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JoeW comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong
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I have seen several posts in LW where someone moderately informed in a field comes to us with (my paraphrase) "there are many flaws and mistakes being made here, and time spent dealing with issues that are actually well understood in the field; here are some high-value expert resources that will quickly level you up in this field so you can at least now make interesting and important mistakes, rather than repeating basic mistakes the whole field moved past".
These have been universally well received (AFAIK) except for this one - and make no mistake, that's exactly what the OP was.
I strongly suspect in any other topic area, the defensiveness, cached behaviours and confirmation bias abounding in many of the replies here would be called out for what it is.
I also suspect in any other topic area, any links presented as "read these to quickly level up" would in fact be read before the post is being argued with. I strongly suspect that is not the case here because, well, basic arguments are being made which are addressed and dealt with in the links (sometimes in the comments rather than in the OP).
Variations on "but if we did that, all of us would constantly be in trouble" are the main ones I'm thinking of there. Since I'm sure there's a significant overlap of LW readers with SF fandom, many of you would also have seen this thoroughly dealt with in the Readercon debacle.
I suspect there is also a correlation here with approving of PUA and disapproving of anti-"creeper" measures, and am now fascinated by how we might confirm or deny that.
I'm not a PUA expert by any means, but from what I've read of the field its approach is complex. On the one hand, it concerns itself extensively with not coming off as creepy, as that's one of the easier ways to be profoundly unattractive. On the other, it acknowledges that building social skills entails a lengthy awkward phase while they're being learned, wherein an aspiring PUA might inadvertently seem creepy, and encourages an aggressive approach during this phase in order to gain skill faster. Offhand I couldn't say whether this approach inspires more or less lifetime creepy feelings than the alternative.
I'd model most of the PUA types I've read as being dismissive of at least some attempts to minimize creepy behavior on grounds of it trying to solve a wrong problem, but as being outright contemptuous of the behavior itself.
My experience of PUA memes for "improving success with women" is that they're written by men, cast interaction in competitive terms, treat all the parties' interests as zero sum, and their success relies on women having little or no agency and remaining that way.
I contrast that with intersectional social justice feminism, which is largely written by women, casts interaction in collaborative terms, rejects zero-sum framings, and its success relies on upgrading everyone's agency & ability.
I also can't help but think that if & when PUA works, its success inversely varies with a woman's intelligence, self-awareness and rationality. The opposite is true with social justice feminism.
I actually taught my girlfriend some of the PUA stuff so that she's better at seducing me! (with success)
I hope that doesn't make me any of those things :p
Well, I really don't see much hope for bridging the gap between pro- and anti-PUA camps on this board; both positions are already entrenched, and large portions of both sides have adopted the other as a Hated Enemy with whom no rational dialogue can be maintained. It's not a battle I'm interested in fighting; besides, that battle's already been fought. Several times. To no productive effect.
Speaking as someone who's fairly familiar with both sides yet identifies with neither, though, I think they have more in common than they're willing to admit. There's a great deal of adversarial framing going on, yes, to the point where you've got people like Heartiste who've built their reputations on it. But both sides are basically trying to advocate for greater agency and fulfillment within their scope and among their constituents, which sounds like a great opportunity for intersectionality if I've ever heard one. As to zero-sum framing -- well, "leave her better than you found her" is a well-known, and fairly mainstream, PUA catchphrase.
If I'm going to demonize anything here, this unspeakably stupid war-of-the-sexes model seems like by far my best target.
At the very least this doesn't seem to be clearly the case. To the extent this is an unstable property influenced by social norms, approved claiming of more certainty than actually present pushes the norms towards establishing that property more strongly. Since what you describe is a bad property ("no rational dialogue can be maintained"), I disapprove of the claim of certainty you've made.
Interesting perspective. I think the grandparent should make it fairly clear that I disapprove of this state of affairs and feel that entrenched members of both camps are, at best, wasting their time; on the other hand, I also feel that most of the cultural mass of the problem is out of our hands. This isn't an endogenous squabble of LW's; it's a wider cultural dispute that just tends to instantiate itself here because of our demographic placement (and our taste for metacontrarianism). And since for whatever reason it doesn't seem to partake of our norm of political detachment, I think we'll have a very hard time with it unless and until the conventional wisdom shifts one way or another.
I could be wrong. I hope I am.
