Is there any sound (not self-serving) argument against the idea that the best thing for creepy males to do is just go away?
Maybe. Telling people to go away makes them stop listening to you—and probably not “go away”, but “find people who agree with them and hang out there instead”. You can move the problem, but making it stop being a problem isn’t going to happen through mere eviction unless you can effect very systematic culturewide change.
Telling people to go away makes them stop listening to you—and probably not “go away”, but “find people who agree with them and hang out there instead”.
Yeah, I see this in the wild pretty often and it seems… suboptimal. Not to name names, but when you get lots of creepy-labeled people hanging out together, one natural consequence is the formation of identity groups based partly around the behaviors that got them labeled as creepy in the first place. Which in turn creates positive reinforcement that makes those behaviors a lot harder to get rid of and the process of removing them a lot more painful.
That seems like a straightforward loss for everyone, except in the hypothetical case where allegedly creepy behavior is consequentially positive but maintains negative associations thanks to some random social hangover—and I think those cases are pretty rare.
I suspect you and Matt are talking past each other a bit.
Let’s say we’ve got a guy who went to engineering school, works as an engineer, and plays Magic the Gathering in his spare time. As a result most of the people he has interacted with over the past decade are men, and evolution has programmed him to feel desperate and act creepy. Is there any ethical way for him to overcome his creepiness problem? Matt’s arguing that maybe there isn’t, because even if he finds women to hang out with, he’ll end up creeping them out some at first by accident. So the ethical thing to do is to avoid women at all costs.
What’s your take on this argument? My take is that someone needs to give Matt a big hug.
As a result most of the people he has interacted with over the past decade are men, and evolution has programmed him to feel desperate and act creepy.
For all that it’s relevant to your point and means in context, you might as well replace “evolution has programmed him” with “he is being moved by the gods.”
Yeah, I’m not sure why telling myself “I have a strong inclination to do x” and “evolution programmed me to do y in order to acheive z” feel so different.
Generally, I find that if the behavior is fitness-maximizing (seeking social interaction, sex, food, etc), I think of it as “evolution programmed me”, whereas in the case of things that are not obviously fitness-maximizing (finding interesting puzzles/challenges, building things, playing guitar, etc), I think of it as “I have an inclination to X”. It might actually also have to do with whether most people have similar urges as well, now that I think about it.
It might be optimal for this guy to befriend men, or women he knows to be married or gay, who know how to socialize with people and are willing to help him out with that. There’s a bootstrapping issue, but it’s the best outcome if it can be attained.
[Edit] Misread, unfairly singled out one responder, editing to make generic.
My take is that any such person can read all the links provided by the OP, some of which are written specifically for people in that scenario.
Some of the other links have many comments now, but it’s worth reading all of them. Anyone who can read every comment on all of those links is pretty much guaranteed to level-up in all sorts of ways that will be to their benefit in many respects, including improving their interactions with other people, which includes women.
not “go away”, but “find people who agree with them and hang out there instead”
I’m not sure what the difference supposed to be. If they hang out with someone else, and are happy there, and don’t bother you anymore, how is that “not going away”, and why is that not a good solution?
The problem seems to be not your scenario, but the one where they fail to find people who agree with them and hang out there.
ETA: reading Nornagest’s comment below, maybe you mean that they find others who agree with them, but instead of hanging out together somewhere else, they come back with those others and bother you as a group (or bother someone else). That’s a problem, but if these other similar-minded people are around to be found, I’m not sure if not telling them to go away will prevent them from finding one another and banding together.
Tl;dr of my point: telling people to go away should on balance make them go away more.
What I meant (but didn’t express well) was more like “they go find another group, which is composed of people who agree with them and can protect each other, and there are also some people around for some reason who don’t like all this creeping but don’t have the wherewithal to leave for some reason”.
Telling them to go away may well increase such congregations (I’m interested in hearing non-anecdotal evidence). But even assuming that happens, do you think the net amount of being-creeped-out increases as a result? Some people do get them to go away, after all.
