Imagine a group discussion intended to chose one of four options. Language being what it is, the names of the options come with emotional baggage, the good option, the wise option, the bad option, the foolish option. A group of mundanes will have a lively discussion. Having picked either the good option or the wise option, they will go away believing that they discussed the matter thoroughly, little suspecting that bad option and the foolish option never stood a chance in the discussion, whatever their merits.
The emotional baggage of terminology plays out in different ways in different contexts. If you are playing to win, you will try to crank up the level of emotion. In the abortion debate in America one side tries to win by framing it as choice versus slavery while the other side tries to win by framing it as life versus death.
If you are trying to find the truth, you need to push back against language doing your thinking for you. When smart people are having a group discussion intended to chose one of four options they notice that they labeled the options wise, good, foolish, bad, and spot the danger. The convention among smart people is to level the playing field, by relabeling the options wise ⇒ smug, good ⇒ priggish, foolish ⇒ subtle, bad ⇒ hard-headed,… something like that.
Once the labels have been neutralised, the options can be discussed objectively. The mainstream guy doesn’t feel under social pressure to argue for the common-sense option, the contrarian guy doesn’t feel under social pressure to argue to the wacky option. They can talk mechanisms and consequences.
Conflict arises when a mundane slaps a feelgood label on their preferred option and a smart person rips off the feelgood label and replaces it with a snarky label. The top level post frames this as the smart person being rude and needing to solve this by being polite. That might be correct, but I’m unhappy about the way that the conclusion is prejudged by the choice of labels.
The Purpose of This Post: I think many smart people “defect” by accident.
Accident? That is a slippery concept with the conscious layered over the sub-conscious running on untrusted hardware. Mundanes aren’t using emotional labels willy-nilly and accidentally trashing their preferred option with a label with negative emotional connotations. Its all neuro-typical, all the time. If you ask a mundane “I know that you are awfully proud of your ape ancestry and hate having to talk like we are in the Logic Room on Planet Vulcan, but can you please give it a rest for five minutes so that we can get some work done?”, well, you are so not going to get five minutes of calm logic.
The rules of politeness are there to be gamed and they get gamed hard.
If you’re at a meeting and someone gives a presentation and asks if anyone has questions, and you ask point-blank, “But we don’t have the budget or skills to do that, how would we overcome that?”—then, that seems like a highly reasonable question. It’s probably very intelligent.
Yeah, well, how did that happen? It’s not like the presenter was unaware of the importance of budget and skills.
“This seems like an amazing idea and a great presentation. I wonder how we could secure the budgeting and get the team for it, because it seems like it’d be a profitable if we do, and it’d be a shame to miss this opportunity.”
Now you have conceded that the idea is a really good one, upgrading it because you felt obliged to be polite about the presenters lack of concern over budget and skills. That wasn’t an accident; you’ve been out maneuvered.
I’m in strong agreement with lionhearted about the importance of developing social skills, both by reading books and cultivating awareness in real life. But where does it take you?
One place it takes you is a greater awareness of setups. You try to be polite but you start noticing the person who wants to get their way has set things up so that if you disagree you will come across as rude. You could develop a thick skin about the social awkwardness. You could try to avoid them. You could try to see it coming and engage in a social fencing match, trying to dodge being backed into a corner where you must either submit or give offense. None of this works all that well.
There is a fork ahead in your personal path. Do you exploit the rules of politeness and become the kind of person that others find it difficult to say no to? Do you deliberately reject that path, and leave other people polite outs?
And what of your role as passive participant in social set ups? If you suspect that some-one deliberately left obvious stuff out of their presentation, intending to run out the clock on the question and answer session before it got on to the tough questions, how are you going to feel about somebody else falling for the gambit and taking up time in the meeting with polite padding on their questions?
