My issue with this argument is that you are implicitly claiming that social interaction --> manipulation. On the face of it this is probably more or less true. Most social interactions do involve (mild) manipulations such as suggesting an activity, asking someone to pass the [object], or telling a story to elicit sympathy/respect. However, you then claim that these types of manipulations are ones intelligent people “feel iffy about.”
I’m certainly willing to accept that there are types of manipulation that makes the manipulator feel guilty and could possibly cause socially awkwardness. But I very much doubt the claim that most social interactions consist of these types of manipulation and that this is what leads to the social clumsiness some smart people exhibit.
Also, the evo-psych justification that “evolution has programmed us to have repulsion towards unfairly manipulating others” seems like a big stretch. I would actually expect the opposite to be true to the extent that your manipulations weren’t blatant enough to trigger retaliation.
Oh, yes, that is basically my understanding: We do social manipulation to the extent it is deemed “fair”, that is, to the point it doesn’t result in retaliation. But at some point it starts to result in such retaliation, and we have this “fairness”-sensor that tells us when to retaliate or watch out for retaliation.
I don’t particularly care about manipulation that results in obtaining salt shaker or a tennis partner. What I’m interested in is manipulation you can use to form alliances, make someone liable to help you with stuff you want, make them like you, make them think of you as their friend or “senpai” for the lack of better term, or make them fall in love with you. What also works is getting them to have sex with you, to reveal something embarrassing about themselves, or otherwise become part of something they hold sacred. Pretending to be a god would fall into this category. I’m struggling to explain why I think manipulation on those cases is iffy, I think it has to do with that kind of interaction kinda assuming that there are processes involved beyond self-regulation. With manipulation, you could bypass that and in effect you would lie about your alliance.
It is true many social interactions are not about anything deeper than getting the salt shaker. I kind of just didn’t think of them while writing this post. I might need to clarify that point.
Manipulation of the kind you’re talking about is going to involve flexibility of self—you have to be capable of being the person they would consider a friend, a lover, a confidant. This is significantly harder than it sounds, especially over long periods of time, and you run the very real risk of becoming the thing you only intended to pretend to be. This should be a matter of concern in serious matters—the necessity to be the person they need you to be means you are manipulated by them as a necessary element to manipulating them.
There’s a reason countries tend to monitor the mental health of their spies pretty closely.
My issue with this argument is that you are implicitly claiming that social interaction --> manipulation. On the face of it this is probably more or less true. Most social interactions do involve (mild) manipulations such as suggesting an activity, asking someone to pass the [object], or telling a story to elicit sympathy/respect. However, you then claim that these types of manipulations are ones intelligent people “feel iffy about.”
I’m certainly willing to accept that there are types of manipulation that makes the manipulator feel guilty and could possibly cause socially awkwardness. But I very much doubt the claim that most social interactions consist of these types of manipulation and that this is what leads to the social clumsiness some smart people exhibit.
Also, the evo-psych justification that “evolution has programmed us to have repulsion towards unfairly manipulating others” seems like a big stretch. I would actually expect the opposite to be true to the extent that your manipulations weren’t blatant enough to trigger retaliation.
Oh, yes, that is basically my understanding: We do social manipulation to the extent it is deemed “fair”, that is, to the point it doesn’t result in retaliation. But at some point it starts to result in such retaliation, and we have this “fairness”-sensor that tells us when to retaliate or watch out for retaliation.
I don’t particularly care about manipulation that results in obtaining salt shaker or a tennis partner. What I’m interested in is manipulation you can use to form alliances, make someone liable to help you with stuff you want, make them like you, make them think of you as their friend or “senpai” for the lack of better term, or make them fall in love with you. What also works is getting them to have sex with you, to reveal something embarrassing about themselves, or otherwise become part of something they hold sacred. Pretending to be a god would fall into this category. I’m struggling to explain why I think manipulation on those cases is iffy, I think it has to do with that kind of interaction kinda assuming that there are processes involved beyond self-regulation. With manipulation, you could bypass that and in effect you would lie about your alliance.
It is true many social interactions are not about anything deeper than getting the salt shaker. I kind of just didn’t think of them while writing this post. I might need to clarify that point.
Manipulation of the kind you’re talking about is going to involve flexibility of self—you have to be capable of being the person they would consider a friend, a lover, a confidant. This is significantly harder than it sounds, especially over long periods of time, and you run the very real risk of becoming the thing you only intended to pretend to be. This should be a matter of concern in serious matters—the necessity to be the person they need you to be means you are manipulated by them as a necessary element to manipulating them.
There’s a reason countries tend to monitor the mental health of their spies pretty closely.