The Craft And The Community: The Basics: Apologizing

Yes; apology is an underrated consequentialist tool among nerds.

Some of the social function of apology can be understood game theoretically: Apology explicitly disavows a past action, allowing the one to whom the apology was made to leverage that confession in future: If someone apologises for something then does it again, then response can escalate because we have evidence that they are doing it even knowing that it's 'wrong'. The person who apologised knows this, and often the implicit threat of escalation if they do the same thing checks their future behaviour. Therefore apology is (possibly among other things) a signal, where the cost to apologising is the greater susceptibility to escalation in future cases.

Apology falls into a class--along with other things such as forgiving misdeeds, forgetting misdeeds, retribution, punishing an agent against its will, compensation for misdeeds--of things that would make no sense among sufficiently advanced and cooperative rationalists. Some things in that class (e.g. forgiveness) might already have been transcended by LW, and others (e.g. apology) are probably not possible to transcend even on LW, because the knowledge of other participants (e.g. confidence of their cooperativeness) required to transcend apology is probably too high for an online community of this size.

I would guess that the Bay Area rationalist set and its associates--which as far as I can tell is by far the most advanced community in the world in terms of how consummately instrumental x-rationality is forged into their swords--apologizes way, way, way more than the average LW'er, just like they talk about/express their feelings way more than people on LW typically do, and win because they're willing to confront that prospect of 'being vulnerable'.

HPMoR status:

"Well," said the boy. His eyes had not wavered from the Defense Professor's. "I certainly regret hurting you, Professor. But I do not think the situation calls for me to submit to you. I never really did understand the concept of apology, still less as it applies to a situation like this; if you have my regrets, but not my submission, does that count as saying sorry?"

Again that cold, cold laugh, darker than the void between the stars.

"I wouldn't know," said the Defense Professor, "I, too, never understood the concept of apology. That ploy would be futile between us, it seems, with both of us knowing it for a lie. Let us speak no more of it, then. Debts will be settled between us in time."

Two mistakes in thinking that my past self made a lot and others might also:

(1) Refusing to apologize if another party was 'more wrong'. Even if you're 99.9% right/innocent/blameless, you still have to make a choice between apologizing and not apologizing to the other person. If you refuse to apologize, things will probably get worse, because the other person thinks you're more wrong than you think you are, and they will see you not apologizing as defecting. If you apologize in a smart way, you can give an apology (which shouldn't make a difference but has the actual consequence where the other person is more probable to also apologise) without tying yourself down with too broad a commitment on your future behaviour, and without lying that you thought something was a mistake that wasn't.

(2) Using the fact that, in the limit as rationality and cooperation become arbitrarily great, apology is meaningless, as a rationalization for not apologising, when in fact you just feel embarrassed/are generally untrained and therefore not fit enough to apologise, and you're therefore avoiding the exertion of doing so.

I want to point out the difference between completely fake apologies for things one does not think were mistakes, and apologising for things that were mistakes even if the other person's mistakes were much greater. The former is less often the smart thing to do, and the latter is a lot more often than one might think. Once you get fairly strong, you can sometimes even win free points by apologising in front of a big group of people for something that everyone but the other disputant think is completely outweighed by the other disputant's actions.

E.g. 'I'm sorry I used such an abrupt tone in asking you to desist from stealing my food; it probably put you on the defensive.' If you really mean it (and you should, because you're almost certainly not a perfect communicator and there were probably things you could have done better), then often onlookers will think you're awesome and think the other person sucks for 'making you' apologise when you'd 'done nothing wrong'. Sometimes even the other disputant will be so disarmed by your unwavering 'politeness' that they will realise the ridiculousness of the situation and realise that you're being genuine and that they made a mistake, whereas when they thought you were a hostile opponent, it was much easier for them to rationalise that mistake.

Notice than in that example, your apology has not even constrained your future actions; everyone was so distracted by the ridiculousness of you apologising when you were innocent and the contrast it made between yourself and your opponent, that nobody will think to escalate against you in future the next time somebody steals your food.

That's why it's so important to know how to lose--so that you can win! Just like how the best things you could do to decrease your personal risk from fights are things like practising conflict defusion techniques, learning how to walk away from conflict, being less tempestuous, being situationally aware, or even just learning how to play dead/fake a seizure/panic attack, rather than something that just looks like winning, like practising flashy kicks.

[-]KnaveOfAllTrades12y260

6Ritalin12y

The setting most probable for such a situation would be a school environment, middle or high. The theft would not be about the food, it would be about bullying, and if the thief feels confident enough to even attempt this, it means that the victim is isolated and bereft of allies. In this context, I would expect them to laught at such a phrase, and I would expect the victim to lack the subjective perception of strength to even deliver it properly. We should do something on bullies and how to deal with them... for the sake of our children if nothing else.

7KnaveOfAllTrades12y

Fair. That's not a situation where I've actually used the 'overly apologetic' approach, it was just the first thing my imagination returned when I queried for a possible example that had the feel I was looking for. I had in mind (university) student life, where theft of food would (in my experience) not generally be due to bullying so much as greed and the perpetrator would probably know they made a mistake but might get defensive when called out. Also, the wording of that example is off, because (1) 'stealing my food' is relatively harsh and explicit and can feel like an accusation, hauling the perpetrator across the coals (2) 'probably put you on the defensive' could also be construed as a further dig. Better would be, 'I'm sorry I used such an abrupt tone when talking to you about this before; I think it might have seemed like I was attacking you?' (where 'this' is unambiguous due to conversational context). Raise voice at end of sentence to emphasise query. This encourages other person to make a snap decision between answering that it did and risk escalating or answer that it didn't to foster reconciliation. Often they will go for the latter even if they did kinda feel under attack, just because they're on the spot and don't want to risk defecting from the reconciliation process. And if they go the former route, you should take it graciously (using your rationality training to avoid being outraged), and if appropriate even thank them for letting you know. Actual example from my experience: Being woken up/kept awake at a somewhat unreasonable time by a housemate showering and moving around on the floor above (paper-thin ceiling) for a long time. Eventually I dragged myself upstairs in just boxer shorts (since I didn't want to get dressed, which seemed like it would waste time and drag me further away from sleep), knocked on their door, and garbled some sort of hinty explanation that they were making a fair amount of noise. Since both of us are somewhat bodily t

5Adele_L12y

Could you explain this specific example further?