I think that to the extent we have a conflict between "pro-PUA" and "anti-PUA" camps on LW, most of the conflict consists simply in deciding whether to cheer "yay PUA" or "boo PUA", and, relatedly, what specific memes to treat as central to the PUA memeplex. I suspect that if people were asked to endorse or repudiate specific pieces of concrete social advice, there'd be a lot less disagreement than there is over "yay PUA" or "boo PUA".
"What specific memes to treat as central" is very important part. I would say this is the part where many memetic wars are won or lost.
If you allow pro-X people to design the official definition of X, every time you use the definition you automatically provide applause lights to X. If you allow anti-X people to design the official definition of X, every time you use the definition you automacally provide boo lights to X.
A typical pro-X definition of X is something like: "X is a movement of people who want happiness and cookies for everyone". Far-mode applause lights; omitting the controversial details.
A typical anti-X definition of X is something like: "X is a movement containing evil low-status people (here are some extreme examples)".
For any group consisting of humans, you can create both definitions, and then pro-X and anti-X people will disagree on which definition is the correct one. The group more successful in popularizing their message has essentially already won.
I'd love to see Yvain's blog post you linked turned into a top-level LW post. I found it more elucidating that the Worst Argument in the World post, say.
Your testimony thereof gives an overwhelming impression that your experience with such memes comes either exclusively from or is dominated by second hand sources who are themselves hostile to the culture.
Yes. (And dating advice for men written by women gets a different label.)
A significant aspect of it, at certain phases of courtship, yes.
Nonsense.
This assumes that the will directing said agency does not wish to mate with or form a relationship with someone with the social skills developed by the PUA. As it happens the universe we live in enough people (and, I would even suggest most people) do prefer people with those skills
Those sound like noble ideals. It is plausible that there is a group of people who adhere to them. Did they come prepackaged with your prejudice or can you buy them separately?
I doubt that.
Social justice feminism is a strategy for attracting mates that can be compared in efficacy to skills developed with the active intent to attract said mates? That would be an impressive set of ideals indeed if true!
Mm, I agree I could know PUA better than I do. You're under no obligation to educate me, of course, but if you had a few links you thought exemplary for PUA at its best, I'd be much obliged.
I'm finding (scholarly, thoughtful) critiques of PUA and the seduction community from a feminist social justice perspective, but in case they're attacking PUA at its worst. I'll do some reading. I'm concentrating on inside-view critiques from people well versed in PUA techniques and the seduction community, there are some good links out there.
Putting this as charitably as possible, even if in fact there is nothing misogynistic or unjust in PUA, there is a vast amount of feminist distrust of it, and PUA doesn't seem to have responded well to those critiques (or even particularly to think they need to be responded to, as far as I can tell).
PUA is probably too far off-topic for this post and I'm willing to continue this elsewhere (Discussions?) or let it drop for now.
Here are a few quick counterexamples to your comments about zero-sum, lack of agency, lack of response to feminism, etc::
I think these should be sufficient to provide a shift in your opinion regarding what the field of "PUA" includes, even if you view these schools of thought as isolated examples. (They aren't the only such schools, of course; they just happen to be ones it was easy for me to find representative links for.)
See also Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser, a substantial overview of different sorts of PUA, a woman's experiences exploring the PUA subcultures, and some theory on the subject.
Has anyone read the book?
She picks up on something I find off-putting about much of the PUA material I've seen (and LW is almost the only place that I've seen PUA material). It seems to be set in a universe where no one likes anybody.
That is actually a good way of stating the difference between the material that I don't like, vs. the material I do. People who focus on the zero-sum aspects of mating and dating (i.e. both inter- and intra-gender competition) seem, well, creepy to me.
I suppose those folks might write off my concerns as simply saying they're displaying low status by focusing on those aspects, but I think the real issue, as you state, is simply that they seem to live in a universe where nobody likes anybody or has any positive intentions, and people who think otherwise are all just signalling or deluded. It's like if HP:MoR's Professor Quirrel was giving relationship classes!
(Luckily, this is not a universal characteristic of PUA theory, as Soporno and AMP demonstrate.)
[Edit: brain fart - I wrote "non-zero sum" when I meant "zero sum"]
Non-zero sum? I'm not sure that's the issue.
In theory, I think it would be possible to have an alliance-building PUA model of relationships, and it would still be Quirrelesque.
HughRistik had a different list of benign elements in PUA, I think-- but have any of the benign styles shown up at LW?
