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Swimmer963 comments on The Power of Reinforcement - Less Wrong
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Your position is that you have a certain emotional response to knowing someone is trying to modify your behaviour. My position is that I have a different emotional response. I can imagine myself having an emotional response like yours...I just don't. (Conversely, I can imagine someone experiencing jealousy in the context of a relationship, but romantic jealousy isn't something I really experience personally.) I don't think that makes either of us wrong.
Well, my position is that doing things like asking how someone is doing so as to reinforce behavior rather than because you want to know the answer is ethically bad. I used the example of the friend to try to motivate and explain that position, but at some point if you are totally fine with that sort of behavior, I don't have very much to argue with. I think you're wrong to be fine with that, but I also don't think I can mount a convimcing argument to that effect. So you've pretty much reached the bottom of my thoughts on the matter, such as they are.
I'm curious about whether your reasons for considering this kind of behaviour "unethical" are consequentialist (i.e. a world where people do X is going to be worse overall than a world where no one does X) or deontological (there are certain behaviours, like lying or stealing, that are just bad no matter what world they take place in, and using social cues to manipulate other people is a behaviour that falls into that class.)
Ah, I'm not a consequentialist or a deontologist, but I do think this is a case where intentions are parcticularly important. Doing this kind of reinforcement training to someone without their knowledge is characteristically disrespectful if you just do it to help them, but it may also be the right thing to do in some cases (I'm toning down my claim a bit). Doing it with the result that they are harmed is vicious (that is, an expression or manifestation of a vice) regardless of your intentions. So that puts me somewhere in the middle.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. Doing it when you know they don't (or would not) want you to is disrespectful.
This definitely seems false. It is the expected result, given information that you have (or should be expected to have) that can indicate viciousness, not actual results. For example, I could reward my children such that they never Jaywalk (still not quite sure what this is) and only cross the road at official crossings. Then one of my children gets hit by a car waiting at a crossing when they would have been fine crossing the street earlier. I haven't been vicious. My kid has been unlucky.
It the general case it is never the result that determines whether your decision was the right decision to make in the circumstance. It is the information available at the time. (The actual result can be used as a proxy by those with insufficient access to your information at the time or when differing incentives would otherwise encourage corruption with 'plausible deniability').
On the unlucky kid: fair enough. But using positive reinforcement to make someone violent or cowardly, even if you think you're benefiting them, is vicious. Thats the sort of case I was thinking about.
I disagree with you about the actual vs. expected result, but thats a bigger discussion.
On your account, is using positive reinforcement to make someone peaceful vicious? Virtuous? Neither?
It depends on whether or not they should be peaceful, I guess. But if they're not your child or student or something like that, then it's probably disrespectful at the least.
OK. Tapping out now.
Can you express your personal ethics explicitly and clarify where it comes from?
I'd be happy to try. Do you want a brief account specific to this topic, or something more general?
If you could trace your ethics backward from "it's unethical when people consciously use punishment/reward system to modify my behavior to their liking" to some basic ideas that you hold inviolate and cannot further trace to anything deeper, I'd appreciate it.
I think there are basically two aspects to our ethical lives: the biological and habituated arrangement of our emotions and our rationality. Our lives involve two corresponding phases. As children, we (and our teachers, parents, etc.) aim at developing the right kinds of emotional responses, and as adults we aim at doing good things. Becoming an adult means having an intellectual grasp of ethics, and being able (if one is raised well) to think thought one's actions.
When you use positive reinforcement training, you treat someone as if they were in the childhood phase of their development, even if the behavioral modification is fairly superficial. This isn't necessarily evil or anything, but it's often disrespectful if it stands in place of appealing to someone's ethical rationality. I guess an analogue would be using dark arts tactics to convince someone to have the right opinions about something. Its disrespectful because it ignores or holds in contempt their ability to reason for themselves.
I think I disagree with this because the brain is modular, an evolutionary hodge-podge of old and new subroutines each with different functions. Only a few of those modules are conscious, self-aware, deliberative thinkers capable of planning ahead and accurately judging the consequences of potential actions to decide what to do. The rest is composed of a series of unconscious impulses, temptations, and habits. When I say "I," I refer to the former. When I say "my brain", I refer to the latter.
And I am always trying to trick and manipulate my brain. If I'm on a diet, I'll lock the refrigerator door to make it harder to get a midnight snack. I'll go grocery shopping only when I'm full. I'll praise myself when I eat celery, etc.
Personally, I only identify with, approve of, and demand respect for those conscious, self-reflective modules, and the various emotions and habits that are harmony with them. And if someone who loves me wants to help me trick my brain into better aligning with my values, I'm all for it. Even if a particular technique to condition my brain requires that I don't know what they're doing.
And when it comes to reinforcing behaviors that align with my extrapolated volition ("What is OTOH likely to want to do, but is too scared/lazy/squicked out/biased to get herself to do?"), deliberate, considered, scientifically sound manipulation is probably better than the subconscious manipulation we all engage in, because the chances of getting undesired results are lower.
My objection is basically that it's disrespectful (to the point of being unethical) to do this sort of thing to someone without their consent. As with many such things, there are going to be cases where someone has not or cannot actually give consent, and so we have to ask whether or not they would do so if they had all the facts on the table. In these cases, it's a tricky question whether or not you can assume someone's consent, and it often best to err on the side of not assuming consent.
I notice that you put this in terms of someone you love manipulating your habits in accordance with your values. That sounds a lot like a case where someone is safe assuming your consent.