The deep problem here is that it is never deliberate. Mr A gives his presentation and accidently leaves out some obvious points. Mr B is there when Mr A gets an easy time of it because the weaknesses in Mr A’s presentation got passed over in favour of going over the stuff that got left out. Mr B learns by example (not analysis) that this is the way you do things: leave out some obvious stuff so that there are some obvious questions to ask with easy answers. Mr B can probably feel the emotional comfort of not facing awkward questions even though he doesn’t know how the trick works. He does it, but he doesn’t intend it, and if you call him on it you will get a perfectly genuine blank look.
If we’re going to talk about the cognitive framing effects of language, as the original post did, how about your use of the word “Mundane”?
To me, it seems actively harmful to accurate thinking, happiness, and your chance of doing good in the world. The implication is characterizing most humans as a separate lower class, with the suggestion of contempt and/or disgust for those inferior beings, which has empirically led to badness (historically: genocide. in my personal experience: it has been poisonous to Objectivism and various atheist groups I’ve been in).
I’d like to hear some examples where framing most people as both “lesser” and “other” has led to good for the world, because all the ones I’m pullin’ up are pretty awful...
To me, it seems actively harmful to accurate thinking, happiness, and your chance of doing good in the world.
Interesting. The terms ‘mundane’ and ‘smart’ always pointed out to me that I am part of a group that is perceived as ‘other’ by some people. I have to be more Machiavellian at times when dealing with mundane people (‘opposed to smart’ more than ‘not smart’), but I don’t consider most people mundane. That said, I have no idea if this interpretation is how other people see it, or if it’s not the intended interpretation.
What do you think about cultivating a reputation for social awkwardness for the explicit purpose of opting out of these kinds of games? If you always just speak your mind, politeness be damned, wouldn’t people excuse you for it after a while? Plus, you can free up a lot of mental resources for other purposes.
Tried it as a kid. They don’t. Not sure why, their explicit justification seems to be that social norms are morally good. Or maybe you just make a sucky ally.
Not working as a kid would be expected, since you have nothing of value to offer other kids for them to put up with your social awkwardness. Might be different in the workplace (if your job is mainly to contribute a technical skill instead of a social one).
Yep, but the vast majority of people in a workplace, even those nominally there to deliver technical skills, are there to deliver social skills in reality, and all of the most highly paid people are paid for social skills. That said, your right, still worth it. Being officially a foreigner is possibly the best approach.
This is an awesome response and extension, although it doesn’t invalidate the point that we should learn what signals our words will give and choose them consciously. It’s basically always better to understand and use the subtext. Whether using it to make sure you don’t accidentally press the emotional buttons of a good-willed collaborator, or understanding when others are using it to exploit you.
In my experience, relentless politeness + authenticity (don’t give up your basic point, but phrase it very nicely) is a great help at defeating setups. In the presentation case, sure, the questioner has upgraded the idea. But he has still pointed out it’s core flaw! A less adept questioner might either a) not question at all, knowing that it looks like a rude challenge, or b) question rudely because he doesn’t know how to be polite. Either one of which would make it more likely for the bad idea to pass unchallenged.
The key is authenticity: politeness shouldn’t stop you from putting the knife into something that should die, it should just make it so smooth that it hurts the minimum and shows everyone that you are acting in the common interest. It’s an empowering tool so that you can play the game of fighting back against bad gaming without looking like a gamer or a fighter.
Anyway, I have a sunny disposition so I don’t share your negative framing of this, but your meta-point about how others can use these rules for evil and/or selfishness is great (although maybe at too high a level of Slytherin to be really useful to most LWers).
I think the point is: If you make enemies, do it on purpose, and rudeness is similar. There is a time and a place for it, but be fully aware of what you’re doing. It’s impossible to game something you’re not conscious of let alone game it hard. And hard it shall and should be gamed!
“This seems like an amazing idea and a great presentation. I wonder how we could secure the budgeting and get the team for it, because it seems like it’d be a profitable if we do, and it’d be a shame to miss this opportunity.”
