what are some signs that someone isn’t doing frame control? [...]
They give you power over them, like indications that they want your approval or unconditional support in areas you are superior to them. They signal to you that they are vulnerable to you.
There was a discussion on the Sam Harris podcast where he talks about the alarming frequency at which leaders of meditation communities end up abusing, controlling or sleeping with their students. I can’t seem to find the episode name now.
But I remember being impressed with the podcast guest, a meditation teacher, who said they had seen this happening all around them and before they took over as the leader of their meditation centre had tried to put in place things to stop themselves falling into the same traps.
They had taken their family and closest friends aside and asked them for help, saying things to this effect: “If you ever see me slipping into behaviour that looks dodgy I need you to point it out to me immediately and in no uncertain terms. Even though I’ve experienced awakening I’m still fallible and I don’t know how I’m going to handle all this power and all these beautiful young students wanting to sleep with me.”
This kind of mindset is a norm I’d love to see encouraged and supported in the leaders of the rationalist community.
I think I have seen the “sanity-check”/”sanity-guillotine” thing done well. I have also seen it done poorly, in a way that mostly resembles the “finger-trap” targeting any close friends who notice problems.
For actual accountability/protection? “Asking to have it reported publicly/to an outside third party” seems to usually work better than “Report it to me privately.”
(A very competent mass-crowd-controller might have a different dynamic, though; I haven’t met one yet.)
For strong frame-controllers? “Encouraging their students to point out a vague category of issue in private,” has a nasty tendency to speed up evaporative cooling, and burns out the fire of some of the people who might otherwise have reported misbehavior to a more-objective third-person.
It can set up the frame-controller as the counter/arbiter of “how many real complains have been leveled their way about X” (...which they will probably learn to lie about...), frames them as “being careful about X,” and gives the frame-controller one last pre-reporting opportunity to re-frame-control things in the sender.
I think the “private reporting” variant is useful to protect a leader from unpleasant surprises, gives them a quick chance to update out of a bad pattern early on, and is slightly good for that reason. But I think as an “accountability method,” this is simply not a viable protection against an even halfway-competent re-framer.
I think the gold-standard for actual accountability, is closer to the “outside HR firm” model. Having someone outside your circle, who people report serious issues to, and who is not primarily accountable to you.
Not everyone has access to the gold-standard, though.
When I single a person out for my future accountability? I pick people who I view as (high-integrity low-jealousy) peers-or-higher, AND/OR people on a totally different status-ladder. I want things set up such that even a maximally-antagonistic me, probably has no way to easily undermine them.
If I have a specific concern, I give them a very clear sense in advance of: “Here is a concrete threshold condition. If I ever trigger this, please destroy me unless I remove myself from a position of power over others. I am asking you in specific (negates bystander effect). I will thank you later.”
(Probably also hand them something that would make it easier to selectively shut me down, such as “A signed letter from myself.” Concrete thresholds are useful, because it is hard to frame-obscure your way out of hard facts.)
I think this variant requires knowing, and trusting, someone pretty non-petty and non-jealous who has a higher bar of integrity than you do. I do kinda think most people’s judgement around identifying those is terrible, unfortunately?
But I think the drawbacks of this are at least… different. And I generally take that shape of thing, as a strong signal of real vulnerability and accountability.
There’s actually 1 additional dynamic, that I can’t quite put my finger on, but here’s my attempt.
It’s shaped something like...
If you are a pretty powerful person, and you take a desperate powerless person, and you hand them something that could indiscriminately destroy you? That is very likely to be a horrible mistake that you will one day regret. It’s a bit like handing some rando a version of The One Ring, which is specific to controlling you.
Unless you had really good judgement and the person you handed it to is either Tom Bombdil or a hobbit who manages to spastically fling it into a volcano even despite himself? It is likely to corrupt them, and they are probably going to end up doing terrible things with it.
Never jump someone from 0 to 11 units of power over you, until you’ve seen what they’re like with a 3 or a 5.
[Mostly unrelated but sparked by skimming this comment]
It occurs to me that another question around frame control, is: how can I / we facilitate social niches that don’t require frame control? In the leadership example: how can I be more willing and able to be led effectively by someone who is e.g. deeply and truly criticized in front of the group? For example, this might involve being more careful about not falling into misinformation cascades, and more intentional about hope.
Part of my model is that spiritual students tend to be a lot more prone to wanting to connect in a physical way. Sometimes to the point of almost literally throwing themselves at the teacher.
It could be both. First the students almost literally throw themselves at the teacher. Then the teacher gets used to it and mistakenly assumes the same about a student who was not throwing themselves at the teacher, but was afraid to resist the teacher’s advances.
