The Dark Arts are as nothing besides the terrible power of signaling!
I’ve read—and I have no idea how much of this is true—that in some Eastern cultures you can get bonus points in a conversation by apologizing for things that weren’t in fact offensive before you started apologizing; or taking the blame for minor things that everyone knows you’re not responsible for; or saying things that amount to “I’m a low status person, and I apologize for it”, when the low-status claim is factually untrue and, again, everyone knows it...
I live in the Northeast US, which isn’t especially “Eastern”, but I’ve nevertheless found that taking the blame for things that everyone knows I’m not responsible for to be a very useful rhetorical trick, at least in business settings.
(Warning: this came out somewhat as a rant. I don’t have the energy to rewrite it better right now.)
Honestly: stories like this terrify me. This is not exaggeration: I feel literal terror when I imagine what you describe.
I like to think that I value honesty in conversations and friendships—not Radical Honesty, the ordinary kind. I take pride in the fact that almost all of my conversations with friends have actual subjects, which are interesting for everyone involved; that we exchange information, or at least opinions and ideas. That at least much of the time, we don’t trade empty, deceptive words whose real purpose is signaling status and social alliance.
And then every once in a while, although I try to avoid it, I come up against an example—in real life too—of this sort of interaction. Where the real intent could just as well be transmitted with body language and a few grunts. Where consciousness, intelligence, everything we evolved over the last few million years and everything we learned over the last few thousand, would be discarded in a heartbeat by evolution, if only we didn’t have to compete against each other in backstabbing...
If I let myself become too idealistic, or too attached to Truth, or too ignorant and unskilled at lying, this will have social costs; my goals may diverge too far from many other humans’. I know this, I accept this. But will it mean that the vast majority of humanity, who don’t care about that Truth nonsense, will become literally unintelligible to me? An alien species I can’t understand on a native level?
Will I listen to “ordinary” people talking among themselves one day, and doing ordinary things like taking the blame for things they’re not responsible for so they can gain status by apologizing, and I will simply be unable to understand what they’re saying, or even notice the true level of meaning? Is it even plausible to implement “instinctive” status-oriented behavior on a conscious, deliberate level? (Robin Hanson would say no; deceiving yourself on the conscious level is the first step in lying unconsciously.)
Maybe it’s already happened to an extent. (I’ve also seen descriptions that make mild forms of autism and related conditions sound like what I’m describing.) But should I immerse myself more in interaction with “ordinary” people, even if it’s unpleasant to me, for fear of losing my fluency in Basic Human? (For that matter, can I do it? Others would be good at sensing that I’m not really enjoying a Basic Human conversation, or not being honest in it.)
It’s not actually that hard to accept the blame, especially if people kind of realize that it wasn’t all your fault. Which brings us to the best way of taking the blame: do it for another guy. You’ll feel good for taking the fall, he’ll feel good about not getting blamed, and the guy who lost his whole 36GB porn-collection because of your incompetence will grudgingly admit that you at least didn’t try to weasel out of it.
Then make the developer who really screwed up (if you can find him) know inprivate that he screwed up. Not just so he can avoid it in the future, but so that he knows he owes you one. And, perhaps even more importantly, he’s also likely the person who can fix it. Because, let’s face it, it sure ain’t you.
ETA: I take back my initial reaction. It’s not completely different from what TheOtherDave described. But there are some important differences from at least what I described and had in mind:
If someone else already accepted the blame, it doesn’t advise you to try to take away the blame from him and on yourself, especially if he’s really the one at fault!
It doesn’t paint being blamed as being a net positive in some situations, so no incentive to invent things to be blamed for, or to blow them u pout of all proportion
Telling off the one really at fault, in private, is an important addition—especially if everyone else is tacitly aware you’ll do this, even if they don’t always know who was at fault. That’s taking responsibility more than taking blame.
In addition, there’s a difference between a random person taking blame for the actions of another random person; and a leader taking blame for the mistakes of one of his subordinates. As far as I can tell, the situation described in the article you linked to is a bit closer to the second scenario.
See my above comment, I manage to subvert Basic Human conversation fairly well in real life.
I empathize with all of your complaints. Doing things like explicitly pointing out when you’re manipulating other people (like when I said I empathize with all of your complaints) while still qualifying that within the bounds of the truth (like I will do right now, because despite the manipulativeness of disclosure involved my empathy was still real [although you have no real reason to believe so and acknowledge that {although that acknowledgement was yet another example of manipulation ([{etc}]) }]).
For another less self referential example, see the paragraph I wrote way above this where I explicitly pointed out some problems of the norms involved with apologies, but then proceeded to apologize anyway. I think that one worked very well. My apology for apologizing is yet another example, that one also worked fairly well.
(I hope the fact that I’m explicitly telling you all of this verifies my good intentions, that is what the technique depends upon, also I don’t want you to hate me based on what is a legitimate desire to help [please cross apply the above self referential infinitely recursive disclaimer].)
Although in real life, I’m much less explicit about maniuplation, I just give it a subtle head nob but people usually seem to understand because of things like body language, etc. It probably loses some of its effectiveness without the ability to be subtle (or when you explain the concept itself while simultaneously using the concept, like I attempted to do in this very comment). Explaining the exact parts of the technique is hard without being able to give an example which is hard because I can’t give the example through text because of the nature of real life face-to-face communication.
I have adopted the meta-meta strategy of being slighly blunt in real life but in such a way that reveals that I am 1. being blunt for the purpose of allowing others to do this do me 2. trying to reveal disdain for these type of practices 3. knowingly taking advantage of these type of practices despite my disdain for them. People love it in real life, when it’s well executed. I’m tearing down the master’s house with the master’s tools in such a way that makes them see me as the master. It’s insidiously evil and I only do it because otherwise everyone would hate me because I’m so naturally outspoken.
