It seems to me that this habit is universal in American culture, and I’d be surprised (and intrigued!) to hear about any culture where it isn’t.
I live in Austria. I would say we do have norms against hypocrisy, but your example with the drivers license seems absurd to me. I would be surprised (and intrigued!) if agreement with this one in particular is actually universal in American culture. In my experience, hypocrisy norms are for moral and crypto-moral topics.
For normies, morality is an imposition. Telling them of new moral requirements increases how much they have to do things that suck to stay a good person. From this perspective, the anti-hypocrisy norm is great. If people don’t follow the new requirement they suggest (or can be construed as not doing so), you get to ignore it without further litigation.
Now the classical LW position is that thats wrong, and that you ought to be glad someone informed you how much good you can do by giving away large fractions of your income, because this gave you the opportunity to do so. Because you ought to believe morality in your heart. From this perspective, the anti-hypocrisy norm is useless. It might also be why the drivers license example is a natural fit for you: its all “advice” to you. If you’ve failed to Chestertons fence, I think its this previous step where it happened.
My current take is that anti-hypocrisy norms naturally emerge from micro status battles: giving advice naturally has a little undercurrent of “I’m smarter than you”, and pointing out that the person is not following their own advice counters this. Therefore, a hypocrisy check naturally becomes a common response, because it’s a pretty good move in status games. Therefore, people expect a hypocrisy check, and check themselves.
I would be surprised (and intrigued!) if agreement with this one in particular is actually universal in American culture. In my experience, hypocrisy norms are for moral and crypto-moral topics.
On the one hand, I was probably blind to the moral aspect and over-generalized to some extent.
On the other hand, do you really imagine me telling someone they should get a driver’s license (in a context where there is common knowledge that I don’t have one), and not expect a mild backlash? I expect phrases like “look who’s talking” and I expect the ‘energy in the room’ after the backlash to be as if my point was refuted. I expect to have to reiterate the point, to show that I’m undeterred, if I still want it to be considered seriously in the conversation. (Particularly if the group isn’t rationalists.)
So your social experience is different in this respect?
So your social experience is different in this respect?
I’ve never experienced this example in particular, but I would not expect such a backlash. Can you think of another scenario with non-moral advice that I have likely experienced?
Can you tell me anything about the “advice culture” you have experience with?
For example, I’ve had some experience with Iranian culture, and it is very different from American culture. It’s much more combative (in the sense of combat vs nurture, not necessarily real combativeness—although I think they have a higher preference/tolerance for heated arguments as well). I was told several times that the bad thing about american culture is that if someone has a problem with you they won’t tell you to your face, instead they’ll still try to be nice. I sometimes found the blunt advice (criticism) from Iranians overwhelming and emotionally difficult to handle.
I don’t strongly relate to any of these descriptions. I can say that I don’t feel like I have to pretend advice from equals is more helpful than it is, which I suppose means its not face. The most common way to reject advice is a comment like “eh, whatever” and ignoring it. Some nerds get really mad at this and seem to demand intellectual debate. This is not well received. Most people give advice with the expectation of intellectual debate only on crypto-moral topics (this is also not well received generally, but the speaker seems to accept that as an “identity cost”), or not at all.
You mean advice to diet, or “technical” advice once its established that person wants to diet? I don’t have experience with either, but the first is definitely crypto-moral.
Ok. My mental sim doesn’t expect any backlash in this type of situation. My first thought is it’s just super obvious why the advice might apply to you and not to him; but, this doesn’t really seem correct. For one thing, it might not be super obvious. For another, I think there are cases where it’s pretty obvious, but I nonetheless anticipate a backlash.
So I’m not sure what’s going on with my mental sim. Maybe I just have a super-broad ‘crypto-moral detector’ that goes off way more often than yours (w/o explicitly labeling things as crypto-moral for me).
So I’m not sure what’s going on with my mental sim. Maybe I just have a super-broad ‘crypto-moral detector’ that goes off way more often than yours (w/o explicitly labeling things as crypto-moral for me).
