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buybuydandavis comments on [LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (43)
No Assholes, No Whiners.
I think most people would agree with that, but there would be wide disagreement about who those labels apply to.
There was an operational definition in the video.
13:00: After talking to the asshole, does the target feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled?
There's evidence that verbal aggression is a serious problem in organizations. Do you have evidence that complaining a lot about verbal aggression (I assume that's what you mean by whining) is a comparable problem?
So, all I have to do to get you excluded from the group, is to report feeling oppressed and de-energized every time I interact with you? Awesome!
I better start now, because I suppose this game has a strong first-mover advantage.
(Note: The example is fictional; I actually like you. Also, I understand that there are people who really make other people feel bad, and it would be great to remove them. I just predict that if this is made an official rule, some people will abuse it. Will there be a meta-defense of saying: "I am really scared of Joe, because I noticed that when he does not like someone, he reports them making him feel bad, and then the group punishes the person, and I'm already afraid to speak my mind about something I know Joe would disagree with."? And of course at the same moment Joe says: "Viliam, this was really cruel, you made me cry. Don't ever say anything like this again.")
So that X is an asshole, if Y feels a certain way.
I just don't agree with the general trend to automatically privilege the offended. Sometimes I find them justified, sometimes I don't.
There is no "verbal aggression" meter that I am aware of, and I doubt that your study used one. There are people interacting, and people doing studies and characterizing their interactions as "aggression". Aggressiveness itself is not even necessarily a problem. It's likely that what I'd call aggression causes the biggest problem events, but the every day problematic work interactions I'm familiar with are more driven by emotional and economic insecurity than by what I'd call "aggression". People are defensive and fearful, and lash out or feel hurt when they perceive a threat.
What I noticed from reading the slides is that the cost is born out in the decreased productivity of the "targets", not the "assholes". That doesn't really make the case that the "assholes" are the problem.
I suppose there's a risk of Goodhart's Law-- any measurement which is used to guide policy will become corrupt.
I called it aggression. I'm not sure that the guy in the video did.
The intent isn't to solve every workplace problem. It's to solve one quite serious problem which appears in volunteer organizations (the video focused on open source projects) as well as conventional employment.
The claim is that a small percentage of people habitually leave the other people (probably the people of lower status) around them feeling miserable, and this is a problem.
Once a mechanism for excluding people who do this is in place, there's a risk it could be used for scapegoating, and I haven't seen any discussion of how that could be prevented.
In open source, competing forks with visibly different attitudes.
Could you expand on that?
I mean that there is a competition element in social relations if the projects are on an equivalent level. e.g. OpenBSD versus everyone; Apache OpenOffice versus LibreOffice; and this competition element will help the project that's nicer to work with gain participants, and this will help select against both assholery and scapegoating. This of course requires competing projects of comparable quality in the first place, which is not so common.
That's a really bad definition because it is entirely based on target's feelings. It promotes victimhood, can get in the way of getting things done, and makes it look like the goal of organizations is to make their members/employees feel good about themselves.
Other people, obviously.
To some extent. Although from what I understand there are many who underestimate the practical (and even raw financial) consequences of certain cultural aspects.
The book by that name focuses on specific destructive behaviours to prohibit or watch for.