Isn’t that kind of missing the point, though, since the people in question almost certainly don’t have mind-readers with such a capability? Sounds like yet another failure of insight on the part of the writers.
It reminds me of a certain LWer’s “helpful” advice that, “You have to dress right, and wear the right clothes, that look good, and wear it the right way.” Ah, thanks, man, how’d I miss that?
But even more importantly, I don’t think anyone has a mind reader capable of what these writers are expecting of it. Everyone has some margin of error and so can’t be categorically expected (or advised) to avoid “all” “unwanted” behavior—much more reasonable to ask that they not do a (person-invariant) category of generally disliked behavior, whether or not a particular person happens to like or not like it (and punish even if it happened to be liked, because of incentive effects).
Worse, “unwanted” behavior with respect to Jones might be for Smith not to make romantic overtures toward Doe (assuming Doe and Jones aren’t in a relationship). Or for Smith not to offer products for sale that are competitive with Jones’s. Or for Smith to keep his golden watch rather than give it away.
No reasonable social rule requires you to junk your life in order to be a perpetual font of charity, however wanted that might be.
I was not under the impression that we were discussing reasonable, consistent social rules.
To someone with built-in social skills, it basically feels like the policy reduces to “do what other people want”. It takes a lot of effort to see that the reduction goes the other way (i.e. we’re trying to reduce “do what other people want” to actionable rules). Additionally, the writers are probably giving the first explanation that comes to mind for why people seem creepy (naturally, one that reflects favorably on them and, more importantly, unfavorably on the person they’re criticizing). If they dug deeper, they might (might) be able to come up with specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors that trigger the “creepy” association. This would be useful if they were interested in helping creepy people become less creepy, but for the most part the people writing about creepiness are writing because they’ve just been on the receiving end, and just want it to go away.
I suspect that at least some people have a mind-reader at least close to the specs of these writers, particularly people those from the writers’ social groups. The standard model onboard human emulator really is quite good, particularly when it’s been trained by large amounts of social contact (something most people labeled creepy (the low-status kind) don’t get much of). Which is why the most successful advice on how to become less creepy is to get out more. Being creepy isn’t something you can really think yourself out of, because it has a lot to do with posture, timing, intonation, and trained guesswork. I’m fairly sure that formal training for becoming less creepy would be effective (possibly more so than the “getting out more”), but it’s something that would require an outside, experienced party.
Isn’t that kind of missing the point, though, since the people in question almost certainly don’t have mind-readers with such a capability? Sounds like yet another failure of insight on the part of the writers.
It reminds me of a certain LWer’s “helpful” advice that, “You have to dress right, and wear the right clothes, that look good, and wear it the right way.” Ah, thanks, man, how’d I miss that?
But even more importantly, I don’t think anyone has a mind reader capable of what these writers are expecting of it. Everyone has some margin of error and so can’t be categorically expected (or advised) to avoid “all” “unwanted” behavior—much more reasonable to ask that they not do a (person-invariant) category of generally disliked behavior, whether or not a particular person happens to like or not like it (and punish even if it happened to be liked, because of incentive effects).
Worse, “unwanted” behavior with respect to Jones might be for Smith not to make romantic overtures toward Doe (assuming Doe and Jones aren’t in a relationship). Or for Smith not to offer products for sale that are competitive with Jones’s. Or for Smith to keep his golden watch rather than give it away.
No reasonable social rule requires you to junk your life in order to be a perpetual font of charity, however wanted that might be.
I was not under the impression that we were discussing reasonable, consistent social rules.
To someone with built-in social skills, it basically feels like the policy reduces to “do what other people want”. It takes a lot of effort to see that the reduction goes the other way (i.e. we’re trying to reduce “do what other people want” to actionable rules). Additionally, the writers are probably giving the first explanation that comes to mind for why people seem creepy (naturally, one that reflects favorably on them and, more importantly, unfavorably on the person they’re criticizing). If they dug deeper, they might (might) be able to come up with specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors that trigger the “creepy” association. This would be useful if they were interested in helping creepy people become less creepy, but for the most part the people writing about creepiness are writing because they’ve just been on the receiving end, and just want it to go away.
I suspect that at least some people have a mind-reader at least close to the specs of these writers, particularly people those from the writers’ social groups. The standard model onboard human emulator really is quite good, particularly when it’s been trained by large amounts of social contact (something most people labeled creepy (the low-status kind) don’t get much of). Which is why the most successful advice on how to become less creepy is to get out more. Being creepy isn’t something you can really think yourself out of, because it has a lot to do with posture, timing, intonation, and trained guesswork. I’m fairly sure that formal training for becoming less creepy would be effective (possibly more so than the “getting out more”), but it’s something that would require an outside, experienced party.