I’m more and more struck by how different people have different things going on in their heads.
Sounds to me like the guy struck a group, and thereby self, depreciating tone that would be non threatening to an outsider; that you’d have to be dragged to the meeting if you weren’t a regular reader lowers the status of the meeting members relative to outsiders, and is thereby respectful and inviting to an outsider.
That’s how I would take it if someone asked me that. I would take it as a comment to gain information about me in a way that was meant to reassure me if I were an outsider. It is a relevant question at the meeting, after all—do you or don’t you read the list? Just getting some context.
Now I wasn’t there, and I suppose one could say that in a particularly aggressive and hostile way, but given the guy’s passive response to the aggressive attack he received in turn, I don’t think he had started the conversation in an aggressive frame of mind.
But even if you thought the comments could be taken as hostile, I thought the attack on the guy was unwarranted, and was a very socially inept response. If the guy committed a faux pas with an outsider, the goal should have been to deescalate the situation in a gracious way, leaving the outsider feeling more comfortable. Instead, the conflict was escalated by aggressively white knighting, leaving the “rescued damsel” a front row witness to a wholly unnecessary conflict about her. Talk about your weird and creepy groups. I guess the guy wasn’t joking about people needing to be dragged to these meetings.
Even if she found the first question off putting, would being “rescued” me more or less annoying? Maybe she thinks she’s a big girl, and doesn’t need protection from such an “attack”. But whatever the answer to those questions, I think the escalation made matters worse in the vast majority of scenarios, and usually much worse.
It seemed like a basic failure to think about the consequences of his words.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I thought the alternative questions were worse as well. Questions with a presupposition that the person is a reader puts them on the spot to contradict the assumption and fess up that they’re not. Better to ask whether the person was a reader or had been dragged there. The most open ended way to ask would have been the cliched “come here often”?
The easiest way to avoid offense is to say nothing at all. I don’t see it as an advance to paint the less usual demographics as mine fields to be navigated. I’ve got other things to do than navigate mine fields. I try to start with a presumption of basic good will, and behave accordingly. When others share that presumption, life is easy between us. I’m not going to spend my life tip toeing around people who don’t need it for the sake of people who do.
On the other hand, not being talked to at all can seem unwelcoming. My impression is that “How did you hear about the group?” is a good starting point.
I think ” “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?” has a significantly different subtext from ” “So, do you read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”, which is also significantly different from ” “So, do you read Less Wrong?”
The “actually” implies that the target has already made an indication of reading LW, and that the speaker is asking for verification of that indication. The “or did someone drag you here” has some of the same tones of “are you available?”
All three are different, particularly when explicitly presented as contrasting alternatives, which wouldn’t be the case for the original listener. If given in the same tone, the first two are fairly equivalent, it’s just that the first would tend to be presented in a more negative tone more often.
One fair point to remember—we received the report from someone clearer hostile to the first speaker. What’s your prior that this is meant as an exact quote? That it is an accurate exact quote, if so meant? If not exact, more likely the quote given was marginally worse or better than the original comment?
The original guy could have been completely hostile, with a sneering and demeaning tone. Admittedly it’s a mountain of inference we’re dealing with, as it was for the original commenter here. That’s why I hate this whole business of playing psychic detective in the first place. What will someone think of this word? What did they mean by that word? What a tiresome way to live. Makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Most likely, the guy wasn’t thinking that hard and was just flapping his mouth to make conversation. Me, I deliberately try to squelch ruminations of hostile intent, and take people at face value.
That’s seems a weakness of this whole series. It’s all about inferring motive on a thimble full of evidence. Without us all watching a movie of events, we’re all talking to different movies we’ve constructed in our own heads. What unreasonable conclusions people are drawing from what happened! (In my movie!)
The poster here seemed hostile to me. Maybe there was good reason for it based on the emotional tone of the original statement. Given my priors and the comment here, I’d still bet against it, but could be.
The “actually” implies that the target has already made an indication of reading LW, and that the speaker is asking for verification of that indication.
Didn’t happen in my movie. Certainly, if the guy originally was suggesting that the woman was a liar about a claim she made about reading LW, that’s an entirely different movie. And, I think literally, a different story in fact, as my prior for that scenario is vanishingly low. Don’t you think that would have been a relevant part of the story to relay in the first place, if it was indeed the case? Why would the poster leave it out, when it so well suited her narrative? People aren’t likely to do that.
