Debbie’s particular shape is arranged in part to isolate honesty and predictability as useful. If I’d just had her hiding bad things and confabulating good things I’d worry the takeaway would be solely that doing bad things or having a bad average was the problem, so I set her up such that the average stayed put and the curve just flattened out. I think the individual pieces do make sense though, if not in that particular combination.
Hiding good actions happens due to humbleness or status regulation or shyness or just because it’s private.
A church needs unexpectedly expensive repairs, and an anonymous donor covers them.
A new player on the sports team could honestly take credit for a win, but doesn’t want to make enemies and emphasizes other people’s work.
A world class scientist gets asked what they do for work, and answers “I work for a university.”
That one person who reached out after a bad breakup and talked their friend through the worst few nights.
Some off-kilter weirdos do invent middle-of-the-distribution actions, trying to create a false consensus or just badly misunderstanding what’s normal.
“I have lots of friends here, ask Robin or Sean or Ted, they’ll vouch for me!” “We asked them. We had to remind them who you were, they said they talked to you once or twice briefly.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say people are uncomfortable with me, they’ve never said so and I’m respectful of boundaries. Susan and I broke up, that’s all.” “According to Susan she politely said she’d rather you to leave her alone repeatedly, then eventually told you if you showed up at her dorm unannounced again she’d call the police, and she hasn’t heard from you since.” “Yeah, and? She set a boundary, I respected it. And that’s not her saying she’s uncomfortable is it?”
“Alcohol? Eh, like I said I drink a normal amount, you know?” “This is the third time we’ve found you passed out on the lawn.” “Yeah, doesn’t everyone drink about that much? I’m not a real alcoholic, it’s not like I do that unless it’s the weekend.”
(Also, people contain multitudes. The same person can donate generously to their local community, talk their friends through the long nights of despair, and also drink themselves insensate every week plus ignore a lot of romantic soft nos.)
And, yeah, sometimes there’s just a very different outlook that’s causing some blue and orange morality social norms. Ideally, you can talk to the person or get used to them and build up a custom bell curve for them, notice that while weird their behavior isn’t actually hurting anyone, and everything’s fine. You can even be a bit of an ambassador or on-ramp. “Oh yeah, that’s Wanda, the Groucho Marx mustache is a bit weird but she’s pretty friendly.” I’m a big fan of spaces for the weird but harmless!
Debbie’s particular shape is arranged in part to isolate honesty and predictability as useful. If I’d just had her hiding bad things and confabulating good things I’d worry the takeaway would be solely that doing bad things or having a bad average was the problem, so I set her up such that the average stayed put and the curve just flattened out. I think the individual pieces do make sense though, if not in that particular combination.
Hiding good actions happens due to humbleness or status regulation or shyness or just because it’s private.
A church needs unexpectedly expensive repairs, and an anonymous donor covers them.
A new player on the sports team could honestly take credit for a win, but doesn’t want to make enemies and emphasizes other people’s work.
A world class scientist gets asked what they do for work, and answers “I work for a university.”
That one person who reached out after a bad breakup and talked their friend through the worst few nights.
Some off-kilter weirdos do invent middle-of-the-distribution actions, trying to create a false consensus or just badly misunderstanding what’s normal.
“I have lots of friends here, ask Robin or Sean or Ted, they’ll vouch for me!” “We asked them. We had to remind them who you were, they said they talked to you once or twice briefly.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say people are uncomfortable with me, they’ve never said so and I’m respectful of boundaries. Susan and I broke up, that’s all.” “According to Susan she politely said she’d rather you to leave her alone repeatedly, then eventually told you if you showed up at her dorm unannounced again she’d call the police, and she hasn’t heard from you since.” “Yeah, and? She set a boundary, I respected it. And that’s not her saying she’s uncomfortable is it?”
“Alcohol? Eh, like I said I drink a normal amount, you know?” “This is the third time we’ve found you passed out on the lawn.” “Yeah, doesn’t everyone drink about that much? I’m not a real alcoholic, it’s not like I do that unless it’s the weekend.”
(Also, people contain multitudes. The same person can donate generously to their local community, talk their friends through the long nights of despair, and also drink themselves insensate every week plus ignore a lot of romantic soft nos.)
And, yeah, sometimes there’s just a very different outlook that’s causing some blue and orange
moralitysocial norms. Ideally, you can talk to the person or get used to them and build up a custom bell curve for them, notice that while weird their behavior isn’t actually hurting anyone, and everything’s fine. You can even be a bit of an ambassador or on-ramp. “Oh yeah, that’s Wanda, the Groucho Marx mustache is a bit weird but she’s pretty friendly.” I’m a big fan of spaces for the weird but harmless!