I'm not sure whether this is relevant, but it took me a while to put what bothers me about PUA as I've seen it into words, and longer than that to pull together the nerve to post about it.
I agree; it's just a symptom. "A universe where no one likes anybody" is a much better summation.
Define "shown up".
Reading the book now. I'm certainly less anti-PUA than I was before I started reading it., and I have much more sympathy for the guys who join the seduction community than I used to.
She picks up on something I find off-putting about much of the PUA material I've seen (and LW is almost the only place that I've seen PUA material). It seems to be set in a universe where no one likes anybody.
Yes, this!
It was written by a Less Wronger. I'm not sure whether that's ironic or not.
I read and enjoyed it.
Thank you, I'll take a look.
EDIT: Have read those links several times and digested them over the last few days. I am poking at why the third one bothers me (I think it's the "it's in their nature" statement).
Certainly the first two are good counter-examples to my earlier impressions. Thank you again.
Why would they find that worth their time?
Agree and my own reaction took this a step further---I was glad to hear that JoeW, as someone who seems to affiliate with people politically opposed to PUA, got the impression that the PUA community felt no obligation to engage or respond. I would have thought less of the community if it did.
PUAs are not political activists. They are people who enjoy, practice and develop a specific set of skills with a specific purpose. Their comparative advantage really isn't in engaging in moral and political debate to convince others that they deserve respect, acceptance or special treatment. Moreover acting as if you need to justify yourself (or your group) to others already represents a significant loss of standing. That is one aspect of politics in general that PUAs should be expected to be familiar with, since it overlaps so much with the rules of the social game that they are dedicated to mastering.
(This is different from simply explaining their own personal ethical values completely divorced from any reference to external critics and in terms of conveying information rather than giving excuse. That is something that PUA-instructor types seem to enjoy doing.)
What's the downside?
Adopting PUA techniques and values: arguably improves sex and/or relationship outcomes with some women. Visibly adopting and affiliating with PUA: definitely worsen sex and/or relationship outcomes with some (other but not wholly disjoint set of) women.
Addressing those perceptions might offset some of the latter (certain) penalty, and it's not clear to me that it would come at any reduction to the former (possible) bonus.
I'm still reading the "PUA at its best" links so I don't know enough to say how costly this approach is. Perhaps you're saying you think it's better to cut your losses, completely give up on any women alienated by PUA and focus on those who don't notice or don't care?
Time and effort spent are a very real costs as is opportunity cost.
I'm not sure why women who are alienated by PUA would be off the table as potential romantic partners. I'm sure it has a cost, but I'm not sure the kind of person who sough out PUA in the first place doesn't still have better odds using game and paying the price, rather than doing what he would have done before.
I'm sceptical of claims that PUA being practised in the wild is easy to spot. To bring in ancedotes from my social life, I've had both false positives and negatives when guessing which strangers (later acquaintances and friends) where running game and which had never heard of it.
I've had very positive experience talking to my gfs about game as I see and practice it (sprinkled with general Hansonian observations about status and behaviour), they are very interested and often talk to me about it. One became very enthusiastic to the point of reading the same gaming blogs as I do and reporting gossip in the jargon, which makes it almost fun to listen to. Not to mention the opportunity for great inside jokes. :)
I think it made communication about desire, sexuality, socialization and relationships easier. Maybe I would be even better off if I hadn't shared this interest or didn't have it in the first place, but I don't think that is the case.
That was my question though, albeit not stated so clearly: is it really an opportunity cost?
Does fetishising intelligence, sex positivity, communicative effectiveness, intersectional social justice, and active informed consent really turn off mainstream conventional women? Serious question; I seldom have relationships or sex outside that constellation of characteristics.
The thing is convincing people on the internet about something is very different from talking to people in your personal life.
I'm just wondering what is intersectional social justice? I found it challenging to unpack the meaning behind the words used in the wikipedia article. Please try to idiot proof the explanation in accordance with this while retaining as much accuracy as possible.
Some of these, yes. PUA makes it easier to connect with women who have no preference for thinking about sex/sexuality - or even gender relations - in such active and overt terms.
Furthermore, PUA often seems very focused on specifically-sexualized enviroments in which nobody is actually speaking directly (A particular sort of high-class Los Angeles nightclub seems to be the original target) and really ruthlessly optimizing.
Plus wayyyyyyyy too much Dark Arts.