EDIT: For people downvoting army1987′s comment below, I suggest you’re missing the point and blocking valuable content on Postel’s Law. I missed the point originally because I jumped to the link and found it idiotic, and didn’t take the time to decipher SCNR—sorry, could not resist.
He’s made a valid point about intent not being a get out of being a dick free card, made in a tongue in cheek manner with a pointer to a raving post, or so I take it. The SCNR warning should immunize him from karma downvotes, IMO.
The point is, certain bad things can only happen if both parties in an interaction fail to abide by Postel’s law, so if such a thing happens to me, I don’t get to chide the other party for violating Postel’s law, because so did I.
In my own mind I’ve always named this “Two Way Slack”, but never had such a concise formulation before. Thanks!
But I disagree with your comment a bit, at least in the general human case. Slack on both ends tolerates some deviation from Postel’s law. You get very robust when both sides observe it, still some robustness without it, but there’s still always the potential for failure.
That assumes neither party is actively malicious. If one of the parties is in fact malicious abiding by Postel’s law makes it more likely that you can be hacked.
Yeah, setting the prior toward good will, which seems the proper course in a social get together. There are predators out there, and there are dicks, but better to have a fairly high bar before assuming either in that context, IMO.
The question is how much damage can improperly trusting someone cause. In particular the woman in the OP could reasonably be described as ideologically driven.
Yeah. Alone in a parking garage with someone—don’t extend that trust so easily. Though I’d say it’s easy to be paranoid, for me at least, and the expected cost of fear is likely greater than the expected cost from violated trust. A woman could not trust the guy from the meeting who offers to walk her to her car, thereby being alone should someone else be there. There is a safety cost in not trusting people. And just a cost in lost opportunities of connection with others.
In particular the woman in the OP could reasonably be described as ideologically driven.
I have some suspicions of that on my part as well. I’m trying to extend her a little trust, and take her at her word in her latest update.
The “actually” implies that the target has already made an indication of reading LW, and that the speaker is asking for verification of that indication.
It could also imply insulting skepticism. One reading of the scene could be “your presense here implies you read LW and consider yourself a rationalist or aspiring rationalist; I find that unlikely on account of your being female, and hereby question it.”
That was actually my first reading, before I mentally corrected for below-average LW social skills and above-average LW intelligence. I think it more likely a LWer would make a social flub than that they would mentally execute “female implies non-rational in absense of further evidence (such as being a LW reader); non-rational implies WTH are you doing here?”
But I don’t know that I could have done that correction in real-time! At risk of mind-reading, the original poster may have had the same initial impression. If she believed the intent was the insulting version above, then her rather harsh response makes a lot more sense.
In a gender-skewed environment it’s best not to say anything that emphasizes someone’s gender. The stereotype threat alone would tend to reduce me to awkward mumbling. And your first reading is certainly the only one I would have come up with in realtime.
Submitter C’s story has lowered the already-low probability that I will ever attend a LW meetup.
The “actually” implies that the target has already made an indication of reading LW, and that the speaker is asking for verification of that indication.
Well, I agree that “do you actually X” implies that there’s some frame that suggests that you X, but I disagree that the frame is necessarily you having explicitly indicated X. It might be more implicit… e.g., if I ask someone at a concert “do you actually like this music?” I’m treating their presence at the concert at all as the source of the implication.
I think a question such as “Do you actually like this music?” carries a presumed shared understanding that it’s quite possible and reasonable that the interlocutor doesn’t like the music, but came to the concert for other reasons, and the speaker inferred this from something about him/her.
E.g. someone is expected to be at the concert anyway (because they’re a friend of a band member, say), and they know you know it, so you ask them “do you actually like the music?”. Or, you see that someone came as part of a large group but isn’t wild with excitement like the rest of their group, so you suspect they went out of a social obligation, and they understand that people might suspect that, looking at them.
In the LW meetup scenario, the question with ‘actually’ might be unraveled as “We both know that this is a meetup for people who read LW, and we also both understand that, based on your gender and appearance, which is all I know about you, you’re not a likely demographic; so is it out of social obligation that you came here?” Whether the recipient will be offended depends a lot on her character, mood, whether she will want to make an allowance for poor social skills of her interlocutor, etc. I think it’s both not maliciously meant and a rather rude thing to say.
Here’s another analogy: imagine that it’s a chess club meeting and the question is “Do you actually play chess, or did someone drag you here?”
I’m more and more struck by how different people have different things going on in their heads.
