“[M]ake other people feel safe and comfortable around me, to avoid doing things that would make them feel needlessly hurt or upset or unsafe, and to actively let them know that I’m doing this” is weakness and self-sabotage. It is willing self-sacrifice of your potential to cynical manipulators and sociopaths. Not only to engage in such behavior oneself, but to promote it to others—that is the moral wrong.
Hmm. I’m not sure why you feel that trying to model others and making an effort to ensure that they’re not needlessly upset, necessarily sacrifices one’s potential? (Note the word needlessly in that sentence; I’m definitely not saying that it would be a good goal to never upset others. Certainly upsetting people is sometimes the right thing to do. I just don’t want to do it accidentally and without any good reason, just because I failed to anticipate what the consequences of my actions might be.)
I have pretty strong evidence that rather than being a sacrifice of my potential, it’s actually using my potential: people feeling safe around me means that they like me more and are more inclined to consider me an ally. I don’t think I’d have nearly as many fulfilling friendships if I didn’t have the ability to make others feel comfortable around me to the extent that I do.
people feeling safe around me means that they like me more and are more inclined to consider me an ally
There are many things I could say to this.
I could say that “liking” and “respecting” are not the same thing (nor are either of them the same as “trusting”—which itself is not monolithic).
I could say that once we have begun to speak of being an “ally”, we have left behind the domain of human relationships which I am interested in having. One needs allies in war, after all. Am I at war? Should I be? With whom? (It need hardly be said that attempts to convince us that we are at war, that we’re in a struggle for survival, that we battle against an implacable enemy, and you’re either with us—an ally—or you’re against us… are an age-old, and painfully common, method of cynical manipulation and exploitation.) In peacetime, it is not allies which are called for, but partners, collaborators, or simply fellow citizens. And—always, whether in peace or in war—what one needs, above all else, is friends. Friendship is very, very different from alliance.
I could say that people who conflate disagreement with hostility, and who tell you that your criticism, your opposition, your speaking up, makes them feel unsafe, are toxic; and that making it impossible to disagree, without thereby causing offense—making a difference of opinion into a transgression—is another all-too-common pattern of manipulation and abuse.
All these things, you may, perhaps, dispute. Take my word, then, for this: my friendships, and my experience with people in general, became tremendously more fulfilling once I stopped worrying so much about making other people feel comfortable and un-offended.
Thanks for linking those comments, I think I understand your thinking better now.
My understanding of Vladimir_M’s comments is that Scott’s proposed approach falls down if used indiscriminately rather than saying that it should never be used.
Here are 4 scenarios where I might modify my behaviour based on claims of harm (in descending order of likelihood of me modifying):
1= Someone I trust tells me that I have offended a 3rd party (without the 3rd party complaining about offence)
1= At least 2 people from different friendship groups (no cross-contamination) tell me I’ve offended them in a similar way
3. Multiple people from a single friendship group tell me I’ve offended them
4. Someone I trust tells me that I have offended them
Would you suggest that some/all of these should definitely not result in modification? Or is it that you think that generally people modify too easily and you want to encourage people to modify significantly less often?
I’m genuinely curious because if anything I suspect I do err on the side of being too accommodating.
P.S. I think the link to Scott’s concession goes to the wrong comment, it’s here if anyone is looking for it.
Vladimir says that if you only use “the discomfort to me versus the discomfort to the other person” as your only decision criteria, then you are incentivizing others to experience discomfort in order to manipulate you.
I agree with this point; and I also acknowledge that I have, in fact, fallen victim to such manipulation in the past. Just a naive comparison of discomforts should definitely not be your only decision criteria.
But I don’t think that falling victim to this behavior is an inevitable consequence of trying to make others feel comfortable. You can still set your own boundaries, and say: this is the length to which I’m prepared to go to make others feel comfortable, but I’m not willing to go beyond that. And you can say: these are the kinds of reactions which I consider reasonable and which I’m willing to accommodate, and these others I refuse to consider.
