Newbies to a field need to absorb jargon to keep up, or experts need to slow themselves down and explain it.
Here you’re asked to improve your understanding.
Bullied kids are told to forgive and forget because their bully “is trying to say they’re sorry”, even after repeated cycles of faux-apologies and bullying.
Here you’re asked to act low status, no understanding required.
I agree that those are substantially different. It seems like to some extent the “interpretive labor” framework suggests that (1) is more often something like a fancy version of (2) than it might otherwise appear. (For instance, if you live under a totalitarian ideological regime such as e.g. many public schools, you can’t defend yourself without speaking in the regime’s language, which will be constructed to make it hard for people in certain situations to defend themselves.)
I guess my position is closer to Yvain’s than yours. The courtier is worth listening to. On the margin, people would benefit from doing more interpretive labor, not taking more offense at it.
Here’s a less emotionally charged example. Imagine you’re a programmer at a big company, and your manager tells you to do something stupid for business reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Understanding the manager’s reasoning—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for how it works—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many programmers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they stay grunts. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
I’ve thought a while (with some help from friends) about what made this comment seem objectionable to me. I think what’s bothering me about it is that the linked post is trying to describe a situation where power imbalances cause asymmetric incentives (and ability) to perform interpretive labor. It seems to me like this sort of comment subtly recasts the frame into a debate about whether people should act according to these incentives or indignantly refuse, thus conflating a descriptive claim with a policy recommendation of indignation.
This is an example of the sort of thing I was trying to point to in Model-building and scapegoating; descriptions of a situation that might be a problem are read as intent to blame one class of participant, often one who seems to be benefiting. My post on actors and scribes was also trying to point at this.
power imbalances cause asymmetric incentives (and ability) to perform interpretive labor
In my example the power imbalance is mostly an effect, not a cause. You can apply to work at a programming company as a programmer, and they will accept you if you pass the interview. Or you can—with the same name and face—apply to work as a manager, and they will accept you if you pass the interview. Or you can move from programming to management, I know a bunch of people who did that. Your position is determined by your skills.
You could say “oh, but people in lower positions are prevented from learning the skills needed for higher positions”. But that’s not true in my experience. Programmers aren’t prevented from learning “people stuff”, they know they could do it, it just makes them yawn.
The original post didn’t claim to have awareness of itself. So it’s left as an exercise to the reader to slot themselves in and create that interpretation.
It’s a different style to appeal to one side.
A different style to appeal the second side.
A different style to appeal to one side and be clear about it.
A different style to appeal to the second side and be clear about it.
A different style to appeal to neutrality.
A different style to appeal to neutrality and know it.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally”.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it and get it wrong.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it, and get it wrong, and know it, and show it all.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it, and get it wrong, and know it, and show it all. In a neutral frame while still being useful to the earlier 10 stances.
Trouble is, the further up this tree that one climbs, the cloudier it is to see clarity from gibberish.
I am disturbed by this comment. It seems like you are interpreting the post as doing coalitional politics and ignoring the descriptive content. The fact that descriptive statements about power dynamics automatically get interpreted as doing coalitional politics is the whole issue here.
If this goes too far then all words will be interpreted as violence and we will no longer be able to talk ourselves out of this mess because such talking would itself be interpreted as violence; everything would degenerate into an unproductive and destructive mess of zero-sum conflict. I am actually really worried about this happening and want to strongly push back against it.
Notice that I didn’t claim to be one side or another. I didn’t even claim to be critical or uncritical of the post. Or claim which level the post was on. And there are more levels above.
Also everyone is always playing on many levels. But also we trust and take charitably each other’s ideas. Without that trust we really do live in zero safety world.
People don’t face the binary choice “do more interpretive labor” and “take offense at it,” and it’s inappropriately political in this context to generically exhort people to work harder to internalize the preferences of those who have power over them.
Imagine you’re a manager at a big company, and one of your programmers is slacking on a task for motivational reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Checking in with your direct reports to make sure they understand the business case for what you’re asking and how it might help them advance in their careers—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for whether there’s shared understanding—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many managers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they’re stuck with a team of underperformers. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
I think that’s the same question for all the purposes I care about—why name exactly one example, and specifically an example of a subordinate doing interpretive labor towards their manager? This sort of selective attention is the mechanism by which asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are made.