That sounds really braggy, please ignore the bragginess, sorry.
The Dark Arts are as nothing besides the terrible power of signaling!
I’ve read—and I have no idea how much of this is true—that in some Eastern cultures you can get bonus points in a conversation by apologizing for things that weren’t in fact offensive before you started apologizing; or taking the blame for minor things that everyone knows you’re not responsible for; or saying things that amount to “I’m a low status person, and I apologize for it”, when the low-status claim is factually untrue and, again, everyone knows it...
I live in the Northeast US, which isn’t especially “Eastern”, but I’ve nevertheless found that taking the blame for things that everyone knows I’m not responsible for to be a very useful rhetorical trick, at least in business settings.
(Warning: this came out somewhat as a rant. I don’t have the energy to rewrite it better right now.)
Honestly: stories like this terrify me. This is not exaggeration: I feel literal terror when I imagine what you describe.
I like to think that I value honesty in conversations and friendships—not Radical Honesty, the ordinary kind. I take pride in the fact that almost all of my conversations with friends have actual subjects, which are interesting for everyone involved; that we exchange information, or at least opinions and ideas. That at least much of the time, we don’t trade empty, deceptive words whose real purpose is signaling status and social alliance.
And then every once in a while, although I try to avoid it, I come up against an example—in real life too—of this sort of interaction. Where the real intent could just as well be transmitted with body language and a few grunts. Where consciousness, intelligence, everything we evolved over the last few million years and everything we learned over the last few thousand, would be discarded in a heartbeat by evolution, if only we didn’t have to compete against each other in backstabbing...
If I let myself become too idealistic, or too attached to Truth, or too ignorant and unskilled at lying, this will have social costs; my goals may diverge too far from many other humans’. I know this, I accept this. But will it mean that the vast majority of humanity, who don’t care about that Truth nonsense, will become literally unintelligible to me? An alien species I can’t understand on a native level?
Will I listen to “ordinary” people talking among themselves one day, and doing ordinary things like taking the blame for things they’re not responsible for so they can gain status by apologizing, and I will simply be unable to understand what they’re saying, or even notice the true level of meaning? Is it even plausible to implement “instinctive” status-oriented behavior on a conscious, deliberate level? (Robin Hanson would say no; deceiving yourself on the conscious level is the first step in lying unconsciously.)
Maybe it’s already happened to an extent. (I’ve also seen descriptions that make mild forms of autism and related conditions sound like what I’m describing.) But should I immerse myself more in interaction with “ordinary” people, even if it’s unpleasant to me, for fear of losing my fluency in Basic Human? (For that matter, can I do it? Others would be good at sensing that I’m not really enjoying a Basic Human conversation, or not being honest in it.)
Linux Kernel Management Style says to be greedy when it comes to blame.
Here are some relevant paras:
ETA: I take back my initial reaction. It’s not completely different from what TheOtherDave described. But there are some important differences from at least what I described and had in mind:
If someone else already accepted the blame, it doesn’t advise you to try to take away the blame from him and on yourself, especially if he’s really the one at fault!
It doesn’t paint being blamed as being a net positive in some situations, so no incentive to invent things to be blamed for, or to blow them u pout of all proportion
Telling off the one really at fault, in private, is an important addition—especially if everyone else is tacitly aware you’ll do this, even if they don’t always know who was at fault. That’s taking responsibility more than taking blame.
In addition, there’s a difference between a random person taking blame for the actions of another random person; and a leader taking blame for the mistakes of one of his subordinates. As far as I can tell, the situation described in the article you linked to is a bit closer to the second scenario.
See my above comment, I manage to subvert Basic Human conversation fairly well in real life.
I empathize with all of your complaints. Doing things like explicitly pointing out when you’re manipulating other people (like when I said I empathize with all of your complaints) while still qualifying that within the bounds of the truth (like I will do right now, because despite the manipulativeness of disclosure involved my empathy was still real [although you have no real reason to believe so and acknowledge that {although that acknowledgement was yet another example of manipulation ([{etc}]) }]).
For another less self referential example, see the paragraph I wrote way above this where I explicitly pointed out some problems of the norms involved with apologies, but then proceeded to apologize anyway. I think that one worked very well. My apology for apologizing is yet another example, that one also worked fairly well.
(I hope the fact that I’m explicitly telling you all of this verifies my good intentions, that is what the technique depends upon, also I don’t want you to hate me based on what is a legitimate desire to help [please cross apply the above self referential infinitely recursive disclaimer].)
Although in real life, I’m much less explicit about maniuplation, I just give it a subtle head nob but people usually seem to understand because of things like body language, etc. It probably loses some of its effectiveness without the ability to be subtle (or when you explain the concept itself while simultaneously using the concept, like I attempted to do in this very comment). Explaining the exact parts of the technique is hard without being able to give an example which is hard because I can’t give the example through text because of the nature of real life face-to-face communication.
Blargh,.
I have adopted the meta-meta strategy of being slighly blunt in real life but in such a way that reveals that I am 1. being blunt for the purpose of allowing others to do this do me 2. trying to reveal disdain for these type of practices 3. knowingly taking advantage of these type of practices despite my disdain for them. People love it in real life, when it’s well executed. I’m tearing down the master’s house with the master’s tools in such a way that makes them see me as the master. It’s insidiously evil and I only do it because otherwise everyone would hate me because I’m so naturally outspoken.
That sounds really braggy, please ignore the bragginess, sorry.