The links above do not strike me as good advice. For people with sufficiently low social skills, the only way to follow the advice above is to never interact with anyone ever (i.e. it is easy to fail the eye contact test if you do not know how to initiate conversations, or if you happen to hang out with a group that does not make eye contact often, something which is particularly common among nerdier folk). Furthermore, one can break some of these rules and yet still be non-creepy; never following a group along when they go to do something is a recipe for meeting many fewer people, and not necessary to avoid creepiness if you are decent at interpreting social cues. I therefore do not think the parallel you are drawing is a valid one.
As a further point, the post on weight-lifting a while back was not well-received, despite being more correct than this post. What is has in common with this post is a lack of citations back to reputable-seeming sources (such citations definitely do not guarantee the correctness of a post, so I am not claiming this to be good grounds for discrimination, but am pointing it out as a difference).
ETA: I have no strong opinions on PUA, I think decreasing creepiness is a good thing, but I don't think that these are great resources for doing so. I definitely got something out of them --- for instance, an outside view awareness of the different responses that men and women tend to have when a man is creeping on a woman --- but it is hard to endorse the advice given in aggregate.
Do you have better advice to give?
For someone with low social skills, who has been told that their behaviour is making other people uncomfortable, maybe the correct course of action is not to continue those behaviours until they have improved their social skills sufficiently to be able to do them without making other people uncomfortable.
Because what's the alternative? Asking people to put up with X's behaviour that makes them feel creeped out, because "Oh dear X can't help it, they have poor social skills." ?
If you think that is your best course of action, then by all means follow it. That wasn't the point I was trying to make (like I said, I think decreasing creepiness is a good thing). Although I would suggest that if you really want to improve social skills, you can do much better by reading Luke's post on romance and accompanying references. Also, by reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. Take this with a grain of salt as I haven't read the books myself but am mainly going off of skimming the subject matter. (You may wonder why something on romance matters for non-creepiness; it's not as directly related as I would like, but creepiness is essentially the result of unwanted sexual advances, which can be as implicit as a guy showing inordinately high amounts of attention towards a girl that is not attracted to him.)
The point I was trying to make was that this post would be analogous to the situation where, say, Luke or Yvain were to write a post that was substantially and obviously technically incorrect, but such that following the advice in that post was better than not doing anything. I therefore disagree with JoeW's claim that poor reception towards this post indicates sexism (although there are plenty of comments elsewhere in this thread that do indicate sexism, or at least extreme social naievete, as well as plenty of comments coming from poorly-thought-out feminist positions; there are also plenty of comments that indicate not sexism but a valid critique of the poorly-thought-out feminist positions, as well as well-thought-out feminist positions; the story is not as black-and-white as most are trying to make it out to be, and there is plenty of noise and bias to go around).
You are looking at this as being advice aimed at the person being creepy, and evaluating whether the information in the links would be practical at helping them improve their social skills.
Have you considered it from the perspective of it being aimed at someone who is uncertain about the validity of their feeling there is something wrong in a group, and whether the information in the links would help them identify the problem and confirm to them that it is actually a problem that they do have a right to have addressed?
Ah, I misinterpreted your original comment and did not realize you were the OP. Re-reading the top-level post, I now realize that you did in fact intend this to be aimed not just at the perpetrators but at the community as a whole.
I now feel slightly confused about something, but it's hard to point to what exactly. So instead of trying to figure it out, let me just re-iterate that I approve of the point that if anyone feels uncomfortable it is the group's responsibility to fix that. I also approve of global over local (i.e. this person is here to hang out with all the other people here, not for my sole benefit). I suspect that a large portion of the people on this thread would also approve of both of these. The issue seems to be more the part where the links are also framed as social advice, where I now (I think?) see that they were not intended as such, but instead as a set of restraints to place on someone who is burning the commons.
I am probably at fault for this, but I did not understand any of that until I reread the OP. I interpreted it in the context of intended social advice. If other people did as well, I think that explains some of the reactions (but not all of them --- I think some of it results from having previously had bad experiences with feminist memespace, in the same way that some of the anti-FAI / anti-SingInst discussion results from having had bad experiences with the FAI/SingInst memespace). If it is not too late, your cause may be helped by unambiguously reframing it in the way you intended (if I am correct about what you intended).
I wasn't sure of the etiquette about editing top level posts.
I've now added a clarification to the end of the post. Thank you for the suggestion.
