Do not initiate intimate physical contact (hugs, touching shoulder, etc) unless the target has previously made similar contact with you.
This rule is always safe to follow, but is suboptimal in that it rules out some contact that both parties would enjoy.
Do not act entitled to intimate physical contact unless you have already made that kind of target and are sure it was appreciated
This is mostly an anti-innuendo rule. Just as threats of violence are morally equivalent to acts of violence, entitlement to entering personal space is equivalent to entering personal space.
For a better-phrased example of this rule, see the code of conduct from the OpenSF polyamory conference:
No touching other people without asking! (Or unless you already have that sort of relationship with them.) We really mean it. This means no random hands on knees, shoulders, etc. We know this is California and everyone hugs, but please do that awkward “wanna hug?” gesture before actually hugging. When in doubt about any kind of social or erotic touching, please ASK FIRST. We have attendees who do not like to be touched, and they will like you much better if you respect their personal space.
Or possibly just “Hugs okay?”, sans the arms outstretched (it can create pressure; the person has signalled very loudly in social terms, so the other person’s denial can lead to face loss; people who’ve been socialized to be sensitive to that, whether for cultural or other reasons, might find the outstretched arms add pressure. Fine for folks who’ve no issue asserting their boundaries loudly and clearly without concern for face, but that’s not even enough of everybody to be a really good rule, I think.)
Hm. I’ve not tried that myself, but as someone who had a lot of past awkwardness and cluelessness in social situations, and now does alright, it strikes me as not a good move. My sense is that it’ll just look like a different flavor of awkward-confused, albeit one that puts less direct pressure on the person.
Jandila’s response here illustrates the vital point that common sense is not a safe way to read advice in this area. If you need advice, what you consider common sense will often be deeply wrong.
So, I know this funny little trick where you can verbalize a desire and seek explicit permission to act it out while taking care to make sure nothing about the situation seems especially likely to make the other party feel coerced or intimidated into giving an answer out of synch with their preferences. It basically involves paying attention, modelling the other person as an agent, deciding on that basis whether the request is appropriate (while noting the distinction between “appropriate” and “acceptable to the other person”) and then asking politely. You do have to take care not to assume that the answer is or “should be” yes, though—the difference that makes in your approach usually comes off as a bit creepy.
If it happens that you don’t know how to perform all of these magical tricks, using your words is a good first approximation. The likelihood of a good outcome is often improved if you ask e.g. “Can I hug you?” as opposed to just bounding up and hugging the person, and your blameworthiness is significantly lowered.
Note please that physically imposing folks who appear to be men and are not charismatic (like social status, but interpreted on an individual basis—the individual one considers highest-charisma is likely to be thought of as creepy by a lot of other people, because it’s about walking the fine line between creepiness and friendliness) are most likely to benefit from this. This does stand to be noticed. Cute perky energetic young women can get away with hugging practically anyone without asking. This does not necessarily mean that they should.
I mean, I was kinda being snarky (I don’t think what I suggested is all that hard or unusual at all, though it obviously varies. I’ve noticed a few reasons for that:
-The person is failing to model the other as an agent, as a center of perspective. Their model of the person starts and stops at their own feelings and reactions; hence, if they find the person attractive, “X is attractive to me” becomes way more salient than it would otherwise be, in determining how they’ll attempt interaction. Men do this to women a lot, in general, but there are plenty of other dynamics or situations which can lead to it. Autism or similar psychological variance is massively overstated as an explanation for it; it’s way too prevalent a behavior in the general population for that.
-The person has no sense of whether something is appropriate or not, even though they’ve modelled the other party accurately (“is agent, has preferences”). This is very common among people who, for whatever reason, have had socialization issues. They usually know there’s a bewildering array of possible rules or at least broad patterns that might theoretically bear on the answer, but it’s not obvious which ones apply, or that they haven’t even thought of. To be honest, even socially-successful people sometimes have trouble navigating that, as soon as they’re in circumstances that are unfamiliar to them—another culture’s norms, or when dealing with a known charged dynamic and they’re concerned about signalling and how they come off. The trick is that there’s usually not any one right answer; it can be as specific as the nonverbal communication between two parties. Is asking for a hug creepy or unnecessary? Sometimes, if you can’t read the cues, you really can’t know short of asking. This means there’s always some subjective sense of risk; the problem is they don’t know how to calibrate that to the situation, don’t have a model of likely prior probabilities. All they really have is a sense of the variance on the options, which is incredibly wide.
-They’re failing to not-assume-yes. This is related to the first problem; the person is failing to be aware of, or consider, the pressure their request creates, or is equivocating the risk of being told “no” or declared “creepy” to be symmetrical with the worst-case scenario on the other person’s chart. For one reason or another, it just seems to them that if there’s no obvious reason not to, no compelling objection in particular, then obviously the thing they want should happen. “No” isn’t heard as a good answer in and of itself, not a sufficient report of the other party’s preference; it’s felt as somehow keeping them at arm’s length, denying them the information they need to know how to get what they want. This sort of thing is very obvious from outside, because it leads to different behaviors and responses, and body language tells, when confronted with a “no.”
“Hug?” “No, I don’t want a hug.” “Okay, won’t ask again.”
“Hug?” “No, I don’t want a hug.” “How dare you deny me what I want?”
“Hug?” “No, I want to lower your status, and this refusal is a way to do that.” “Okay, I’m a worthless and horrible person and should grovel.”
“Hug?” “No, I want to lower your status, and this refusal is a way to do that.” “How dare you rudely shun me?”
The usual way is to convey requests and refusals by cues too subtle for status fights. The nerdy way is to always interpret answers as preference reports, not status fights. Bad things happen in the intersection.
That can come across to some women as insecure. (Though I’d expect most of those are in the left half of the bell curve and hence unlikely to be found in LW meetups.)
Some women? And you’re Irish? This behaviour is practically tattooing “I have poor social skills or severe confidence issues” on your forehead in any guess culture. Odd is about as positive a description as it’s going to get outside of people who’ve not read a good deal of woman’s studies stuff.
