I overlooked a “no hug” sign myself, even though I’m an organiser and had a part in choosing them. I agree that they need to be more visually distinct and we will improve that next time.
For the record, I think the tags are a super-awesome idea! And I hope the next iterations will be even better.
I realize this is not a fair comparison, but in the friendly environment during the weekend, I was thinking about the “Elevatorgate” I read about online, and it seemed to me like a huge cultural contrast. Like a strong evidence that rationalists sometimes do win big in real life. I mean, if the tags would be fully respected (which unfortunately they were not, but I have a hope for the future), we would have a solution for avoiding some unwanted interactions, other than the suboptimal “better play it safe and avoid doing anything that might hypothetically offend someone (unless you have high enough status to protect you from a potential damage)”. Because some people don’t want to be hugged, but other people do, and while respecting the former is the basic decency, it would be great to also provide better options for the latter, as long as these goals are not in contradiction.
Speaking for myself, I am not good at reading body language of other people, but it also seems to me that other people are not good at reading my signals. (Maybe the abilities to “read” and to “speak” the body language are related. Is there a research for this? Or maybe there are actually multiple languages, so the speakers of the majority language get most success.) So I prefer using words, instead of relying on an unreliable channel. I also think that some people are genuinely good at reading body language, but there are many who merely overestimate their own ability. Unfortunately, verbal asking can sometimes also be considered offensive. (In the environment that created “Elevatorgate”, how long could you walk around asking people whether it’s okay to hug them, until someone would write a similar blog about you? Maybe I overestimate the risk, but I would rather play safe than risk becoming a global archetype of creepiness.) And because we are not good enough at reading other people’s minds, having some content of the mind displayed visibly is the next best option.
I can imagine possible problems with explicit symbols in general; for example people feeling social pressure to display a tag they don’t really identify with. (For example, in a strongly religious country, not wearing a symbol of the dominant religion could be harmful. Or wearing a symbol of a non-approved sexual orientation.) Maybe I am ignoring something, but I believe this is not a problem in our community. However, if some specific tags would become socially dangerous (create a risk to the user either for wearing them or for not wearing them), the solution could be to ban those specific tags. Another possible failure could be people wearing untrue tags because it would give them some advantage in manipulating others. -- But the situation with “hugs” / “no touching” seems perfect for the tag system, because people belonging to both groups want to be classified correctly by everyone else.
I realize this is not a fair comparison, but in the friendly environment during the weekend, I was thinking about the “Elevatorgate” I read about online, and it seemed to me like a huge cultural contrast. Like a strong evidence that rationalists sometimes do win big in real life.
OMG, that’s an interesting project! And I originally wanted to spend this day without too much web reading.
Some of the comments are… educational.
The very fact that you think it’s acceptable to ask … disturbs me greatly. The very fact that you think it’s reasonable to want … strikes me as a symptom of … at its worst.
The request constitutes … just as much as the actual … does.
There are many people in this world … who would never walk up to a stranger and ask … We are taught from an early age not to do this, to exercise what is typically called societal restraint. It’s impolite to do this to strangers, we are taught. You are proposing a system to make the question permissible.
This illustrates that the so-called conflict between Guess culture and Ask culture cannot be solved by merely saying “here we have a opt-in subgroup which uses different communication rules”. Some things are merely difficult to guess correctly, and that can be fixed by improving the communication system. But some things are genuinely taboo… so creating a better communication system about them would cause an outrage.
At the first sight, they may both seem the same to an outsider or a clueless insider, because both are something that is simply never talked about. Therefore, as the first step, we have to find out whether X is “generally okay, just difficult to coordinate” or “forbidden”. If something is considered intrinsically wrong, creating a more reliable and more consensual communication system is solving the wrong problem. (It would also be necessary to make the system secret, or at least plausibly deniable. But that makes coordination even more difficult.) And we should actually be thankful to people who openly admit they believe it is intrinsically wrong, as opposed to e.g. rationalizing about imperfections in the communication system, etc.