You want to give people that are acting creepy advice that it's at least slightly in their interest to follow, otherwise they will ignore it.
I, for one, have read these. They come up any time feminism rubs up against male geekdom, like blisters. Hopefully they do some help, but change is hard, and that's just how social skills are: they're skills, and acquiring them is and requires serious change on your part as a person.
This is obfuscated by other things, like hey, sometimes it is the other person's problem. Not all the time. Maybe even only rarely. But sometimes. And the temptation to make that excuse for yourself is very strong, even if you do know better.
The defensiveness isn't a good thing, but it's certainly understandable, and if you're part of the contrarian cluster, there's going to be some instinctive, automatic pushback. I know there is in me. Plus the criticism is leveled at (one of) my (our) tribe. What did you think was going to happen?
Naively, I thought the LessWrong commitment to being, well, less wrong, would extend to all opportunities to be less wrong.
I know attempts to discuss privilege here have typically not gone well, which is a pity because I think there's some good argument that privilege is itself a cognitive bias - a complex one, that both builds on and encourages development of others.
It's not clear to me that privilege is a bias of its own, so much as aspects of privilege are examples of other biases, like availability bias.
I think the primary reason that attempts to discuss privilege don't go well is because the quality of most thought on privilege is, well, not very good. People who volunteer to speak on the topic generally have strong enough opinions that they can't help but moralize, which is something to resist whenever possible.
I think another problem with discussions of privilege is that they frequently sound as though some people (in the ways that they're privileged) should have unlimited undefined obligations and other people (in the ways that they're not privileged) should have unlimited social clout.
Or is that what you mean by moralizing?
I would love to see a discussion of privilege in terms of biases. Obvious ones include: attribution errors (fundamental & ultimate); system justification; outgroup homogeneity & ingroup superiority biases.
I hadn't considered the availability heuristic but yes, that's probably relevant too.
That's actually a really interesting thought. I am white and male and straight and am very aware of my privilege, and also am very interested in heuristics and biases and how they are part of our thought patterns. I consider myself very much a feminist, and also a realist in terms of how people actually work compared with how people would like each other to work. I might brood on this for a bit and write about it.
This could be something that's kicked around in Discussions for a while perhaps?
Related, I'd like to see defensiveness discussed through the lens of cognitive bias. It has wide impact; it can be improved; improving it likewise has wide impact on one's life. I think it's one of those meta-levels of improvement where upgrades significantly affect our ability to upgrade many other things.
There's also the fundamental attribution error ("they're not doing a good job because they're just lazy").
Of course, but you don't get surprised when we turn out to be a bunch of apes after all.
The function of JoeW's comment is not informing you "I put P(LWers behaving badly)<.05" but "If I remind LWers of a virtue they profess to like, they may alter their behavior to be more in line with that virtue."
Well put. I lean towards the "requiring more of male geeks" side, but that's a really good analysis.
Exactly. (Interestingly, the clash that led me to write that post had the shoe on the other foot, so to speak.)
I'm sorry, do you have actual evidence that reading Yet Another List of Don'ts will "quickly level you up" in this field? Or that the TC is an expert? Or that they are even high-value resources? Can you identify even one person that has (as you put it) gained a few levels from these resources?
Being extremely doubtful of this parallel you've made, I can't buy your claim that this is being treated differently.
I saw the main gains of the top post being the links. I don't agree that the links contain only "don'ts"... but, well, so what if they did? If there are clumsy don'ts as routine mistakes, learning to recognise and avoid them is surely an improvement?
As these aren't academic peer-reviewed articles, I can't give you objective evidence in the form of citations and impact measures. What sort of metrics could one provide that would make them more convincingly expert? If these aren't the best experts available I too would like to know who is better so as to learn more.
If you're saying you'll accept anecdotes as weak evidence, then yes, I am one data point there. :) Comments particularly on the pervocracy and Captain Awkward links contain other such claims.
As many have said - both here, and perhaps ironically, in many of those links too - it's more productive to focus on behaviours rather than on labels for people. "Creeper" is a very laden term, probably very similar to "racist" - most of us don't want to think of ourselves as someone with all the imputed characteristics of those labels, and we get defensive.
When I started being able to focus on behaviours (my own and others'), I recognised a number of ways in which my own biases, ignorance and negligence were costing me flawless victories in many social & business settings. This is why I wonder why there's so much pushback, as the upgrades in general communication/social/people skills from a good reading of privilege and social justice are useful everywhere.