3KnaveOfAllTrades12y

In the sense I'm using it here, forgiveness is an arbitrary ritual whereby the 'I'm angry at you about this' tag is switched to 'Nah, 's cool' for the forgiver. For the forgived, it's a way of saying that they're 'allowed' to stop feeling guilty about their past action because the forgiver has 'granted them' forgiveness. Forgiveness can be useful if you don't have the self-awareness to know when you've fully learned your lesson from a mistake, and someone attuned to it (the forgiver) is better positioned to discern when you have. It can also serve a social function as a 'lowering of weapons', or as a way of saying 'I am now over my emotional disgust and am ready to engage again', or so forth. Insomuch as forgiveness is an approximation to these various component propositions and is coloured by magical thinking (e.g. intuitively thinking that it makes sense to have an epiphenomenal 'mad at you' tag that should determine your disposition towards someone), advanced cooperating rationalists would not use forgiveness, because it encourages magical thinking about the various components, and this magical thinking is susceptible to lost purposes, e.g. turning into a game of 'winning forgiveness' that is divorced from the actual purpose of doing better in future or understanding mistakes better. 'Forgive and forget' is even worse; advanced cooperating rationalists would not permit each other to forget misdeeds, including their own, because that would be throwing away evidence. Of course, 'forget' here does not literally mean forget; misdeeds might be brought up again if the same mistake is made in future. But this is still a binary thing of 'Allowed to bring this up as evidence'/'Not allowed to' which is a crude approximation to the continuous and constant nature of past misdeeds as evidence about a person. I don't remember ever seeing a forgiveness ritual take place on LW, but I do know that I've seen lots of cases in an exchange where someone explained their own misdee

2jsteinhardt12y

I wish I could upvote this more than once.

0jetm12y

Why would this be true? If the other disputant was so clearly in the wrong, wouldn't it be obvious that that's what you're trying to do, thus voiding the effect?

2KnaveOfAllTrades12y

Sure, it wouldn't always be effective. But things that--when described linguistically to you--sound obvious can be subtle enough when they actually happen to others that they work anyway. Actually believing that you have acted imperfectly and can do better next time and conveying this in apology form makes it less obvious. And in fact, if you are trained to apologise for little things in the face of big things even without an audience, then your outward conduct may even be mostly indistinguishable between the two cases anyway.

[-]Anatoly_Vorobey12y230

My first reaction to this video is that it's pretty crappy. Its main message is to insist on the following sequence as everyone's moral responsibility: once you say something that someone perceives as hurtful, you're morally obliged not to "question their feelings", but to perceive that you screwed up, to feel bad, to apologize, and change your behavior so this doesn't happen again. The video repeatedly insists that your own thoughts about whether what you've done was improper are irrelevant.

Now, it should be completely obvious that this sequence is not going to be used as prescribed by anyone including the author of the video. If you were to approach him and say, "In your video, you identified my position as that of a fartbag, repeatedly, and that was very hurtful to me", he's not going to say, "Oh, thanks for telling me that, I'm sorry I screwed up, I feel really bad and will never do this again". He is, in fact, going to use his own judgement about the appropriateness of his behavior to decide whether or not he should apologize.

Why, then, is there no mention of your own moral judgement in the video, and instead, you're repeatedly encouraged not to ... (read more)

9Ritalin12y

I don't anticipate that. Seems like a perfectly acceptable hypothetical. Wait, what? How so?

[-]Anatoly_Vorobey12y190

I don't anticipate that. Seems like a perfectly acceptable hypothetical.

Not sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying that, for instance, if Hank Green were to correctly call someone's words racist, and that person were to complain to Hank Green that this labeling hurt them, Hank Green would thereupon feel bad, apologize, and refrain from using the word "racist" henceforth? I find that ridiculously unlikely.

social-justice-warriors terminology here, which is or course very much misaligned with rationality

Wait, what? How so?

In a myriad of ways, really. Off the top of my head, and I'll stop at five examples, and will skip "check your privilege", because that's just shooting fish in a barrel:

Status-seeking through Oppression Olympics is endemic.
The concept of "ally" seems to involve wilful submission to others' critical judgements and suspension of your own critical faculties. Witness the burgeoning genre of explanations of what a "good ally" must or must not do, which usually involve "shut up" and other similar admonishments.
Habitual pattern-matching of any opposition. Hence "derailing", the practice of

... (read more)

[-]Viliam_Bur12y110

Are you saying that, for instance, if Hank Green were to correctly call someone's words racist, and that person were to complain to Hank Green that this labeling hurt them, Hank Green would thereupon feel bad, apologize, and refrain from using the word "racist" henceforth?

I guess he would. Well, at least if the complaining person was a woman, or black, or disabled, or homosexual, or whatever. He would probably not stop using the word "racist", but he would be more careful to use it in a way that makes obvious that the word applies only to white straight males.

Ok, I was joking here, but here is a thing that really happened on a feminist blog: There was a discussion about trans people. All people were super politically correct, except for one person who repeatedly asserted that trans people are against the nature, because the Spirit of Nature told her so. When other people finally attacked that as cis-ism (or how exactly they call that), the person defended by saying that she was a Native American, and those were her Native American beliefs; and that the people who offended her beliefs should check their privileges and apologize. And... however incredibly that felt to me... they really apologized. I was completely shocked. So yes, this kind of behavior really is possible. It might not make sense to you or me, but it exists.

8Ritalin12y

"Not sure I understand you correctly" Indeed you misunderstood me; I meant that, if one were to confront Hank Green on this double standard, he would acknowledge it and amend his proposal accordingly, because, as far as I've been able from watching his show, he's an honest guy. Although, if one is feeling strong enough, the alternative you're describing can be practical, because racists and malicious bastards are people too, have loved ones and hopes and aspirations... and vulnerabilities. And hurting their feelings can be counter-productive to getting them to stop being in your way. So, if you can spare the effort and the love, you might as well be sorry that they're hurt, and say so. But that's, like, Messianic, All-Loving Hero grade awesomeness, and I believe it's perfectly fine to not feel or show "sympathy for the devil". Also, there might well be a huge level of arrogance in forgiving a villain for the hurt they inflicted on people other than you; it's not your place to do that. What are Oppression Olymptics? What is "check your privilege"? This said, I've seen some of the patterns you described occur. I don't know if I would call myself an SJW (I mean, what is that, precisely? I've only started hearing the term "social justice" this November, in relation to Kill la Kill of all things (which, by the way, is insanely awesome), but I know I am pretty committed to the promotion and advancement of gender and racial equality. This is partly because of the obvious and multiple utilitarian advantages on a universal level. It is also because I selfishly want to be able to enjoy poetry, flowers, fashion, be a vegetarian, drive an electric car, and, why not, fuck a dude if I feel like it, among many other things, without getting harassed and belittled and found undesirable for it by men and women alike, without it diminishing my social status and getting in the way of me getting things done. Now, this said, I've been faced with embarassing situations as an "ally",

[-]lmm12y100

What are Oppression Olymptics?

People "competing" by claiming they are more oppressed than other people, because of the group they're in.

What is "check your privilege"?

In its worst form, the position that you're not allowed to have a view on an issue (or that any possible view is invalid) because you are not the oppressed party.