There was a discussion on the Sam Harris podcast where he talks about the alarming frequency at which leaders of meditation communities end up abusing, controlling or sleeping with their students. I can’t seem to find the episode name now.
But I remember being impressed with the podcast guest, a meditation teacher, who said they had seen this happening all around them and before they took over as the leader of their meditation centre had tried to put in place things to stop themselves falling into the same traps.
They had taken their family and closest friends aside and asked them for help, saying things to this effect: “If you ever see me slipping into behaviour that looks dodgy I need you to point it out to me immediately and in no uncertain terms. Even though I’ve experienced awakening I’m still fallible and I don’t know how I’m going to handle all this power and all these beautiful young students wanting to sleep with me.”
This kind of mindset is a norm I’d love to see encouraged and supported in the leaders of the rationalist community.
I think I have seen the “sanity-check”/”sanity-guillotine” thing done well. I have also seen it done poorly, in a way that mostly resembles the “finger-trap” targeting any close friends who notice problems.
For actual accountability/protection? “Asking to have it reported publicly/to an outside third party” seems to usually work better than “Report it to me privately.”
(A very competent mass-crowd-controller might have a different dynamic, though; I haven’t met one yet.)
For strong frame-controllers? “Encouraging their students to point out a vague category of issue in private,” has a nasty tendency to speed up evaporative cooling, and burns out the fire of some of the people who might otherwise have reported misbehavior to a more-objective third-person.
It can set up the frame-controller as the counter/arbiter of “how many real complains have been leveled their way about X” (...which they will probably learn to lie about...), frames them as “being careful about X,” and gives the frame-controller one last pre-reporting opportunity to re-frame-control things in the sender.
I think the “private reporting” variant is useful to protect a leader from unpleasant surprises, gives them a quick chance to update out of a bad pattern early on, and is slightly good for that reason. But I think as an “accountability method,” this is simply not a viable protection against an even halfway-competent re-framer.
I think the gold-standard for actual accountability, is closer to the “outside HR firm” model. Having someone outside your circle, who people report serious issues to, and who is not primarily accountable to you.
Not everyone has access to the gold-standard, though.
When I single a person out for my future accountability? I pick people who I view as (high-integrity low-jealousy) peers-or-higher, AND/OR people on a totally different status-ladder. I want things set up such that even a maximally-antagonistic me, probably has no way to easily undermine them.
If I have a specific concern, I give them a very clear sense in advance of: “Here is a concrete threshold condition. If I ever trigger this, please destroy me unless I remove myself from a position of power over others. I am asking you in specific (negates bystander effect). I will thank you later.”
(Probably also hand them something that would make it easier to selectively shut me down, such as “A signed letter from myself.” Concrete thresholds are useful, because it is hard to frame-obscure your way out of hard facts.)
I think this variant requires knowing, and trusting, someone pretty non-petty and non-jealous who has a higher bar of integrity than you do. I do kinda think most people’s judgement around identifying those is terrible, unfortunately?
But I think the drawbacks of this are at least… different. And I generally take that shape of thing, as a strong signal of real vulnerability and accountability.
There’s actually 1 additional dynamic, that I can’t quite put my finger on, but here’s my attempt.
It’s shaped something like...
If you are a pretty powerful person, and you take a desperate powerless person, and you hand them something that could indiscriminately destroy you? That is very likely to be a horrible mistake that you will one day regret. It’s a bit like handing some rando a version of The One Ring, which is specific to controlling you.
Unless you had really good judgement and the person you handed it to is either Tom Bombdil or a hobbit who manages to spastically fling it into a volcano even despite himself? It is likely to corrupt them, and they are probably going to end up doing terrible things with it.
Never jump someone from 0 to 11 units of power over you, until you’ve seen what they’re like with a 3 or a 5.
[Mostly unrelated but sparked by skimming this comment]
It occurs to me that another question around frame control, is: how can I / we facilitate social niches that don’t require frame control? In the leadership example: how can I be more willing and able to be led effectively by someone who is e.g. deeply and truly criticized in front of the group? For example, this might involve being more careful about not falling into misinformation cascades, and more intentional about hope.
Part of my model is that spiritual students tend to be a lot more prone to wanting to connect in a physical way. Sometimes to the point of almost literally throwing themselves at the teacher.
It could be both. First the students almost literally throw themselves at the teacher. Then the teacher gets used to it and mistakenly assumes the same about a student who was not throwing themselves at the teacher, but was afraid to resist the teacher’s advances.