Yes, but I’m not so much interested (right now) in what are the optimal rules to impose on people; I’m asking what is the right thing to do, which is a subtly different question. Your argument that eviction leads to problems in other places is clearly true. Analogously, it would be a very bad idea to impose a 80% marginal tax rate on top earners to fund the Against Malaria Foundation, because most of them would work less and there would be huge deadweight loss. However, Peter Singer and people like that argue persuasively that very wealthy people should as a matter of principle voluntarily give a high percentage of their income to efficient charity. And this causes no deadweight loss if they make sure to work as much as before.
Similarly, if there are creeps in your group, don’t you wish they would just leave, and not try to infiltrate another innocent group? Then that is what they should do.
Analogously, it would be a very bad idea to impose a 80% marginal tax rate on top earners to fund the Against Malaria Foundation, because most of them would work less and there would be huge deadweight loss.
The tax rate was 90 percent on them for a long time, in the US—what’s your basis for that claim? It sounds like a cached belief.
One popular tax dodge that made the effective tax rate much lower. Also, until the 80′s (Reagan?) you could get lots of stuff paid for by the company without paying tax on it; company car, housing allowance, other stuff. I’m not an expert but the “real” tax rates were that high only for some.
Huh, interesting claim in the link. I Googled, though, and I couldn’t find any source for this besides the comments on Y Combinator. Can you find another source (preferably one that explains how big an effect this had in aggregate)?
The yield of a tax at 0% is 0. The yield of tax at 100% is also close to zero, as nobody will do anything to earn money that will be taxed at 100% (i.e. ensure all earnings dodge that tax). Therefore the set of policies that give maximum tax yield do not have a tax rate of 100%, and increasing tax rates beyond that reduce tax yield.
(Not to mention that some taxes are easier to evade than others, and it’s easier for some people (e.g. self-employed workers) to evade taxes than for others (e.g. public servants).)
Taxes will be dodged regardless of the rate as long as paying lawyers and accountants is cheaper than paying those taxes. Simplifying the tax code would do a lot to prevent this deadweight loss
Similarly, if there are creeps in your group, don’t you wish they would just leave, and not try to infiltrate another innocent group?
I wish them to do their part to not run into the people they creep on, and allow other people in the group (if any exist) to continue to extract any available value from their participation. And fix them, if that’s doable. (This is if all they are doing is creeping. If they are committing assaults or something I wish them to go away, to a corrections facility.)
Maybe. Telling people to go away makes them stop listening to you—and probably not “go away”, but “find people who agree with them and hang out there instead”. You can move the problem, but making it stop being a problem isn’t going to happen through mere eviction unless you can effect very systematic culturewide change.
Yeah, I see this in the wild pretty often and it seems… suboptimal. Not to name names, but when you get lots of creepy-labeled people hanging out together, one natural consequence is the formation of identity groups based partly around the behaviors that got them labeled as creepy in the first place. Which in turn creates positive reinforcement that makes those behaviors a lot harder to get rid of and the process of removing them a lot more painful.
That seems like a straightforward loss for everyone, except in the hypothetical case where allegedly creepy behavior is consequentially positive but maintains negative associations thanks to some random social hangover—and I think those cases are pretty rare.
I suspect you and Matt are talking past each other a bit.
Let’s say we’ve got a guy who went to engineering school, works as an engineer, and plays Magic the Gathering in his spare time. As a result most of the people he has interacted with over the past decade are men, and evolution has programmed him to feel desperate and act creepy. Is there any ethical way for him to overcome his creepiness problem? Matt’s arguing that maybe there isn’t, because even if he finds women to hang out with, he’ll end up creeping them out some at first by accident. So the ethical thing to do is to avoid women at all costs.
What’s your take on this argument? My take is that someone needs to give Matt a big hug.
For all that it’s relevant to your point and means in context, you might as well replace “evolution has programmed him” with “he is being moved by the gods.”
Yeah, I’m not sure why telling myself “I have a strong inclination to do x” and “evolution programmed me to do y in order to acheive z” feel so different.
Generally, I find that if the behavior is fitness-maximizing (seeking social interaction, sex, food, etc), I think of it as “evolution programmed me”, whereas in the case of things that are not obviously fitness-maximizing (finding interesting puzzles/challenges, building things, playing guitar, etc), I think of it as “I have an inclination to X”. It might actually also have to do with whether most people have similar urges as well, now that I think about it.