I've only started hearing the term "social justice" this November, in relation to Kill la Kill of all things (which, by the way, is insanely awesome), but I know I am pretty committed to the promotion and advancement of gender and racial equality.

Hah. The cluster I think of as SJW would, I'm pretty sure, say you couldn't possibly be committed to the advancement of gender equality if you have a positive view on Kill la Kill.

It is also because I selfishly want to be able to enjoy poetry, flowers, fashion, be a vegetarian, drive an electric car, and, why not, fuck a dude if I feel like it, among many other things, without getting harassed and belittled and found undesirable for it by men and women alike, without it diminishing my social status and getting in the way of me getting things done.

I think that's an inadequ... (read more)

8NancyLebovitz12y

Another bad form (I'm not going to claim it's worse) is that your privilege means you're not allowed to have any opinion other than the social justice consensus.

[-]JoshuaZ12y140

There's a much saner form that's worth noting, when it is shorthand for "You overlap through at least one of the following categories:heterosexual, male, white, high socioeconomic bracket, and so you are less likely to have personal experience of the sort of problem that is going on here and might not notice when it occurs." This is essentially an issue of an illusion of transparency, in that often members of specific groups have issues that they are more aware of, and the amount of share experience leads to problems of inferential distance.

Essential agreement that the other two meanings are deeply counter-rational. Unfortunately, exactly what someone means by it isn't always clear.

[-]Kaj_Sotala12y250

I think that "privilege" (in its more reasonable forms) basically refers to a special case of the Typical Mind Fallacy, one where people are prone to dismissing or understating the problems of one group because they don't personally experience them in the same way. For a relatively neutral example, there's this bit in Yvain's post:

I can't deal with noise. If someone's being loud, I can't sleep, I can't study, I can't concentrate, I can't do anything except bang my head against the wall and hope they stop. I once had a noisy housemate. Whenever I asked her to keep it down, she told me I was being oversensitive and should just mellow out. I can't claim total victory here, because she was very neat and kept yelling at me for leaving things out of place, and I told her she needed to just mellow out and you couldn't even tell that there was dust on that dresser anyway. It didn't occur to me then that neatness to her might be as necessary and uncompromisable as quiet was to me, and that this was an actual feature of how our minds processed information rather than just some weird quirk on her part.

I would say that these are pretty much perfect examples of privilege: situatio... (read more)

4Lumifer12y

That definition is incomplete without having power mentioned in it. For example, it's culturally difficult for "straight cisgendered male Americans" to show weakness. It's not a problem for women. Take the stereotypical situation when a couple is lost and the man refuses to ask for directions. The woman is annoyed at him. Can he tell her "check your privilege"? I strongly disagree. It cannot be.

5Kaj_Sotala12y

Depends on who you ask. I would say yes, some would say no. Right, a literal "never allowed to have" cannot be. What I meant to say was that positions that might easily seem like "you are never allowed to have this opinion" might actually be positions of "this position is so likely to be wrong as to not be worth wasting our time with", which can sometimes (though definitely not always) be reasonable.

1Lumifer12y

Sure, there are lots of those. But notice the difference in accents: "I think you have no clue to the extent that I am not going to bother and waste my time" -- vs. " You have no right to your opinion", especially if there's an explicit or implicit "because you belong to a privileged class".

4fubarobfusco12y

What on earth could it possibly mean for you to have (or not have) "a right to your opinion"? One possibility that occurs to me is that the expression "I have a right to my opinion!" has to do with whether people will give you the last word — it's a claim to power over other people in conversation. Asserting "I have a right to my opinion" is a way of saying, "Shut up! I'm not talking about this with you any more!" Thus, to say "you have no right to your opinion" is a way of saying, "No, I won't shut up; I will go on trying to convince you that you are wrong." Another possibility is that "I have a right to my opinion!" is a statement that one intends to continue to confidently assert a view which has been undermined by evidence or argument, without acknowledging or responding to the criticism. Thus, to say "you have no right to your opinion" is to say "you are being epistemically rude; stop it." A third possibility is that "I have a right to my opinion!" is an assertion that some topics are too socially volatile to be exposed to much criticism. This seems to be what people mean when they bring up "the right to your opinion" in matters of religious doctrine. Thus, to say "you have no right to your opinion" is to say "I'm not going to stop publicly debunking your religion just because you don't like me doing it." Fourth, "I have a right to my opinion!" could be a demand to not be treated worse socially by others on account of one's opinion, even if others may fear that the opinion may lead you to treat them worse. This would seem to be a demand for unilateral disarmament: "I will go on being bigoted against Blues, and I demand that Blues not treat me badly, even if they fear that I will treat them badly." Thus, to say "you have no right to your opinion" is to say "Yes, I am going to treat your opinion as evidence about your character and your future actions, and treat you accordingly." Lastly, "I have a right to my opinion!" could be an effort to tar one's (nonvio

4NancyLebovitz12y

It's also possible that "I have a right to my opinion" can mean "I have a right to enough time to assimilate new information without being told I have to think differently because someone else is sure they're right." It might be interesting, the next time you come across someone who says "I have a right to my opinion", to ask them what they mean.

-1Lumifer12y

For a trivial example, it turned out that Larry Summers did not have a right to his opinion about why women are underrepresented in certain fields.

After seeing your comment, I went and read what Wikipedia had to say about that incident. I'd heard about Summers' resignation only at some remove, and only really from bloggers who had opinions on one side or the other on the women-in-science issue. As a result, I hadn't known that there were other contributing factors to Summers' resignation besides that one. It seems that there were — including other conflicts with the faculty ... and a corruption scandal involving Russia's post-Soviet privatization program that led to Harvard paying a $26.5 million settlement to the Federal government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Summers#President_of_Harvard I guess that goes to show the consequences of getting news from partisan sources. The rest of the story is substantially less exciting to folks who care about the "Social Justice vs. Political Incorrectness" Blue-Green war, though, so it's no surprise it didn't get as much press.

Of course it didn't end there...

4Kaj_Sotala12y

Sure. I didn't read the original as a literal quote but rather as a rough characterization of a perceived attitude, so I didn't pay much attention to the details of the exact wording, since I treated it as referring to a set of many different statements that include both of the variants in your comment, as well as others.

4JoshuaZ12y

Are you simply going to say you disagree with Kaj here on this last part or actually respond to their comment, especially say the end of the sentence you cut off where Kaj said:

I am going to point out that "you're not allowed to have any other opinion" and "I believe your opinion is wrong because of A, B, and C" are very different statements.

How much depends on what one means by allowed? For example, it isn't unreasonable to say that I shouldn't have an opinion on whether or not sterile neutrinos exist- because I have nowhere near the physics background to remotely understand the question beyond at an extremely basic level.

