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Barry_Cotter comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong
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On the topic of the "poisonous pleasure" of moralistic critique:
I am struck by the will to emotional neutrality which appears to exist among many "aspies". It's like a passive, private form of nonviolent resistance directed against neurotypical human nature; like someone who goes limp when being beaten up. They refuse to take part in the "emotional games", and they refuse to resist in the usual way when those games are directed against them - the usual form of defense being a counterattack - because that would make them just as bad as the aggressor normals.
For someone like that, it may be important to get in touch with their inner moralizer! Not just for the usual reason - that being able to fight back is empowering - but because it's actually a healthy part of human nature. The capacity to denounce, and to feel the sting of being denounced without exploding or imploding, is not just some irrational violent overlay on our minds, without which there would be nothing but mutual satisficing and world peace. It has a function and we neutralize it at our peril.
You don't need to be angry to hit someone, or to spread gossip, or to otherwise retaliate against them. If you recognise that someone is a threat or an obstacle you can deal with them as such without the cloud of rage that makes you stupider. You do not need to be angry to decide that someone is in your way and that it will be necessary to fuck them up.
No; but it certainly makes it likelier that you will bring yourself to action.
Then why didn't humans evolve to perform rational calculations of whether retaliation is cost-effective instead of uncontrollable rage? The answer, of course, is largely in Schelling. The propensity to lose control when enraged is a strategic precommitment to lash out if certain boundaries are overstepped.
Now of course, in the modern world there are many more situations where this tendency is maladaptive than in the human environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Nevertheless, I'd say that in most situations in which it enters the strategic calculations it's still greatly beneficial.
I agree, or at least agree for situations where people are in their native culture or one they're intimately familiar with, so that they're relatively well-calibrated. What I wrote was poorly phrased to the point of being wrong without lawyerly cavilling.
To rephrase more carefully; you can act in a manner that gets the same results as anger without being angry. You can have a better, more strategic response. I'm not claiming it's easy to rewire yourself like this, but it's possible. If your natural anger response is anomalously low, as is the case for myself and many others on the autism spectrum, and you're attempting some relatively hardcore rewiring anyway, why not go for the strategic analysis instead of trying to decrease your threshold for blowing up?
I'm not sure if you understand the real point of precommitment. The idea is that your strategic position may be stronger if you are conditionally committed to act in ways that are irrational if these conditions are actually realized. Such precommitment is rational on the whole because it eliminates the opponent's incentives to create these conditions, so if the strategy works, you don't actually have to perform the irrational act, which remains just a counterfactual threat.
In particular, if you enter confrontations only when it is cost-effective to do so, this may leave you vulnerable to a strategy that maneuvers you into a situation where surrender is less costly than fighting. However, if you're precommitted to fight even irrationally (i.e. if the cost of fighting is higher than the prize defended), this makes such strategies ineffective, so the opponent won't even try them.
So for example, suppose you're negotiating the price you'll charge for some work, and given the straightforward cost-benefit calculations, it would be profitable for you to get anything over $10K, while it would be profitable for the other party to pay anything under $20K, so the possible deals are in that range. Now, if your potential client resolutely refuses to pay more than $11K, and if it's really impossible for you to get more, it is still rational for you to take that price rather than give up on the deal. However, if you are actually ready to accept this price given no other options, this gives the other party the incentive to insist with utter stubbornness that no higher price is possible. On the other hand, if you signal credibly that you'd respond to such a low offer by getting indignant that your work is valued so little and leaving angrily, then this strategy won't work, and you have improved your strategic position -- even though getting angry and leaving is irrational assuming that $11K really is the final offer.
(Clearly, the strategy goes both ways, and the buyer is also better off if he gets "irrationally" indignant at high prices that still leave him with a net plus. Real-life negotiations are complicated by countless other factors as well. Still, this is a practically relevant example of the basic principle.)
Now of course, an ideally rational agent with a perfect control of his external behavior would play the double game of signaling such precommitment convincingly but falsely and yielding if the bluff is called (or perhaps not if there would be consequences on his reputation). This however is normally impossible for humans, so you're better off with real precommitment that your emotional propensity to anger provides. Of course, if your emotional propensities are miscalibrated in any way, this can lead to strategic blunders instead of benefits -- and the quality of this calibration is a very significant part of what differentiates successful from unsuccessful people.
I agree with what you are saying and would perhaps have described it as "ways that would otherwise have been irrational".
I obviously need to work on phrasing things more clearly.
Anger functions as a strategic precommitment which improves your bargaining position. Two examples of a precommitment would be as follows (1) A car buyer going to a dealership with a contract stating that for every dollar they pay over a predetermined price (manufacturers price plus average industry margin presumably) they must pay ten dollars to some other party (who can credibly hold them to it). (2) Destroying your means of retreat when you plan aggression against another party, so that you have no motive to hold anything back, like Cortes did when he burned his ships upon landing in Mexico.
Now (1) is more like anger than (2) is because it's a public signal, but both of them reduce your options to strengthen your position, (1) in a negotiation, (2) as a committed, cohesive group. (1) is very much like throwing the steering wheel out the window in the game of chicken. Pretending your hands are tied and you can't go above/below the stated price without going further up the chain of command is actually one of those negotiating tricks that are in all the books, like the car salesman who goes "Oh, I'm not sure; I'll have to consult my boss" and smokes a cigarette in the office before coming back and agreeing to a lower price.
