this is getting off topic, but I’ll give one more reply:
“holding accountable” in the sense of “sending them frowny faces to make them feel bad about their behavior” doesn’t seem like a consequentially effective frame, yeah. if someone is doing bad things, you take actions to stop them; if they’re convinceable and just aren’t considering that the things might be bad, you show them the impact, and then they feel bad when they comprehend. if they’re not convinceable, you aren’t going to get through to them by frowning at them. claiming moral failure is a “send you frowny face” move.
like—let’s say you bumped into someone on a crowded subway car, because you weren’t paying attention. I saw it, and know that you just smashed their food. you don’t know that. If I come up to you, someone who cares about not smashing people’s food for no reason, and say “I’m here to hold you accountable for what you’ve done wrong”, you’ll go ”...what the heck?” but if I say “hey, you smashed their food,” you’ll turn around and be surprised and unhappy about this, not least because now you also know you need to clean up how it got on you, as well as the moral impacts.
if you go around smashing people’s food regularly, and repeatedly say you’re just not paying attention, then it might be that me telling you you suck is an effective intervention, but it still seems unlikely; either you’re doing it on purpose, in which case an immune response at you is needed, or you’ve got some sort of failure-to-update thing happening, in which case I need to help you look through what happens when you’re about to make the mistake and find a new behavior there (a deeper version of explaining it). if it’s because you’re getting paid to not look around you on the subway, then it might be hard to get you to consider the tradeoff, but if you value not knocking people’s food over, I might still be able to get through.
I admit I’m not sure how to read this as something other than a rejection of holding people morally accountable.
this is getting off topic, but I’ll give one more reply:
“holding accountable” in the sense of “sending them frowny faces to make them feel bad about their behavior” doesn’t seem like a consequentially effective frame, yeah. if someone is doing bad things, you take actions to stop them; if they’re convinceable and just aren’t considering that the things might be bad, you show them the impact, and then they feel bad when they comprehend. if they’re not convinceable, you aren’t going to get through to them by frowning at them. claiming moral failure is a “send you frowny face” move.
like—let’s say you bumped into someone on a crowded subway car, because you weren’t paying attention. I saw it, and know that you just smashed their food. you don’t know that. If I come up to you, someone who cares about not smashing people’s food for no reason, and say “I’m here to hold you accountable for what you’ve done wrong”, you’ll go ”...what the heck?” but if I say “hey, you smashed their food,” you’ll turn around and be surprised and unhappy about this, not least because now you also know you need to clean up how it got on you, as well as the moral impacts.
if you go around smashing people’s food regularly, and repeatedly say you’re just not paying attention, then it might be that me telling you you suck is an effective intervention, but it still seems unlikely; either you’re doing it on purpose, in which case an immune response at you is needed, or you’ve got some sort of failure-to-update thing happening, in which case I need to help you look through what happens when you’re about to make the mistake and find a new behavior there (a deeper version of explaining it). if it’s because you’re getting paid to not look around you on the subway, then it might be hard to get you to consider the tradeoff, but if you value not knocking people’s food over, I might still be able to get through.