Certainly! As such, we should figure out how to turn geekdoms into ask cultures, when they aren’t already. Putting even marginally socially-awkward people in situations where they have to guess other people’s intentions, when everyone is intentionally avoiding making their intentions common knowledge, well, that’s sort of cruel.
So, this become a problem we can actually try to solve. In a relatively small environment, like a group of a dozen or so, what can one do to induce “ask culture”, instead of “guess culture”?
(This should probably be a discussion post of its own… hm.)
My own approach: if I can afford the status-hit, I ask about stuff in a guess culture, and I explicitly answer questions there. In some cases I volunteer explicit explanations even when questions weren’t asked, although I’m careful about this, because it can cause a status-hit for the person I’m talking to as well.
Some additional notes:
I was raised in two different guess cultures simultaneously, then transferred to an ask culture in my adolescence, and I’m fairly socially adept. This caused me to think explicitly about this stuff rather a lot, even before I had words for it. That said, I strongly suspect that there’s much clearer understandings of this stuff available in research literature, and a good scholar would be invaluable if you were serious about this as a project.
Talking about “affording the status-hit” is oversimplifying to the point of being misleading, since I live in the intersection of multiple cultures and being seen in culture A as deliberately making a status-lowering move in culture B can be a status-raising move in A. Depending on how much I value A-status and B-status, “taking a hit” in B might not be a sacrifice at all. (Of course, being seen that way in A without actually making such a move in B… for example, pretending to my A friends that I am seen as a rebel in B while in fact being no such thing… is potentially a more valuable move, albeit a risky one. As well as a dishonest one, to the extent that that matters.)
The terms “ask culture” and “guess culture” are misleading as well; it’s more precise to think in terms of topics for which a given culture takes an “ask” stance, and topics for which it takes a “guess” stance. It’s even clearer to think in terms of preferred levels of directness and indirectness when trying to find something out, since successful people don’t actually guess about topics for which their culture takes a “guess” stance, they investigate indirectly. But, having said all that, I’m willing to keep talking about “ask” and “guess” culture for convenience as long as we understand the limits of the labels.
A downside of asking for things in a guess culture is that people have to give you the things. (Unless you’re demanding so much they’d rather refuse and lose you as an ally.) Imposing this cost on people hurts them, as well as lowers your status.
Note that I wrote “asking about”, not “asking for”.
I agree that turning down requests in a guess culture has social costs, which is one reason the distinction between appropriate and inappropriate requests is considered so important.
Imposing costs on others by making demands of them doesn’t necessarily lower my status.
Understood—but essentially no humans consider their own status hits as of extremely low importance. this is so strong that directing other people to lower their status—even if it’s in their best long-term interest—is only rarely practical advice.
Oh absolutely. To be clear, I am asserting that people making this recommendation are basically following the FDA playbook. Given a tradeoff between bad things happening and costly safety measures...radically optimize for an expensive six sigmas of certainty that no bad event ever happens, with massive costs to everyone else.
Now, this strategy can make sense, if either:
You view even a single creepy incident as an extreme harm and believe that this sort of thing happens very often. [Note: “Creepiness is bad and I have an anecdote to prove it” is does not prove this quantitative claim.]
You care a lot about the feelings of people claiming creepiness and care very little about the costs to everyone else.
Arguably, the few people in this thread that are advocating extremely socially costly “safety measures” believe a combination of both.
This is sometimes a fair characterization, but remember that (like this thread has been discussing) the social cost depends a lot on your environment. Better to say that categorically recommending behaviors without understanding the perspectives of those that those behaviors would harm is a problem (obviously somewhat inevitable due to ignorance). (I think we need the term “typical social group fallacy”.)
Because we want to see more comments like this (i.e. clearing up confusion), and because in a thread this large it only takes a small percentage of people deciding that a comment is high-quality for it to get upvoted.
It’s probably more accurate to refer to hint cultures rather than guess cultures.
I wish lojban had worked out better—it would be very handy to have a concise way of indicating whether you’re talking about how a culture feels from the inside or the outside.
On the one hand, emphatically yes—when talking about How To Interact with people of X gender, people tend to make a lot of generalizations.
On the other, feminist scripts seem to be against didactically learning social rules to an extreme extent—instead of pointing out “Hey, this thing works on maybe three out of four women, referring to that subset as ‘women’ makes you believe less in the other one-quarter,” they go the entirely opposite direction and say that learning any rule, ever, is wrong and misleading and Evil. I dislike this, and while your comment is clearly not being this, it can easily be read as it by someone with experience interacting with those scripts.
I often find that what is not creepy for internet feminists can be for women who use other social conventions, and vice versa. Makes it hard when one doesn’t know the convention being used. Also makes other-optimising a problem here.
Creepiness is partially context-dependent. If you try to list all details, there will be too many details to remember. On the other hand, if you try to find some general rules (such as: “don’t make people feel uncomfortable”), some people will have problem translating them to specific situations.
This could be possibly solved by making a “beginners” handbook, which would contain the general rules and their specific instances in the most typical situations (at school, at job, on street, in shop), and later some specific advice for less typical situations (at disco, at funeral, etc.).
But still, even the internet version would probably need different sections for instant messengers, facebook, e-mail… even for e-mail to different groups of people… Eh. Anyway, it could also start with most frequent situations, and progress to the more rare ones.
Heck, I suspect that in a lot of cases what a feminist claims is creepy on the internet, and what the same feminist would find creepy in real life are different things.
That extends to more than feminists, and more than creepiness; people’s verbal descriptions of grammatical or moral rules often don’t match the judgement they will give to specific cases. More generally, people can’t see how their brain works, and when they try to describe it they will get a lot wrong.
But do you mean to say that the creepiness standards of internet feminists are the same as that for “women who go other social convention”? I was expecting you to mean that they were different.
A problem with teasing is that it sets up an environment where it can feel very risky to say “No, I don’t like being teased”. Will the request be respected, or will it be met with more teasing?
I like that approach. Unfortunately, for some of the most socially-adept (in other respects), any request not to tease is itself regarded as an invitation for more teasing—or at least, the “I really need to stop” sensor is way too insensitive to negatives. Even worse, some end up liking the person because of this (which obviously has horrid incentive effects).