Swimmer963 asked me:
and I replied
which I think shows at least a weak grasp of how these precommitments can work; one builds a reputation, and given that we're meatbags with malleable conceptions of self, a reason to make such precommitments even when they cannot effect our reputation.
If "normally impossible" means very, very hard I agree completely; robust self-behavioural modification is hard even for small things, never mind for something as difficult to bring into conscious awareness or control as anger.
Would you consider expanding upon quality of calibration?
Yes, I think we understand each other now. Funny, I had the "must consult my boss" trick pulled on me just a few days ago by a guy whom I called up to haul off some trash. I still managed to make him lower the supposedly boss-mandated price by about 20%. (And when I later thought about the whole negotiation more carefully, I realized I could have probably lowered it much more.)
Regarding the quality of calibration, it's straightforward. Emotional reactions can serve as strategic precommitments the way we just discussed, and often they also serve as decision heuristics in problems where one lacks the necessary information and processing power for a conscious rational calculation. In both cases, they can be useful if they are well-calibrated to produce strategically sound actions, but if they're poorly calibrated, they can lead to outright irrational and self-destructive behavior.
So for example, if you fail to feel angry indignation when appropriate, you're in danger of others maneuvering you into a position where they'll treat you as a doormat, both in business and in private life. On the other hand, if such emotions are triggered too easily, you'll be perceived as short-tempered, unreasonable, and impossible to deal with, again with bad consequences, both professional and private.
It seems to me that the key characteristic that distinguishes high achievers is the excellent calibration of their emotional reactions -- especially compared to people who are highly intelligent and conscientious and nevertheless have much less to show for it.
If you're not angry, what would motivate you to do any of those things? If someone injures me in some way or takes something that I wanted, usually neither hitting them nor spreading gossip about them will in any way help me repair my injury or get back what they took from me. So I don't. Unless I'm angry, in which case it kind of just happens, and then I regret it because it usually makes the situation worse.
Put simply, sometimes displaying a strong emotional response (genuine or otherwise) is the only way to convince someone that you're serious about something. This seems to be particularly true when dealing with people who aren't inclined to use more 'intellectual' communication methods.
I think you're right. Mind you as someone who is interested in communication that doesn't involve control via strong emotional responses I most definitely don't reward bad behaviour by giving the other what they want. This applies especially if they use the aggressive tactics of the kind mentioned here. I treat those as attacks and respond in such a way as to discourage any further aggression by them or other witnesses.
This is not to say I don't care about the other's experience or desires, nor does it mean that a strong emotional response will rule out me giving them what they want. If the other is someone that I care about I will encourage them towards expressions that actually might work for getting me to give them what they want. I'll guide them towards asking me for something and perhaps telling me why it matters to them. This is more effective than making demands or attempting to emotionally control.
I'm far more generous than I am vulnerable to dominance attempts and I'm actually willing to consciously make myself vulnerable to personal requests to just behind the line of being an outright weakness because I have a strong preference for that mode of communication. Mind you even this tends to be strongly conditional on a certain degree of reciprocation.
Point being that I agree with the sometimes qualifier; the benefit to such displays (genuine or otherwise) is highly variable. We also have the ability to influence whether people make such displays to us. Partly by the incentive they have and partly by simple screening.
Seems true. Nevertheless I've never used it in this way. This may have more to do with my personality than anything: from what I've read here, I'm more of a conformist than the average Less Wrong reader, and I put a higher value on social harmony. I hate arguments that turn personal and emotional.
I might hit someone because they're pointing a gun at me and I believe hitting them is the most efficient way to disarm them. I might hit someone because they did something dangerous and I believe hitting them is the most efficient way to condition them out of that behavior. I might spread gossip about them because they are using their social status in dangerous ways and I believe gossiping about them is the best available way of reducing their status.
None of those cases require anger, and they might even make the situation better. (Or they might not.)
Or, less nobly, I might hit someone because they have $100 I want, and I think that's the most efficient way to rob them. I might spread gossip about them because we're both up for the same promotion and I want to reduce their chance of getting it.
None of those cases require anger, either. (And, hey, they might make the situation better, too. Or they might not.)
I suppose the context of my comment was limited to a) me personally (I don't have any desire to steal money or reduce other people's chances of promotion) and b) to the situations I have encountered in the past (no guns or danger involved). Your points are very valid though.
If you are dealing with someone in your social circle, or can be seen by someone in your social circle and you want to build or maintain a reputation as someone it is not wise to cross. Even if it's more or less a one shot game, if you make a point of not being a doormat it is likely to impact your self-image, which will impact your behaviour, which will impact how others treat you.
Even if in the short run retaliating helps nobody and slightly harms you, it can be worth it for repuatational and self-concept reasons.
Point taken. I am a doormat. People have told me this over and over again, so I probably have a reputation as a doormat, but that has certain value in itself; I have a reputation as someone who is dependable, loyal, and does whatever is asked of me, which is useful in a work context.