I wonder if we can use this idea to interpret some of the friction both within the LW/EA communities and between the LW/EA world and non-participants.
Here, long, detailed analyses in a neutral but confident tone don’t usually read to me as attempts to project “epistemic authority” (ie to say “I am an expert, defer to me”). But I’ve explicitly gotten feedback that it comes across this way in online forums outside LW/EA. Here, we have a pretty well understood stance for “articulating my personal beliefs and evidence for them for collective inspection.” To others, that might come across as being a bunch of know-it-alls or cranks.
One thing I’m curious about is people’s level of “social stance relativism.” How willing are people to admit that there are multiple valid social stance schemas? Or to adjust to match somebody else’s, or to conform to the expectations in a workplace or role? To admit somebody else’s might be as good or better than theirs? To adopt a common social scheme instead of advancing their own idiosyncratic one? And where are people incentivized to be flexible, vs to enforce their own schema on others?
This feels like an idea where there’s an appearance of flexibility and opportunity for greater mutual understanding, but maybe also a surprising level of rigidity and even active ongoing conflict when you try, since there’s a need for commonly understood social stance schema and trying to import your own could be disruptive. Plus, if there are (as I experience) high switching costs, people would have reason to fight for their own standard to be adopted.
One thing I’m curious about is people’s level of “social stance relativism.” How willing are people to admit that there are multiple valid social stance schemas?
I feel like I intellectually think that there are lots of valid schemas (though they may have different sets of tradeoffs, such as the way guess culture has different tradeoffs than ask culture). Though emotionally I often find it annoying and effortful if I have to employ different ones that I’m most used to. :)
That smiley being a good example—to me it connotes friendliness and non-seriousness, but apparently, some younger people find it more ambiguous and possibly even passive-aggressive and would use something like “lol” in its place. And I feel really reluctant to do that because those strings have totally different meanings to me.
another thing I consider common, is that a person who is overly flexible in changing their stance, and overly “fluent” in various social stances comes of as untrustworthy, suspicious, even dangerous. In the height of the PUA/NLP craze, these kind of people were called “social robots”, and their behavior either made people fall for their charisma easily, or be extremely creeped out.
I think humans subconsciously expect some social stance misunderstandings, pushback from people with different stances, and that it would take at least some struggle to convince someone to match your stance. If the other person immediately shifts to a compatible stance, even one incongruous with their previous behavior, it catches us of-guard.
I wonder if we can use this idea to interpret some of the friction both within the LW/EA communities and between the LW/EA world and non-participants.
Here, long, detailed analyses in a neutral but confident tone don’t usually read to me as attempts to project “epistemic authority” (ie to say “I am an expert, defer to me”). But I’ve explicitly gotten feedback that it comes across this way in online forums outside LW/EA. Here, we have a pretty well understood stance for “articulating my personal beliefs and evidence for them for collective inspection.” To others, that might come across as being a bunch of know-it-alls or cranks.
One thing I’m curious about is people’s level of “social stance relativism.” How willing are people to admit that there are multiple valid social stance schemas? Or to adjust to match somebody else’s, or to conform to the expectations in a workplace or role? To admit somebody else’s might be as good or better than theirs? To adopt a common social scheme instead of advancing their own idiosyncratic one? And where are people incentivized to be flexible, vs to enforce their own schema on others?
This feels like an idea where there’s an appearance of flexibility and opportunity for greater mutual understanding, but maybe also a surprising level of rigidity and even active ongoing conflict when you try, since there’s a need for commonly understood social stance schema and trying to import your own could be disruptive. Plus, if there are (as I experience) high switching costs, people would have reason to fight for their own standard to be adopted.
I feel like I intellectually think that there are lots of valid schemas (though they may have different sets of tradeoffs, such as the way guess culture has different tradeoffs than ask culture). Though emotionally I often find it annoying and effortful if I have to employ different ones that I’m most used to. :)
That smiley being a good example—to me it connotes friendliness and non-seriousness, but apparently, some younger people find it more ambiguous and possibly even passive-aggressive and would use something like “lol” in its place. And I feel really reluctant to do that because those strings have totally different meanings to me.
another thing I consider common, is that a person who is overly flexible in changing their stance, and overly “fluent” in various social stances comes of as untrustworthy, suspicious, even dangerous. In the height of the PUA/NLP craze, these kind of people were called “social robots”, and their behavior either made people fall for their charisma easily, or be extremely creeped out.
I think humans subconsciously expect some social stance misunderstandings, pushback from people with different stances, and that it would take at least some struggle to convince someone to match your stance. If the other person immediately shifts to a compatible stance, even one incongruous with their previous behavior, it catches us of-guard.