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army1987 comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong
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In comment threads to feminist blog posts in reaction to a particular xkcd comic, I've seen good reasons why certain people might be very pissed off when other people try to talk to them somewhere they cannot get away from, though they mostly apply to women being talked to by men.
I would always find people in aeroplanes less threatening than in trains. I wouldn't imagine the person in the next seat mugging me, for example, whereas I would imagine it on a train.
What do other people think of strangers on a plane versus on a train?
Hadn't noticed that before but now you mention it, I think I have a weaker version of the same intuition.
I expect part of it's based on status of course, but part of it could be that it would be much harder for a mugger to escape on a plane. No crowd of people standing up to blend into, and no easy exits.
Also on some trains you have seats facing each other, so people get used to deliberately avoiding each others gaze (edit: I don't think I'm saying that quite right. They're looking away), which I think makes it feel both awkward and unsafe.
For comparison, here's what I come up with when I introspect about my intuition:
The planes I'm on usually have higher people density than the trains I ride.
People seem more likely to step in if a fight breaks out on a plane than on a train. (Although I wonder why I believe that, since I've never witnessed a fight on a plane. Maybe I'm influenced by point 1. I guess fliers are also quite proactive nowadays about piling on people who get violent on planes.)
Passengers on planes are screened for weapons before they board, and when they're on-board there's less room for them to take a swing at me than on a train.
Someone who confronts me on a plane is less likely/able to follow me home, or to somewhere isolated, than someone who confronts me on a train.
I don't see a difference.
I could understand if it was persistent unwanted communication, but the dude is just trying to break the ice for Odin's sake. Just ignore him or tell him you'd rather not chit chat. How difficult is that?
Surprisingly difficult if you've been trained to be "nice".
Sucks to be that person. Solution! Don't be that person!
Or, more precisely, if you are that person then do the personality development needed to remove the undesirable aspects of that social conditioning.
(You can not control others behaviour in the past. Unless they are extraordinarily good predictors, in which case by all means wreak acausal havoc upon them to prevent their to-be-counterfactual toxic training.)
Yes, that is precisely the meaning I intended.
I'm amazed.
I've been furious at the way you apparently discounted the work it takes to get over niceness conditioning, and the only reason I haven't been on your case about it is that I was distracted by wanting to be nasty-- but I lack the practice at flaming people.
Both nice and nasty are errors, although I can imagine nasty being useful as a learning exercise on the way to curing oneself of niceness.
I didn't mean to belittle the effort (although that is a fair reading of what I wrote). Just to say that that is the task to be done, and the thing to do is to do it, whatever effort it takes. aelephant's comment above, that's what I would call dismissive.
Thanks for saying it was a fair reading.
I'm not sure why I found your comment that much more annoying than aelephant's. I have a hot button about being given direct orders about my internal states, so that might be it.
It's possible that practicing niceness could be a learning exercise on the way to curing nastiness, too, but we're both guessing.
I've heard stories of men who react very, very badly when women try this.
I can attest from personal experience that it's not only women to whom people will sometimes react very negatively. This is one of the factors which has conditioned me into being less comfortable attempting to politely disengage than continuing a conversation I don't want.
With three lines and a half's worth (on my screen) of blathering before you have even said “Hi” to him.
On the bright side, that particular kind of blathering signals someone who's probably self-aware and open to a similarly rambling, self-referential reply. So I'd feel OK parrying pragmatist's opener with something that's also explicit & meta-conversational, e.g.: "Ah, we're doing the having-a-conversation-about-having-a-conversation thing, and now I feel like I have to match your openness about your awkwardness, so I'd better do that: I find it awkward to try to manufacture conversation with somebody in a cramped, uncomfortable, noisy environment for hours. Fortunately, I mostly just want to sleep on this flight, and I brought a book in case I can't, so you don't have to worry about me nervously stealing quick glances at you."