(I am not sure how to feel about an argument that there ain’t no such thing as consent, because people can always be pressured into consent e.g. by ostracism; and therefore, if it is morally wrong to do X against someone’s will, then it is wrong to allow X even among consenting people. It has a point; but applied consistently it would mean you shouldn’t interact with anyone, ever. Which I guess means that the only practical way to apply this is to have a social consensus about when to use it and when to ignore it, which will be decided by the high-status people. And by the way, merely saying that there should be a way to do X, implies that X is good, which already creates a pressure on people to do X. -- Another interesting generalizable argument was that allowing consensual X is wrong, because some people would get more consent and some wouldn’t get any, and they would feel horrible; therefore it is better to keep it a general taboo, so no one feels personally rejected. -- Also, people have a right not to know that your subculture exists. = I should probably use all these to create a random activity-criticism generator. Or even a complete flamewar generator, because there are also predictable responses.)
If there is a culture with a taboo against hugging, where people who want to hug others are perceived as morally depraved and dangerous, providing “hugs” tags for people would be risky.
By the way, the system mentioned in the article used two clearly explicit steps (some commenters may have misunderstood this, or may have reacted to the early stages before the protocol was established). The protocol was: (1) opt in by wearing a tag; (2) ask people with the tag whether it is okay to do X; (3) do X. Which means that under this protocol no one should even be asked without consenting to be asked first. -- This two-step consent is probably a good idea for controversial topics, although I would like to also have a one-step alternative. For example “it is okay to ask if you can hug me” and “it is okay to hug me even without asking first”.
(I wanted to stay meta, but here is an object-level note: It would have been better to call it “Open Source Touching Project”; because other body parts were also allowed, but many people in discussions objected to the title. Also, there is a valid objection that doing some things in public may be illegal, so it is wrong to do such things at a convention without explicit permission of the organizers.)
So I prefer using words, instead of relying on an unreliable channel. I also think that some people are genuinely good at reading body language, but there are many who merely overestimate their own ability.
Reading when someone is uncomfortable while you hug them is an easier skill then reading it before you hug them. At the weekend Anne was walking around with the written word “cuddle” in addition to the free hugs sticker. I greeted her the first time with what was in her words more of a cuddle then a hug. I could feel that it was too much for the situation and I’m usually calibrated well enough that I don’t act in a way that creates that reaction in another person. Enough for me to reduce the amount of physical contact that I initiated in later interaction with other people because I had the feeling that my automatic calibration skills were broken at that point.
A day later Anne came to me to give me feedback and she basically didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already knew myself. But in case I would have my own feedback loops, that feedback would probably have been quite valuable. Having an environment where it’s possible to give that kind of feedback openly is very valuable.
Beforehand I hugged a few guys who I would categorise as someone who’s system I says: “Hugging is at the rand of my comfort zone” and who’s system II says: “I want to be hugged”. For interaction with guys that usually means it’s okay to hug them, especially for the rationalist crowd who think their system II is what matters. For male-to-female physical contact on the other hand you usually want that both system I and system II of the woman agrees to the physical contact.
Free hug sign itself don’t tell you the line that tells you which intensity of physical contact is welcome and which isn’t. They just tell you that you can hug the person. There still the possibility to have to much contact and walking around with the heuristic that you treat people based on their tags, reduces the amount one reacts to body language of other people.
That was one of the cases where my preferences were too nuanced for the keywords/stickers. I was fine with hugs from everyone, but would have preferred to be asked for cuddles first. And the long hug you gave me was, from my point of view, cuddling.
It prompted thoughts like “Why is he the cuddling right away? Is he trying to initiate more than just friendly conversation? Should I get some distance between us to signal that I’m not interested?” and that made me uncomfortable though system II agreed that there wasn’t any way you could have told that I would have preferred you to ask (before reading my physical reaction). Talking about it fixed that system I feeling of “needing to get some distance”, so it’s good that we did that. :)
Did you consider asking me whether your impression (that I was uncomfortable with the cuddling) was true, before I gave you that feedback?