The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
Managers already do the bulk of interpretive labor though
Why should I believe this? One manager typically manages multiple people, so at first I’d expect that each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them. Remember that some of the manager’s time will also be spent interpreting their manager, which competes with time spent interpreting their employees.
I wonder if this is in part a representativeness heuristic problem. Because managers have to control the behavior of so many other people, they may end up spending nearly all of their time doing interpretive labor, whereas managed people have to interface with their object-level tasks much of the time. So interpretive labor is a more characteristic activity for a manager. But this is a response to the underlying dynamic where the many-to-one relationship between managers and managed makes managerial interpretive labor scarce. Interpretive labor is characteristic of managers because they have less total capacity to do it per subordinate than their subordinates do per manager, not more.
each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them
Agree about the time ratio. But interpretive labor of managers is more efficient per time spent, because they specialize in people, while programmers specialize in computers. For example, if you want to present a new project to superiors or partners, a good manager can craft the right communication in a day, where a brilliant programmer could spin their wheels for a week and in the end the message would fall flat. The same is true for manager-programmer conversations I’ve seen, managers are far better at reading them and it comes from skill, not position. That’s why I say programmers have more room for growth.
The post seems to conflate two different things:
Here you’re asked to improve your understanding.
Here you’re asked to act low status, no understanding required.
I’m in favor of (1) but not (2).
Yeah, in retrospect that was a mistake. They’re related, but it begins the slippery slope to using “interpretive labor” to mean “all emotional labor”
-Post author
I agree that those are substantially different. It seems like to some extent the “interpretive labor” framework suggests that (1) is more often something like a fancy version of (2) than it might otherwise appear. (For instance, if you live under a totalitarian ideological regime such as e.g. many public schools, you can’t defend yourself without speaking in the regime’s language, which will be constructed to make it hard for people in certain situations to defend themselves.)
Things in the class of the courtier’s reply seem relevant here (see also YVain’s article on it).
I guess my position is closer to Yvain’s than yours. The courtier is worth listening to. On the margin, people would benefit from doing more interpretive labor, not taking more offense at it.
Here’s a less emotionally charged example. Imagine you’re a programmer at a big company, and your manager tells you to do something stupid for business reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Understanding the manager’s reasoning—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for how it works—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many programmers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they stay grunts. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
I’ve thought a while (with some help from friends) about what made this comment seem objectionable to me. I think what’s bothering me about it is that the linked post is trying to describe a situation where power imbalances cause asymmetric incentives (and ability) to perform interpretive labor. It seems to me like this sort of comment subtly recasts the frame into a debate about whether people should act according to these incentives or indignantly refuse, thus conflating a descriptive claim with a policy recommendation of indignation.
This is an example of the sort of thing I was trying to point to in Model-building and scapegoating; descriptions of a situation that might be a problem are read as intent to blame one class of participant, often one who seems to be benefiting. My post on actors and scribes was also trying to point at this.
In my example the power imbalance is mostly an effect, not a cause. You can apply to work at a programming company as a programmer, and they will accept you if you pass the interview. Or you can—with the same name and face—apply to work as a manager, and they will accept you if you pass the interview. Or you can move from programming to management, I know a bunch of people who did that. Your position is determined by your skills.
You could say “oh, but people in lower positions are prevented from learning the skills needed for higher positions”. But that’s not true in my experience. Programmers aren’t prevented from learning “people stuff”, they know they could do it, it just makes them yawn.
OK, “cause” was too strong—correlate with.
Would this problem be resolved by adding awareness to “which one I am”. When throwing around self or external blame?
“I recognise I’m blaming everyone else for my problems”
“I recognise I’m. Blaming myself for my problems”
Given that the original post was not blaming anyone for anything and was interpreted as such anyway, this would not resolve the issue.
The original post didn’t claim to have awareness of itself. So it’s left as an exercise to the reader to slot themselves in and create that interpretation.