I agree that this is being bend-over-backwards polite to the point of conceding a lot of ground. Maybe it was a great presentation and an amazing idea, if only we had the budget for it. But maybe you don’t think that. In that case, there has to be middle ground; praising the presentation but not the idea, for example, is rhetorically safe since it doesn’t matter that he gave a good presentation. However, I do think this is a legitimate question you should be able to ask directly. I work with non-nerds and would feel very comfortable asking this question directly—and would expect someone to, if I didn’t.
Imagine a group discussion intended to chose one of four options. Language being what it is, the names of the options come with emotional baggage, the good option, the wise option, the bad option, the foolish option. A group of mundanes will have a lively discussion. Having picked either the good option or the wise option, they will go away believing that they discussed the matter thoroughly, little suspecting that bad option and the foolish option never stood a chance in the discussion, whatever their merits.
The emotional baggage of terminology plays out in different ways in different contexts. If you are playing to win, you will try to crank up the level of emotion. In the abortion debate in America one side tries to win by framing it as choice versus slavery while the other side tries to win by framing it as life versus death.
If you are trying to find the truth, you need to push back against language doing your thinking for you. When smart people are having a group discussion intended to chose one of four options they notice that they labeled the options wise, good, foolish, bad, and spot the danger. The convention among smart people is to level the playing field, by relabeling the options wise ⇒ smug, good ⇒ priggish, foolish ⇒ subtle, bad ⇒ hard-headed,… something like that.
Once the labels have been neutralised, the options can be discussed objectively. The mainstream guy doesn’t feel under social pressure to argue for the common-sense option, the contrarian guy doesn’t feel under social pressure to argue to the wacky option. They can talk mechanisms and consequences.
Conflict arises when a mundane slaps a feelgood label on their preferred option and a smart person rips off the feelgood label and replaces it with a snarky label. The top level post frames this as the smart person being rude and needing to solve this by being polite. That might be correct, but I’m unhappy about the way that the conclusion is prejudged by the choice of labels.
Accident? That is a slippery concept with the conscious layered over the sub-conscious running on untrusted hardware. Mundanes aren’t using emotional labels willy-nilly and accidentally trashing their preferred option with a label with negative emotional connotations. Its all neuro-typical, all the time. If you ask a mundane “I know that you are awfully proud of your ape ancestry and hate having to talk like we are in the Logic Room on Planet Vulcan, but can you please give it a rest for five minutes so that we can get some work done?”, well, you are so not going to get five minutes of calm logic.
The rules of politeness are there to be gamed and they get gamed hard.
Yeah, well, how did that happen? It’s not like the presenter was unaware of the importance of budget and skills.
Now you have conceded that the idea is a really good one, upgrading it because you felt obliged to be polite about the presenters lack of concern over budget and skills. That wasn’t an accident; you’ve been out maneuvered.
I’m in strong agreement with lionhearted about the importance of developing social skills, both by reading books and cultivating awareness in real life. But where does it take you?
One place it takes you is a greater awareness of setups. You try to be polite but you start noticing the person who wants to get their way has set things up so that if you disagree you will come across as rude. You could develop a thick skin about the social awkwardness. You could try to avoid them. You could try to see it coming and engage in a social fencing match, trying to dodge being backed into a corner where you must either submit or give offense. None of this works all that well.
There is a fork ahead in your personal path. Do you exploit the rules of politeness and become the kind of person that others find it difficult to say no to? Do you deliberately reject that path, and leave other people polite outs?
And what of your role as passive participant in social set ups? If you suspect that some-one deliberately left obvious stuff out of their presentation, intending to run out the clock on the question and answer session before it got on to the tough questions, how are you going to feel about somebody else falling for the gambit and taking up time in the meeting with polite padding on their questions?
The deep problem here is that it is never deliberate. Mr A gives his presentation and accidently leaves out some obvious points. Mr B is there when Mr A gets an easy time of it because the weaknesses in Mr A’s presentation got passed over in favour of going over the stuff that got left out. Mr B learns by example (not analysis) that this is the way you do things: leave out some obvious stuff so that there are some obvious questions to ask with easy answers. Mr B can probably feel the emotional comfort of not facing awkward questions even though he doesn’t know how the trick works. He does it, but he doesn’t intend it, and if you call him on it you will get a perfectly genuine blank look.