That depends on who's doing the talking. It's not unreasonable for you to decide that you shouldn't have an opinion on X until you found out more about X. When another party tells you that you are not allowed to have an opinion on X the very first issue that pops up is what power/authority does that other party have to decide which opinions you are allowed to have and which not? CYP doesn't come up in discussions of neutrinos, it comes up in discussion of sociopolitical issues and in that context allowing or not allowing people to have certain opinions has a long and ugly history.

2TheOtherDave12y

Is it similarly true, if another party tells me that the very first issue that pops up under certain circumstances is X, that the very first issue that pops up is what power/authority does that other party have to decide what the very first issue is and isn't? This seems to me a silly way to treat ordinary discourse. When you tell me that X is the very first issue to pop up, I take that to mean you're more interested in discussing X than anything else. If someone tells me I shouldn't have an opinion about X, I take that to mean they're not interested in hearing about my opinion. Yes, in both cases they are expressing themselves as though their personal preferences were facts about the world, but I just treat that as a fairly basic rhetorical maneuver to establish their conversation status.

2Lumifer12y

Generally speaking, no, it doesn't mean that I'm more interested in X. What it means is that the answer to X will influence and affect discussions of Y and Z so we might as well start with X because we'll end up there anyway. I take that differently -- I understand that as containing a moral judgment as to which opinions are acceptable/allowed and which are not. After all in this case you can have an opinion as long as it is the correct "social justice" one. Any color as long as it's black.

So it sounds like on your account, if I were to rail against you for deciding that we're going to talk about X now and that I'm not allowed to talk about Y and Z, I would be missing the point, because what's really going on has nothing to do with who is deciding what and who has the power. Rather, you're just pointing out that, since the answer to X will influence and affect discussions of Y and Z, there is a conversational failure mode we can avoid by talking about X first. On your account, you aren't expressing a moral judgment about what topics are acceptable/allowed, you're just saying that some topics will cause the conversation to proceed more usefully (by addressing the fundamental issues first) and others will cause it to proceed less usefully. Yes? By contrast, on your account, the "social justice" warriors who say that, for example, men aren't entitled to an opinion about the prevalence of sexism against women in our culture, aren't making any such claim. There is no model of conversational dynamics they operate from such that such expressions of opinion can be expected to cause a conversation to proceed less usefully. In that case it really is about who is deciding what and who has the power. So the two aren't comparable. Yes?

Not so much even a failure mode, as an observation that the optimal path is X -> Y -> Z and if you start anywhere else you'll have to come back to X soon, anyway. Yes. More than that, CYP generally aims at putting a full stop to a particular branch of a conversation. It's like "This here is a Sacred Truth, all you can do is accept it, and we will tolerate no doubts about it". Claims to power, yes, not necessarily the actual power. Yes.

OK; thanks for clarifying. I don't agree with your position generally, but I certainly agree that there exist individuals who have the kind of "This here is a Sacred Truth, all you can do is accept it, and we will tolerate no doubts about it" attitude towards what we've been calling "social justice", and there exist many communities where such individuals exert disproportionate power.

0JoshuaZ12y

I think you may want to see Kaj's comment here, which I think clarifies what is going on.

[-]NancyLebovitz12y110

You're right about the ignorance part of privilege-- and contrary to SJW, it's quite possible for people in the less privileged categories to be ignorant about at least some of the problems of people in the more privileged categories.

I'd love to find a way to disentangle the ignorance part of the idea of privilege from the power grab, but I haven't figured out how to do it.

6JoshuaZ12y

My general tactic has been when people use the term to say more or less the version like what you quoted is "problematic" and then explain more or less the ok meaning. Most of the time if you do so, people will be more careful at least for the remainder of the conversation. On the other hand, at least once when I did so, I was informed that what I was attempting to do was "mansplaining" and "coming from a position of privilege to control what it means to have privilege" and I more or less threw up my hands. I don't know if the individual in question was hopelessly mindkilled or not, but it exceeded my patience level.

An interesting set. So let's see who doesn't overlap at least one category -- it got to be a lesbian (or at least bi) poor non-white woman. So everybody who is not a lesbian poor non-white woman (which I would estimate to be 98-99% of the population) is vulnerable to the cry of Check Your Privilege! Interesting...

2JoshuaZ12y

Well, in the sane version this isn't about vulnerability or conversation point scoring/status but actually trying to make an observation. And in the sane contexts, most of them aren't going to be relevant. If for example, one discussing say voting rights issues, I don't think (sane) people are going to argue that sexual orientation matters, even as race and income might. Although, if you do want to focus on how narrow it can get, I've also seem to the term in the context of people who are Christian not realizing how uncomfortable people from other religious backgrounds can easily be in parts of the US, and especially how that applies to atheists. But again, I don't think the argument would be made that all the issues are relevant at the same time.

3Lumifer12y

So, maybe, make it? There is, of course, the trivial point that for any issue there are people who had personal experience with it and people who had not, but "check your privilege" is very much not about personal experiences but about treating people solely as members of a certain class. There is a reasonable way to put what you're trying to say -- it would go along the lines of "You are making assumptions X, Y, and Z and they don't work in this situation because of A, B, and C and so what you expect to happen doesn't". But "check your privilege" is not that -- it's a shorthand for "sit down, shut up, and feel guilty".

5JoshuaZ12y

Or it can be shorthand for "You are making a long list of implicit assumptions, and it will take time to go through all of them, but you can conclude from someone who has actually been in the relevant situation that you are wrong about the actual situation on the ground." That's a common enough sentiment in many different contexts where inferential distance matters, and it may help to think in terms of this thread which tried to expand most of those issues in other contexts. It helps to not try to interpret every statement people who make as the most irrational possible just because you already disagree with them or have seen other irrational aspects that particularly irk you.

4Anatoly_Vorobey12y

If you have interesting examples of such a relatively positive use of "check your privilege", I'd like to see them. My experience is the same as Lumifer's - I have only seen this phrase used to shut down unwanted opinions or unwanted participants. Theoretically, it could stand for what you said, and I'd love it if it did, but in practice it doesn't seem to happen. (Interestingly, the same seems to be true about the obnoxious -splaining family: "mansplaining", "cissplaining" etc. That is, I can well imagine their uses that, while rude, seem somewhat justified. But I don't think I've ever actually observed such a justified use; all the uses I've seen were always as a way to attack an opinion based on race/sex/identity of whoever offered it).

6TheOtherDave12y

FWIW, in my social circle it's often used in the first person. As in, "my first response was to dismiss X as completely unnecessary; then I checked my privilege and reconsidered what X might offer to groups G1, G2, and G3." I don't necessarily claim that these sorts of uses are interesting or positive (that's a discussion I don't choose to get into here), but I don't quite see how it involves shutting anyone down. As for "-splaining", I more often see it used as a way to attack a conversational strategy than directly to attack an opinion... though of course many people will choose to attack a conversational strategy as an indirect way of attacking the opinions being expressed using that strategy, or the individuals expressing them. Similarly, many people will choose to attack word choices in such an indirect fashion, as well, in order to indirectly attack the opinions being expressed using those words or the individuals expressing them, but that doesn't mean it's inappropriate to challenge inappropriate word choices.

