I’ve noticed that I sometimes have this problem. However, there’s a bright side that makes it slightly easier: I’ve found that generally if I have a pragmatic reason to enjoy someone’s company that’s generally some major positive trait (e.g. only expert on a certain topic around me, is a better chess player than anyone else around, is the only other Go player around, etc.) This provides a positive trait to start with.
The whole thing about the understanding that other humans have circumstances that help explain actions also is something that’s been nagging at the back of my mind for a while as somewhat similar. The phrasing here about using it to actively assume that people had good reasons for their behavior made it click more. There’s an old tradition in Judaism about trying to assume that people mean well and when one sees something negative one should assume extenuating circumstances not apparent to you. This idea was heavily promoted by among other people the Chofetz Chaim (he was a major Rabbi living around 1900). Sometimes this sort of view was pushed to points where something is just actively anti-rational (ridiculously contrived stories are sometimes told to Orthodox kids to inculcate this point). This also results in some very bad attitudes in the ultra-Orthodox population about not willing to accept that someone did something wrong even when there’s heavy evidence (curiously this attitude occurs primarily with people of very high status). This leads to a general worry here: is the effort to try to think of explanatory circumstances here possibly against good rational thinking? In particular, there seems to be a problem if one tries to deal with the fundamental attribution error only when they are people you have a reason to try and like. This seems to easily lead to tribalism. (And again, using the comparison to Orthodox Judaism, these sorts of assumptions are essentially never applied to people outside the fold).
This is interesting. Not knowing much about Judaism, I want to ask: do those “ridiculously contrived stories” teach you to be in denial even when a fellow tribe member does something wrong to you, or is it only about wrongs done to other people?
It varies. These stories as commonly told seem to actually focus more on what would be here labeled as ritual rather than moral law more than anything else. (For example one such story is about a man is seen buying bacon at a store but it turns out he was buying it because his wife is pregnant and had a craving.) Empirically when this sort of heuristic is applied in the real world it applies generally when there are actual victims but the one engaging in the bad behavior in question is of high status (frequently either a rich philanthropist or a Rabbi) and the victims are either of low status (for example, converts, potential converts, children, mamzerim (Edit: They are a technical class of bastards who are somewhat discriminated against in ultra-orthodox settings)) or the victims are an abstract collection (frequently the government if it is say tax fraud).
It might help to give two recent concrete examples. Leib Tropper is an ultra-Orthodox Rabbi who it turned out was sexually exploiting women whose conversion he was supervising. Despite the existence of actual recorded phone conversations being circulated, repeated denial of any wrong-doing was a common refrain in the ultra-Orthodox world. Similarly, during the ongoing Rubashkin scandal with Agriprocessors, much of the Orthodox community has decided that they really aren’t guilty or are not guilty of anything that major. The stories in this case they’ve decided to tell are conspiratorial and portray the US federal prosecutors as somewhat similar to the government of Czarist Russia.
I agree with your concerns about corrupting your rationality via this exercise. Even if it’s instrumentally a benefit. I would require some proof that this is a good thing. I would use this in limited situation where the “lack of like” is probably due to accidental factors that do not really reflect on the the person.
To mention another famous Rabbinical story, a talmudic rabbi had a wife who, ahem, was kind of evil and always did the opposite of request. His son suggested to ask her to cook the said rabbi’s Least Favorite food in order to get what he really wanted. The Rabbi was excited by the idea at first (I guess he hasn’t thought of it??) but then commented that they should not do this because of “limdu lashonam dvar sheker”—“their tongues have learnt to speak falsely”, so lying instrumentally will lead to further corruption, as I understand this.
BTW the original injunction of “Dan lekaf zchus”—“benefit of doubt” in approximate translation—comes from Ethics of the Fathers, and I believe one of the major commenters (R.Yonah IIRC) suggested, essentially, giving heavy weight to the prior: if the person is generally good you should try to explain an apparently bad act, and vice versa! you should explain an apparently good act of a bad person UNfavorably. Pretty sane thought.
BTW the original injunction of “Dan lekaf zchus”—“benefit of doubt” in approximate
translation—comes from Ethics of the Fathers, and I believe one of the major
commenters (R.Yonah IIRC) suggested, essentially, giving heavy weight to the prior: if the person is generally good you should try to explain an apparently bad act, and
vice versa! you should explain an apparently good act of a bad person UNfavorably.
Pretty sane thought.
I’m not sure. One can see how this goes wrong in Talmudic contexts. For example, there are a lot midrashim that explain away apparently good behavior by Esau and Ishmael, and there are a lot of midrashim that explain away or try to justify apparently bad or deceptive behavior by Jacob. Yet, a simple reading of the Biblical text shows that what is actually happening is that these just aren’t 1 dimensional characters. So this general tendency can be actively distorting.
Edit: For others reading, midrashim are a classical Jewish set of stories generally told in an interconnected fashion to fill in apparent gaps in the Biblical stories.
