One fairly central reaction I had to this post is not so much about the specific phenomenon of frame control but rather about the general observation that it’s quite common for the aspects of an abusive situation that are worst to experience to NOT be the same as the aspects that are most clear-cut bad and easiest to convey objectively to another person.
This seems true; I have heard multiple people with objectively horrifying stories of abuse report that actually they don’t really care about the objectively awful parts that their friends are horrified about, but instead they are really fucked up by some stuff that’s much harder to convey. (Probably in some cases that’s the same general phenomenon described in this post and in other cases it’s some other interpersonal fuckery.)
I have also heard people report that they experienced a situation as abusive and NOT have any clear-cut objectively awful behavior to point to. It makes perfect sense that this would happen in some cases—because the abuser is savvy enough about what people will object to to avoid those things, or because the abuser is actually trying to be good by following the ethical rules they know but is not managing to also be good in less legible matters, or for some other reason.
...It is also my experience that when humans make not-fully-objective reports about the beliefs/behaviors/words of other humans they disagree with and/or have some kind of adversarial relationship with, it is extremely common for such subjective accounts to be distorted in some way. For this reason, when I hear about an accusation of wrongdoing, I usually try to zero in on the objective claims being made, because (assuming I basically trust that the reporter is intending to be truthful) those are much less likely to be distorted or interpreted through a lens I think is unreasonable.
But this means that it’s very hard for me to tell, as an outsider, when illegible wrongdoing has occurred. (I was going to say “illegible harm” but actually accusations of interpersonal wrongdoing are much stronger evidence of harm than of wrongdoing per se; I only need a very basic level of trust in someone’s honesty to conclude they were harmed by a situation they’re describing as abusive.) Indeed this feels kind of epistemically hopeless to ever evaluate from the outside?
I don’t really know what to do with this thought but it felt important to note.
>Indeed this feels kind of epistemically hopeless to ever evaluate from the outside? I don’t really know what to do with this thought but it felt important to note.
Does seem good to note, and it would be nice to have more theory about this. We could upgrade our individual abilities to notice when we’re being frame controlled / etc.; we could upgrade our collective abilities to aggregate information about whether / how someone is systematically or intentionally harmful; we could close social niches that call up abusive behavior.
I think one piece of the puzzle might be something like:
(1) B can’t abuse C without C having the capacity to notice *at some point*. Maybe it’s in a year when C isn’t enmeshed in the situation; maybe it’s only after C has read other accounts of abuse, or other accounts about B specifically;
(2) If B is intentionally* abusing people, B will tend to abuse multiple people, or one person across long time periods. (I don’t know if this is true; it’s easy enough to imagine B abusing only one person, but it seems unlikely to be intentionional; why would B only use this strategy in one isolated situation?
(3) If B is effectively, skillfully abusing people, B will tend to abuse multiple people, or one person across long time periods. (Because how else would B be good at frame control / etc.? This might not be true because there’s skill transfer; e.g. B might do a lot of work that involves deeply understanding people, which is otherwise benign, but gives them the tools to deeply fuck with people in isolated circumstances.)
(4) If you’re on the lookout for frame control and such, it’s harder to have it happen to you. But being on the lookout is a lot of work.
To the extent that these are all true, ISTM it would be good to somehow be much more willing to publicly discuss stuff like this about specific people. Obviously there’s huge issues with scapegoating, and basically people lying. But, it seems that there’s value on the table, where giving public reports like “I felt harmed by my interaction with B”, being agnostic about intentionality or even causality, and without scapegoating on that basis, would allow future targets to effectively invest their limited capacity to detect stuff (and then make further reports, which opens us up to a sort of streetlight-bias, which we could hopefully correct for).
Another tack, is the idea of investigations—investigative journalism, or (cross-)examinations in a criminal trial. Simply having someone ask searching questions can reveal stuff that’s hard to pin down by default. I wonder how much abuse could be revealed with a series of three 3-hour interviews, or something.
(By “intentionally doing X” I don’t mean knowingly, conciously, deliberately, or endorsedly, but I do mean more than systematically. “B systematically does X” means simply that B tends to do X more than usual, more than some default, etc. If B intentionally does X, then B systematically does X. But say B is ugly, and people systematically treat ugly people in such a way that X is suitable behavior in that context; then I’d say B does X systematically, but only with very weak intentionality; the intentionality routes through other people, so it makes more sense to say that other people intentionally evoke X. By “B intentionally does X” I mean that X is an aim of B. The more super-ordinate the aim is, in a hierarchy of aims, the more intentional it is; the more B’s acheiving effect X is robust to situations, the more intentional it is.)