It can. But for me to accept this requires me to grant A LOT of credibility to the speaker. Well, we can talk empirics, then. I've had "check your privilege" card pulled on me numerous times. In the great majority of the cases it was done to shut me up and shame me. In the great majority of cases people saying that had zero idea about my personal experiences and were just assuming what it was convenient for them to assume. In most cases this card was pulled when people were badly losing a rational argument. So while in theory "check your privilege" can mean various things, I am pretty certain about what it means in practice.

7JoshuaZ12y

Inferential distance issues is actually very high on the list of things that can make someone think that someone else is "badly losing" an argument. On at least one occasion I've had someone who was insisting that .9999... !=1 come away from a conversation with me convinced that they had "clearly won". But your point does have some validity, and if you look back at the original comment you replied to, I agreed with Nancy that it can be used in irrational ways. My point was about the more rational ways people can and do use the term. So what precisely are you trying to argue here?

6Lumifer12y

My feeling is that the term is irretrievably tainted. I see its use as an ideological marker. I accept that what it tries to express can be a useful point but this particular phrase by now carries way too much baggage.

3JoshuaZ12y

This sounds then like an assertion not that people don't use the phrase more rationally, but that you or others are unlikely to treat it as having a more rational meaning even when it does, because it has a history of being used more often in a more irrational fashion by people you politically disagree with. Is that a fair summary?

It is an assertion that in my personal experience people do not use the phrase rationally. YMMV and all that, of course. This personal experience leads me to consider this particular phrase as an indicator of certain characteristics of people who us it, both with respect to their ideology and their rationality.

8ialdabaoth12y

Does it matter who they use that phrase to? Because some of us know how to speak "social justice-ese" to those who respond well to it, and "rational-ese" to those who respond better to that - but it can sometimes be frustrating when talking to a mixed audience. Whichever language one chooses, the other half will sense a betrayal.

Correctly, too. Few like being manipulated and "two-faced" is not endearment.

2ialdabaoth12y

I don't know that I agree with that. I've found, for example, that plenty of social justice crusaders are perfectly willing and capable of learning rationalist thinking, but only from someone who has identified as a member of their pack. And plenty of rationalists express a desire for social justice people to behave more rationally. At what point should instrumental "skillful means" be seen as manipulation, and at what point is it a necessary handshake protocol?

Sure, if you recall that rationalist thinking is defined as winning. So you are using the expression as a tribal membership sign? With the implication that "check your privilege" is a valid tribal marker? Depends on what you are promising and implying. Note the difficulty of using "skillful means" in mixed audiences, as mentioned above. By incorporating the right signs into the handshake protocols you represent yourself as a bona fide member of the tribe. And if then you start speaking as an outsider, tribe members will come to the correct conclusion that you only pretended to be a member of the tribe.

And from a tribal perspective, this illustrates the need for liminal / shamanistic roles - people who can be a bona fide member of the tribe, and yet also speak outsider language. There's plenty of evidence that cultures from our ancestral environment codified roles that were allowed to break such taboos.

0Lumifer12y

It's not a taboo if you are, without a doubt, the member of the tribe. If you haven't established that you belong, behaving as an outsider will likely be interpreted as treachery or evidence of two-facedness.

I suspect this may be extending the tribe metaphor too far.

0ialdabaoth12y

Can you elaborate on your suspicion? Because I think it's using the metaphor precisely where the mapping is tightest.

Well, we use the word "tribal" in such contexts, but we don't really mean tribes in a literal sense. Even in tribal cultures, political and other alliances form and break off at a much smaller scale.

I suspect that isn't the definition that ialdabaoth is using here, but rather is talking about the cluster in meme space such as cognitive biases, tabooing terms, explicitly acknowledging inferential distance, making beliefs pay rent, etc.

In my biased opinion the social justice warriors would have trouble with this cluster. Their position is very much ideological and ideologies are not friendly towards this cluster.

What do you mean by ideology? Is say neo-reactionism an ideology? Is libertarianism an ideology? In any event, this has little to do with my point since I was clarifying what ialdabaoth was talking about. However, as long as were talking about biased, personal experiences, I'm going to need to strongly disagree in the specific case of people who self-identity as involved in social justice. In fact, the notion of inferential distance at least seems to be one that once you explain it, jumps out as a thing precisely because they are aware of examples of it, but don't really have a separate term, or a decent overarching explanation for what is going on. I have to wonder if perhaps you are going into conversations with SJs or people on the left or far left with a more adversarial bent, and that's contributing to the differences in experience?

That is likely. SJWs also are prone to going into adversarial mode pretty quickly when talking to me. I tend to believe that sacred cows make the best hamburger and they are usually quite fond of their sacred cows :-D

Pissing off ideologues or trolling people in real life can be fun, but it isn't a useful way to get information about their actual beliefs or how rational they are.

Oh, I disagree. Pissed-off people often get agitated enough to actually state their true beliefs which they would normally mask and camouflage and hedge about.

There's this common belief that people when angry say what they are really thinking, but I suspect that often what is coming out is oversimplified statements that given a few more seconds of thought they'd even say to themselves "No, I don't really believe that." Speaking personally, one thing I like a fair bit about the internet is that I can reread a statement and make sure it has all the necessary nuance, and isn't a completely off the cuff remark that doesn't include any disclaimers that are bouncing around in my head but didn't make it to the keyboard.

First, not always -- sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. However what people are willing to say, even under provocation, often offers insight into their minds. Second, I was talking about beliefs which are less controlled by the conscious mind.

That's part of what the SJWs are doing, too-- trying to guess at what people are really like from small clues.

What do you mean by beliefs?

Values, as well as maps (in the map/territory meaning).

So, that's two very broad categories and is most human thoughts. So when you say these beliefs are less controlled by the conscious mind, that's opposed to what other thoughts?

That's opposed to explicit logical (or "logical") reasoning. The distinction between underwater structures of the human mind and activity that happens in full sight above the water is rather basic and runs throughout the Sequences, for example.

1JoshuaZ12y

There's a massive difference between manipulating people and using vocabulary whose meaning people understand. To use a different example, I've ran into similar issues when having a discussion about religious matters in a group with both Jews and Christians.

Let me rephrase the original quote a bit: Because some of us know how to speak PUA to girls who respond well to it, and "rational-ese" to those who respond better to that. Still fine with that? Can be frustrating when talking to a mixed audience, yes :-/

Not actually a comparable situation. In one case, the goal of the conversation is to have a conversation and to share information and ideas, and hopefully come to a mutual understanding. The other one has a goal of getting in someone's pants. I don't think most people consider it manipulative to adjust vocabulary to match someone else's in order to exchange ideas. Or if you want a different example: physicists and mathematicians sometimes use different notations (for example physicists like their bracket notation a lot). That's in part a function of what objects one is most frequently talking about. Adjusting notation isn't manipulative (although I suspect that a mixed group of mathematicians and physicists will mind such notational issues substantially less).