I was objecting, in the OP, to the lack of any discussion of what seems to me to be the central moral question in this kind of activity, as well as what I took to be the view that this kind of consent can be quite broadly assumed. With some very few exceptions, I think this is unethical.
The thing is, other people's actions and reactions will always sway our behavior in a particular direction, and our actions will do the same to others. We evolved to speak and act in such a way as to get allies, friends, mates, etc. - ie, make people like us so we can then get them to do things for us. Those who were good at getting others to like and help them reproduced more frequently than those who were not. Even if I were to agree that influencing others' behavior without their explicit knowledge and consent is unethical, I can't not do that.
My every smile, frown, thank-you, sorry, and nagging criticism will do something to affect the behavior of others, and they won't be thinking "Ah, she thanked me, this will have the effect of reinforcing this behavior." So if I can't avoid it, the next best thing would be to influence skillfully, not clumsily. In both cases, the other person's behavior is being influenced, and in both cases they are not explicitly aware of this. The only difference in the second case is that I know what I'm doing.
I definitely understand where you're coming from. I can empathize with the sense of violation and disrespect, and I agree that in a lot of situations such behavior is problematic, but I probably wouldn't agree with you on what situations, or how often they occur. This was my biggest problem with PUA when I first heard about it. I found it horrifyingly offensive that men might take advantage of the security holes in my brain to get me to sleep with them. But...confident, suave men are attractive. If a man were "naturally" that way, then he's "just sexy," but if someone who didn't initially start out that way explicitly studies how to behave in an attractive manner, that's creepy.
Why? It's not like no one's ever allowed to try to get anyone to sleep with them, and it's not like I would favor a strict rule of a complete, explicit disclaimer explaining, "Everything I say is with the sole intention of convincing you to have sex with me." (Such a disclaimer wouldn't even be true, necessarily. Human interaction is complex and multi-faceted, and any given conversation would have multiple motives, even if one dominates.)
So what's the difference between a man who's "just sexy" and a "creepy PUA" who behaves the same way? (We'll ignore some of the blatant misogyny and unattractive bitterness among many PUA, because many women find the abstract concept itself creepy, with or without misogyny.)
I think it's the knowledge differential, which causes a very skewed power balance. The naturally confident, extroverted man is unconsciously playing out a dance which he never really examined, and the woman he's chatting up is doing the same. When this man is replaced with a hyper self-aware PUA, the actions are the same, but the woman is in the dark while the man can see exactly why what he says causes her to react the way she does.
It's like a chess game between Gary Kasporov and a guy who only vaguely realizes he's playing chess. Yes, it's unfair. But I think the more practical solution is not making Kasporov handicap himself, but teaching the other guy how to play chess.
I think the line between conscious and unconscious influencing of behavior is thinner and more fluid than you seem to say, more like a sliding scale of social self-awareness. And the line between manipulation and self-improvement is even thinner. What if I decided to be much nicer to everyone all of a sudden because I wanted people to like me? The brain is not a perfect deceiver; soon I'll probably fake it til I make it, and everyone's lives would be more pleasant.
In the end, I treat emotional manipulation (which involves changing one's emotional responses to certain behaviors, rather than telling people factual lies) the way I treat offense. It's just not practical to ban offending people. I think it's more useful to be aware of what offends us, and moderate our responses to it. In the same way, it's not possible to ban influencing other people's behavior without their explicit knowledge; the naturally sexy man does this just as much as the PUA does. It's possible to have a norm of taking the other person's wishes into account, and it's possible to study the security holes in our own minds and try to patch them up.
I think there is a difference. You're right that all our behavior has or can have a reinforcing effect on other people. But smiles, and frowns, and thank-yous and such aren't therefore just reinforcers. When I smile at someone, I express something like affection, and if I don't feel any affection, I smile falsely. All these kinds of behaviors are the sorts of things that can be done honestly or falsely, and we ought to do them honestly. We do this with children, but with adults it's disrespectful.
It might be possible to smile at someone for the sake of reinforcing some behavior of theirs, and to feel affection all the while, but my sense is that either a smile is an expression of affection, or it is done for some ulterior end.
I think your initial reaction to PUA is spot on. It's a monstrous practice.
That's sensible, but realize that it's atypical. Make those expectations clear before you cry foul in a relationship.
If you make an appeal to the "adult" in most people, you'll confuse and infuriate them ("why is he lecturing me?"). Better (by default) stick with a smile when they do right by you, and ignore/brush off when possible if they don't.
Even without any feedback from others? Or are you OK with a specific kind of feedback? What kind would it be? Is explicitly telling a person what you expect of them OK? If so, when does it become not OK?
Yes, even without feedback, though its always helpful to have other people to think with. As to when telling someone what to do is okay and not, I can't imagine there's any general rule, but I also expect we're all familiar with the kinds of situations when you can do then and when not.
Just to be clear: if a hundred randomly-selected humans are presented with an identical list describing, in full detail, a hundred cases where person A tells person B what to do, and those humans are asked to classify those cases into acceptable, unacceptable, and borderline, your expectation is that most or all of those humans will arrive at the same classifications?
Because I find that extremely unlikely.
Really? To me, it depends substantially on how the list is generated. If we try to "rip from the headlines," I'd expect substantial disagreement. If we follow you around and watch you tell people what to do in your ordinary week, I expect more agreement.
In short, there are lots of points of disagreement about social interaction, but there are far more mundane and uncontroversial interactions than controversial ones.