If we’re going to talk about the cognitive framing effects of language, as the original post did, how about your use of the word “Mundane”?
To me, it seems actively harmful to accurate thinking, happiness, and your chance of doing good in the world. The implication is characterizing most humans as a separate lower class, with the suggestion of contempt and/or disgust for those inferior beings, which has empirically led to badness (historically: genocide. in my personal experience: it has been poisonous to Objectivism and various atheist groups I’ve been in).
I’d like to hear some examples where framing most people as both “lesser” and “other” has led to good for the world, because all the ones I’m pullin’ up are pretty awful...
Interesting. The terms ‘mundane’ and ‘smart’ always pointed out to me that I am part of a group that is perceived as ‘other’ by some people. I have to be more Machiavellian at times when dealing with mundane people (‘opposed to smart’ more than ‘not smart’), but I don’t consider most people mundane. That said, I have no idea if this interpretation is how other people see it, or if it’s not the intended interpretation.
Two examples. Sexual selection and speciation. Nuff’ said.
What do you think about cultivating a reputation for social awkwardness for the explicit purpose of opting out of these kinds of games? If you always just speak your mind, politeness be damned, wouldn’t people excuse you for it after a while? Plus, you can free up a lot of mental resources for other purposes.
Tried it as a kid. They don’t. Not sure why, their explicit justification seems to be that social norms are morally good. Or maybe you just make a sucky ally.
Not working as a kid would be expected, since you have nothing of value to offer other kids for them to put up with your social awkwardness. Might be different in the workplace (if your job is mainly to contribute a technical skill instead of a social one).
Yep, but the vast majority of people in a workplace, even those nominally there to deliver technical skills, are there to deliver social skills in reality, and all of the most highly paid people are paid for social skills.
That said, your right, still worth it. Being officially a foreigner is possibly the best approach.
This is an awesome response and extension, although it doesn’t invalidate the point that we should learn what signals our words will give and choose them consciously. It’s basically always better to understand and use the subtext. Whether using it to make sure you don’t accidentally press the emotional buttons of a good-willed collaborator, or understanding when others are using it to exploit you.
In my experience, relentless politeness + authenticity (don’t give up your basic point, but phrase it very nicely) is a great help at defeating setups. In the presentation case, sure, the questioner has upgraded the idea. But he has still pointed out it’s core flaw! A less adept questioner might either a) not question at all, knowing that it looks like a rude challenge, or b) question rudely because he doesn’t know how to be polite. Either one of which would make it more likely for the bad idea to pass unchallenged.
The key is authenticity: politeness shouldn’t stop you from putting the knife into something that should die, it should just make it so smooth that it hurts the minimum and shows everyone that you are acting in the common interest. It’s an empowering tool so that you can play the game of fighting back against bad gaming without looking like a gamer or a fighter.
Anyway, I have a sunny disposition so I don’t share your negative framing of this, but your meta-point about how others can use these rules for evil and/or selfishness is great (although maybe at too high a level of Slytherin to be really useful to most LWers).
I think the point is: If you make enemies, do it on purpose, and rudeness is similar. There is a time and a place for it, but be fully aware of what you’re doing. It’s impossible to game something you’re not conscious of let alone game it hard. And hard it shall and should be gamed!
I agree that this is being bend-over-backwards polite to the point of conceding a lot of ground. Maybe it was a great presentation and an amazing idea, if only we had the budget for it. But maybe you don’t think that. In that case, there has to be middle ground; praising the presentation but not the idea, for example, is rhetorically safe since it doesn’t matter that he gave a good presentation. However, I do think this is a legitimate question you should be able to ask directly. I work with non-nerds and would feel very comfortable asking this question directly—and would expect someone to, if I didn’t.