(For clarity, where you say “Hugging is at the rand of my comfort zone” you mean ”… at the edge of my comfort zone”. It might not be obvious to non-German readers, so I’m pointing it out.)
Did you consider asking me whether your impression (that I was uncomfortable with the cuddling) was true, before I gave you that feedback?
No, in that case the observation was that you were getting tense was clear. I’m not sure whether I could told it visually alone on that day but with physical contact it was quite clear. Is it theoretically possible that you tell yourself in such a situation a story that makes it okay that you get tense when I touch you? Yes, but very unlikely.
There are cases in Salsa dancing where I dance with a woman who’s a beginner. The woman might get a bit tense in close physical contact but tell herself a story that she’s tense because she’s a beginner and that’s just part of being a beginner at Salsa. However even in those cases it’s often good to give the woman a bit of space.
In general people often make up story to explain why they are feeling a certain way that don’t really have much to do with why they actual feel what they feel. If you stimulate a neuron in someone’s brain and that initiates an action, the person will still do his best to make a plausible story of why he engages in that action. The same goes for actions done because of posthypnotic suggestions.
Even if the other person knows why they are reacting the way they do, there are often social reasons why the person might not want to share everything openly.
In your case your suggestion that you felt what you felt because you had a different expectation is interesting. If I act in ways that follow the expectations of other people surely makes it easier for them to model me and therefore easier to interact with me.
Is he trying to initiate more than just friendly conversation?
I don’t see hugging primarily as a means to initiate something. The fact that it feels good is reason enough to do it. In that situation the next reason would be to be more associated with my own body.
I do have a bunch of male friends whom I great in that physical intensity so it doesn’t even have much to do with the fact that you are woman.
Two years ago I did have a time where I pushed the boundaries in regards to trying to go as far as I can in regards to physical intimacy with woman. Today I’m far away from that perspective and I rather do what feels right in a specific moment.
There still the possibility to have to much contact and walking around with the heuristic that you treat people based on their tags, reduces the amount one reacts to body language of other people.
I believe this happens, the question is (a) how much, and (b) whether it is a net improvement or not.
Generally, any situation of “not having to worry about X as much as before” makes people spend less energy on X, and more energy on something else. Historically, since people invented reading and writing, they didn’t have to memorize everything, and they stopped memorizing a lot of things—so these days most people can’t recite long sagas from memory and don’t remember ten generations of their ancestors. We lost something; but I believe we gained more than we lost. If we decided to spend a lot of time and energy to get this ability back, we probably could; but we prefer to spend that time and energy doing something else. As another example, I heard that some people who were abused have very high ability to read other people’s body language; because for them it was a survival skill. (Not sure how reliable is this info, I remember only a fictional evidence.) I think it’s not worth paying this price, if one has an option to avoid it.
In the Elevatorgate story I don’t think there was an unwelcome hug. On the other hand there was a guy with uncalibrated social skills that were so uncalibrated that they caused a public debate. I don’t think hugging tags would have helped in that situation. If the guy in question however would learn to read body language to an extend of being able to tell when a woman gets uncomfortable he would have feedback loops to be calibrated well enough to avoid gross faux pas like the one in Elevatorgate.
I still think that it’s good to have the tags at an LW event as they encourage people to hug each other who otherwise wouldn’t while allowing those uncomfortable with physical touch to opt out, but they are not a magic solution to all problems. The tags are useful crutches.
In the environment that created “Elevatorgate”, how long could you walk around asking people whether it’s okay to hug them, until someone would write a similar blog about you?
Getting asked to be hugged from a person you don’t want to hug is a pretty slight inconvenience, I don’t think anything that someone would find worthy to start a huge debate about.
What generally helps is giving people social feedback. Verbal feedback to those people who don’t understand the nonverbal one.
I heard that some people who were abused have very high ability to read other people’s body language; because for them it was a survival skill. (Not sure how reliable is this info, I remember only a fictional evidence.)