Sounds to me like the guy struck a group, and thereby self, depreciating tone that would be non threatening to an outsider; that you’d have to be dragged to the meeting if you weren’t a regular reader lowers the status of the meeting members relative to outsiders, and is thereby respectful and inviting to an outsider.
That’s how I would take it if someone asked me that. I would take it as a comment to gain information about me in a way that was meant to reassure me if I were an outsider. It is a relevant question at the meeting, after all—do you or don’t you read the list? Just getting some context.
Now I wasn’t there, and I suppose one could say that in a particularly aggressive and hostile way, but given the guy’s passive response to the aggressive attack he received in turn, I don’t think he had started the conversation in an aggressive frame of mind.
But even if you thought the comments could be taken as hostile, I thought the attack on the guy was unwarranted, and was a very socially inept response. If the guy committed a faux pas with an outsider, the goal should have been to deescalate the situation in a gracious way, leaving the outsider feeling more comfortable. Instead, the conflict was escalated by aggressively white knighting, leaving the “rescued damsel” a front row witness to a wholly unnecessary conflict about her. Talk about your weird and creepy groups. I guess the guy wasn’t joking about people needing to be dragged to these meetings.
Even if she found the first question off putting, would being “rescued” me more or less annoying? Maybe she thinks she’s a big girl, and doesn’t need protection from such an “attack”. But whatever the answer to those questions, I think the escalation made matters worse in the vast majority of scenarios, and usually much worse.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
I thought the alternative questions were worse as well. Questions with a presupposition that the person is a reader puts them on the spot to contradict the assumption and fess up that they’re not. Better to ask whether the person was a reader or had been dragged there. The most open ended way to ask would have been the cliched “come here often”?
The easiest way to avoid offense is to say nothing at all. I don’t see it as an advance to paint the less usual demographics as mine fields to be navigated. I’ve got other things to do than navigate mine fields. I try to start with a presumption of basic good will, and behave accordingly. When others share that presumption, life is easy between us. I’m not going to spend my life tip toeing around people who don’t need it for the sake of people who do.
On the other hand, not being talked to at all can seem unwelcoming. My impression is that “How did you hear about the group?” is a good starting point.
I like that. Beats “come here often?”, but still seems relatively neutral on in/out group. And of course it’s better to talk to them than not.
I think ” “So, do you actually read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?” has a significantly different subtext from ” “So, do you read Less Wrong, or did someone drag you here?”, which is also significantly different from ” “So, do you read Less Wrong?”
The “actually” implies that the target has already made an indication of reading LW, and that the speaker is asking for verification of that indication. The “or did someone drag you here” has some of the same tones of “are you available?”
All three are different, particularly when explicitly presented as contrasting alternatives, which wouldn’t be the case for the original listener. If given in the same tone, the first two are fairly equivalent, it’s just that the first would tend to be presented in a more negative tone more often.
One fair point to remember—we received the report from someone clearer hostile to the first speaker. What’s your prior that this is meant as an exact quote? That it is an accurate exact quote, if so meant? If not exact, more likely the quote given was marginally worse or better than the original comment?
The original guy could have been completely hostile, with a sneering and demeaning tone. Admittedly it’s a mountain of inference we’re dealing with, as it was for the original commenter here. That’s why I hate this whole business of playing psychic detective in the first place. What will someone think of this word? What did they mean by that word? What a tiresome way to live. Makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. Most likely, the guy wasn’t thinking that hard and was just flapping his mouth to make conversation. Me, I deliberately try to squelch ruminations of hostile intent, and take people at face value.
That’s seems a weakness of this whole series. It’s all about inferring motive on a thimble full of evidence. Without us all watching a movie of events, we’re all talking to different movies we’ve constructed in our own heads. What unreasonable conclusions people are drawing from what happened! (In my movie!)
The poster here seemed hostile to me. Maybe there was good reason for it based on the emotional tone of the original statement. Given my priors and the comment here, I’d still bet against it, but could be.
Didn’t happen in my movie. Certainly, if the guy originally was suggesting that the woman was a liar about a claim she made about reading LW, that’s an entirely different movie. And, I think literally, a different story in fact, as my prior for that scenario is vanishingly low. Don’t you think that would have been a relevant part of the story to relay in the first place, if it was indeed the case? Why would the poster leave it out, when it so well suited her narrative? People aren’t likely to do that.
EDIT: For people downvoting army1987′s comment below, I suggest you’re missing the point and blocking valuable content on Postel’s Law. I missed the point originally because I jumped to the link and found it idiotic, and didn’t take the time to decipher SCNR—sorry, could not resist.