The conversations where "check your privilege" comes up are usually not about sharing information and ideas. They are usually about "I'm right and you're wrong". In particular, by the time one party to the conversation tells the other "check your privilege" that conversation is clearly adversarial. This expression is not used in friendly discussion by people who respect each other.

My personal experience has falsified that statement many times. Perhaps you are not interacting with particularly intelligent or open social justice warriors, or perhaps I am interacting with atypically intelligent and open ones, but either way, I can attest that you are making an overgeneralization.

Perhaps. As I said, YMMV... I would probably say that my conversations with smart social justice warriors usually short-circuit to value disagreements so quickly that CYP doesn't even come up. Conversations that result tend to be about much more fundamental things.

What values?

Basic ones :-D The balance of individual and community; the freedoms and responsibilities involved, the role of the state, etc. And notice, we're talking about smart SJWs. Most don't have the faintest clues about economics...

I thought we just established that people can use that phrase in other ways, but that you find it to have too many bad connotations attached. Moreover, the actual comment you responded to was the statement that: So I'm confused by your focus on apparently adversarial contexts.

I consider the phrase to be inherently adversarial.

That seems like a distinct claim than your earlier that And given that multiple people on this thread have discussed non-adversarial interpretations of the phrase, I'm confused by how you can now assert that the phrase is inherently adversarial. That's not even "often" or "frequently" or "the vast majority of the time". What justifies this belief?

My opinion that CYP unrolls to "You're wrong and you can't even possibly come to the right conclusion because you are inherently deficient so you'll have to trust what I am telling you and accept it. Oh, and you opinion is morally bad, you should be ashamed of having it".

And that people on this thread have given other possible meanings of what that phrase is short-hand for?

Yes, and..? I have sufficient experience of meeting CYP in real life. I understand it could mean other things, it's just that in reality it rarely does. Yes, that may be a function of the the subset of people I have interacted with and may not be representative, but that's fine. I am not claiming this as a universal truth but as my opinion. Other people based on their experience can have different opinions, this fact does not force me to change mine.

FWIW, I probably agree with you that it's more common for people to use that phrase as an adversarial shaming tactic than not. Of course, I would say the same of many phrases, since it's very common for people to adopt adversarial stances in conversation and for people to try to shame each other. "Language is a tin drum on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope our music will move the stars."

So, what do you mean when you use the word "inherently"? And in what context did you reply to Ialdabaoth's comment http://lesswrong.com/lw/j5i/the_craft_and_the_community_the_basics_apologizing/a3n5 here, given that that's clear not the meaning of the phrase or similar phrases he's intending to use? And how does that work with your statement http://lesswrong.com/lw/j5i/the_craft_and_the_community_the_basics_apologizing/a3mf ?

Oh, please. I am not going to fisk multiple posts -- if you feel I have contradicted myself, be specific.

Sure, I'm confused by your statement that: And then later you stated: which are both hard to reconcile, with None of these seem to be interconsistent. And it makes particularly little sense to use any of them in the context of Ialdabaoth's remark about using the correct vocabulary with different groups.

I don't see why. The "You are making a long list of implicit assumptions..." expression is still adversarial. It is a polite version of the same underlying meaning -- "You are wrong, I am right and you should just trust me that I'm right". Now, sometimes, rarely, that expression is actually correct -- the party to whom it's addressed really doesn't have a clue about what being in a certain situation means. And that party can submit -- accept that it doesn't have a clue and should shut up and listen. This, as I said, requires the speaker to have a lot of credibility. And, by the way, doesn't change the inherently adversarial character of the phrase.

2fubarobfusco12y

Hmm. It seems to me that if you treat it as "adversarial" when someone provides you with clarifying information that they reasonably and correctly believe that you don't possess, then you're not going to learn very much.

No, they don't provide me with clarifying information. They provide me with a ready-made conclusion which they insist I must accept on trust. I'll take my chances.

This may say more about your own attitudes than anything else, or you may have a different notion of what one means by adversarial. If someone seems to be making implicit assumptions, what is wrong with pointing that out?

Because of two things. First, the emphasized parts in "You are wrong, I am right and you should just trust me that I'm right". Second, CYP has a strong shaming component.

So, you seem to be extremely intent on not actually adjusting your views despite that many people have given examples of contexts where this is reasonable at this point, including TheOtherDave and Kaj I'm going try one more personal example and then give up. A while back, when discussing voting restrictions that increase the amount of time it takes for people to get IDs acceptable for voting and increase the wait time to actually vote, I was arguing with someone that this wasn't a big deal since people could just take a few hours out of their day to do it. The response of CYP caused me to think about the matter more, and I immediately realized that the relevant issue was socioeconomic bracket: people in lower socioeconomic brackets can't just take a few hours off or even if they can, they'll end up losing income that they need. In this case, a three-word phrase was sufficient communication.

In which direction do you think my views should be adjusted and on the basis of which evidence? Do notice that imagining contexts where something is possible or even likely does not constitute evidence. I am not sure what this personal anecdote is supposed to demonstrate? That you personally react well to CYP? Sure, that's one datapoint. What's next? Oh, and by the way, in this particular context I don't believe the conclusion you came to.

0A1987dM12y

What does it tell about me that the first thing some part of my brain thought after reading those two sentences was ‘well, in some sense the latter is just a special case of the former’? Probably, just that I've read this too many times! ;-)

5fubarobfusco12y

How about in its best form?

[-]TheOtherDave12y100

That when I have advantages you don't, I am less likely to notice the problems in our shared environment that my advantages compensate for than you are, and therefore when you discuss a problem in our shared environment that I don't experience, I ought not treat my own experience as definitive on the matter.

EDIT: When used in the second person imperative specifically, as here, it carries the additional implication that the person to whom it is addressed is violating that normative rule.

2pragmatist12y

For real? That surprises me. Do you have a link to the relevant empirical research?

0bramflakes12y

I often see this cited but I've never gone through and checked the validity myself. If you take the blogging equivalent of a wiki-walk through the HBD-sphere you'll come across other data.

0lmm12y

Saw it in a number of threads here but I didn't keep the links, sorry.