I just ran across an interview with Patti Newbold applying the idea of assuming the best to marriage (with some caveats about not assuming the best when one is seriously mistreated).
I’ve noticed that I sometimes have this problem. However, there’s a bright side that makes it slightly easier: I’ve found that generally if I have a pragmatic reason to enjoy someone’s company that’s generally some major positive trait (e.g. only expert on a certain topic around me, is a better chess player than anyone else around, is the only other Go player around, etc.) This provides a positive trait to start with.
The whole thing about the understanding that other humans have circumstances that help explain actions also is something that’s been nagging at the back of my mind for a while as somewhat similar. The phrasing here about using it to actively assume that people had good reasons for their behavior made it click more. There’s an old tradition in Judaism about trying to assume that people mean well and when one sees something negative one should assume extenuating circumstances not apparent to you. This idea was heavily promoted by among other people the Chofetz Chaim (he was a major Rabbi living around 1900). Sometimes this sort of view was pushed to points where something is just actively anti-rational (ridiculously contrived stories are sometimes told to Orthodox kids to inculcate this point). This also results in some very bad attitudes in the ultra-Orthodox population about not willing to accept that someone did something wrong even when there’s heavy evidence (curiously this attitude occurs primarily with people of very high status). This leads to a general worry here: is the effort to try to think of explanatory circumstances here possibly against good rational thinking? In particular, there seems to be a problem if one tries to deal with the fundamental attribution error only when they are people you have a reason to try and like. This seems to easily lead to tribalism. (And again, using the comparison to Orthodox Judaism, these sorts of assumptions are essentially never applied to people outside the fold).
This is interesting. Not knowing much about Judaism, I want to ask: do those “ridiculously contrived stories” teach you to be in denial even when a fellow tribe member does something wrong to you, or is it only about wrongs done to other people?
It varies. These stories as commonly told seem to actually focus more on what would be here labeled as ritual rather than moral law more than anything else. (For example one such story is about a man is seen buying bacon at a store but it turns out he was buying it because his wife is pregnant and had a craving.) Empirically when this sort of heuristic is applied in the real world it applies generally when there are actual victims but the one engaging in the bad behavior in question is of high status (frequently either a rich philanthropist or a Rabbi) and the victims are either of low status (for example, converts, potential converts, children, mamzerim (Edit: They are a technical class of bastards who are somewhat discriminated against in ultra-orthodox settings)) or the victims are an abstract collection (frequently the government if it is say tax fraud).
It might help to give two recent concrete examples. Leib Tropper is an ultra-Orthodox Rabbi who it turned out was sexually exploiting women whose conversion he was supervising. Despite the existence of actual recorded phone conversations being circulated, repeated denial of any wrong-doing was a common refrain in the ultra-Orthodox world. Similarly, during the ongoing Rubashkin scandal with Agriprocessors, much of the Orthodox community has decided that they really aren’t guilty or are not guilty of anything that major. The stories in this case they’ve decided to tell are conspiratorial and portray the US federal prosecutors as somewhat similar to the government of Czarist Russia.
Nice to see a fellow yeshiva bochur here ;)
I agree with your concerns about corrupting your rationality via this exercise. Even if it’s instrumentally a benefit. I would require some proof that this is a good thing. I would use this in limited situation where the “lack of like” is probably due to accidental factors that do not really reflect on the the person.
To mention another famous Rabbinical story, a talmudic rabbi had a wife who, ahem, was kind of evil and always did the opposite of request. His son suggested to ask her to cook the said rabbi’s Least Favorite food in order to get what he really wanted. The Rabbi was excited by the idea at first (I guess he hasn’t thought of it??) but then commented that they should not do this because of “limdu lashonam dvar sheker”—“their tongues have learnt to speak falsely”, so lying instrumentally will lead to further corruption, as I understand this.
BTW the original injunction of “Dan lekaf zchus”—“benefit of doubt” in approximate translation—comes from Ethics of the Fathers, and I believe one of the major commenters (R.Yonah IIRC) suggested, essentially, giving heavy weight to the prior: if the person is generally good you should try to explain an apparently bad act, and vice versa! you should explain an apparently good act of a bad person UNfavorably. Pretty sane thought.
I’m not sure. One can see how this goes wrong in Talmudic contexts. For example, there are a lot midrashim that explain away apparently good behavior by Esau and Ishmael, and there are a lot of midrashim that explain away or try to justify apparently bad or deceptive behavior by Jacob. Yet, a simple reading of the Biblical text shows that what is actually happening is that these just aren’t 1 dimensional characters. So this general tendency can be actively distorting.
Edit: For others reading, midrashim are a classical Jewish set of stories generally told in an interconnected fashion to fill in apparent gaps in the Biblical stories.
I just ran across an interview with Patti Newbold applying the idea of assuming the best to marriage (with some caveats about not assuming the best when one is seriously mistreated).