a middle ground, which didn’t have a separate tag and did not truly fit neither of the present tags.
Perhaps “Please hug me,” “Please ask first,” and “Please don’t hug”? Not quite a solution, for reasons to be discussed shortly.
I don’t know if having a new middle-ground tag would fix this problem.
The underlying problem, I suspect, is the different desires for physical / social intimacy. So long as that exists, you’re going to have some level of awkwardness and deadweight loss, and the question is where it falls. Similarly, the underlying reason behind a ‘please ask first’ tag is that there are people you want to hug, and people you don’t want to hug, and oftentimes the people you don’t want to hug want to hug you. So even with a ‘please ask’ tag, they ask, and then you say no, and then there’s awkwardness, especially if you just hugged someone else, say, or want to hug someone else immediately afterwards. Perhaps it is enough to acknowledge the costs- having to check tags, having to ask, having to deal with rejection- as the price for when things do work out.
(One of my friends was in a theater group that would have cast parties after the show where, basically, everyone was assumed to consent to make out with anyone else- and she described the experience as “trying to catch the people you were interested in while trying to avoid the people you weren’t interested in,” which led to a large amount of circling around the room for a party.)
The underlying problem, I suspect, is the different desires for physical / social intimacy. So long as that exists, you’re going to have some level of awkwardness and deadweight loss, and the question is where it falls.
In general the solution to that problem is reading body language of other people. Hug people with body language that indicate they want to be hugged and don’t hug people with body language that doesn’t look like they want to be hugged.
For me having the tags lead to hugging certain people who I wouldn’t have hugged based on their body language and my whole calibration for when to initiate physical contact stopped working well.
Especially for those people whose position probably is: “I almost never hug anyone, so it’s a bit at the edge of my comfort zone. On the other hand I believe that the idea of hugging is beneficial and sort of nice.”
I still think the tag system if perfect for a gathering of rationalists who like to have clear rules of how to interact with one another.
I kind of assumed that given the existence of an explicit “no hugs” and an explicit “yay hugs” sticker, someone with neither would count as “please ask”. But apparently this wasn’t a universally shared assumption.
Perhaps “Please hug me,” “Please ask first,” and “Please don’t hug”? Not quite a solution, for reasons to be discussed shortly.
The underlying problem, I suspect, is the different desires for physical / social intimacy. So long as that exists, you’re going to have some level of awkwardness and deadweight loss, and the question is where it falls. Similarly, the underlying reason behind a ‘please ask first’ tag is that there are people you want to hug, and people you don’t want to hug, and oftentimes the people you don’t want to hug want to hug you. So even with a ‘please ask’ tag, they ask, and then you say no, and then there’s awkwardness, especially if you just hugged someone else, say, or want to hug someone else immediately afterwards. Perhaps it is enough to acknowledge the costs- having to check tags, having to ask, having to deal with rejection- as the price for when things do work out.
(One of my friends was in a theater group that would have cast parties after the show where, basically, everyone was assumed to consent to make out with anyone else- and she described the experience as “trying to catch the people you were interested in while trying to avoid the people you weren’t interested in,” which led to a large amount of circling around the room for a party.)
In general the solution to that problem is reading body language of other people. Hug people with body language that indicate they want to be hugged and don’t hug people with body language that doesn’t look like they want to be hugged.
For me having the tags lead to hugging certain people who I wouldn’t have hugged based on their body language and my whole calibration for when to initiate physical contact stopped working well. Especially for those people whose position probably is: “I almost never hug anyone, so it’s a bit at the edge of my comfort zone. On the other hand I believe that the idea of hugging is beneficial and sort of nice.”
I still think the tag system if perfect for a gathering of rationalists who like to have clear rules of how to interact with one another.
I kind of assumed that given the existence of an explicit “no hugs” and an explicit “yay hugs” sticker, someone with neither would count as “please ask”. But apparently this wasn’t a universally shared assumption.
I would assume someone without a tag is operating under normal protocols, in which asking people to hug them is often weird.
But so is hugging strangers.
(And the “normal protocols” differ from place to place, so in an international meeting...)