It seems clear to me that one should not, under any circumstances engage in a group therapy exercise designed to lower your emotional barriers and create vulnerability in the presence of anyone you trust less than 100%
I agree with this almost completely. Two quibbles: first, styles of Circling vary in how much they are a “group therapy exercise” (vs. something more like a shared exploration or meditation), and I think “100%” trust of people is an unreasonable bar; like, I don’t think you should extend that level of trust to anyone, even yourself. So there’s actual meat in the question of “what’s it like to Circle with someone that you 90% trust? Should you do that?”.
Also I think the ideal of Circling agrees with this underlying sentiment, in that the goal is not to lower emotional barriers but to understand them. It may be that as part of understanding them, they get lowered, or they might be maintained or raised. I’ve been in many Circles where the content of the Circle was “huh, it seems like we don’t trust each other enough to be open / handle deep topic X. What’s that like?”.
One of the things that I worry about some with Circling and rationalists is something like… the uncanny valley of noticing emotional responses while not trusting them, or something? Like I’m reminded of this comment by jimmy:
You have to be careful when dismissing subconscious fears as irrational. They were put there for a reason, and they may still be relevant. If I was staying in a “haunted house” in a city where it was not isolated or abandoned or anything, I don’t think it’d scare me one bit. A secluded/abandoned haunted house might be scary, and for good reasons. It would be unwise to assume that your fear is entirely irrational.
I went to a local park with some friends one night to hang out. Both I and another friend were uneasy about it, but dismissed our fears as irrational (and didn’t mention it). We both figured that we didn’t have any reason to think that something bad was gonna happen in the sense that you can’t predict the future through “ESP”, but it didn’t occur to us that “you’re scared because that isn’t a safe place to be at night you dolt!”
Turns out some guys showed up and tried to stab us, nearly succeeding. I learned the “almost hard” way not to disregard fears right off the bat.
If I thought Circling would on average make people more exploitable or worse at defending themselves / avoiding bad outcomes, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m less clear about what to do when there’s a valley you need to cross, which I think is true for theory and rationality as well, and my rough guess is “the only way out is through.”
I’m less clear about what to do when there’s a valley you need to cross, which I think is true for theory and rationality as well, and my rough guess is “the only way out is through.”
I’d add: “in theory, and rationality, and physical exercise, and… whatever’s going on in Circling*, it’d be nice if it were possible to safely gain a bunch of relevant skills without exposing yourself to danger. But it’s not, and meanwhile, you’re already in danger.”
(I endorse making this claim for something like Circling, but I admit that my exact model is still pretty fuzzy. Introspection, extrospection, authenticity, emotional self-regulation, maintaining safeguards and other things all seem like part of the cluster of skills that Circling seems to be training)
I don’t think on average Circling makes one more exploitable, but I expect it increases variance, making some people significantly more exploitable than they were before because previously invisible boundaries are now visible, and can thus be attacked (by others but more often by a different part of the same person).
And yeah it does seem similar to the valley of bad rationality; the valley of bad circling, where when you’re in the valley you’re focusing on a naive form of connection without discernment of the boundaries.
I agree with this almost completely. Two quibbles: first, styles of Circling vary in how much they are a “group therapy exercise” (vs. something more like a shared exploration or meditation), and I think “100%” trust of people is an unreasonable bar; like, I don’t think you should extend that level of trust to anyone, even yourself. So there’s actual meat in the question of “what’s it like to Circle with someone that you 90% trust? Should you do that?”.
Also I think the ideal of Circling agrees with this underlying sentiment, in that the goal is not to lower emotional barriers but to understand them. It may be that as part of understanding them, they get lowered, or they might be maintained or raised. I’ve been in many Circles where the content of the Circle was “huh, it seems like we don’t trust each other enough to be open / handle deep topic X. What’s that like?”.
One of the things that I worry about some with Circling and rationalists is something like… the uncanny valley of noticing emotional responses while not trusting them, or something? Like I’m reminded of this comment by jimmy:
If I thought Circling would on average make people more exploitable or worse at defending themselves / avoiding bad outcomes, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m less clear about what to do when there’s a valley you need to cross, which I think is true for theory and rationality as well, and my rough guess is “the only way out is through.”
I’d add: “in theory, and rationality, and physical exercise, and… whatever’s going on in Circling*, it’d be nice if it were possible to safely gain a bunch of relevant skills without exposing yourself to danger. But it’s not, and meanwhile, you’re already in danger.”
(I endorse making this claim for something like Circling, but I admit that my exact model is still pretty fuzzy. Introspection, extrospection, authenticity, emotional self-regulation, maintaining safeguards and other things all seem like part of the cluster of skills that Circling seems to be training)
Note that I previously wrote up a lot of my concerns and thoughts-on-tradeoffs over on Unreal’s Circling post.
I expect understanding something more explicitly—such as yours and another persons boundaries—w/o some type of underlying concept of acceptance of that boundary can increase exploitability. I recently wrote a shortform post on the topic of legibility that describes some patterns I’ve noticed here.
I don’t think on average Circling makes one more exploitable, but I expect it increases variance, making some people significantly more exploitable than they were before because previously invisible boundaries are now visible, and can thus be attacked (by others but more often by a different part of the same person).
And yeah it does seem similar to the valley of bad rationality; the valley of bad circling, where when you’re in the valley you’re focusing on a naive form of connection without discernment of the boundaries.