One fairly central reaction I had to this post is not so much about the specific phenomenon of frame control but rather about the general observation that it’s quite common for the aspects of an abusive situation that are worst to experience to NOT be the same as the aspects that are most clear-cut bad and easiest to convey objectively to another person.
This seems true; I have heard multiple people with objectively horrifying stories of abuse report that actually they don’t really care about the objectively awful parts that their friends are horrified about, but instead they are really fucked up by some stuff that’s much harder to convey. (Probably in some cases that’s the same general phenomenon described in this post and in other cases it’s some other interpersonal fuckery.)
I have also heard people report that they experienced a situation as abusive and NOT have any clear-cut objectively awful behavior to point to. It makes perfect sense that this would happen in some cases—because the abuser is savvy enough about what people will object to to avoid those things, or because the abuser is actually trying to be good by following the ethical rules they know but is not managing to also be good in less legible matters, or for some other reason.
...It is also my experience that when humans make not-fully-objective reports about the beliefs/behaviors/words of other humans they disagree with and/or have some kind of adversarial relationship with, it is extremely common for such subjective accounts to be distorted in some way. For this reason, when I hear about an accusation of wrongdoing, I usually try to zero in on the objective claims being made, because (assuming I basically trust that the reporter is intending to be truthful) those are much less likely to be distorted or interpreted through a lens I think is unreasonable.
But this means that it’s very hard for me to tell, as an outsider, when illegible wrongdoing has occurred. (I was going to say “illegible harm” but actually accusations of interpersonal wrongdoing are much stronger evidence of harm than of wrongdoing per se; I only need a very basic level of trust in someone’s honesty to conclude they were harmed by a situation they’re describing as abusive.) Indeed this feels kind of epistemically hopeless to ever evaluate from the outside?
I don’t really know what to do with this thought but it felt important to note.
>Indeed this feels kind of epistemically hopeless to ever evaluate from the outside? I don’t really know what to do with this thought but it felt important to note.
Does seem good to note, and it would be nice to have more theory about this. We could upgrade our individual abilities to notice when we’re being frame controlled / etc.; we could upgrade our collective abilities to aggregate information about whether / how someone is systematically or intentionally harmful; we could close social niches that call up abusive behavior.
I think one piece of the puzzle might be something like:
(1) B can’t abuse C without C having the capacity to notice *at some point*. Maybe it’s in a year when C isn’t enmeshed in the situation; maybe it’s only after C has read other accounts of abuse, or other accounts about B specifically;
(2) If B is intentionally* abusing people, B will tend to abuse multiple people, or one person across long time periods. (I don’t know if this is true; it’s easy enough to imagine B abusing only one person, but it seems unlikely to be intentionional; why would B only use this strategy in one isolated situation?
(3) If B is effectively, skillfully abusing people, B will tend to abuse multiple people, or one person across long time periods. (Because how else would B be good at frame control / etc.? This might not be true because there’s skill transfer; e.g. B might do a lot of work that involves deeply understanding people, which is otherwise benign, but gives them the tools to deeply fuck with people in isolated circumstances.)
(4) If you’re on the lookout for frame control and such, it’s harder to have it happen to you. But being on the lookout is a lot of work.
To the extent that these are all true, ISTM it would be good to somehow be much more willing to publicly discuss stuff like this about specific people. Obviously there’s huge issues with scapegoating, and basically people lying. But, it seems that there’s value on the table, where giving public reports like “I felt harmed by my interaction with B”, being agnostic about intentionality or even causality, and without scapegoating on that basis, would allow future targets to effectively invest their limited capacity to detect stuff (and then make further reports, which opens us up to a sort of streetlight-bias, which we could hopefully correct for).
Another tack, is the idea of investigations—investigative journalism, or (cross-)examinations in a criminal trial. Simply having someone ask searching questions can reveal stuff that’s hard to pin down by default. I wonder how much abuse could be revealed with a series of three 3-hour interviews, or something.
(By “intentionally doing X” I don’t mean knowingly, conciously, deliberately, or endorsedly, but I do mean more than systematically. “B systematically does X” means simply that B tends to do X more than usual, more than some default, etc. If B intentionally does X, then B systematically does X. But say B is ugly, and people systematically treat ugly people in such a way that X is suitable behavior in that context; then I’d say B does X systematically, but only with very weak intentionality; the intentionality routes through other people, so it makes more sense to say that other people intentionally evoke X. By “B intentionally does X” I mean that X is an aim of B. The more super-ordinate the aim is, in a hierarchy of aims, the more intentional it is; the more B’s acheiving effect X is robust to situations, the more intentional it is.)