-6Ritalin12y

6Error12y

I didn't get this impression; that is, the impression I got from the video wasn't "you should accept your interlocutor's perspective as the Only True Perspective" but "don't give Weasel Apologies." Sometimes an apology is socially called for, but the speaker doesn't believe they did anything wrong. The most obvious examples are students (or office workers!) having an argument, in which a teacher or boss demands that one or both parties apologize to each other. Outright refusal may not be an option. A Weasel Apology is likely to result, but is pretty much morally neutral under the circumstances. The difficulty arises when you have a Bottom Line problem. e.g., your mind should go: "Did I do something wrong?" * Yes. (Apologize.) * No. (Don't.) But sometimes it actually goes: "Uh oh, I'm supposed to apologize now. Will that make me look like I did something wrong?" * Yes. (Well that won't do. Weasel it!) Note the absence of an actual wrongness-check in the second form. I think this is what the video is actually railing against, IMO justifiably. But there is a third version: "Did I do something wrong?" * Yes. (Will an apology be used against me?) * No. (Apologize.) * Yes. (Weasel it.) * No. (Is an apology socially called for? ) * Yes. (Weasel it.) This actually does have a wrongness-check, but still results in Weasel Apologies. The video does not cover this case. I'm not sure being incomplete is a strike against it, though. Edited to add: There is an ambiguity here, in that there's a difference between internalizing that you've done something wrong and internalizing the moral system of an accuser. I interpreted the video as talking about #1, but it seems at least a few others interpreted it as #2. Internalization[1] is good to do and bad to weasel out of, assuming whatever you did is wrong according to your moral code. Internalization[2] is shitty to demand, but probably a bad idea to weasel out of too. If it's being demanded for

8Anatoly_Vorobey12y

Then I believe that you missed it. What you say was in the video (and I mentioned it), but the part about accepting the supposed victim's claims of being hurt as proof that you sinned (your "Only True Perspective" goes a bit too far) is there and is the backbone of the video. The video's complete list of claims, in a brief form: 1. You will slip up, but when you've done something crappy, you have a choice: either apologize and regain your awesome, or be a fartbag. 2. Analogy: I stepped on your toe, you yell in pain, and I blame you for "standing everywhere". 3. Intent is irrelevant: "I understand you didn't mean to step on their toe, but you still did, and you caused it, so apologize". 4. Don't blame people for how they feel, blame yourself, you've caused it. 5. Do feel bad. 6. When apologizing, don't think you're asking for forgiveness. 7. Figure out what you did wrong, believe it, understand it, internalize it 8. Figure out why you did the hurtful things and provide context. 9. Don't just express sympathy, you have to accept the blame. 10. Tell people you won't do it again. 11. Don't think you're losing or that it's a zero-sum game. Apologizing is a sign of strength. 12. Do in fact change your behavior. Points 2-4 basically set up the premise that someone's feelings being hurt by your words means you've done something bad and should apologize. You're not allowed to question the appropriateness of those feelings, and you're not allowed to introduce your intent. Your own moral judgement is never mentioned.

[-][anonymous]12y220

An example, by way of "The Root of All Evil" by Richard Dawkins:

Science is about testing, comparing and corroborating this mass of evidence, and using it to update old theories of how things work. I do remember one formative influence in my undergraduate life. There was an elderly professor in my department who had been passionately keen on a particular theory for a number of years. And one day an American visiting researcher came, and he completely and utterly disproved our old man's hypothesis. The old man strode to the front, shook his hand and said, "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these 15 years." And we all clapped our hands raw. That was the scientific ideal of somebody who had a lot invested, a lifetime almost invested in a theory, and he was rejoicing that he had been shown wrong, and scientific truth had been advanced.

2Ritalin12y

This anecdote literally drives me to tears.

1Benquo12y

What does this have to do with apologizing?

8fubarobfusco12y

Both involve admitting that you've been wrong?

3Benquo12y

That is a thing they have in common, but that seems insufficiently specific to justify the relevance of that anecdote to this post. Especially since I don't recall the linked video saying much about making sure you're wrong before apologizing.

[-]Ritalin12y60

One thing that always confused me was forcing others to apologize. Starting from school, putting two kids who hate each other's guts, and demanding that they apologize to each other whether they mean it or not. What's the point? Who does this help? What does this achieve?

[-]Richard_Kennaway12y110

What's the point? Who does this help? What does this achieve?

It helps the teacher establish their own authority over the children.

3Ritalin12y

Hardly; if the apologies are false, the teacher is undermining their own authority by teaching the children to lie and subterfuge their way around them. Once they've learned to dissociate their image-to-the-teacher with the image-to-themselves, it's a slppery slope to getting pelted with paper in the back of the head when you write on the blackboard, among many other forms of torment children heap on their masters.

5Richard_Kennaway12y

The teacher is exhibiting their power to make the children tell a lie in public, a lie that everyone knows is a lie. The teacher is demonstrating that what is very important to the children is not at all important to the teacher, that the teacher can make the children perform this ritual, then shut up and return to their seats because the teacher tells them to.

1Ritalin12y

... Is assering this kind of power ("authority" connotes people being willing to "listen" more than "obey", as far as I can tell) a terminal value in the teacher's mind?! Because this sounds amazingly pointless. I would think a teacher's desire is to mold the students' mind to their satisfaction, propagate their memes, etc. etc. not just... make them execute pointless gestures just to show who's boss.

2Richard_Kennaway12y

Showing them who's boss is a precondition for all the rest. At this point I should say that I'm not sure how much this sort of behaviour is a good thing and how much a bad. Hypothetically, one can confabulate all sorts of scenarios either way. But I have no experience of teaching children.

5Ritalin12y

Ah, but we all have experience in being taught, don't we. Some good, some bad. We would do well, I think, to give a long, hard look to the way we were taught, not only regarding how it may have affected us, but also in how it might affect our children, were they to be subjected to similar treatments. Because, in the face of authority performing such seemingly pointless gestures, I have half a mind to teach my children to reject such orders on general principle, and say so to their teachers in no uncertain terms—without being rude about it, which might be a bit of a challenge. Point is, when my kids grow, I want them to be the sort that would say no in Milgram's Experiment from the moment the victim revoked consent, if not earlier. (Also, intuitively one-box on Newcomb's problem, etc. etc.)

5Viliam_Bur12y

When children can evaluate good ideas, it makes sense to tell them to obey the authority when a request is good, and to disobey when the request is harmful. But before that age, the obedience in the Milgram's experiment and the obedience in "please stop hitting your younger sibling" or "please stop talking now so we can learn the alphabet" is probably processed by the same algorithm.

0Ritalin12y

Very pertinent. So it's a matter of age... well, we would do well not to underestimate our kids' ability to learn; it' surprising what they can achieve when nobody's told them they shouldn't be able to yet. Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to get a firm grip on what the state of the art in developmental psychology says on how to best go about teaching them right from wrong.