My request that you not reply to my comments was not, and never became, an invitation for replies to my comments.
Alicorn’s request for SilasBarta to not reply to her comments was not, and never became, an obligation for him to not speak up when Alicorn says things that he opposes.
Replying to a comment on a forum is not the same as approaching someone in person to engage in conversation. It is, fittingly, like responding to a public speech at the forum. Accordingly, the right to reply to Alicorn’s comments isn’t something that requires her ‘invitation’. She does not have the right to speak whatever she wishes and demand that someone in particular who disagrees with her may not reply. (Except, I suppose, in the technical sense whereby she could in principle abuse her moderation powers to prevent someone replying for any reason she chose.)
This particular play for status and control over SilasBarta should be rejected and crushed mercilessly. SilasBarta’s comment isn’t personal in nature and so does not represent the kind of social approach that fits with the subject of this thread and doesn’t get the same treatment.
The solution to not wanting to see replies by a specific individual is an ignore feature and that is one we really need here. There are plenty of people I whose comments I don’t want to see and as a bonus that which is not seen can not be fed.
Also, the grandparent is disingenuous. Presumably, Silas assumed that the request had simply expired, not that it had morphed into a different kind of request.
...as did I, frankly. I’m now commenting here after seeing this and thinking, “Oh, no, please don’t let this be about....that!”, and then finding, to my utter horror, that it was indeed about that.
My request that you not reply to my comments was not, and never became, an invitation for replies to my comments.
Alicorn’s request for SilasBarta to not reply to her comments was not, and never became, an obligation for him to not speak up when Alicorn says things that he opposes.
Alicorn’s request was exactly that. What else could the words possibly mean?
I agree that an “ignore” feature would be very valuable for this site.
A request is not exactly an obligation. If you disagree, I request that you give me all your money.
What else could the words possibly mean?
I think my words above mean that I have uttered an unreasonable request that someone with healthy boundaries would ignore.
(Note that even if you happen to believe people have the particular rights of control over others that Alicorn has claimed your reply here would still seem to be confusing the nature of the relationship between verbal symbols and obligation.)
I don’t really enjoy bringing this up, much less in this thread, but IIRC, it used to be that SilasBarta would hound Alicorn and “follow her around” on the site (by specifically tracking her recent comments) in order to confront her. This is deeply disruptive behavior which can actually drive honest users off the site, so it’s very much not OK. No users should be getting this kind of treatment, unless they’re actually being so annoying on their own that we’d rather drive them off.
Let Silas apologize to Eliezer directly for his problem behavior, then we can think about lifting these restrictions on his commenting privileges.
but IIRC, it used to be that SilasBarta would hound Alicorn and “follow her around” on the site (by specifically tracking her recent comments) in order to confront her.
Oh the irony. The last link in the OP specifically discusses exactly this scenario.
While the outcome for a woman targeted by a man like this is poor, the damage done to the group by all the other men staying silent (or outright supporting him) is huge. Really, this isn’t even buried in the comments, this is the whole point of the two letters discussed in that link.
I can’t speak to whether there are problems of this sort in LW meetups, but right here is our evidence of it here in LW comments.
I understand concerns about censorship, arbitrary moderation, special treatment, etc, but everyone who downvoted Alicorn and upvoted wedrifid here has also sent a message of tacit support for SilasBarta and a very clear message to any other woman here.
From my link above, edited:
Step 1: A creepy dude does creepy, entitled shit and makes women feel unsafe {in LW}
Step 2: The women speak up about it {in LW}
Step 3: It gets written off as “not a big deal” or “he probably didn’t mean it” or “he’s not a bad guy, really.” {...}
Step 4: Everyone is worried about hurting creepy dude’s feelings or making it weird for creepy dude. Better yet,
everyone is worried about how the other dudes in the friend group will feel if they are called out for enabling
creepy dude. Women are worried that if they push the issue, that the entire friend group will side with creepy
dude or that they’ll be blamed for causing “drama.” {...}
Step 5: Creepy dude creeps on with his creepy self. He’s learned that there are no real (i.e. “disapproval &
pushback from dudes and dude society”) consequences to his actions. Women feel creeped out and
unsafe. Some of them decide to take a firm stand against creeping and not {participate in LW} anymore.
{...} Some of the woman decide to just quietly put up with it, because they’ve learned that no one will really side
with them and it’s easier to go along than to lose one’s entire community. The whole group works around this
missing stair.
By this exact scenario, do you mean something TOTALLY different? disagreeing with someone who makes public comments on an internet forum is not “creepy entitled shit” (you wouldn’t even have thought to make this accusation here if SilasBarta was female and Eliezer was the target) and even if we assume that the original situation of banning him from responding to her was totally justified (I don’t know, I haven’t read the backdrama), then it’s still ridiculous for Alicorn to respond to a thread SilasBarta is talking in without him being able to reply. I’m not trying to defend anything SilasBarta did in the past, I’m trying to defend conversation. If you have a restraining order against someone, you shouldn’t walk right up to THEM and force them to leave wherever they happen to be.
(you wouldn’t even have thought to make this accusation here if SilasBarta was female and Eliezer was the target)
Agreed, and I think that says something interesting and useful. Symmetry is not a useful tool here.
If there’s broader interest in seeing some attempt at a rationalist view of privilege I’m keen to get whatever help is available, and take it to a separate Discussion.
I would be interested in seeing some attempt at a rationalist view of privilege, however I’m not sure that it would be welcome here; also I do think there are many advantages in trying to stick to the “no mindkiller topics” rule. Do you have a personal blog that you could post it on? If you do decide post it on LW I would recommend using the open thread, rather than the discussion or main section.
I suspect if I were LW-high-status, I could politely point out that while we’ve both argued from assertions, one of us has expanded on their assertion, and one of us has not.
Unless you mean “that linked post does not discuss LW or any of the individuals you reference, so claiming it specifically discusses exactly this scenario is trivially false”? I have no objection to curbing my hyperbole with an edit.
