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Esar comments on The Power of Reinforcement - Less Wrong
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If you don't know you're manipulating someone, you're not manipulating someone. Manipulation is an intentional behavior, like lying, or congratulating, or taking a vow. Knowing what you're doing is part of doing it.
Yeah, I pretty much disagree with this statement completely.
That's... incredible to me. Do you disagree that there is such a category (i.e. actions you have to know you're doing in order to be doing them at all), or that manipulation falls under it?
I disagree that manipulation falls under it.
Do you agree that manipulation can be intentional (lets call this Imanipulation) And that what Luke is advising is the intentional kind?
I agree that manipulation can be intentional, certainly.
I agree that the examples Luke is talking about are intentional ones, but I suspect that's rather incidental. To talk about it as "the intentional kind of manipulation" strikes me as misleading in the same sense that, while I agree that his example of Anna and Alicorn manipulating Eliezer was manipulation of a man by women, I would consider it misleading to refer to it as "the heterosexual kind of manipulation."
For example, if I practiced positive-reinforcement conditioning so assiduously that I started doing it without having to form explicit intention to do it (in the same way that I don't always form the explicit intention to catch a ball flying at my face before catching it), I expect that Luke would endorse doing it just the same; the fact that it's intentional in one case and not the other just wouldn't matter.
Actually, now that I think about it, what's your take on that? That is, if I practice modifying others' behavior until I reach the point where I can do it instinctively, without an overt intention-forming stage, does it suddenly become ethically acceptable for me to do so? (Since, after all, it's no longer manipulation, on your account.)
I didn't follow this at all.
Say I practiced my swing so assiduously that I could hit a 90mph fastball without thinking (indeed, there is no time to think). Would you say that every time I knock such a pitch into the outfield, I've done so unintentionally? The fact that I don't go through an explicit thought process (if such a category is intelligible) every time doesn't make a difference. A practiced liar and a pathological liar could both lie without thinking, but the former is doing something typically unethical (unless they're like a spy or something) while the latter is just, well, pathological.
The way I'd put your point here is that one can practice a behavior to the point where it becomes a basic action, something which requires no deliberation as to how it is done, like walking or taking a drink or saying a sentence in your native language. I don't think the basic vs. non-basic action distinction (if you think this is a fair way to put it) tracks the intentional vs. unintentional action distinction.
And the unintentional manipulations I'd exclude from this discussion are cases where you, say, ask how someone's kids are because you care, and this happens to make them feel good (largely because they think you care), as opposed to cases where you ask about their kids in order to make them feel good. Those unintentional cases fall outside the conventional use of 'manipulation', but I won't stand on semantics.
Nope. If you intentionally put yourself into a situation where you're going to have 90mph fastballs thrown near you, with the intention of hitting them with a baseball bat, I would not say that your subsequent hitting of a 90mph fastball with a bat was unintentional.
I'm going to drop this thread here, because I feel like you're sidestepping my questions rather than addressing them, and it's beginning to get on my nerves. (You are, of course, under no obligation to answer my questions. I'm also perfectly prepared to believe that you aren't intentionally sidestepping them.)
Well, I am sidestepping, because I think the point about practice is tangential to our discussion. Habitual insincerity is not therefore unintentional in the relevant sense.
This exchange may be helpful to understand TheOtherDave's point.
Thanks, that is helpful.