It’s a different style to appeal to one side.
A different style to appeal the second side.
A different style to appeal to one side and be clear about it.
A different style to appeal to the second side and be clear about it.
A different style to appeal to neutrality.
A different style to appeal to neutrality and know it.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally”.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it and get it wrong.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it, and get it wrong, and know it, and show it all.
A different style to appeal to sidedness “universally” and know it, and get it wrong, and know it, and show it all. In a neutral frame while still being useful to the earlier 10 stances.
Trouble is, the further up this tree that one climbs, the cloudier it is to see clarity from gibberish.
I am disturbed by this comment. It seems like you are interpreting the post as doing coalitional politics and ignoring the descriptive content. The fact that descriptive statements about power dynamics automatically get interpreted as doing coalitional politics is the whole issue here.
If this goes too far then all words will be interpreted as violence and we will no longer be able to talk ourselves out of this mess because such talking would itself be interpreted as violence; everything would degenerate into an unproductive and destructive mess of zero-sum conflict. I am actually really worried about this happening and want to strongly push back against it.
Notice that I didn’t claim to be one side or another. I didn’t even claim to be critical or uncritical of the post. Or claim which level the post was on. And there are more levels above.
Also everyone is always playing on many levels. But also we trust and take charitably each other’s ideas. Without that trust we really do live in zero safety world.
People don’t face the binary choice “do more interpretive labor” and “take offense at it,” and it’s inappropriately political in this context to generically exhort people to work harder to internalize the preferences of those who have power over them.
Why didn’t you give this example instead?
Imagine you’re a manager at a big company, and one of your programmers is slacking on a task for motivational reasons that don’t make sense to you. Should you say “ugh, interpretive labor”? No! Checking in with your direct reports to make sure they understand the business case for what you’re asking and how it might help them advance in their careers—not asking tons of questions, but getting a feel for whether there’s shared understanding—is the door to the stairs to the next level of your career. I’ve seen so many managers ignoring that door for years and wondering why they’re stuck with a team of underperformers. Don’t get stuck like that! Jump on every chance to do interpretive labor!
Why not both?
I think that’s the same question for all the purposes I care about—why name exactly one example, and specifically an example of a subordinate doing interpretive labor towards their manager? This sort of selective attention is the mechanism by which asymmetric demands for interpretive labor are made.
The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
One might equally well advise workers to correct the power imbalance caused by the asymmetric interpretive labor bottleneck by unionizing, of course.
Again, why not both?
“Stop ignoring business stuff if you want to advance career-wise, even though it doesn’t come naturally and is hard. Also, unionize.”
(This is assuming, of course, that unionizing helps at all. I take no position on this.)
No one’s argued for “not both” here.
What’s that? Having high self agency and being proactive is a win state?
Why yes we say that often. Around these parts.
Managers already do the bulk of interpretive labor though. And too often programmers just yawn when the conversation turns to business stuff.
Why should I believe this? One manager typically manages multiple people, so at first I’d expect that each employee spends much more time interpreting their manager than their manager spends interpreting them. Remember that some of the manager’s time will also be spent interpreting their manager, which competes with time spent interpreting their employees.
I wonder if this is in part a representativeness heuristic problem. Because managers have to control the behavior of so many other people, they may end up spending nearly all of their time doing interpretive labor, whereas managed people have to interface with their object-level tasks much of the time. So interpretive labor is a more characteristic activity for a manager. But this is a response to the underlying dynamic where the many-to-one relationship between managers and managed makes managerial interpretive labor scarce. Interpretive labor is characteristic of managers because they have less total capacity to do it per subordinate than their subordinates do per manager, not more.
Agree about the time ratio. But interpretive labor of managers is more efficient per time spent, because they specialize in people, while programmers specialize in computers. For example, if you want to present a new project to superiors or partners, a good manager can craft the right communication in a day, where a brilliant programmer could spin their wheels for a week and in the end the message would fall flat. The same is true for manager-programmer conversations I’ve seen, managers are far better at reading them and it comes from skill, not position. That’s why I say programmers have more room for growth.