I take from your vehemence that your disagreement is more fundamental though. Do you have more words there you’re willing to add, here or in PM?
I suspect if I were LW-high-status, I could politely point out that while we’ve both argued from assertions, one of us has expanded on their assertion, and one of us has not.
What is it about being low status that makes you think you are better served by making the claim passively aggressively rather than politely? Politeness usually more important when status is lacking, not less. Or do you consider this style to be even more polite than, well, pointing out politely?
As it happens I have expanded rather a lot in my original message. I chose not to expand further in response to either you or bogus because I didn’t see benefit to such engagement.
I take from your vehemence that your disagreement is more fundamental though.
The thing in the OP is bad. Replying to public comments isn’t. That is all.
Oh the irony. The last link in the OP specifically discusses exactly this scenario.
No way. Hounding users on an internet site can cause a lot of annoyance and status problems, but it’s not creepy, i.e. it entails no shared threat of bodily harm. People routinely get away with extremely weird behavior on internet groups, even though corresponding behaviors (even something as mild as a heated social confrontation) would get them shunned and ostracized, or perhaps physically assaulted and injured, in a real-world actual community where bodily harm considerations are critical. There is nothing wrong with this persay—it just takes some getting used to.
Hounding someone, even if there are no threats, can turn an online group into no fun for them.
I’m not convinced it’s true that all female fury at male inappropriate attention is based in fear of physical harm. However, large amounts of inappropriate attention can be a huge attention and energy drain—mental cpus are a limited resource.
No way. Hounding users on an internet site can cause a lot of annoyance and status problems, but it’s not creepy, i.e. it entails no shared threat of bodily harm.
I disagree with your definition of “creepy”. However, whether we define the word that way or not, would you agree that it is behaviour worth discouraging?
It is one thing to disagree with a view that someone is expressing. It is quite another to follow that person around, disproportionately, in order to find opportunities to disagree specifically with them, (whether that’s in order to make them feel unwelcome and drive them out, or whether via some twisted logic the hounder feels it gains them dominance or even sees it as courting behaviour).
Just confirming: are you disagreeing because link posited risk of escalation to assault which I agree seems impossible in a purely online context?
I drew the analogy because it called out the toxic effects on a community, and that in many ways the toxicity is not that there was a creeper, but that there is much signalling in their support that has follow-on effects.
Assuming those claimed signalling secondary losses are correct, I don’t see anything specific to an online context that would be immune. The “risk of escalation” discussed there seems severable from its other points.
I am disagreeing because I regard what you call “risk of escalation to assault” (or, more generally: risks of bodily harm and benefits from tightly-knit social cooperation) as a critical determinant of social interaction. It is very hard to meaningfully compare real-world and online contexts, much less regard them as “the exact same scenario”.
(Indeed, I have jokingly argued before that we should totally deprecate and taboo the term “community” as referring to online social groups, since it tends to promote this very kind of ontological confusion.)
As for your question about “toxicity”, let’s just say that this particular discussion has been held already. If anything, LW has seemed to err towards taking complaints about divisive or disruptive behavior more seriously than they otherwise would, especially when outgroup status is a factor.
I have just solicited from Eliezer, and received, permission to ban further comments from Silas that reply to me.
(Except, I suppose, in the technical sense whereby she could in principle abuse her moderation powers to prevent someone replying for any reason she chose.)
It seems my caveats were too generous. I honestly thought you would be outright offended if I even hinted that you would do such a thing. It seems obviously the sort of thing a moderator would be careful not to do.
Silas, please document all such abuses—PM them to me.
It should be noted that all instances of comments which moderator privileges prevent reply to represent comments that I wish to see less of on lesswrong, for reasons related to filtered evidence.
Thanks. Interestingly, I was about to reply to your quoted comment with something about it being irresponsible to even insinuate that a moderator would abuse their power that way, &c. but … yeah. I just PM’d EY for confirmation. If true, this may just be “jump the shark” day.
I doubt that a rogue moderator would receive express advance approval of abusive actions. If Eliezer says that Alicorn may ban certain comments, then it is not abusive for Alicorn to ban those comments.
I doubt that a rogue moderator would receive express advance approval of abusive actions. If Eliezer says that Alicorn may ban certain comments, then it is not abusive for Alicorn to ban those comments.
If Eliezer’s approval makes the action tautologically non-abusive then please act as if I substituted a different word that means something along the lines of “detrimental, innapropriate, politically ill advised, deprecated and considered ‘naughty’ by user:wedrifid”. ;)
As I understood the spirit of the original agreement, you were not supposed to comment downthread from Silas if you didn’t want to be responded-to. You did so.
Since many issues of this type stem not from polite-but-overreaching people but rather the legitimately impolite, this method may not always be hugely effective. Legitimately impolite people would hear something like that and reply “Are you?” with a smirk. Also, if you get angry or seriously assertive, they are likely to assume the problem is on your end and tell people about how “crazy” you are.
The fact that many people reward such behavior is of course a major contributor to this issue.
The only explanation for this is that it is acceptable for women to initiate physical contact without prior contact by the other party. This is an unconscious double standard.
In many social groups touching initiated from women is often received just as bad as from men, and fairly so. I am sure there are lots of groups with this specific double standard, but it is not universal, not by a large margin.
Just as threats of violence are morally equivalent to acts of violence
Threats of violence are bad. Threats of violence are bad because acts of violence are bad. Some of the moral badness of acts of violence flows into threats of violence and makes them bad too. Threats of violence should not be tolerated.
Threats of violence are not morally equivalent to acts of violence. The fact that we’re talking about practical real-world morality is no excuse to lose our ability to think quantitatively.
This rule is always safe to follow, but is suboptimal in that it rules out some contact that both parties would enjoy.
This is mostly an anti-innuendo rule. Just as threats of violence are morally equivalent to acts of violence, entitlement to entering personal space is equivalent to entering personal space.
If everyone follows this rule nobody will ever initiate physical contact.
For a better-phrased example of this rule, see the code of conduct from the OpenSF polyamory conference:
The OpenSF code of conduct seems pretty good in general.