He’s made a valid point about intent not being a get out of being a dick free card, made in a tongue in cheek manner with a pointer to a raving post, or so I take it. The SCNR warning should immunize him from karma downvotes, IMO.
I’ve just noticed the extra layer of irony in that comment which I hadn’t realized (or perhaps I had forgotten) was there.
Ha! I hadn’t noticed either.
Intent! It’s fucking magic! (SCNR.)
Yes, but someone could write the same thing about offense.
Of course.
The point is, certain bad things can only happen if both parties in an interaction fail to abide by Postel’s law, so if such a thing happens to me, I don’t get to chide the other party for violating Postel’s law, because so did I.
Postel’s law—love it! Just talking with the roommate the other day about why we get along so well. Postel’s law is the perfect summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_Principle
In my own mind I’ve always named this “Two Way Slack”, but never had such a concise formulation before. Thanks!
But I disagree with your comment a bit, at least in the general human case. Slack on both ends tolerates some deviation from Postel’s law. You get very robust when both sides observe it, still some robustness without it, but there’s still always the potential for failure.
That assumes neither party is actively malicious. If one of the parties is in fact malicious abiding by Postel’s law makes it more likely that you can be hacked.
Yeah, setting the prior toward good will, which seems the proper course in a social get together. There are predators out there, and there are dicks, but better to have a fairly high bar before assuming either in that context, IMO.
The question is how much damage can improperly trusting someone cause. In particular the woman in the OP could reasonably be described as ideologically driven.
Yeah. Alone in a parking garage with someone—don’t extend that trust so easily. Though I’d say it’s easy to be paranoid, for me at least, and the expected cost of fear is likely greater than the expected cost from violated trust. A woman could not trust the guy from the meeting who offers to walk her to her car, thereby being alone should someone else be there. There is a safety cost in not trusting people. And just a cost in lost opportunities of connection with others.
I have some suspicions of that on my part as well. I’m trying to extend her a little trust, and take her at her word in her latest update.
When talking about transphobia intent is the very last fucking thing you should be insulting.
It could also imply insulting skepticism. One reading of the scene could be “your presense here implies you read LW and consider yourself a rationalist or aspiring rationalist; I find that unlikely on account of your being female, and hereby question it.”
That was actually my first reading, before I mentally corrected for below-average LW social skills and above-average LW intelligence. I think it more likely a LWer would make a social flub than that they would mentally execute “female implies non-rational in absense of further evidence (such as being a LW reader); non-rational implies WTH are you doing here?”
But I don’t know that I could have done that correction in real-time! At risk of mind-reading, the original poster may have had the same initial impression. If she believed the intent was the insulting version above, then her rather harsh response makes a lot more sense.
In a gender-skewed environment it’s best not to say anything that emphasizes someone’s gender. The stereotype threat alone would tend to reduce me to awkward mumbling. And your first reading is certainly the only one I would have come up with in realtime.
Submitter C’s story has lowered the already-low probability that I will ever attend a LW meetup.
Well, I agree that “do you actually X” implies that there’s some frame that suggests that you X, but I disagree that the frame is necessarily you having explicitly indicated X. It might be more implicit… e.g., if I ask someone at a concert “do you actually like this music?” I’m treating their presence at the concert at all as the source of the implication.
I think a question such as “Do you actually like this music?” carries a presumed shared understanding that it’s quite possible and reasonable that the interlocutor doesn’t like the music, but came to the concert for other reasons, and the speaker inferred this from something about him/her.
E.g. someone is expected to be at the concert anyway (because they’re a friend of a band member, say), and they know you know it, so you ask them “do you actually like the music?”. Or, you see that someone came as part of a large group but isn’t wild with excitement like the rest of their group, so you suspect they went out of a social obligation, and they understand that people might suspect that, looking at them.
In the LW meetup scenario, the question with ‘actually’ might be unraveled as “We both know that this is a meetup for people who read LW, and we also both understand that, based on your gender and appearance, which is all I know about you, you’re not a likely demographic; so is it out of social obligation that you came here?” Whether the recipient will be offended depends a lot on her character, mood, whether she will want to make an allowance for poor social skills of her interlocutor, etc. I think it’s both not maliciously meant and a rather rude thing to say.
Here’s another analogy: imagine that it’s a chess club meeting and the question is “Do you actually play chess, or did someone drag you here?”
Yup, agreed on all counts, with “might” being an operative word.
I never said that the indication was explicit.
Great; glad we’re agreed.