My priors for that claim being true are low. I would think you got it from the fictional evidence.
Being good at reading body language of other people often has a lot to do with being aware of your own body. Physical abuse often leads to shutting down bodily self awareness to reduce the amount perceived uncomfort.
Speaking for myself, I am not good at reading body language of other people, but it also seems to me that other people are not good at reading my signals. (Maybe the abilities to “read” and to “speak” the body language are related. Is there a research for this?)
There are probably cases where body language is actively spoken in a way that’s learned. On the other hand there are people with Asperger’s syndrome where I can tell based on their body language that they fall in that spectrum and are therefore unlikely to be very comfortable with a hug.
They can still make a conscious decision to want to want to hug and then that’s really hard to read.
I overlooked a “no hug” sign myself, even though I’m an organiser and had a part in choosing them. I agree that they need to be more visually distinct and we will improve that next time.
For the record, I think the tags are a super-awesome idea! And I hope the next iterations will be even better.
I realize this is not a fair comparison, but in the friendly environment during the weekend, I was thinking about the “Elevatorgate” I read about online, and it seemed to me like a huge cultural contrast. Like a strong evidence that rationalists sometimes do win big in real life. I mean, if the tags would be fully respected (which unfortunately they were not, but I have a hope for the future), we would have a solution for avoiding some unwanted interactions, other than the suboptimal “better play it safe and avoid doing anything that might hypothetically offend someone (unless you have high enough status to protect you from a potential damage)”. Because some people don’t want to be hugged, but other people do, and while respecting the former is the basic decency, it would be great to also provide better options for the latter, as long as these goals are not in contradiction.
Speaking for myself, I am not good at reading body language of other people, but it also seems to me that other people are not good at reading my signals. (Maybe the abilities to “read” and to “speak” the body language are related. Is there a research for this? Or maybe there are actually multiple languages, so the speakers of the majority language get most success.) So I prefer using words, instead of relying on an unreliable channel. I also think that some people are genuinely good at reading body language, but there are many who merely overestimate their own ability. Unfortunately, verbal asking can sometimes also be considered offensive. (In the environment that created “Elevatorgate”, how long could you walk around asking people whether it’s okay to hug them, until someone would write a similar blog about you? Maybe I overestimate the risk, but I would rather play safe than risk becoming a global archetype of creepiness.) And because we are not good enough at reading other people’s minds, having some content of the mind displayed visibly is the next best option.
I can imagine possible problems with explicit symbols in general; for example people feeling social pressure to display a tag they don’t really identify with. (For example, in a strongly religious country, not wearing a symbol of the dominant religion could be harmful. Or wearing a symbol of a non-approved sexual orientation.) Maybe I am ignoring something, but I believe this is not a problem in our community. However, if some specific tags would become socially dangerous (create a risk to the user either for wearing them or for not wearing them), the solution could be to ban those specific tags. Another possible failure could be people wearing untrue tags because it would give them some advantage in manipulating others. -- But the situation with “hugs” / “no touching” seems perfect for the tag system, because people belonging to both groups want to be classified correctly by everyone else.
Perhaps a closer comparison than Elevatorgate is the Open-Source Boob Project.
OMG, that’s an interesting project! And I originally wanted to spend this day without too much web reading.
Some of the comments are… educational.
This illustrates that the so-called conflict between Guess culture and Ask culture cannot be solved by merely saying “here we have a opt-in subgroup which uses different communication rules”. Some things are merely difficult to guess correctly, and that can be fixed by improving the communication system. But some things are genuinely taboo… so creating a better communication system about them would cause an outrage.
At the first sight, they may both seem the same to an outsider or a clueless insider, because both are something that is simply never talked about. Therefore, as the first step, we have to find out whether X is “generally okay, just difficult to coordinate” or “forbidden”. If something is considered intrinsically wrong, creating a more reliable and more consensual communication system is solving the wrong problem. (It would also be necessary to make the system secret, or at least plausibly deniable. But that makes coordination even more difficult.) And we should actually be thankful to people who openly admit they believe it is intrinsically wrong, as opposed to e.g. rationalizing about imperfections in the communication system, etc.