It does! Want to clone it for the Singularity Summit?
I don’t think a commonsense reading of this rule would prohibit holding one’s arms up and saying “Hugs?”
Or possibly just “Hugs okay?”, sans the arms outstretched (it can create pressure; the person has signalled very loudly in social terms, so the other person’s denial can lead to face loss; people who’ve been socialized to be sensitive to that, whether for cultural or other reasons, might find the outstretched arms add pressure. Fine for folks who’ve no issue asserting their boundaries loudly and clearly without concern for face, but that’s not even enough of everybody to be a really good rule, I think.)
Is being vague with who it’s directed at and counting on something like the bystander effect a good hack for that?
Hm. I’ve not tried that myself, but as someone who had a lot of past awkwardness and cluelessness in social situations, and now does alright, it strikes me as not a good move. My sense is that it’ll just look like a different flavor of awkward-confused, albeit one that puts less direct pressure on the person.
Jandila’s response here illustrates the vital point that common sense is not a safe way to read advice in this area. If you need advice, what you consider common sense will often be deeply wrong.
So, I know this funny little trick where you can verbalize a desire and seek explicit permission to act it out while taking care to make sure nothing about the situation seems especially likely to make the other party feel coerced or intimidated into giving an answer out of synch with their preferences. It basically involves paying attention, modelling the other person as an agent, deciding on that basis whether the request is appropriate (while noting the distinction between “appropriate” and “acceptable to the other person”) and then asking politely. You do have to take care not to assume that the answer is or “should be” yes, though—the difference that makes in your approach usually comes off as a bit creepy.
If it happens that you don’t know how to perform all of these magical tricks, using your words is a good first approximation. The likelihood of a good outcome is often improved if you ask e.g. “Can I hug you?” as opposed to just bounding up and hugging the person, and your blameworthiness is significantly lowered.
Note please that physically imposing folks who appear to be men and are not charismatic (like social status, but interpreted on an individual basis—the individual one considers highest-charisma is likely to be thought of as creepy by a lot of other people, because it’s about walking the fine line between creepiness and friendliness) are most likely to benefit from this. This does stand to be noticed. Cute perky energetic young women can get away with hugging practically anyone without asking. This does not necessarily mean that they should.
Challenging, but certainly possible.
Which bit do you find challenging?
I mean, I was kinda being snarky (I don’t think what I suggested is all that hard or unusual at all, though it obviously varies. I’ve noticed a few reasons for that:
-The person is failing to model the other as an agent, as a center of perspective. Their model of the person starts and stops at their own feelings and reactions; hence, if they find the person attractive, “X is attractive to me” becomes way more salient than it would otherwise be, in determining how they’ll attempt interaction. Men do this to women a lot, in general, but there are plenty of other dynamics or situations which can lead to it. Autism or similar psychological variance is massively overstated as an explanation for it; it’s way too prevalent a behavior in the general population for that.
-The person has no sense of whether something is appropriate or not, even though they’ve modelled the other party accurately (“is agent, has preferences”). This is very common among people who, for whatever reason, have had socialization issues. They usually know there’s a bewildering array of possible rules or at least broad patterns that might theoretically bear on the answer, but it’s not obvious which ones apply, or that they haven’t even thought of. To be honest, even socially-successful people sometimes have trouble navigating that, as soon as they’re in circumstances that are unfamiliar to them—another culture’s norms, or when dealing with a known charged dynamic and they’re concerned about signalling and how they come off. The trick is that there’s usually not any one right answer; it can be as specific as the nonverbal communication between two parties. Is asking for a hug creepy or unnecessary? Sometimes, if you can’t read the cues, you really can’t know short of asking. This means there’s always some subjective sense of risk; the problem is they don’t know how to calibrate that to the situation, don’t have a model of likely prior probabilities. All they really have is a sense of the variance on the options, which is incredibly wide.
-They’re failing to not-assume-yes. This is related to the first problem; the person is failing to be aware of, or consider, the pressure their request creates, or is equivocating the risk of being told “no” or declared “creepy” to be symmetrical with the worst-case scenario on the other person’s chart. For one reason or another, it just seems to them that if there’s no obvious reason not to, no compelling objection in particular, then obviously the thing they want should happen. “No” isn’t heard as a good answer in and of itself, not a sufficient report of the other party’s preference; it’s felt as somehow keeping them at arm’s length, denying them the information they need to know how to get what they want. This sort of thing is very obvious from outside, because it leads to different behaviors and responses, and body language tells, when confronted with a “no.”
The hard part is forming an accurate model of the other person and situation.
Don’t worry—I’m sure those links are packed with advice on this particularly difficult subproblem! Why else would they be recommended?
Your last paragraph is excellent. (Others also good, last excellent.)
There’s a bit of confounding between
“Hug?” “No, I don’t want a hug.” “Okay, won’t ask again.”
“Hug?” “No, I don’t want a hug.” “How dare you deny me what I want?”
“Hug?” “No, I want to lower your status, and this refusal is a way to do that.” “Okay, I’m a worthless and horrible person and should grovel.”
“Hug?” “No, I want to lower your status, and this refusal is a way to do that.” “How dare you rudely shun me?”
The usual way is to convey requests and refusals by cues too subtle for status fights. The nerdy way is to always interpret answers as preference reports, not status fights. Bad things happen in the intersection.
That can come across to some women as insecure. (Though I’d expect most of those are in the left half of the bell curve and hence unlikely to be found in LW meetups.)
Some women? And you’re Irish? This behaviour is practically tattooing “I have poor social skills or severe confidence issues” on your forehead in any guess culture. Odd is about as positive a description as it’s going to get outside of people who’ve not read a good deal of woman’s studies stuff.
Certainly! As such, we should figure out how to turn geekdoms into ask cultures, when they aren’t already. Putting even marginally socially-awkward people in situations where they have to guess other people’s intentions, when everyone is intentionally avoiding making their intentions common knowledge, well, that’s sort of cruel.
So, this become a problem we can actually try to solve. In a relatively small environment, like a group of a dozen or so, what can one do to induce “ask culture”, instead of “guess culture”?
