I am occasionally appalled by just how easy it is to get people to do things just by telling them to. It took me until about my mid-twenties to realise there might be other useful modes of interaction.
When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, I started applying for scholarships from different organizations and to universities. A large fraction of the applications had a section like “Write an essay on why you want to exercise leadership.”
At the time I concluded that “leadership” was a new buzzword that everyone had to make some reference to in order to qualify for anything. I dutifully wrote some meaningless essays about leadership. Then when I went to school and heard more and more about leadership,the more I thought my buzzword analysis was correct.
Then I got into the corporate world. Oh my goodness. Now I understand what all the fuss was about. By default no one does work unless someone explicitly tells them to.
I can’t say much about the monkey tribe example that Eliezer quoted—for example I don’t know if it is true or if it implies anything about human evolution—but I have found that people are remarkably adaptable with cultural conditioning.
I would also like to point out that there is a difference between people doing what you tell them and people only working if you explicitly tell them to; it is possible for people to be receptive to commands and yet be self directed. My current work environment is full of examples.
My biggest problem with this is the awareness that many people, once I tell them what to do, will expect me to continue doing so more or less indefinitely. I’ve fallen into that trap from time to time, but I really prefer to avoid it.
I grew up in a house of five pushy people, which is why it took me so long to realise there were other modes of interaction, and that other people might not just push back …
I am occasionally appalled by just how easy it is to get people to do things just by telling them to.
I think this might be the crux of the politeness/directness argument we had here a while back. It’s so easy to get things done by just asking/telling people to do them that anything less direct often feels like unnecessary effort and verbiage.
That’s an interesting take on politeness/directness.
Am I understanding correctly that you see the primary purpose of your interactions with people to be getting things done in the short term, such that effort devoted to other goals feels wasted?
If so… I think you’re right: if that’s a widely held perspective, that would explain a lot of the disconnect around this question.
Am I understanding correctly that you see the primary purpose of your interactions with people to be getting things done in the short term, such that effort devoted to other goals feels wasted?
I personally switch between socialising mode and getting-stuff-done mode, such that in doing-stuff mode I often find it difficult to remember to respect status or use politeness (while in socialising mode it doesn’t feel like a chore at all, it just feels like normal interaction). The kinds of responses I saw on the last big argument thread gave me the impression that there are people here who spend most of their time in doing-stuff mode—there was a lot of lamenting going on about how much easier it would be to get stuff done if people didn’t require so much politeness.
I don’t think so. To some extent, a sufficiently shared set of assumptions makes unadorned shorthand conversation more efficient than dressing it up. But from much observation of the politeness/directness argument in its many forms over the decades, particularly on the internet, I still think the key point is that rude nerds demand the right to be impolite to others, but reliably explode when they get the same back, even in the same conversation—a simple failure to reciprocate, despite claiming they do so. The previous discussion has plenty of examples of such explosions and I also linked to a long, long list of them.
Eventually I just get really annoyed with other people dithering. This is the problem with the concept of nonhierarchical communal living or organisations, viz. someone like me will start running everything just to keep other people from pissing us off.
(Tangentially, an important essay on emergent social hierarchies: The Tyranny Of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman. Originally about feminist activism, but I’ve found it widely applicable to the sort of self-organising groups one sees all the time on the Internet. tl;dr: if you penalise the formation of explicit social structures, secret ones will form anyway and bite you in the backside.)
On the flip side of this, I’ve found that some people prefer the power structure in an organization to be implicit, as it lets them exert power with less explicit accountability and to be exclusive without having to formalize (or even necessarily acknowledge) that exclusivity, and will resist or even actively sabotage attempts to render those structures explicit.
I generally model this as the “of course you aren’t prohibited from doing X, dear, it’s just inappropriate” trap.
I often have a hard time telling the difference between those people, and the ones who just want to get things done. Which is not to say that there isn’t one, or many.
This distinction between implicit and explicit reminds me of Mencius Moldbug’s theory of corruption—that corruption is just when power is exercised through non-formalized channels, but where power is thought to be exercised through formal channels (shades of homo hypocritus and Venkat’s Gervais principle). There’s probably some testable predictions here, like people with low social skills who are bad at the homo hypocritus game would prefer non-corrupt/formal power structures, and good social game players would prefer the exact opposite.
(It also reminds me a little, I think, of Gang Leader for a Day, where the student learns that much of the power in the building centered around an old black woman who controlled rents and housing grants.)
people with low social skills [..] prefer non-corrupt/formal power structures, and good social game players would prefer the exact opposite
Theory aside, I would certainly expect this to be true. You should totally read the Freeman article David_Gerard cites, if you haven’t; IIRC she talks about this dynamic a fair bit.
I often amuse myself by wanting a clear specification of who is responsible for what at precisely the moment when I am frustrated by my inability to achieve my goals within an organization, and wanting that to stay fuzzy and flexible right up until that moment.