Rationality & intelligence should win, right? If smart women with better people skills than us have specific practical advice, how can we lose by listening carefully and bypassing our defensiveness? Even if only 1% of it were useful, don't you want that 1%? I do.
For the reason I gave earlier: the weird stuff happens because they don't know what the superior option is, not because they're under the impression that it was a great idea all along. Moreover, to borrow from EY's felicitous phrasing, non-wood is not a building material, non-selling-apples is not a business plan, and non-hugs-without-asking is not a social adeptness enhancement method.
you should probably avoid implying that they met such a standard with a statement like:
I accept anecdotes as weak evidence. I accept self-reports as weak(er) evidence. I do not, however, accept that this evidence suffices given the strength of your claim (and confidence in it), nor do I accept the comparison to the other articles you mentioned.
These are good points, and I don't have great answers to them.
My weak answer is that in a field that isn't well represented in peer-reviewed academic journals, we still have to sift it by some measures. I agree self-reports are close to worthless - we could find self-reports extolling the virtues of astrology and homeopathy.
My other weak answer is that Elevator-Gate and responses to the discussion of forming a Humanist+ community make it abundantly clear that the atheist/rationalist movement is widely perceived by a lot of smart women as both passively a horrible place to be and actively hostile to anyone who says so. I haven't tried exhaustive online searches but I'm not finding even 1% of the same data volumes from women saying they find atheist/rationalist space actively attractive because of these attitudes.
I like your point about non-wood, but if someone tells you you are stepping on their foot, non-stepping-on-feet probably does need to figure prominently in your short term decision tree.
(Great link, it's short, it's to the point.)
If someone is routinely stepping on feet, it would make more sense to find out why, and offer non-destructive ways of accomplishing that. For example, if they're stepping on feet to get attention, then offering the general rule of "don't step on feet" is just setting yourself up to write an unending list of articles about "... or lift people in the air", "... or play airhorns", "...or dress as a clown", etc.
(And I know, "you're not obligated to fix other people's problems", but once you've decided to go that route, you should take into account which methods are most effective, and "don't [do this specific failure mode]" isn't it.)
I find I agree with everything you've said, yet I'm still wondering what happens to the poor person whose foot has been stood on.
Perhaps I'm just restating and agreeing with "no obligation to fix others", but the comments in the CaptainAwkward link address this specifically: the approach you describe still makes the person transgressing boundaries the focus of our attention and response. I find that caring about why someone routinely steps on feet is quite low on my list, and (perhaps this is my main point) something I'm only willing to invest resources in once they (1) stop stepping on people's feet and (2) agree and acknowledge they shouldn't be stepping on feet.
I'm also a bit skeptical of the idea you peripherally touch on, but we're seeing in a lot of the comments in this post, that avoiding the "creeper" equivalent on stepping on toes is a tough bar to clear and is unfair to ask of someone with deficits in social/people/communication skills. I think it's very telling that such people seldom seem to get into boundary-related trouble with anyone they recognise as more powerful than them (law enforcement; airport security; workplace bosses).
There was that study about (average, neurotypical) men's supposed deficits in reading indirect communication compared to women that found that it's basically rubbish - they can do it when they think they have to, and they don't with women because they think they don't have to. (Link is to non-academic summary, but has the links to the journal articles.)
I'm wandering well past your point here but you reminded me of this. :)
Certainly, if your main priority is stopping this behavior, that affects how your respond to it. But once you've decided to write articles telling the creeps how to act at events, and the advice is something other than "never go to events, just be alone", then I think you need to offer advice more than "don'ts".
And so if you've closed off the "they should just go away" route, then I think you have no choice but to offer solutions that avoid having to write the infinite list of articles about "... or dance Irish jigs at random, either". And that means saying what to do right.
I've never suggested that. That is an easy bar to clear indeed. My point is that clearing every such bar without positive advice (about what to do rather than not do) is hard. And so, again, you can certainly take the "who cares if they just never come at all?" approach, but since these articles don't go that way, they have to do better than "don'ts".
How is that relevant to the non-neurotypical creep type we're concerned about here?
I am willing to attempt a separate Discussion post that attempts to put together specific, practical, measurable "do this (and here's why)" techniques from a rationalist approach. (Or as close as possible; there won't be a lot of peer-reviewed scholarly research here, but there is some.)