(This should probably be a discussion post of its own… hm.)
My own approach: if I can afford the status-hit, I ask about stuff in a guess culture, and I explicitly answer questions there. In some cases I volunteer explicit explanations even when questions weren’t asked, although I’m careful about this, because it can cause a status-hit for the person I’m talking to as well.
Some additional notes:
I was raised in two different guess cultures simultaneously, then transferred to an ask culture in my adolescence, and I’m fairly socially adept. This caused me to think explicitly about this stuff rather a lot, even before I had words for it. That said, I strongly suspect that there’s much clearer understandings of this stuff available in research literature, and a good scholar would be invaluable if you were serious about this as a project.
Talking about “affording the status-hit” is oversimplifying to the point of being misleading, since I live in the intersection of multiple cultures and being seen in culture A as deliberately making a status-lowering move in culture B can be a status-raising move in A. Depending on how much I value A-status and B-status, “taking a hit” in B might not be a sacrifice at all. (Of course, being seen that way in A without actually making such a move in B… for example, pretending to my A friends that I am seen as a rebel in B while in fact being no such thing… is potentially a more valuable move, albeit a risky one. As well as a dishonest one, to the extent that that matters.)
The terms “ask culture” and “guess culture” are misleading as well; it’s more precise to think in terms of topics for which a given culture takes an “ask” stance, and topics for which it takes a “guess” stance. It’s even clearer to think in terms of preferred levels of directness and indirectness when trying to find something out, since successful people don’t actually guess about topics for which their culture takes a “guess” stance, they investigate indirectly. But, having said all that, I’m willing to keep talking about “ask” and “guess” culture for convenience as long as we understand the limits of the labels.
A downside of asking for things in a guess culture is that people have to give you the things. (Unless you’re demanding so much they’d rather refuse and lose you as an ally.) Imposing this cost on people hurts them, as well as lowers your status.
Note that I wrote “asking about”, not “asking for”.
I agree that turning down requests in a guess culture has social costs, which is one reason the distinction between appropriate and inappropriate requests is considered so important.
Imposing costs on others by making demands of them doesn’t necessarily lower my status.
Where “doesn’t necessarily” for most intents and purposes could mean “does the reverse of”!
Yes. But now you’ve gone and ruined my guess-culture use of understatement with your ask-culture explicitness! Hrumph.
It’s almost as though some people consider your status hit as something of extremely low importance!
Understood—but essentially no humans consider their own status hits as of extremely low importance. this is so strong that directing other people to lower their status—even if it’s in their best long-term interest—is only rarely practical advice.
Oh absolutely. To be clear, I am asserting that people making this recommendation are basically following the FDA playbook. Given a tradeoff between bad things happening and costly safety measures...radically optimize for an expensive six sigmas of certainty that no bad event ever happens, with massive costs to everyone else.
Now, this strategy can make sense, if either:
You view even a single creepy incident as an extreme harm and believe that this sort of thing happens very often. [Note: “Creepiness is bad and I have an anecdote to prove it” is does not prove this quantitative claim.]
You care a lot about the feelings of people claiming creepiness and care very little about the costs to everyone else.
Arguably, the few people in this thread that are advocating extremely socially costly “safety measures” believe a combination of both.
This is sometimes a fair characterization, but remember that (like this thread has been discussing) the social cost depends a lot on your environment. Better to say that categorically recommending behaviors without understanding the perspectives of those that those behaviors would harm is a problem (obviously somewhat inevitable due to ignorance). (I think we need the term “typical social group fallacy”.)
(I’m Italian.)
Forgive me, my memory is poor, I took your references to Ireland to mean you were Irish.
(I studied in Ireland from September 2010 to May 2011.) EDIT: Why were this and the grandparent upvoted?
I wasn’t the one who upvoted it, but volunteering extra information that reduces confusions certainly seems worth upvoting to me.
Because we want to see more comments like this (i.e. clearing up confusion), and because in a thread this large it only takes a small percentage of people deciding that a comment is high-quality for it to get upvoted.
It’s probably more accurate to refer to hint cultures rather than guess cultures.
I wish lojban had worked out better—it would be very handy to have a concise way of indicating whether you’re talking about how a culture feels from the inside or the outside.
Probably depends who’s talking.
It’s almost like there is no one magic rule set for interacting with us or something! ;p
On the one hand, emphatically yes—when talking about How To Interact with people of X gender, people tend to make a lot of generalizations.
On the other, feminist scripts seem to be against didactically learning social rules to an extreme extent—instead of pointing out “Hey, this thing works on maybe three out of four women, referring to that subset as ‘women’ makes you believe less in the other one-quarter,” they go the entirely opposite direction and say that learning any rule, ever, is wrong and misleading and Evil. I dislike this, and while your comment is clearly not being this, it can easily be read as it by someone with experience interacting with those scripts.
I often find that what is not creepy for internet feminists can be for women who use other social conventions, and vice versa. Makes it hard when one doesn’t know the convention being used. Also makes other-optimising a problem here.
(Edited for clarification)
Creepiness is partially context-dependent. If you try to list all details, there will be too many details to remember. On the other hand, if you try to find some general rules (such as: “don’t make people feel uncomfortable”), some people will have problem translating them to specific situations.
This could be possibly solved by making a “beginners” handbook, which would contain the general rules and their specific instances in the most typical situations (at school, at job, on street, in shop), and later some specific advice for less typical situations (at disco, at funeral, etc.).
But still, even the internet version would probably need different sections for instant messengers, facebook, e-mail… even for e-mail to different groups of people… Eh. Anyway, it could also start with most frequent situations, and progress to the more rare ones.
Heck, I suspect that in a lot of cases what a feminist claims is creepy on the internet, and what the same feminist would find creepy in real life are different things.
That extends to more than feminists, and more than creepiness; people’s verbal descriptions of grammatical or moral rules often don’t match the judgement they will give to specific cases. More generally, people can’t see how their brain works, and when they try to describe it they will get a lot wrong.
I suspect one of those negatives still has to go, no?
