Using words with strongly negative connotations in a title of the article, is not a way to get upvoted. Was this a meta example of the idea in the article?
I think this articles has a good idea, and bad writing. By which I don’t mean the writing is bad in general, but rather that the title and the whole idea have so negative connotations, that the writing is not nearly good enough to balance that. (Also, don’t say “PUA” in an article, unless it is essential to the article. The mere using of the word gives you like automatic 5 downvotes. Gender politics is the mindkiller.) The article pattern-matches to whining about intelligence. Again, not good.
I’ll try to express the same idea (assuming I understand what you meant) using different words:
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The word “manipulation” has strong negative connotations. If we try to taboo it, it means “making other people more likely to do what we want, without being explicit about us doing this”. Plus the thousand negative connotations.
But if we think about it, “making other people do what we want” is almost a definition of living socially. By which I mean that if “what we want” is have a pleasant talk with someone, saying “hello” to a stranger is literally making them more likely to start talking with us. (Not everything that “we want” is necessarily a bad thing, okay?)
Also, it is a social norm to not be explicit about everything. We usually don’t say: -- “My goal today is to come here and have a pleasant talk with someone. You seem like a suitable person for this. I want to make you more likely to speak with me, by saying… here it comes… Hello!”—to a stranger. (Although, in some situation it could be a funny way to introduce yourself. You you can’t keep doing this all the time.)
How is this paradox possible that “making other people do what we want, without being explicit” is the everyday social interaction, and at the same time a description of a horrible, ethically repulsive behavior?
Well, people are not very good at introspection, and they don’t do it often. The paradox is possible because we don’t notice it. We usually start paying attention to this process when something bad happens; when someone manipulates people to do something that would be strongly against their prior preferences. We don’t notice that the everyday interaction somehow fits the description, too.
So, here is a specific failure of an introspective intelligent person in the valley of bad rationality. First, they learn all the negative connotations of “manipulation”, and they internalize the idea that manipulation is evil. Later, by using their powers of introspection they realize that almost all social interaction fits the literal definition of “manipulation”. And now they are stuck—whenever they are going to interact with people, they are afraid of being “manipulative”, and thus unethical.
A common solution is to add some self-imposed handicaps. As if to convince themselves: “see, I am not getting any benefits from this kind of interaction, therefore it is not manipulation”. Okay, the ethical problem is fixed, but the costs such self-handicapping brings to social life can be too high.
The solution could be to realize that the introspective person’s word “manipulation” does not really have the same meaning as the usual word “manipulation”, therefore it is not ethically the same thing. Words are just labels for something real. We should not ask ourselves whether something, such as saying “hello” to a stranger, can be interpreted too literally to fit a definition of something with negative connotations. A better question is about the real consequences. Does this behavior cause any harm to the other person? Is it incompatible with their “extrapolated volition”? If the answers are negative, the behavior is probably ethically okay.
Using words with strongly negative connotations in a title of the article, is not a way to get upvoted. Was this a meta example of the idea in the article?
I think this articles has a good idea, and bad writing. By which I don’t mean the writing is bad in general, but rather that the title and the whole idea have so negative connotations, that the writing is not nearly good enough to balance that. (Also, don’t say “PUA” in an article, unless it is essential to the article. The mere using of the word gives you like automatic 5 downvotes. Gender politics is the mindkiller.) The article pattern-matches to whining about intelligence. Again, not good.
I’ll try to express the same idea (assuming I understand what you meant) using different words:
-
The word “manipulation” has strong negative connotations. If we try to taboo it, it means “making other people more likely to do what we want, without being explicit about us doing this”. Plus the thousand negative connotations.
But if we think about it, “making other people do what we want” is almost a definition of living socially. By which I mean that if “what we want” is have a pleasant talk with someone, saying “hello” to a stranger is literally making them more likely to start talking with us. (Not everything that “we want” is necessarily a bad thing, okay?)
Also, it is a social norm to not be explicit about everything. We usually don’t say: -- “My goal today is to come here and have a pleasant talk with someone. You seem like a suitable person for this. I want to make you more likely to speak with me, by saying… here it comes… Hello!”—to a stranger. (Although, in some situation it could be a funny way to introduce yourself. You you can’t keep doing this all the time.)
How is this paradox possible that “making other people do what we want, without being explicit” is the everyday social interaction, and at the same time a description of a horrible, ethically repulsive behavior?
Well, people are not very good at introspection, and they don’t do it often. The paradox is possible because we don’t notice it. We usually start paying attention to this process when something bad happens; when someone manipulates people to do something that would be strongly against their prior preferences. We don’t notice that the everyday interaction somehow fits the description, too.
So, here is a specific failure of an introspective intelligent person in the valley of bad rationality. First, they learn all the negative connotations of “manipulation”, and they internalize the idea that manipulation is evil. Later, by using their powers of introspection they realize that almost all social interaction fits the literal definition of “manipulation”. And now they are stuck—whenever they are going to interact with people, they are afraid of being “manipulative”, and thus unethical.
A common solution is to add some self-imposed handicaps. As if to convince themselves: “see, I am not getting any benefits from this kind of interaction, therefore it is not manipulation”. Okay, the ethical problem is fixed, but the costs such self-handicapping brings to social life can be too high.
The solution could be to realize that the introspective person’s word “manipulation” does not really have the same meaning as the usual word “manipulation”, therefore it is not ethically the same thing. Words are just labels for something real. We should not ask ourselves whether something, such as saying “hello” to a stranger, can be interpreted too literally to fit a definition of something with negative connotations. A better question is about the real consequences. Does this behavior cause any harm to the other person? Is it incompatible with their “extrapolated volition”? If the answers are negative, the behavior is probably ethically okay.