The blind idiot god Evolution knows little of this human invention called “morality” …
Correction, Matt needs someone to give him a big hug.
It might be optimal for this guy to befriend men, or women he knows to be married or gay, who know how to socialize with people and are willing to help him out with that. There’s a bootstrapping issue, but it’s the best outcome if it can be attained.
[ETA: I failed a pronoun.]
Married women frequently (warning, availability) report men making unwanted sexual advances. That they’re married makes them even more creepy.
[Edit] Misread, unfairly singled out one responder, editing to make generic.
My take is that any such person can read all the links provided by the OP, some of which are written specifically for people in that scenario.
Some of the other links have many comments now, but it’s worth reading all of them. Anyone who can read every comment on all of those links is pretty much guaranteed to level-up in all sorts of ways that will be to their benefit in many respects, including improving their interactions with other people, which includes women.
I’m not sure what the difference supposed to be. If they hang out with someone else, and are happy there, and don’t bother you anymore, how is that “not going away”, and why is that not a good solution?
The problem seems to be not your scenario, but the one where they fail to find people who agree with them and hang out there.
ETA: reading Nornagest’s comment below, maybe you mean that they find others who agree with them, but instead of hanging out together somewhere else, they come back with those others and bother you as a group (or bother someone else). That’s a problem, but if these other similar-minded people are around to be found, I’m not sure if not telling them to go away will prevent them from finding one another and banding together.
Tl;dr of my point: telling people to go away should on balance make them go away more.
What I meant (but didn’t express well) was more like “they go find another group, which is composed of people who agree with them and can protect each other, and there are also some people around for some reason who don’t like all this creeping but don’t have the wherewithal to leave for some reason”.
Telling them to go away may well increase such congregations (I’m interested in hearing non-anecdotal evidence). But even assuming that happens, do you think the net amount of being-creeped-out increases as a result? Some people do get them to go away, after all.
Yes, but I’m not so much interested (right now) in what are the optimal rules to impose on people; I’m asking what is the right thing to do, which is a subtly different question. Your argument that eviction leads to problems in other places is clearly true. Analogously, it would be a very bad idea to impose a 80% marginal tax rate on top earners to fund the Against Malaria Foundation, because most of them would work less and there would be huge deadweight loss. However, Peter Singer and people like that argue persuasively that very wealthy people should as a matter of principle voluntarily give a high percentage of their income to efficient charity. And this causes no deadweight loss if they make sure to work as much as before.
Similarly, if there are creeps in your group, don’t you wish they would just leave, and not try to infiltrate another innocent group? Then that is what they should do.
The tax rate was 90 percent on them for a long time, in the US—what’s your basis for that claim? It sounds like a cached belief.
One popular tax dodge that made the effective tax rate much lower. Also, until the 80′s (Reagan?) you could get lots of stuff paid for by the company without paying tax on it; company car, housing allowance, other stuff. I’m not an expert but the “real” tax rates were that high only for some.
Huh, interesting claim in the link. I Googled, though, and I couldn’t find any source for this besides the comments on Y Combinator. Can you find another source (preferably one that explains how big an effect this had in aggregate)?
And they still dodge taxes now, even when the rates have been slashed into oblivion. If anything they only seem more determined to do it.
Mindkiller Alert!
The yield of a tax at 0% is 0. The yield of tax at 100% is also close to zero, as nobody will do anything to earn money that will be taxed at 100% (i.e. ensure all earnings dodge that tax). Therefore the set of policies that give maximum tax yield do not have a tax rate of 100%, and increasing tax rates beyond that reduce tax yield.
This analysis is subject to some caveats, and where the optimal rate is is a very complicated and politically charged question, of course, and this is already completely off topic.
(Not to mention that some taxes are easier to evade than others, and it’s easier for some people (e.g. self-employed workers) to evade taxes than for others (e.g. public servants).)
Taxes will be dodged regardless of the rate as long as paying lawyers and accountants is cheaper than paying those taxes. Simplifying the tax code would do a lot to prevent this deadweight loss
I wish them to do their part to not run into the people they creep on, and allow other people in the group (if any exist) to continue to extract any available value from their participation. And fix them, if that’s doable. (This is if all they are doing is creeping. If they are committing assaults or something I wish them to go away, to a corrections facility.)