(I am not sure how to feel about an argument that there ain’t no such thing as consent, because people can always be pressured into consent e.g. by ostracism; and therefore, if it is morally wrong to do X against someone’s will, then it is wrong to allow X even among consenting people. It has a point; but applied consistently it would mean you shouldn’t interact with anyone, ever. Which I guess means that the only practical way to apply this is to have a social consensus about when to use it and when to ignore it, which will be decided by the high-status people. And by the way, merely saying that there should be a way to do X, implies that X is good, which already creates a pressure on people to do X. -- Another interesting generalizable argument was that allowing consensual X is wrong, because some people would get more consent and some wouldn’t get any, and they would feel horrible; therefore it is better to keep it a general taboo, so no one feels personally rejected. -- Also, people have a right not to know that your subculture exists. = I should probably use all these to create a random activity-criticism generator. Or even a complete flamewar generator, because there are also predictable responses.)
If there is a culture with a taboo against hugging, where people who want to hug others are perceived as morally depraved and dangerous, providing “hugs” tags for people would be risky.
By the way, the system mentioned in the article used two clearly explicit steps (some commenters may have misunderstood this, or may have reacted to the early stages before the protocol was established). The protocol was: (1) opt in by wearing a tag; (2) ask people with the tag whether it is okay to do X; (3) do X. Which means that under this protocol no one should even be asked without consenting to be asked first. -- This two-step consent is probably a good idea for controversial topics, although I would like to also have a one-step alternative. For example “it is okay to ask if you can hug me” and “it is okay to hug me even without asking first”.
(I wanted to stay meta, but here is an object-level note: It would have been better to call it “Open Source Touching Project”; because other body parts were also allowed, but many people in discussions objected to the title. Also, there is a valid objection that doing some things in public may be illegal, so it is wrong to do such things at a convention without explicit permission of the organizers.)
Reading when someone is uncomfortable while you hug them is an easier skill then reading it before you hug them. At the weekend Anne was walking around with the written word “cuddle” in addition to the free hugs sticker. I greeted her the first time with what was in her words more of a cuddle then a hug. I could feel that it was too much for the situation and I’m usually calibrated well enough that I don’t act in a way that creates that reaction in another person. Enough for me to reduce the amount of physical contact that I initiated in later interaction with other people because I had the feeling that my automatic calibration skills were broken at that point.
A day later Anne came to me to give me feedback and she basically didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already knew myself. But in case I would have my own feedback loops, that feedback would probably have been quite valuable. Having an environment where it’s possible to give that kind of feedback openly is very valuable.
Beforehand I hugged a few guys who I would categorise as someone who’s system I says: “Hugging is at the rand of my comfort zone” and who’s system II says: “I want to be hugged”. For interaction with guys that usually means it’s okay to hug them, especially for the rationalist crowd who think their system II is what matters. For male-to-female physical contact on the other hand you usually want that both system I and system II of the woman agrees to the physical contact.
Free hug sign itself don’t tell you the line that tells you which intensity of physical contact is welcome and which isn’t. They just tell you that you can hug the person. There still the possibility to have to much contact and walking around with the heuristic that you treat people based on their tags, reduces the amount one reacts to body language of other people.
That was one of the cases where my preferences were too nuanced for the keywords/stickers. I was fine with hugs from everyone, but would have preferred to be asked for cuddles first. And the long hug you gave me was, from my point of view, cuddling. It prompted thoughts like “Why is he the cuddling right away? Is he trying to initiate more than just friendly conversation? Should I get some distance between us to signal that I’m not interested?” and that made me uncomfortable though system II agreed that there wasn’t any way you could have told that I would have preferred you to ask (before reading my physical reaction). Talking about it fixed that system I feeling of “needing to get some distance”, so it’s good that we did that. :)
Did you consider asking me whether your impression (that I was uncomfortable with the cuddling) was true, before I gave you that feedback?