Maybe. How were your intuitions before you encountered LW? If you already had a hypocrisy intuition, then trying to internalize the rationalist perspective might have lead it to ignore the morality-distinction.
I live in Austria. I would say we do have norms against hypocrisy, but your example with the drivers license seems absurd to me. I would be surprised (and intrigued!) if agreement with this one in particular is actually universal in American culture. In my experience, hypocrisy norms are for moral and crypto-moral topics.
For normies, morality is an imposition. Telling them of new moral requirements increases how much they have to do things that suck to stay a good person. From this perspective, the anti-hypocrisy norm is great. If people don’t follow the new requirement they suggest (or can be construed as not doing so), you get to ignore it without further litigation.
Now the classical LW position is that thats wrong, and that you ought to be glad someone informed you how much good you can do by giving away large fractions of your income, because this gave you the opportunity to do so. Because you ought to believe morality in your heart. From this perspective, the anti-hypocrisy norm is useless. It might also be why the drivers license example is a natural fit for you: its all “advice” to you. If you’ve failed to Chestertons fence, I think its this previous step where it happened.
My current take is that anti-hypocrisy norms naturally emerge from micro status battles: giving advice naturally has a little undercurrent of “I’m smarter than you”, and pointing out that the person is not following their own advice counters this. Therefore, a hypocrisy check naturally becomes a common response, because it’s a pretty good move in status games. Therefore, people expect a hypocrisy check, and check themselves.
On the one hand, I was probably blind to the moral aspect and over-generalized to some extent.
On the other hand, do you really imagine me telling someone they should get a driver’s license (in a context where there is common knowledge that I don’t have one), and not expect a mild backlash? I expect phrases like “look who’s talking” and I expect the ‘energy in the room’ after the backlash to be as if my point was refuted. I expect to have to reiterate the point, to show that I’m undeterred, if I still want it to be considered seriously in the conversation. (Particularly if the group isn’t rationalists.)
So your social experience is different in this respect?
I’ve never experienced this example in particular, but I would not expect such a backlash. Can you think of another scenario with non-moral advice that I have likely experienced?
Can you tell me anything about the “advice culture” you have experience with?
For example, I’ve had some experience with Iranian culture, and it is very different from American culture. It’s much more combative (in the sense of combat vs nurture, not necessarily real combativeness—although I think they have a higher preference/tolerance for heated arguments as well). I was told several times that the bad thing about american culture is that if someone has a problem with you they won’t tell you to your face, instead they’ll still try to be nice. I sometimes found the blunt advice (criticism) from Iranians overwhelming and emotionally difficult to handle.
I don’t strongly relate to any of these descriptions. I can say that I don’t feel like I have to pretend advice from equals is more helpful than it is, which I suppose means its not face. The most common way to reject advice is a comment like “eh, whatever” and ignoring it. Some nerds get really mad at this and seem to demand intellectual debate. This is not well received. Most people give advice with the expectation of intellectual debate only on crypto-moral topics (this is also not well received generally, but the speaker seems to accept that as an “identity cost”), or not at all.
Diet advice?
You mean advice to diet, or “technical” advice once its established that person wants to diet? I don’t have experience with either, but the first is definitely crypto-moral.
What’s definitely not crypto-moral?
My father playing golf with me today, telling me to lean down more to stop them going out left so much.
Ok. My mental sim doesn’t expect any backlash in this type of situation. My first thought is it’s just super obvious why the advice might apply to you and not to him; but, this doesn’t really seem correct. For one thing, it might not be super obvious. For another, I think there are cases where it’s pretty obvious, but I nonetheless anticipate a backlash.
So I’m not sure what’s going on with my mental sim. Maybe I just have a super-broad ‘crypto-moral detector’ that goes off way more often than yours (w/o explicitly labeling things as crypto-moral for me).
Maybe. How were your intuitions before you encountered LW? If you already had a hypocrisy intuition, then trying to internalize the rationalist perspective might have lead it to ignore the morality-distinction.