I am occasionally appalled by just how easy it is to get people to do things just by telling them to. It took me until about my mid-twenties to realise there might be other useful modes of interaction.
When I was getting ready to graduate from high school, I started applying for scholarships from different organizations and to universities. A large fraction of the applications had a section like “Write an essay on why you want to exercise leadership.”
At the time I concluded that “leadership” was a new buzzword that everyone had to make some reference to in order to qualify for anything. I dutifully wrote some meaningless essays about leadership. Then when I went to school and heard more and more about leadership,the more I thought my buzzword analysis was correct.
Then I got into the corporate world. Oh my goodness. Now I understand what all the fuss was about. By default no one does work unless someone explicitly tells them to.
I suspect that this is largely cultural; a response based on expectations, examples and training.
I think Eliezer’s point is that it could be evolutionary and not cultural.
The interesting thing is that you can become a leader by just telling people to do stuff, and then they comply.
I can’t say much about the monkey tribe example that Eliezer quoted—for example I don’t know if it is true or if it implies anything about human evolution—but I have found that people are remarkably adaptable with cultural conditioning.
I would also like to point out that there is a difference between people doing what you tell them and people only working if you explicitly tell them to; it is possible for people to be receptive to commands and yet be self directed. My current work environment is full of examples.
If true, that still tells us very little about whether the evolutionary approach could be overridden by a cultural one.
My biggest problem with this is the awareness that many people, once I tell them what to do, will expect me to continue doing so more or less indefinitely. I’ve fallen into that trap from time to time, but I really prefer to avoid it.
I grew up in a house of five pushy people, which is why it took me so long to realise there were other modes of interaction, and that other people might not just push back …
I think this might be the crux of the politeness/directness argument we had here a while back. It’s so easy to get things done by just asking/telling people to do them that anything less direct often feels like unnecessary effort and verbiage.
That’s an interesting take on politeness/directness.
Am I understanding correctly that you see the primary purpose of your interactions with people to be getting things done in the short term, such that effort devoted to other goals feels wasted?
If so… I think you’re right: if that’s a widely held perspective, that would explain a lot of the disconnect around this question.
I personally switch between socialising mode and getting-stuff-done mode, such that in doing-stuff mode I often find it difficult to remember to respect status or use politeness (while in socialising mode it doesn’t feel like a chore at all, it just feels like normal interaction). The kinds of responses I saw on the last big argument thread gave me the impression that there are people here who spend most of their time in doing-stuff mode—there was a lot of lamenting going on about how much easier it would be to get stuff done if people didn’t require so much politeness.
I don’t think so. To some extent, a sufficiently shared set of assumptions makes unadorned shorthand conversation more efficient than dressing it up. But from much observation of the politeness/directness argument in its many forms over the decades, particularly on the internet, I still think the key point is that rude nerds demand the right to be impolite to others, but reliably explode when they get the same back, even in the same conversation—a simple failure to reciprocate, despite claiming they do so. The previous discussion has plenty of examples of such explosions and I also linked to a long, long list of them.
I’m just beginning to discover this. It doesn’t seem very nice, does it?
Eventually I just get really annoyed with other people dithering. This is the problem with the concept of nonhierarchical communal living or organisations, viz. someone like me will start running everything just to keep other people from pissing us off.
(Tangentially, an important essay on emergent social hierarchies: The Tyranny Of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman. Originally about feminist activism, but I’ve found it widely applicable to the sort of self-organising groups one sees all the time on the Internet. tl;dr: if you penalise the formation of explicit social structures, secret ones will form anyway and bite you in the backside.)
On the flip side of this, I’ve found that some people prefer the power structure in an organization to be implicit, as it lets them exert power with less explicit accountability and to be exclusive without having to formalize (or even necessarily acknowledge) that exclusivity, and will resist or even actively sabotage attempts to render those structures explicit.
I generally model this as the “of course you aren’t prohibited from doing X, dear, it’s just inappropriate” trap.
I often have a hard time telling the difference between those people, and the ones who just want to get things done. Which is not to say that there isn’t one, or many.
This distinction between implicit and explicit reminds me of Mencius Moldbug’s theory of corruption—that corruption is just when power is exercised through non-formalized channels, but where power is thought to be exercised through formal channels (shades of homo hypocritus and Venkat’s Gervais principle). There’s probably some testable predictions here, like people with low social skills who are bad at the homo hypocritus game would prefer non-corrupt/formal power structures, and good social game players would prefer the exact opposite.
(It also reminds me a little, I think, of Gang Leader for a Day, where the student learns that much of the power in the building centered around an old black woman who controlled rents and housing grants.)
Theory aside, I would certainly expect this to be true. You should totally read the Freeman article David_Gerard cites, if you haven’t; IIRC she talks about this dynamic a fair bit.
I often amuse myself by wanting a clear specification of who is responsible for what at precisely the moment when I am frustrated by my inability to achieve my goals within an organization, and wanting that to stay fuzzy and flexible right up until that moment.