chaosmosis 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: chaosmosis 09 September 2012 03:57:40AM *  17 points [-]

Creepiness is bad.

But, I've seen labeling people as creepy used as an extremely Dark Arts sort of tactic. The problem is, if someone is labeled as creepy, it becomes very difficult for them to justify themselves to other people, or to confront those who've labeled them. People use the representativeness heuristic and see that they expect a creeper to deny their creepiness and to confront the people who are calling them creepy, so for the wrongly accused it's very difficult to ever clear their names in the eyes of the general public.

There were a couple guys in my high school who admittedly had big personality flaws, but then girls preyed on them by intentionally putting the guys in positions where the guys thought the girls were showing interest, but then the girl could immediately retreat to calling the guy creepy. This was useful for discrediting people the girls didn't like, as well as making the girls seem more desirable. This always really pissed me off and made me sad at the world.

(Full disclosure: something like this happened to me in middle school. I waited it out and made extra efforts to signal not creepy behavior. It worked, but only to a limited extent, people were always cautious when they were first getting to know me and it made me a bit sad. In high school, I never had any issues.)

Comment author: fubarobfusco 09 September 2012 06:19:00AM *  -2 points [-]

Fortunately, this isn't just about some kind of abstract "being creepy" XML tag getting attached to individuals. It's about specific behaviors which individuals can learn not to do.

There were a couple guys in my high school who admittedly had big personality flaws, but then girls preyed on them by intentionally putting the guys in positions where the guys thought the girls were showing interest, but then the girl could immediately retreat to calling the guy creepy. This was useful for discrediting people the girls didn't like, as well as making the girls seem more desirable.

Sounds like pretty typical but unfortunate levels of high-school harassment and hazing. That's not what we're talking about here.

Comment author: faul_sname 09 September 2012 10:41:39PM 8 points [-]

Fortunately, this isn't just about some kind of abstract "being creepy" XML tag getting attached to individuals.

In places where there is a socially determined reputation, that's exactly what it's like.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 10 September 2012 01:09:41AM -1 points [-]

Oh, I don't disagree that happens. But it's not what this thread — and, particularly, the "how not to be creepy" sources in the OP — are about.

Comment author: chaosmosis 10 September 2012 04:54:19AM 3 points [-]

The first paragraph, specifically, is more relevant. I don't really think anyone here is planning on maliciously accusing anyone else of being creepy in order to exploit the representativeness heuristic. But I'm worried that someone with good intentions might move too quickly in determining whether someone is really creepy or not, and that bad consequences would result.

The key is just to question whether a noncreepy person could also have reasons for engaging in behavior X, before concluding that they're creepy and then immediately proceeding to take action. If there's no reminder to look for what does or does not distinguish the two people then you'll end up privileging whatever hypothesis you already had in mind, which as a result of this post would be the creepiness hypothesis.

Comment author: Douglas_Reay 10 September 2012 06:16:00AM -2 points [-]

Does the label and motive matter?

Or is the important thing whether someone is engaging in a behaviour that they have control over, that is having negative consequences, and they are failing to take steps to change this even when the negative consequences are pointed out to them?

Comment author: chaosmosis 10 September 2012 05:04:38PM *  4 points [-]

Not all actions which are labeled creepy have negative consequences or are exclusive to creepy people. If someone does an action without negative consequences but that action is then labeled creepy prematurely without considering the motive behind it, then this premature labeling will have negative consequences. Bad labels mean bad models of reality which result in bad decisions. Mistaking someone for a creep when they're not precludes making friends with a potentially good person, and means your predictions of their behavior will be wrong.

You say that "they are failing to take steps to change this even when the negative consequences are pointed out to them". I am confused. You seem to be envisioning a very specific type of scenario here, and I don't know why you think that I would be envisioning the same scenario. Since when did my argument get restricted to instances where someone has been confronted with their creepiness and refused to change? My argument is meant to encourage caution in the people here are considering experiences from their own lives and trying to determine who is and isn't creepy, on a general overall sort of level, not to this very specific kind of instance that you mention.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 10 September 2012 04:51:35AM 3 points [-]

But the point is potentially relevant to any discussion where the label "creepy" is being applied.