I think I was really meaning to say “not not creepy” at the time :S
But do you mean to say that the creepiness standards of internet feminists are the same as that for “women who go other social convention”? I was expecting you to mean that they were different.
Is it clearer like this?
Possibly even clearer:
“I often find that what is not creepy for internet feminists is creepy for women who follow other social conventions, and vice versa.”
Examples would be nice.
I meant ‘not creepy’ for internet feminists (asking politely) corresponding to ‘not not creepy’ for other people.
Ah, OK, it makes sense now (though I suspect most people will still read it the wrong way)
I didn’t even notice where the negatives were in the original version—I just assumed the intended meaning to be the one that makes sense.
Relevant Language Log post
I like how the guides go about detailing how to do this, rather than simply telling people more things they’re doing wrong.
Wait...
You have to follow some extra links to reach the “do” advice., but it’s there.
A problem with teasing is that it sets up an environment where it can feel very risky to say “No, I don’t like being teased”. Will the request be respected, or will it be met with more teasing?
I like the sentence “I am done being teased now”. It seems to work pretty well.
I like that approach. Unfortunately, for some of the most socially-adept (in other respects), any request not to tease is itself regarded as an invitation for more teasing—or at least, the “I really need to stop” sensor is way too insensitive to negatives. Even worse, some end up liking the person because of this (which obviously has horrid incentive effects).
My request that you not reply to my comments was not, and never became, an invitation for replies to my comments.
Alicorn’s request for SilasBarta to not reply to her comments was not, and never became, an obligation for him to not speak up when Alicorn says things that he opposes.
Replying to a comment on a forum is not the same as approaching someone in person to engage in conversation. It is, fittingly, like responding to a public speech at the forum. Accordingly, the right to reply to Alicorn’s comments isn’t something that requires her ‘invitation’. She does not have the right to speak whatever she wishes and demand that someone in particular who disagrees with her may not reply. (Except, I suppose, in the technical sense whereby she could in principle abuse her moderation powers to prevent someone replying for any reason she chose.)
This particular play for status and control over SilasBarta should be rejected and crushed mercilessly. SilasBarta’s comment isn’t personal in nature and so does not represent the kind of social approach that fits with the subject of this thread and doesn’t get the same treatment.
The solution to not wanting to see replies by a specific individual is an ignore feature and that is one we really need here. There are plenty of people I whose comments I don’t want to see and as a bonus that which is not seen can not be fed.
Also, the grandparent is disingenuous. Presumably, Silas assumed that the request had simply expired, not that it had morphed into a different kind of request.
...as did I, frankly. I’m now commenting here after seeing this and thinking, “Oh, no, please don’t let this be about....that!”, and then finding, to my utter horror, that it was indeed about that.
Alicorn’s request was exactly that. What else could the words possibly mean?
I agree that an “ignore” feature would be very valuable for this site.
A request is not exactly an obligation. If you disagree, I request that you give me all your money.
I think my words above mean that I have uttered an unreasonable request that someone with healthy boundaries would ignore.
(Note that even if you happen to believe people have the particular rights of control over others that Alicorn has claimed your reply here would still seem to be confusing the nature of the relationship between verbal symbols and obligation.)
I have just solicited from Eliezer, and received, permission to ban further comments from Silas that reply to me.
End of thread.
This makes me lose respect for both you and Eliezer.
I don’t really enjoy bringing this up, much less in this thread, but IIRC, it used to be that SilasBarta would hound Alicorn and “follow her around” on the site (by specifically tracking her recent comments) in order to confront her. This is deeply disruptive behavior which can actually drive honest users off the site, so it’s very much not OK. No users should be getting this kind of treatment, unless they’re actually being so annoying on their own that we’d rather drive them off.
Let Silas apologize to Eliezer directly for his problem behavior, then we can think about lifting these restrictions on his commenting privileges.
Completely and utterly false.
Oh the irony. The last link in the OP specifically discusses exactly this scenario.
While the outcome for a woman targeted by a man like this is poor, the damage done to the group by all the other men staying silent (or outright supporting him) is huge. Really, this isn’t even buried in the comments, this is the whole point of the two letters discussed in that link.
I can’t speak to whether there are problems of this sort in LW meetups, but right here is our evidence of it here in LW comments.
I understand concerns about censorship, arbitrary moderation, special treatment, etc, but everyone who downvoted Alicorn and upvoted wedrifid here has also sent a message of tacit support for SilasBarta and a very clear message to any other woman here.
From my link above, edited:
The Geek Social Fallacies seem rather apt here, too.
(Edit to fix square bracket use)
By this exact scenario, do you mean something TOTALLY different? disagreeing with someone who makes public comments on an internet forum is not “creepy entitled shit” (you wouldn’t even have thought to make this accusation here if SilasBarta was female and Eliezer was the target) and even if we assume that the original situation of banning him from responding to her was totally justified (I don’t know, I haven’t read the backdrama), then it’s still ridiculous for Alicorn to respond to a thread SilasBarta is talking in without him being able to reply. I’m not trying to defend anything SilasBarta did in the past, I’m trying to defend conversation. If you have a restraining order against someone, you shouldn’t walk right up to THEM and force them to leave wherever they happen to be.
Agreed, and I think that says something interesting and useful. Symmetry is not a useful tool here.
If there’s broader interest in seeing some attempt at a rationalist view of privilege I’m keen to get whatever help is available, and take it to a separate Discussion.
I would be interested in seeing some attempt at a rationalist view of privilege, however I’m not sure that it would be welcome here; also I do think there are many advantages in trying to stick to the “no mindkiller topics” rule. Do you have a personal blog that you could post it on? If you do decide post it on LW I would recommend using the open thread, rather than the discussion or main section.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTJLFgKoWk&feature=player_detailpage#t=109s
No. It. Does. Not.
I suspect if I were LW-high-status, I could politely point out that while we’ve both argued from assertions, one of us has expanded on their assertion, and one of us has not.
Unless you mean “that linked post does not discuss LW or any of the individuals you reference, so claiming it specifically discusses exactly this scenario is trivially false”? I have no objection to curbing my hyperbole with an edit.