If there's interest in this, I'd welcome assistance and critiques. I'm not stonewalling but I'm feeling we've wandered a bit too far from the OP.
I'm not saying either way which it is, but if only 1 percent is useful, that doesn't mean the other 99 percent is neutral. It could very well be BAD.
Mm, that's fair. I don't think anything should be taken uncritically.
I agree with you that the socially awkward among us could reap large benefits by implementing these "anti-creeper measures". That's because we live in a society where such "creepy" behaviors are deemed unacceptable, and in order to fit into a society, one has to follow that society's norms.
However, I think many people on this thread have a problem with these norms existing, and that's what they're upset about; they'd like to combat these social norms instead of acquiescing to them. And I can certainly see why a rationalist might be opposed to these norms. The idea of "creepiness" seems to be a relatively new social phenomenon, and since it emerged, people have gotten much more conscious about avoiding being "creepy". Most of the discussion in the comments has been about unwanted physical contact, but another part of creepiness is unwanted verbal communication. Social norms seem to cater increasingly to the oversensitive and easily offended; instead of asking oversensitive people to lighten up a bit, we often go out of our way to avoid saying things that will offend people. And of course, any social norm that prevents people from communicating their beliefs and opinions honestly is contrary to the goals of the rationalist movement. It may then be of interest to rationalists to fight this increase in sensitivity by encouraging open discussion, and discouraging taking offense.
Of course, to actually change social norms, we would first have to infiltrate society, which requires gaining basic competence in social skills, even ones we disagree with.
It isn't clear to me that the connotations of "oversensitive" as it's used here are justified. Some people suffer, to greater or lesser degrees, in situations that I don't. That doesn't necessarily make them oversensitive, or me insensitive.
There are some things we, as a culture, are more sensitive to now than our predecessors were. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't believe a rational person, in a situation where honesty causes suffering, necessarily prefers to be honest.
All of that said, I certainly support discouraging people from suffering, given the option. And I support discouraging people from claiming to suffer when they don't. But I don't support encouraging people to keep their mouths shut when they suffer. And I suspect that many social structures that ostensibly do the former in reality do the latter.
What the whuh? Perhaps the label is new (though I find that implausible too), but I really don't think the behaviour as an observed phenomenon is. What do you base your statement on?
Hmm, I think I meant that the label is new, as well as the increased social consciousness of creepiness. A couple years ago, I realized that at my college, the two things everyone wanted to avoid being were "awkward" and "creepy". I could tell because people would preface comments with "this is super awkward, but" or "I don't mean to come across as creepy, but". Usually, the comments would be anything but awkward or creepy, but prefacing the comment does a couple of useful things:
The speaker safeguards himself against being judged by anyone who might possibly find the comment awkward/creepy, or on the threshold of awkward/creepy. If he knows that he's being awkward/creepy, at least no one will think he's so socially maladjusted that he's doing it by accident.
The speaker demonstrates that she's not awkward/creepy. I mean, if she's worried about a comment as innocuous as /that/ being perceived as awkward/creepy, she's certainly not going to do anything /actually/ awkward/creepy!
The conspicuous self-consciousness and constant safeguarding against awkward/creepiness always annoyed me, so I'm likely responding to that as much as I'm responding to the content of this thread.
EDIT: Maybe I'm completely misinterpreting the social situation. Maybe in the past, people were unable to express anything potentially awkward/creepy for fear of being seen as such. And maybe the increased social consciousness and explicit prefacing allow people to discuss ideas or opinions that they previously wouldn't have been able to say aloud at all.
You're just asserting that your preferred level of sensitivity is better than other people's higher preferred level. You call them "oversensitive and easily offended", which assigns your preferences an apparently objective or otherwise special status, but you don't give a reason for this. What reason does anyone else have to go along with your preferences instead of their own?
What reason does lucidian have to go with their preference level instead of his own.
I'm not saying he has any such reason. But neither does anyone else have a reason to go along with his preferences.
Well, the OP was about the first and not the second.
Actually society mostly has no problem at all with these behaviours, which is why the creeper memes flourish. The success of high-status creepers critically relies on this.
But if I grant you your point, I'm reading what you say as the benefit of not being a creeper is conformity with supposed anti-creeper norms. Is that what you meant? Because if so, er, I would have thought the benefits of not being a creeper were the upgrades from no longer seeing women chiefly (or solely) as mating opportunities.