bogus comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Douglas_Reay 09 September 2012 04:41AM

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Comment author: bogus 08 September 2012 05:45:19PM *  4 points [-]

Creepy behaviour is behaviour that tends to make others feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

It would be really good to have a definition that had some shreds of objectivity to it. As it stands your definition simply assigns to one person the responsibility for another person's feelings.

Um, no. There is legal precedent for this phrasing in related contexts, albeit with the understandable proviso that the behavior must be "reasonably believed" to be threatening. This is pretty much what we're dealing with here: the whole problem with creepy behavior (as opposed to merely being awkward or anti-social) is that it puts people's personal safety at risk.

Comment author: waveman 09 September 2012 05:41:56AM *  2 points [-]

If you add language that says "reasonably interpreted to be threatening" you are getting closer to an objective test. But that is not what was proposed here. The problem occurs when you assign to one person the responsibility for another person's feelings, irrespective of the context or reasonableness.