3Viliam_Bur12y

I agree that children are often capable of understanding and doing more than is typically expected of them. And sometimes they are not. And sometimes they start doing it correctly, only to ruin it later; which is probably an inevitable phase in learning a new skill. Just like it is easy to make a mistake of automatically assuming that children are not capable of something, and not giving them really a chance, it is also easy to make a mistake of seeing a child doing something correctly for five minutes, and assuming that nothing can go wrong later. In some environments the former kind of error is typical, but I have also seen (and done) the latter. A high school where I was teaching made a new rule that students are allowed to ask a teacher about a context of what they are taught, such as why do they need to learn something and how is it related to the long-term goals. (There was a long list of new rules, most of them applause lights.) At first sight, it seems like a good idea: the teacher should explain a motivation for teaching something, and if they forget, it is great if the students can ask freely. But in real life this rule was abused heavily. Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: "why is it necessary that we learn this?", especially when it's made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don't even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education. (Later the list of the rules was updated in a way that neutralized most of them, such as: "students have a right to do X... but only if the teacher considers it appropriate", and then removed and forgotten.) So, having this experience, I can easily imagine what would happen if the same high school students received a lesson about Milgram's experiments and why it is wrong to obey authority blindly. Suddenly turning off their iPhones would become an evil comparable with being ordered

"Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: "why is it necessary that we learn this?", especially when it's made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don't even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education." Well, I had forgotten they were capable of such pettiness, but that's an interesting topic on its own, isn't it? I mean, how and why do adults outgrow this (and when don't they)?

0TheOtherDave12y

I expect people mostly outgrow this as we develop less petty, more satisfying forms of power we can exert.

4bramflakes12y

It teaches them to cower in the shadow of the Leviathan. The reasoning being perhaps, that if kids can't be taught to value behaving ethically for its own sake, they ought to behave ethically anyway so that they aren't shamed in public. An example of Goodhart's Law?

I don't get it.

Goodhart's law is the tendency, when using a proxy to measure a desideratum, to optimize for the proxy, rather than the desideratum. In this case, the desideratum is feeling genuine regret about harming others, and the proxy is apologizing.

2Nornagest12y

Fake it 'til you make it. The theory is that going through the motions will eventually inspire prosocial behavior with or without any initial feeling attached. Okay, that's a little glib, and there's some evidence that it doesn't work too well when it's externally imposed. But those studies (Cialdini cites some, for example) were generally done on adults, and it might work better on children; alternately, it might be more about inculcating the forms of prosocial behavior and trusting that they'll get hooked up to the right emotional content later, when kids' empathetic faculties are better developed.

2lmm12y

It enforces the habit of apologizing, which will eventually develop into genuine feeling. A lot of ethical behavior is learned the same way, through politeness - to a kid, "please" is just a magic word for getting ice cream, but genuine gratitude develops from this.

[-]Benquo12y40

This is an important skill that it would be good for us to get better at! Thanks for sharing this thing that tries to help.

I don't think this is quite enough, though - it's advice on a very abstract level, without examples, and without advice on how to recognize occasions where apology is necessary. And it felt like being browbeaten and told I was bad, not like being given helpful advice.

Please someone else let me know if you learned how to implement a specific behavior from this, that you otherwise wouldn't have learned how to implement.

But thanks again f... (read more)

4passive_fist12y

I agree; it felt as if the video is trying to browbeat you and force you to apologize. It seemed that the person in the video was himself angry and confused and this made it hard to watch with a "Let's learn a new skill" mindset. It would have been better if this post could have actually linked to the research about human politeness and how it fits into the instrumental rationality framework. There has been a lot of research on this. A simple google search for 'rationality politeness' reveals a wealth of results.

2Benquo12y

I think a lot of the tone came from the pacing - the video was edited to mash together a bunch of sentences with minimal breaks in between. This made it much faster than normal speech, so it came across as a barrage of admonitions without allowing time to think about them in between. This was probably not intentional, and the speaker was probably not quite as angry as he sounds.

2passive_fist12y

True, I was thinking about mentioning this in my reply above but I felt that criticizing the video would distract from the main point. Editing cuts in a video can be great, occasionally, to provide emphasis or keep the viewer's attention, but yes, here it seems they were overused and this reduces the effectiveness of the communication.

Hardly. If you wish, I could go on to explicitly analyze this video bit by bit in order to achieve a more calm presentation of the ideas therein. It would go something like: "Frequent mistake when apologizing, then how to do it right" I have found myself making most of the mistakes he listed, some of which I have seen in bullies, most notably detaching oneself from the feelings one causes ("I'm sorry that you feel hurt" rather than "I'm sorry that I hurt you") to outright blaming the other person for having feelings at all ("I'm sorry that you're such a whiny pansy who can't take a joke/some criticism/a bit of tough luck. Suck it up (like a man)!") But anger and "browbeating" are perfectly legitimate ways to present something that you care very much about; most of the Sequences are written in such a lecturing, passionate tone. As for that research, I would be thankful if anyone could help me with that, since it's a huge lot of work to review and incorporate it properly, and I don't have a huge lot of time, what with college and all.

5passive_fist12y

Yes, that kind of format would be a much better way to present the ideas. It would then be easier to have a constructive argument about them. Provided, of course, that the reason is given for why said mistakes are actually mistakes. The tone of the sequences is far from emotionally neutral, and 'passionate' would be a good word to describe many parts of the sequences, but the way is this is often done is by providing a justification, building up to the main point, then using a passionate form of presentation to emphasize the important take-away points. It seems that this video skips right to the 'passion' part without addressing the 'why we should even care' part. And that seems like the most important part to me. If you don't mind me saying, I get the impression that you might be missing that part as well. Politeness is all about human psychology and interaction and our in-built sense of empathy towards others. The correctness of an argument has little to do with how politely it is presented, but its impact on other people, on the other hand, does. So it would be useful examining this a little bit more deeply. Again, this is something that is often done in the sequences: things are broken down deeply and a 'view from above' is taken.

That seems likely to be more helpful.

[-]Benquo12y30

Here are some issues I'd like to see covered in the future:

Sometimes person A does something that causes person B to feel pain, and it doesn't seem like person A did anything wrong. What kind of apology, if any, is appropriate?
How do I tell when something really isn't my fault? What kind of harm-causing should I apologize for?
What do I do if someone tries to leverage my apology to extract some kind of additional concession from me, or I expect that this might happen?
Suppose I think someone should apologize to me for something. What should I do about it, if anything?

For my own part, I find "I'm sorry that what I did hurt you" appropriate in the first case, declining to concede appropriate in the third, and asking for an apology appropriate in the fourth. The second is more complicated.

[-][anonymous]12y00

[I accidentally posted a comment I was still thinking about. Apparently I can't delete it, so I just removed the content a few seconds after posting. I'll repost it when it's done.]

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KnaveOfAllTrades12y260

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jetm12y00

Once you get fairly strong, you can sometimes even win free points by apologising in front of a big group of people for something that everyone but the other disputant think is completely outweighed by the other disputant's actions.

LESSWRONG
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LESSWRONG
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The Craft And The Community: The Basics: Apologizing

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