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I don't know if this idea is stupid, but in an area like politics, I wonder if something like this could be useful for detecting subtext. Politics and diplomacy

I don't know if this idea is stupid, but in an area like politics, I wonder if something like this could be useful for detecting subtext. Politics and diplomacy in particular have a sort of universal protocol for interaction that I wonder if it would be easier to read the subtext of human interaction to get some clues about the overall relationship, just through studying how the interaction deviates from the universal protocol. For example I wonder if you could build a map of hot-cold relationships between countries just by watching how their diplomats interact and using methods like this to try and read the subtextual communication happening.

lettergram 10y ago
It may be possible, but it would be very hard. Every culture has its own way of interacting and some cultures can have one action that's polite - but in another culture that's completely offensive. My guess is it wouldn't work for diplomats, but potentially in a large country like the U.S., India, China, it may work for the standard individual or politician.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  But it's because of those cultural differences (and the fear of breaking a taboo) that diplomats learn that sort of suit-and-tie-or-thobe, shaking-hands-and-smiling, business-like-but-not-really thing that we are all used to seeing on television. That's what I mean when I say "universal protocol of interaction". Because it is a template with fairly standard rules, I imagine it would be easier to "predict" how two humans will interact like the technique demonstrated in this post. But then beyond that, I figured the interaction of diplomats might be so easy to predict ("smile, shake hands or bow, speak greeting"), that deviation would be more pronounced than for example the scene from The Office. Enough that some useful information might be conveyed in the deviation.

lettergram 10y ago

It may be possible, but it would be very hard. Every culture has its own way of interacting and some cultures can have one action that's polite - but in another culture that's completely offensive. My guess is it wouldn't work for diplomats, but potentially in a large country like the U.S., India, China, it may work for the standard individual or politician.

fapjacks 10y ago
But it's because of those cultural differences (and the fear of breaking a taboo) that diplomats learn that sort of suit-and-tie-or-thobe, shaking-hands-and-smiling, business-like-but-not-really thing that we are all used to seeing on television. That's what I mean when I say "universal protocol of interaction". Because it is a template with fairly standard rules, I imagine it would be easier to "predict" how two humans will interact like the technique demonstrated in this post. But then beyond that, I figured the interaction of diplomats might be so easy to predict ("smile, shake hands or bow, speak greeting"), that deviation would be more pronounced than for example the scene from The Office. Enough that some useful information might be conveyed in the deviation.