SilasBarta 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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (769)
Tags: social

Comments (769)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SilasBarta 08 September 2012 08:29:56PM 7 points [-]

But the entire problem is that its welcomeness is not known until you do it! That's why you have to go based on general standards of acceptable behavior in judging an action, not by whether one person happened to not like it.

Imagine if Elevatorgate started from, not some elevator, but just the mere fact of Watson being "asked out", and she went on to say, "Whoa! Creepy! Guys, don't ever ask a woman out!"

Someone might protest, "Wait, what?"

Do you understand why it's not a very satisfactory answer to say, "It's okay, we're only talking about those cases where it's unwanted"? If so, apply it to your own answer.

Comment author: DanArmak 08 September 2012 08:43:23PM 0 points [-]

I reread your first comment and I think I just misread it the first time. (And you may have misread mine). I think we were just talking past each other.

We seem to agree on the important bits, namely that:

  • "Creepiness" is defined and measured by the "creeped out" response of recipients.
  • Therefore it depends not just on the action, but on the recipient and on how they perceive the actor.
  • Therefore an action is not definitely creepy or noncreepy until carried out; it is hard to predict reactions.
  • To the extent that the same action is perceived as creepy or not coming from different people, we shouldn't be talking about the action itself sometimes being creepy, but about the relevant differences between people.
Comment author: SilasBarta 08 September 2012 08:57:46PM *  4 points [-]

I don't think we agree, in particular, because I don't agree that the particulars of how a specific event was perceived are relevant for general rules of condemnation. That is, I'm fine with saying "Don't do X" if X really is widely disliked, regardless of the person, but not with giving the same advice, while actually predicating it on people's ability to know others' reaction in advance.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit