When you think of "ultimatums", what comes to mind?

Manipulativeness, maybe? Ultimatums are typically considered a negotiation tactic, and not a very pleasant one.

But there's a different thing that can happen, where an ultimatum is made, but where articulating it isn't a speech act but rather an observation. As in, the ultimatum wasn't created by the act of stating it, but rather, it already existed in some sense.

Some concrete examples: negotiating relationships

I had a tense relationship conversation a few years ago. We'd planned to spend the day together in the park, and I was clearly angsty, so my partner asked me what was going on. I didn't have a good handle on it, but I tried to explain what was uncomfortable for me about the relationship, and how I was confused about what I wanted. After maybe 10 minutes of this, she said, "Look, we've had this conversation before. I don't want to have it again. If we're going to do this relationship, I need you to promise we won't have this conversation again."

I thought about it. I spent a few moments simulating the next months of our relationship. I realized that I totally expected this to come up again, and again. Earlier on, when we'd had the conversation the first time, I hadn't been sure. But it was now pretty clear that I'd have to suppress important parts of myself if I was to keep from having this conversation.

"...yeah, I can't promise that," I said.

"I guess that's it then."

"I guess so."

I think a more self-aware version of me could have recognized, without her prompting, that my discomfort represented an unreconcilable part of the relationship, and that I basically already wanted to break up.

The rest of the day was a bit weird, but it was at least nice that we had resolved this. We'd realized that it was a fact about the world that there wasn't a serious relationship that we could have that we both wanted.

I sensed that when she posed the ultimatum, she wasn't doing it to manipulate me. She was just stating what kind of relationship she was interested in. It's like if you go to a restaurant and try to order a pad thai, and the waiter responds, "We don't have rice noodles or peanut sauce. You either eat somewhere else, or you eat something other than a pad thai."

An even simpler example would be that at the start of one of my relationships, my partner wanted to be monogamous and I wanted to be polyamorous (i.e. I wanted us both to be able to see other people and have other partners). This felt a bit tug-of-war-like, but eventually I realized that actually I would prefer to be single than be in a monogamous relationship.

I expressed this.

It was an ultimatum! "Either you date me polyamorously or not at all." But it wasn't me "just trying to get my way".

I guess the thing about ultimatums in the territory is that there's no bluff to call.

It happened in this case that my partner turned out to be really well-suited for polyamory, and so this worked out really well. We'd decided that if she got uncomfortable with anything, we'd talk about it, and see what made sense. For the most part, there weren't issues, and when there were, the openness of our relationship ended up just being a place where other discomforts were felt, not a generator of disconnection.

Normal ultimatums vs ultimatums in the territory

I use "in the territory" to indicate that this ultimatum isn't just a thing that's said but a thing that is true independently of anything being said. It's a bit of a poetic reference to the map-territory distinction.

No bluffing: preferences are clear

The key distinguishing piece with UITTs is, as I mentioned above, that there's no bluff to call: the ultimatum-maker isn't secretly really really hoping that the other person will choose one option or the other. These are the two best options as far as they can tell. They might have a preference: in the second story above, I preferred a polyamorous relationship to no relationship. But I preferred both of those to a monogamous relationship, and the ultimatum in the territory was me realizing and stating that.

This can actually be expressed formally, using what's called a preference vector. This comes from Keith Hipel at University of Waterloo. If the tables in this next bit doesn't make sense, don't worry about it: all important conclusions are expressed in the text.

First, we'll note that since each of us have two options, a table can be constructed which shows four possible states (numbered 0-3 in the boxes).

		My options
	options	insist poly	don't insist
Partner options	offer relationship	3: poly relationship	1: mono relationship
	don't offer	2: no relationship	0: (??) no relationship

This representation is sometimes referred to as matrix form or normal form, and has the advantage of making it really clear who controls which state transitions (movements between boxes). Here, my decision controls which column we're in, and my partner's decision controls which row we're in.

Next, we can consider: of these four possible states, which are most and least preferred, by each person? Here's my preferences, ordered from most to least preferred, left to right. The 1s in the boxes mean that the statement on the left is true.

state	3	2	1	0
I insist on polyamory	1	1	0	0
partner offers relationship	1	0	1	0
My preference vector (← preferred)

The order of the states represents my preferences (as I understand them) regardless of what my potential partner's preferences are. I only control movement in the top row (do I insist on polyamory or not). It's possible that they prefer no relationship to a poly relationship, in which case we'll end up in state 2. But I still prefer this state over state 1 (mono relationship) and state 0 (in which I don't ask for polyamory and my partner decides not to date me anyway). So whatever my partners preferences are, I've definitely made a good choice for me, by insisting on polyamory.

This wouldn't be true if I were bluffing (if I preferred state 1 to state 2 but insisted on polyamory anyway). If I preferred 1 to 2, but I bluffed by insisting on polyamory, I would basically be betting on my partner preferring polyamory to no relationship, but this might backfire and get me a no relationship, when both of us (in this hypothetical) would have preferred a monogamous relationship to that. I think this phenomenon is one reason people dislike bluffy ultimatums.

My partner's preferences turned out to be...

state	1	3	2	0
I insist on polyamory	0	1	1	0
partner offers relationship	1	1	0	0
Partner's preference vector (← preferred)

You'll note that they preferred a poly relationship to no relationship, so that's what we got! Although as I said, we didn't assume that everything would go smoothly. We agreed that if this became uncomfortable for my partner, then they would tell me and we'd figure out what to do. Another way to think about this is that after some amount of relating, my partner's preference vector might actually shift such that they preferred no relationship to our polyamorous one. In which case it would no longer make sense for us to be together.

UITTs release tension, rather than creating it

In writing this post, I skimmed a wikihow article about how to give an ultimatum, in which they say:

"Expect a negative reaction. Hardly anyone likes being given an ultimatum. Sometimes it may be just what the listener needs but that doesn't make it any easier to hear."

I don't know how accurate the above is in general. I think they're talking about ultimatums like "either you quit smoking or we break up". I can say that expect that these properties of an ultimatum contribute to the negative reaction:

• stated angrily or otherwise demandingly
• more extreme than your actual preferences, because you're bluffing
• refers to what they need to do, versus your own preferences

So this already sounds like UITTs would have less of a negative reaction.

But I think the biggest reason is that they represent a really clear articulation of what one party wants, which makes it much simpler for the other party to decide what they want to do. Ultimatums in the territory tend to also be more of a realization that you then share, versus a deliberate strategy. And this realization causes a noticeable release of tension in the realizer too.

Let's contrast:

"Either you quit smoking or we break up!"

versus

"I'm realizing that as much as I like our relationship, it's really not working for me to be dating a smoker, so I've decided I'm not going to. Of course, my preferred outcome is that you stop smoking, not that we break up, but I realize that might not make sense for you at this point."

Of course, what's said here doesn't necessarily correspond to the preference vectors shown above. Someone could say the demanding first thing when they actually do have a UITT preference-wise, and someone who's trying to be really NVCy or something might say the sceond thing even though they're actually bluffing and would prefer to . But I think that in general they'll correlate pretty well.

The "realizing" seems similar to what happened to me 2 years ago on my own, when I realized that the territory was issuing me an ultimatum: either you change your habits or you fail at your goals. This is how the world works: your current habits will get you X, and you're declaring you want Y. On one level, it was sad to realize this, because I wanted to both eat lots of chocolate and to have a sixpack. Now this ultimatum is really in the territory.

Another example could be realizing that not only is your job not really working for you, but that it's already not-working to the extent that you aren't even really able to be fully productive. So you don't even have the option of just working a bit longer, because things are only going to get worse at this point. Once you realize that, it can be something of a relief, because you know that even if it's hard, you're going to find something better than your current situation.

Loose ends

More thoughts on the break-up story

One exercise I have left to the reader is creating the preference vectors for the break-up in the first story. HINT: (rot13'd) Vg'f fvzvyne gb gur cersrerapr irpgbef V qvq fubj, jvgu gjb qrpvfvbaf: fur pbhyq vafvfg ba ab shgher fhpu natfgl pbairefngvbaf be abg, naq V pbhyq pbagvahr gur eryngvbafuvc be abg.

An interesting note is that to some extent in that case I wasn't even expressing a preference but merely a prediction that my future self would continue to have this angst if it showed up in the relationship. So this is even more in the territory, in some senses. In my model of the territory, of course, but yeah. You can also think of this sort of as an unconscious ultimatum issued by the part of me that already knew I wanted to break up. It said "it's preferable for me to express angst in this relationship than to have it be angst free. I'd rather have that angst and have it cause a breakup than not have the angst."

Revealing preferences

I think that ultimatums in the territory are also connected to what I've called Reveal Culture (closely related to Tell Culture, but framed differently). Reveal cultures have the assumption that in some fundamental sense we're on the same side, which makes negotiations a very different thing... more of a collaborative design process. So it's very compatible with the idea that you might just clearly articulate your preferences.

Note that there doesn't always exist a UITT to express. In the polyamory example above, if I'd preferred a mono relationship to no relationship, then I would have had no UITT (though I could have bluffed). In this case, it would be much harder for me to express my preferences, because if I leave them unclear then there can be kind of implicit bluffing. And even once articulated, there's still no obvious choice. I prefer this, you prefer that. We need to compromise or something. It does seem clear that, with these preferences, if we don't end up with some relationship at the end, we messed up... but deciding how to resolve it is outside the scope of this post.

Knowing your own preferences is hard

Another topic this post will point at but not explore is: how do you actually figure out what you want? I think this is a mix of skill and process. You can get better at the general skill by practising trying to figure it out (and expressing it / acting on it when you do, and seeing if that works out well). One process I can think of that would be helpful is Gendlin's Focusing. Nate Soares has written about how introspection is hard and to some extent you don't ever actually know what you want: You don't get to know what you're fighting for. But, he notes,

"There are facts about what we care about, but they aren't facts about the stars. They are facts about us."

And they're hard to figure out. But to the extent that we can do so and then act on what we learn, we can get more of what we want, in relationships, in our personal lives, in our careers, and in the world.

(This article crossposted from my personal blog.)

School taught me to write banal garbage because people would thumbs-up it anyway. That approach has been interfering with me trying to actually express my plans in writing because my mind keeps simulating some imaginary prof who will look it over and go "ehh, good enough".

Looking good enough isn't actually good enough! I'm trying to build an actual model of the world and a plan that will actually work.

Granted, school isn't necessarily all like this. In mathematics, you need to actually solve the problem. In engineering, you need to actually build something that works. But even in engineering reports, you can get away with a surprising amount of shoddy reasoning. A real example:

Since NodeJS uses the V8 JavaScript engine, it has native support for the common JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format for data transfer, which means that interoperability between SystemQ and other CompanyX systems can still be fairly straightforward (Jelvis, 2011).

This excerpt is technically totally true, but it's also garbage, especially as a reason to use NodeJS. Sure, JSON is native to JS, but every major web programming language supports JSON. The pressure to provide citable justifications for decisions which were made for reasons more like "I enjoy JavaScript and am skilled with it," produces some deliberately confirmation-biased writing. This is just one pattern—there are many others.

I feel like I need to add a disclaimer here or something: I'm a ringed engineer, and I care a lot about the ethics of design, and I don't think any of my shoddy thinking has put any lives (or well-being, etc) at risk. I also don't believe that any of my shoddy thinking in design reports has violated academic integrity guidelines at my university (e.g. I haven't made up facts or sources).

But a lot of it was still shoddy. Most students are familiar with the process of stating a position, googling for a citation, then citing some expert who happened to agree. And it was shoddy because nothing in the school system was incentivizing me to make it otherwise, and I reasoned it would have cost more to only write stuff that I actually deeply and confidently believed, or to accurately and specifically present my best model of the subject at hand. I was trying to spend as little time and attention as possible working on school things, to free up more time and attention for working on my business, the productivity app Complice.

What I didn't realize was the cost of practising shoddy thinking.

Having finished the last of my school obligations, I've launched myself into some high-level roadmapping for Complice: what's the state of things right now, and where am I headed? And I've discovered a whole bunch of bad thinking habits. It's obnoxious.

I'm glad to be out.

(Aside: I wrote this entire post in April, when I was finished my last assignments & tests. I waited awhile to publish it so that I've now safely graduated. Wasn't super worried, but didn't want to take chances.)

Better Wrong Than Vague

So today.

I was already aware of a certain aversion I had to planning. So I decided to make things a bit easier with this roadmapping document, and base it on one my friend Oliver Habryka had written about his main project. He had created a 27-page outline in google docs, shared it with a bunch of people, and got some really great feedback and other comments. Oliver's introduction includes the following paragraph, which I decided to quote verbatim in mine:

This document was written while continuously repeating the mantra “better wrong than vague” in my head. When I was uncertain of something, I tried to express my uncertainty as precisely as possible, and when I found myself unable to do that, I preferred making bold predictions to vague statements. If you find yourself disagreeing with part of this document, then that means I at least succeeded in being concrete enough to be disagreed with.

In an academic context, at least up to the undergrad level, students are usually incentivized to follow "better vague than wrong". Because if you say something the slightest bit wrong, it'll produce a little "-1" in red ink.

Because if you and the person grading you disagree, a vague claim might be more likely to be interpreted favorably. There's a limit, of course: you usually can't just say "some studies have shown that some people sometimes found X to help". But still.

Practising being "good enough"

Nate Soares has written about the approach of whole-assed half-assing:

Your preferences are not "move rightward on the quality line." Your preferences are to hit the quality target with minimum effort.

If you're trying to pass the class, then pass it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion.

If you're trying to ace the class, then ace it with minimum effort. Anything else is wasted motion.

My last two yearly review blog posts have followed structure of talking about my year on the object level (what I did), the process level (how I did it) and the meta level (my more abstract approach to things). I think it's helpful to apply the same model here.

There are lots of things that humans often wished their neurology naturally optimized for. One thing that it does optimize for though is minimum energy expenditure. This is a good thing! Brains are costly, and they'd have to function less well if they always ran at full power. But this has side effects. Here, the relevant side effect is that, if you practice a certain process for awhile, and it achieves the desired object-level results, you might lose awareness of the bigger picture approach that you're trying to employ.

So in my case, I was practising passing my classes with minimum effort, and not wasting motion, following the meta-level approach of whole-assed half-assing. But while the meta-level approach of "hitting the quality target with minimum effort" is a good one in all domains (some of which will have much, much higher quality targets) the process of doing the bare minimum to create something that doesn't have any obvious glaring flaws, is not a process that you want to be employing in your business. Or in trying to understand anything deeply.

Which I am now learning to do. And, in the process, unlearning the shoddy thinking I've been practising for the last 5 years.

Related LW post: Guessing the Teacher's Password

(This article crossposted from my blog)