I think that there’s a thing here that’s kind of similar to type I and type II errors, in that it’s easy to reduce one type of mistake by drastically increasing the probability for another type of mistake, and vice versa. In this case it’s about two different kinds of discomfort:
The kind of discomfort which results from (conscious or subconscious) motives to have more influence. Caring about the discomfort of others may cause more of this to come into being, as it incentivizes people to experience more of this.
The kind of discomfort which results from something else and would exist even in the absence of any external incentive for it. Caring about the discomfort of others may actively help reduce it, either because this directly makes people feel less of it, or indirectly as people who feel safe have an easier time working through whatever issues that cause it.
One may show too much caring about others and spend all of their time trying to manage other people’s feelings, and in so doing just end up totally useless. But like Bucky suggests in the other comment, I don’t think that Vladimir_M’s comment establishes that one shouldn’t care about the feelings of others at all. Rather, it would be better to care about those feelings which are made better by having others care about them, and disregard the feelings which are made worse by having others care about them.
I could say that once we have begun to speak of being an “ally”, we have left behind the domain of human relationships which I am interested in having.
I think we mean very different things by “ally”, so let’s taboo that word. I meant “someone who (to at least some extent) values my well-being and the satisfaction of my desires for their own sake”. This definitely includes friendship: I wouldn’t call a relationship a friendship if both people involved didn’t care for their friend’s well-being at all.
I could say that people who conflate disagreement with hostility, and who tell you that your criticism, your opposition, your speaking up, makes them feel unsafe, are toxic; and that making it impossible to disagree, without thereby causing offense—making a difference of opinion into a transgression—is another all-too-common pattern of manipulation and abuse.
I mostly agree with this, with the caveat that feeling unsafe due to disagreement doesn’t necessarily make a person toxic: some people will say that but also acknowledge it as an emotional reaction which isn’t necessarily justified. But if it was impossible to disagree with some person without causing offense, then I would generally put that in the previously-mentioned category of behaviors which I refuse to accommodate.
Edited to add:
Take my word, then, for this: my friendships, and my experience with people in general, became tremendously more fulfilling once I stopped worrying so much about making other people feel comfortable and un-offended.
I have, historically, definitely been putting too much weight on making other people feel comfortable and un-offended. And I do think that I should correct in the other direction. But that’s a different thing from stopping to care about it at all; if I did, I would end up doing the things which you yourself said are wrong:
It is wrong to deliberately hurt innocent others, for one’s own benefit.
It is wrong to accidentally hurt innocent others, due to negligence where one has an obligation of knowledge.
Hmm. I’m not sure why you feel that trying to model others and making an effort to ensure that they’re not needlessly upset, necessarily sacrifices one’s potential? (Note the word needlessly in that sentence; I’m definitely not saying that it would be a good goal to never upset others. Certainly upsetting people is sometimes the right thing to do. I just don’t want to do it accidentally and without any good reason, just because I failed to anticipate what the consequences of my actions might be.)
I have pretty strong evidence that rather than being a sacrifice of my potential, it’s actually using my potential: people feeling safe around me means that they like me more and are more inclined to consider me an ally. I don’t think I’d have nearly as many fulfilling friendships if I didn’t have the ability to make others feel comfortable around me to the extent that I do.
It so happens that this topic has been discussed before, on Less Wrong. Vladimir_M’s comment (and follow-up) is, in my view, the definitive response. (See also Scott’s response, in which he explicitly concedes the point.)
There are many things I could say to this.
I could say that “liking” and “respecting” are not the same thing (nor are either of them the same as “trusting”—which itself is not monolithic).
I could say that once we have begun to speak of being an “ally”, we have left behind the domain of human relationships which I am interested in having. One needs allies in war, after all. Am I at war? Should I be? With whom? (It need hardly be said that attempts to convince us that we are at war, that we’re in a struggle for survival, that we battle against an implacable enemy, and you’re either with us—an ally—or you’re against us… are an age-old, and painfully common, method of cynical manipulation and exploitation.) In peacetime, it is not allies which are called for, but partners, collaborators, or simply fellow citizens. And—always, whether in peace or in war—what one needs, above all else, is friends. Friendship is very, very different from alliance.