I take from your vehemence that your disagreement is more fundamental though. Do you have more words there you’re willing to add, here or in PM?
What is it about being low status that makes you think you are better served by making the claim passively aggressively rather than politely? Politeness usually more important when status is lacking, not less. Or do you consider this style to be even more polite than, well, pointing out politely?
As it happens I have expanded rather a lot in my original message. I chose not to expand further in response to either you or bogus because I didn’t see benefit to such engagement.
The thing in the OP is bad. Replying to public comments isn’t. That is all.
No way. Hounding users on an internet site can cause a lot of annoyance and status problems, but it’s not creepy, i.e. it entails no shared threat of bodily harm. People routinely get away with extremely weird behavior on internet groups, even though corresponding behaviors (even something as mild as a heated social confrontation) would get them shunned and ostracized, or perhaps physically assaulted and injured, in a real-world actual community where bodily harm considerations are critical. There is nothing wrong with this persay—it just takes some getting used to.
Hounding someone, even if there are no threats, can turn an online group into no fun for them.
I’m not convinced it’s true that all female fury at male inappropriate attention is based in fear of physical harm. However, large amounts of inappropriate attention can be a huge attention and energy drain—mental cpus are a limited resource.
Yes, that’s why I tend to pull out the magic words: “Please put me on your do-not-call list”. Works like a charm.
I disagree with your definition of “creepy”. However, whether we define the word that way or not, would you agree that it is behaviour worth discouraging?
It is one thing to disagree with a view that someone is expressing. It is quite another to follow that person around, disproportionately, in order to find opportunities to disagree specifically with them, (whether that’s in order to make them feel unwelcome and drive them out, or whether via some twisted logic the hounder feels it gains them dominance or even sees it as courting behaviour).
Just confirming: are you disagreeing because link posited risk of escalation to assault which I agree seems impossible in a purely online context?
I drew the analogy because it called out the toxic effects on a community, and that in many ways the toxicity is not that there was a creeper, but that there is much signalling in their support that has follow-on effects.
Assuming those claimed signalling secondary losses are correct, I don’t see anything specific to an online context that would be immune. The “risk of escalation” discussed there seems severable from its other points.
I am disagreeing because I regard what you call “risk of escalation to assault” (or, more generally: risks of bodily harm and benefits from tightly-knit social cooperation) as a critical determinant of social interaction. It is very hard to meaningfully compare real-world and online contexts, much less regard them as “the exact same scenario”.
(Indeed, I have jokingly argued before that we should totally deprecate and taboo the term “community” as referring to online social groups, since it tends to promote this very kind of ontological confusion.)
As for your question about “toxicity”, let’s just say that this particular discussion has been held already. If anything, LW has seemed to err towards taking complaints about divisive or disruptive behavior more seriously than they otherwise would, especially when outgroup status is a factor.
The obvious solution is to only ban creepy, personal comments.
Eliezer confirmed to me via PM that he did grant permission, and did it based on his trust of Alicorn.
It seems my caveats were too generous. I honestly thought you would be outright offended if I even hinted that you would do such a thing. It seems obviously the sort of thing a moderator would be careful not to do.
Silas, please document all such abuses—PM them to me.
It should be noted that all instances of comments which moderator privileges prevent reply to represent comments that I wish to see less of on lesswrong, for reasons related to filtered evidence.
Thanks. Interestingly, I was about to reply to your quoted comment with something about it being irresponsible to even insinuate that a moderator would abuse their power that way, &c. but … yeah. I just PM’d EY for confirmation. If true, this may just be “jump the shark” day.
I doubt that a rogue moderator would receive express advance approval of abusive actions. If Eliezer says that Alicorn may ban certain comments, then it is not abusive for Alicorn to ban those comments.
If Eliezer’s approval makes the action tautologically non-abusive then please act as if I substituted a different word that means something along the lines of “detrimental, innapropriate, politically ill advised, deprecated and considered ‘naughty’ by user:wedrifid”. ;)
I am stealing that.
Like it.
End of thread is something you are not in a position to enforce.
Is that literally true?
I would have said “Enforcing End of Thread would seem to be politically ill-advised in this instance”.
Well, given Eliezer’s recent actions his attitude seems to be that as the supreme rationalist leader of lesswrong he can ignore anyone else’s opinion.
(paid karma to respond)
As I understood the spirit of the original agreement, you were not supposed to comment downthread from Silas if you didn’t want to be responded-to. You did so.
Since many issues of this type stem not from polite-but-overreaching people but rather the legitimately impolite, this method may not always be hugely effective. Legitimately impolite people would hear something like that and reply “Are you?” with a smirk. Also, if you get angry or seriously assertive, they are likely to assume the problem is on your end and tell people about how “crazy” you are.
The fact that many people reward such behavior is of course a major contributor to this issue.
Yeah, I solve that problem on the meta-level by not hanging out with impolite people after discovering this fact about them.
Thanks—I’ll keep it in mind. The advantage might be that it has no flavor of “please stop teasing me”.
I think it manages to avoid the usual unpleasantness associated with saying, “hey, this is serious now”, but then, I prefer bluntness anyway.
It doesn’t say please at all. It says “we were doing this thing. Now we aren’t anymore.”
Exactly. It’s a status assertion.
I’ve presumably got some background assumptions that being teased means I’m in a one-down position.
The only explanation for this is that it is acceptable for women to initiate physical contact without prior contact by the other party. This is an unconscious double standard.
In many social groups touching initiated from women is often received just as bad as from men, and fairly so. I am sure there are lots of groups with this specific double standard, but it is not universal, not by a large margin.
Also, “only explanation”: Really?
“threats of violence are morally equivalent to acts of violence”
Um, what?
Threats of violence are bad. Threats of violence are bad because acts of violence are bad. Some of the moral badness of acts of violence flows into threats of violence and makes them bad too. Threats of violence should not be tolerated.
Threats of violence are not morally equivalent to acts of violence. The fact that we’re talking about practical real-world morality is no excuse to lose our ability to think quantitatively.