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David_Gerard comments on The peril of ignoring emotions - Less Wrong
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Comments (101)
Heh. You grabbed a virtual banana and he cried "Morality!"
Did anyone else seem to buy his argument as to why he hadn't just plain lost?
Beats me... it was a pretty casual exchange at a party; I likely wouldn't even remember it were it not for the followup.
The people who relayed the fact of his offendedness thought he was being silly (it came back to me in the context of "man, X was still grousing about you an hour after you left the party!"), but of course they would; I have no idea what other people thought.
I assume he has friends who took his side, though... pretty much everybody does.
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, isn't that what offense is?
Not quite. It is a subset of what offence applies to. There is some difference in nature between taking personal offence at a status transaction that is legitimate in general but you claim should not be applied to you and claiming that something violates the general moral code. This holds somewhat despite the natural inclination to blur the former into the latter.
Agreed that the word is ambiguous, and yes, any violation of a moral code (or a legal code, or a local policy) is an offense against that code... going 60 in a 55-mph zone is an offense against local traffic laws, for example.
The context I had in mind was the emotional state of offense, though.
Which seems to me to be what primates (and I suspect social mammals in general) experience when they perceive a potential infringement of their rights or privileges.
Agreed that this can be a reaction to both a violation of the actual local status hierarchy, and an act that violates an individual's preference without actually violating the local norms. But I would argue that in the latter case, what that individual is actually trying to do is change their position in the status hierarchy, by invoking an offense-response that would be appropriate were their status different. (Of course, they may not get away with it.)
So I'd say it's no coincidence that the former blurs into the latter... they are, it seems to me, invoking the same mechanisms.