I could say that people who conflate disagreement with hostility, and who tell you that your criticism, your opposition, your speaking up, makes them feel unsafe, are toxic; and that making it impossible to disagree, without thereby causing offense—making a difference of opinion into a transgression—is another all-too-common pattern of manipulation and abuse.
All these things, you may, perhaps, dispute. Take my word, then, for this: my friendships, and my experience with people in general, became tremendously more fulfilling once I stopped worrying so much about making other people feel comfortable and un-offended.
Thanks for linking those comments, I think I understand your thinking better now.
My understanding of Vladimir_M’s comments is that Scott’s proposed approach falls down if used indiscriminately rather than saying that it should never be used.
Here are 4 scenarios where I might modify my behaviour based on claims of harm (in descending order of likelihood of me modifying):
1= Someone I trust tells me that I have offended a 3rd party (without the 3rd party complaining about offence)
1= At least 2 people from different friendship groups (no cross-contamination) tell me I’ve offended them in a similar way
3. Multiple people from a single friendship group tell me I’ve offended them
4. Someone I trust tells me that I have offended them
Would you suggest that some/all of these should definitely not result in modification? Or is it that you think that generally people modify too easily and you want to encourage people to modify significantly less often?
I’m genuinely curious because if anything I suspect I do err on the side of being too accommodating.
P.S. I think the link to Scott’s concession goes to the wrong comment, it’s here if anyone is looking for it.
Vladimir says that if you only use “the discomfort to me versus the discomfort to the other person” as your only decision criteria, then you are incentivizing others to experience discomfort in order to manipulate you.
I agree with this point; and I also acknowledge that I have, in fact, fallen victim to such manipulation in the past. Just a naive comparison of discomforts should definitely not be your only decision criteria.
But I don’t think that falling victim to this behavior is an inevitable consequence of trying to make others feel comfortable. You can still set your own boundaries, and say: this is the length to which I’m prepared to go to make others feel comfortable, but I’m not willing to go beyond that. And you can say: these are the kinds of reactions which I consider reasonable and which I’m willing to accommodate, and these others I refuse to consider.
I think that there’s a thing here that’s kind of similar to type I and type II errors, in that it’s easy to reduce one type of mistake by drastically increasing the probability for another type of mistake, and vice versa. In this case it’s about two different kinds of discomfort:
The kind of discomfort which results from (conscious or subconscious) motives to have more influence. Caring about the discomfort of others may cause more of this to come into being, as it incentivizes people to experience more of this.
The kind of discomfort which results from something else and would exist even in the absence of any external incentive for it. Caring about the discomfort of others may actively help reduce it, either because this directly makes people feel less of it, or indirectly as people who feel safe have an easier time working through whatever issues that cause it.
One may show too much caring about others and spend all of their time trying to manage other people’s feelings, and in so doing just end up totally useless. But like Bucky suggests in the other comment, I don’t think that Vladimir_M’s comment establishes that one shouldn’t care about the feelings of others at all. Rather, it would be better to care about those feelings which are made better by having others care about them, and disregard the feelings which are made worse by having others care about them.
I think we mean very different things by “ally”, so let’s taboo that word. I meant “someone who (to at least some extent) values my well-being and the satisfaction of my desires for their own sake”. This definitely includes friendship: I wouldn’t call a relationship a friendship if both people involved didn’t care for their friend’s well-being at all.
I mostly agree with this, with the caveat that feeling unsafe due to disagreement doesn’t necessarily make a person toxic: some people will say that but also acknowledge it as an emotional reaction which isn’t necessarily justified. But if it was impossible to disagree with some person without causing offense, then I would generally put that in the previously-mentioned category of behaviors which I refuse to accommodate.
Edited to add:
I have, historically, definitely been putting too much weight on making other people feel comfortable and un-offended. And I do think that I should correct in the other direction. But that’s a different thing from stopping to care about it at all; if I did, I would end up doing the things which you yourself said are wrong: