Hmmmm. I almost want to agree with you on #6. I wrote up about half of a response based on agreeing about #6. But, I can’t quite agree. I don’t actually infer all that just from a divergence between words and actions, and I think it would be a bad idea to have it on that trigger.
I do agree with something close to #6. I would think of it as “inferring that I’m dealing with face culture”. Inferring that words mean less that they say, that there’s a social ritual going on. Motives and beliefs are being stated according to the rules of the game, not according to truth. My disagreement with #6 is that I don’t trigger it based on a divergence between words and actions. There are other definitions of “hypocrite” which I do trigger it on, like the definition proposed by Lukas_Gloor, or (less certainly) hypocrisy with the added proviso mentioned by Dagon. There are also a lot of other subtle or not-so-subtle hints which trigger this for me.
But I suspect we have a larger disagreement over some stuff beyond #6. In particular, when applying my version of #6, I basically never call it out. So, we can consider the following:
7. Hypocrisy ⇒ call out hypocrisy
Every time I have applied #6 and then tried to apply #7, things have gone rather poorly for me. This is why I said, of an immune response against hypocrisy:
The way I see things, this is asking for trouble. In high-trust contexts, it’s unnecessary (not because of zero hypocrisy, but because the hypocrisy is all benign). And it’ll harm your ability to tolerate and adapt to low-trust contexts, unless you put on blinders to most of the hypocrisy in those settings. Indeed, that’s what I think many people do: the strong anti-hypocrisy flinch necessitates an inability to see everything that’s going on in social settings.
I was (and still am) interpreting your “immune response” as involving #7. Is that accurate?
I do agree with something close to #6. I would think of it as “inferring that I’m dealing with face culture”.
I don’t agree that this is close to my #6 at all. Again, I think that your attempt to circumscribe what I’m saying, and to claim that it’s an artifact of some specific sort of “culture” that you can name, and set apart from some other contexts with a different culture, is misguided.
As far as “calling out” hypocrisy goes, well, that’s as may be. Your track record with calling out hypocrisy does not seem implausible to me, certainly. But then, I never suggested that calling anything out is strictly necessary. It may be helpful sometimes, but not always, and perhaps not even often. That, however, is different from trying to change the norm against it…
I was (and still am) interpreting your “immune response” as involving #7. Is that accurate?
It is not, as you see. Calling out hypocrisy may be part of the manifestation of the immune response in any given situation, or it may not be. It depends on many things. (For one thing, callouts may take many forms. For example, they make take the form of subtle, and deniable—perhaps even apophatic—implications. If there’s a solidly entrenched, universally shared norm against hypocrisy, then such a gentle approach can serve quite well. In such social contexts, one prefers to avoid the label of hypocrite even if one is able, after all, to defend against the charge; the ideal is not only blamelessness, but manifest, unimpeachable blamelessness. The “appearance of impropriety” parallel may once again be drawn.)
This is why I said, of an immune response against hypocrisy:
The way I see things, this is asking for trouble. In high-trust contexts, it’s unnecessary (not because of zero hypocrisy, but because the hypocrisy is all benign).
I certainly disagree with this. Again, I just don’t buy the “benign hypocrisy” idea. (It is, in any case, socially corrosive even if “true” in any given case. I put “true” in scare quotes, of course, because whether to categorize the behavior as “benign hypocrisy” is precisely at issue; what’s actually true is some empirical facts of the matter.)
And it’ll harm your ability to tolerate and adapt to low-trust contexts, unless you put on blinders to most of the hypocrisy in those settings. Indeed, that’s what I think many people do: the strong anti-hypocrisy flinch necessitates an inability to see everything that’s going on in social settings.
[emphasis mine]
I agree that the bolded part is a danger, but it’s not so great as a danger as you suggest, and not nearly as great a danger as the reverse. Partly this is because I think that you exaggerate, w.r.t. the un-bolded part of the quote. Putting on blinders is not at all the only way to cope!
I certainly disagree with this. Again, I just don’t buy the “benign hypocrisy” idea. (It is, in any case, socially corrosive even if “true” in any given case. I put “true” in scare quotes, of course, because whether to categorize the behavior as “benign hypocrisy” is precisely at issue; what’s actually true is some empirical facts of the matter.)
[how did you get nested quotations to work? I can’t seem to manage that...]
Certainly it’s true that it “isn’t plausible to claim that every divergence between words and actions is due to duplicitous malintent”. But who is claiming otherwise? I am saying that “hypocrisy” refers to—and guards against—a broader spectrum of behaviors than that.
So I think we agree that there are benign divergences of between words and actions.
I don’t know what your definition of hypocrisy is to evaluate whether we disagree beyond that.
[how did you get nested quotations to work? I can’t seem to manage that...]
GreaterWrong uses a raw Markdown editor, where you can do nested quotations in the usual Markdown way. (If you don’t know or recall the format of the quotation markup, you can use the quotation button on the GUIEdit toolbar: select the first level of the quote, click the button; select the quoted text plus the next level, click the button; etc.)
As for the rest of your comment—see my reply in the other thread. I don’t think there is any difference in our definitions of hypocrisy.
Hmmmm. I almost want to agree with you on #6. I wrote up about half of a response based on agreeing about #6. But, I can’t quite agree. I don’t actually infer all that just from a divergence between words and actions, and I think it would be a bad idea to have it on that trigger.
I do agree with something close to #6. I would think of it as “inferring that I’m dealing with face culture”. Inferring that words mean less that they say, that there’s a social ritual going on. Motives and beliefs are being stated according to the rules of the game, not according to truth. My disagreement with #6 is that I don’t trigger it based on a divergence between words and actions. There are other definitions of “hypocrite” which I do trigger it on, like the definition proposed by Lukas_Gloor, or (less certainly) hypocrisy with the added proviso mentioned by Dagon. There are also a lot of other subtle or not-so-subtle hints which trigger this for me.
But I suspect we have a larger disagreement over some stuff beyond #6. In particular, when applying my version of #6, I basically never call it out. So, we can consider the following:
7. Hypocrisy ⇒ call out hypocrisy
Every time I have applied #6 and then tried to apply #7, things have gone rather poorly for me. This is why I said, of an immune response against hypocrisy:
I was (and still am) interpreting your “immune response” as involving #7. Is that accurate?
I don’t agree that this is close to my #6 at all. Again, I think that your attempt to circumscribe what I’m saying, and to claim that it’s an artifact of some specific sort of “culture” that you can name, and set apart from some other contexts with a different culture, is misguided.
As far as “calling out” hypocrisy goes, well, that’s as may be. Your track record with calling out hypocrisy does not seem implausible to me, certainly. But then, I never suggested that calling anything out is strictly necessary. It may be helpful sometimes, but not always, and perhaps not even often. That, however, is different from trying to change the norm against it…
It is not, as you see. Calling out hypocrisy may be part of the manifestation of the immune response in any given situation, or it may not be. It depends on many things. (For one thing, callouts may take many forms. For example, they make take the form of subtle, and deniable—perhaps even apophatic—implications. If there’s a solidly entrenched, universally shared norm against hypocrisy, then such a gentle approach can serve quite well. In such social contexts, one prefers to avoid the label of hypocrite even if one is able, after all, to defend against the charge; the ideal is not only blamelessness, but manifest, unimpeachable blamelessness. The “appearance of impropriety” parallel may once again be drawn.)
I certainly disagree with this. Again, I just don’t buy the “benign hypocrisy” idea. (It is, in any case, socially corrosive even if “true” in any given case. I put “true” in scare quotes, of course, because whether to categorize the behavior as “benign hypocrisy” is precisely at issue; what’s actually true is some empirical facts of the matter.)
[emphasis mine]
I agree that the bolded part is a danger, but it’s not so great as a danger as you suggest, and not nearly as great a danger as the reverse. Partly this is because I think that you exaggerate, w.r.t. the un-bolded part of the quote. Putting on blinders is not at all the only way to cope!
[how did you get nested quotations to work? I can’t seem to manage that...]
I think this disagreement probably was an illusion generated by our differing definitions of hypocrisy:
So I think we agree that there are benign divergences of between words and actions.
I don’t know what your definition of hypocrisy is to evaluate whether we disagree beyond that.
GreaterWrong uses a raw Markdown editor, where you can do nested quotations in the usual Markdown way. (If you don’t know or recall the format of the quotation markup, you can use the quotation button on the GUIEdit toolbar: select the first level of the quote, click the button; select the quoted text plus the next level, click the button; etc.)
As for the rest of your comment—see my reply in the other thread. I don’t think there is any difference in our definitions of hypocrisy.