Why call this “defection”? I interpret “defection” as meaning not just “a bad thing people do” but as deliberately deviating from a previous agreement. The relationship between the prisoner’s dilemma and not being sufficiently polite seems forced, or at least like it could have used more thorough explanation.
I agree with Alicorn and others who find the sort of forced extreme politeness of some of the suggested responses (especially to #1) off-putting. I can’t quite explain why, but if I had to guess, it would be for two reasons. First, politeness level indicates status, and when someone uses excessive politeness that ascribes to me extremely high status that I don’t feel I’ve earned, I suspect they’re trying to manipulate me. Given that many of the arguments in this post are explicitly about politeness as a tool for manipulating people, this seems to be a valid suspicion.
Second, lack of politeness is a countersignalling method to indicate friendship and community by showing you are close enough to a person that politeness is unnecessary (consider the relatively common story of the friends who greet each other with racial slurs, like “Hey n*gga!”, “Hey cracker!” partly as a bonding mechanism to show that they’re close enough to allow what would normally be offensive). If everyone is on board with this, someone who goes around being extremely polite and telling others to be extremely polite might seem to be distancing eirself from the community and denying friendship.
I realize you don’t intend polite comments that way, but as you say in this post, it doesn’t matter what you intend so much as how other people interpret it. I’d agree that politeness is generally a good thing, but carpet-bombing all social interactions with politeness will tend to freak a lot of people out, and Less Wrong is probably more prone to that than other places.
Why call this “defection”? I interpret “defection” as meaning not just “a bad thing people do” but as deliberately deviating from a previous agreement. The relationship between the prisoner’s dilemma and not being sufficiently polite seems forced, or at least like it could have used more thorough explanation.
I wanted to put this into a context of how you could cooperate, raising everyone’s payoffs—or defect, raising your payoff at the expense of the other person.
Which might be fine, if you do it consciously. But is really something you should be aware of. Certain kinds of public statements have this effect—raising your standing at the expense of who you’re criticizing, like in the meeting example. This might be okay to do, but you really, really should be aware of it. A lot of smart people don’t realize that their action/criticism comes across as defection—raising themselves at the expense of lowering the other person.
Second, lack of politeness is a countersignalling method to indicate friendship and community by showing you are close enough to a person that politeness is unnecessary
Yes, but I don’t think this is what the majority of technical people are doing when they’re going around accidentally offending people. Think of the I.T. Guy stereotype who constantly insults everyone else in the office for being so stupid, but is unaware of it. That’s a stereotype, but there’s a grain of truth in it. There’s a huge difference between that and being loose and easy around your friends.
Second, lack of politeness is a countersignalling method to indicate friendship and community by showing you are close enough to a person that politeness is unnecessary
As you say, that only works if everyone is already on board with this. What the OP is talking about is, effectively, the situation where you’re saying “hey nigga wassup!” to someone you’ve just met or barely know. In order to use direct communication to signal closeness, you need to be sure that you’re on the same page first.
Why call this “defection”? I interpret “defection” as meaning not just “a bad thing people do” but as deliberately deviating from a previous agreement. The relationship between the prisoner’s dilemma and not being sufficiently polite seems forced, or at least like it could have used more thorough explanation.
I agree with Alicorn and others who find the sort of forced extreme politeness of some of the suggested responses (especially to #1) off-putting. I can’t quite explain why, but if I had to guess, it would be for two reasons. First, politeness level indicates status, and when someone uses excessive politeness that ascribes to me extremely high status that I don’t feel I’ve earned, I suspect they’re trying to manipulate me. Given that many of the arguments in this post are explicitly about politeness as a tool for manipulating people, this seems to be a valid suspicion.
Second, lack of politeness is a countersignalling method to indicate friendship and community by showing you are close enough to a person that politeness is unnecessary (consider the relatively common story of the friends who greet each other with racial slurs, like “Hey n*gga!”, “Hey cracker!” partly as a bonding mechanism to show that they’re close enough to allow what would normally be offensive). If everyone is on board with this, someone who goes around being extremely polite and telling others to be extremely polite might seem to be distancing eirself from the community and denying friendship.
I realize you don’t intend polite comments that way, but as you say in this post, it doesn’t matter what you intend so much as how other people interpret it. I’d agree that politeness is generally a good thing, but carpet-bombing all social interactions with politeness will tend to freak a lot of people out, and Less Wrong is probably more prone to that than other places.
I wanted to put this into a context of how you could cooperate, raising everyone’s payoffs—or defect, raising your payoff at the expense of the other person.
Which might be fine, if you do it consciously. But is really something you should be aware of. Certain kinds of public statements have this effect—raising your standing at the expense of who you’re criticizing, like in the meeting example. This might be okay to do, but you really, really should be aware of it. A lot of smart people don’t realize that their action/criticism comes across as defection—raising themselves at the expense of lowering the other person.
Yes, but I don’t think this is what the majority of technical people are doing when they’re going around accidentally offending people. Think of the I.T. Guy stereotype who constantly insults everyone else in the office for being so stupid, but is unaware of it. That’s a stereotype, but there’s a grain of truth in it. There’s a huge difference between that and being loose and easy around your friends.
As you say, that only works if everyone is already on board with this. What the OP is talking about is, effectively, the situation where you’re saying “hey nigga wassup!” to someone you’ve just met or barely know. In order to use direct communication to signal closeness, you need to be sure that you’re on the same page first.