(For clarity, where you say “Hugging is at the rand of my comfort zone” you mean ”… at the edge of my comfort zone”. It might not be obvious to non-German readers, so I’m pointing it out.)
No, in that case the observation was that you were getting tense was clear. I’m not sure whether I could told it visually alone on that day but with physical contact it was quite clear. Is it theoretically possible that you tell yourself in such a situation a story that makes it okay that you get tense when I touch you? Yes, but very unlikely.
There are cases in Salsa dancing where I dance with a woman who’s a beginner. The woman might get a bit tense in close physical contact but tell herself a story that she’s tense because she’s a beginner and that’s just part of being a beginner at Salsa. However even in those cases it’s often good to give the woman a bit of space.
In general people often make up story to explain why they are feeling a certain way that don’t really have much to do with why they actual feel what they feel. If you stimulate a neuron in someone’s brain and that initiates an action, the person will still do his best to make a plausible story of why he engages in that action. The same goes for actions done because of posthypnotic suggestions. Even if the other person knows why they are reacting the way they do, there are often social reasons why the person might not want to share everything openly.
In your case your suggestion that you felt what you felt because you had a different expectation is interesting. If I act in ways that follow the expectations of other people surely makes it easier for them to model me and therefore easier to interact with me.
I don’t see hugging primarily as a means to initiate something. The fact that it feels good is reason enough to do it. In that situation the next reason would be to be more associated with my own body.
I do have a bunch of male friends whom I great in that physical intensity so it doesn’t even have much to do with the fact that you are woman.
Two years ago I did have a time where I pushed the boundaries in regards to trying to go as far as I can in regards to physical intimacy with woman. Today I’m far away from that perspective and I rather do what feels right in a specific moment.
I believe this happens, the question is (a) how much, and (b) whether it is a net improvement or not.
Generally, any situation of “not having to worry about X as much as before” makes people spend less energy on X, and more energy on something else. Historically, since people invented reading and writing, they didn’t have to memorize everything, and they stopped memorizing a lot of things—so these days most people can’t recite long sagas from memory and don’t remember ten generations of their ancestors. We lost something; but I believe we gained more than we lost. If we decided to spend a lot of time and energy to get this ability back, we probably could; but we prefer to spend that time and energy doing something else. As another example, I heard that some people who were abused have very high ability to read other people’s body language; because for them it was a survival skill. (Not sure how reliable is this info, I remember only a fictional evidence.) I think it’s not worth paying this price, if one has an option to avoid it.
In the Elevatorgate story I don’t think there was an unwelcome hug. On the other hand there was a guy with uncalibrated social skills that were so uncalibrated that they caused a public debate. I don’t think hugging tags would have helped in that situation. If the guy in question however would learn to read body language to an extend of being able to tell when a woman gets uncomfortable he would have feedback loops to be calibrated well enough to avoid gross faux pas like the one in Elevatorgate.
I still think that it’s good to have the tags at an LW event as they encourage people to hug each other who otherwise wouldn’t while allowing those uncomfortable with physical touch to opt out, but they are not a magic solution to all problems. The tags are useful crutches.
Getting asked to be hugged from a person you don’t want to hug is a pretty slight inconvenience, I don’t think anything that someone would find worthy to start a huge debate about.
What generally helps is giving people social feedback. Verbal feedback to those people who don’t understand the nonverbal one.
My priors for that claim being true are low. I would think you got it from the fictional evidence.
Being good at reading body language of other people often has a lot to do with being aware of your own body. Physical abuse often leads to shutting down bodily self awareness to reduce the amount perceived uncomfort.
There are probably cases where body language is actively spoken in a way that’s learned. On the other hand there are people with Asperger’s syndrome where I can tell based on their body language that they fall in that spectrum and are therefore unlikely to be very comfortable with a hug.
They can still make a conscious decision to want to want to hug and then that’s really hard to read.