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> The lack of a medium for affective information is a primary reason why text-only discussions go off the rails so quickly. I don't agree with that. As someone

> The lack of a medium for affective information is a primary reason why text-only discussions go off the rails so quickly. I don't agree with that. As someone who has communicated primarily online since childhood, I feel as though I am much more attenuated to some group of people's emotional state through text, whereas in person, I feel like my emotions are obvious to everyone besides me, which makes them feel like they are much more able to be subject to manipulation. I as well feel as though my own 'truthful understanding' is concrete in real life, but online, it is easily manipulated in the attempt to see eye to eye. Style develops - humor, sensitivity, all this is information depending on who you associate with and whether you are reflective of another intuitively, or whether it requires gradual understanding and a developed awareness / sensitivity, coupled together with time and observation. I find that text discussions go off the rails because people aren't trying to see eye to eye. They either latch onto a specific point (irony) or a key phrase that doesn't jive appropriately with their perspective, and that constructs the direction of the discussion. People can have whole conversations without actually understanding another, and you can actually examine these arguments and decompose them into parts that once again, become mostly linear. Part of that I think is because, a conversation sequence can actually be composed of many people, which can make it seem like a dialogue, but a dialogue it is often not. This can also happen to individuals, I can see in myself, I consistently contradict myself in a most convoluted way, through the attempt to balance multiple perspectives of awareness - perhaps in the attempt to coalesce those perspectives into some understanding that resonates as true to myself. But I find that to be a problem with no solution, because as soon as resonance seems to be found, the understanding escapes me through repetition - a sort of semantic satiation of concepts. So care must be taken. The problems(?) of life.

klodolph 8y ago
I'm trying to understand the first part of your argument... it sounds like you are saying that it is much easier to understand people's emotions face to face, even too easy, but this is exactly what the parent comment was claiming with the term "affective empathy" (although it's worth discussing the difference between cognitive and affective empathy). > They either latch onto a specific point (irony) or a key phrase that doesn't jive appropriately with their perspective, and that constructs the direction of the discussion. This is a good way of putting it. If you are trying to make some kind of point or to say something, then you don't want me to mechanically react to some word you used or a particular choice of phrasing or example. What you do want is for me to: 1. Understand what you are trying to communicate, what you had in mind rather than the particulars of how you express it, and 2. React appropriately. This is not too far from a textbook definition of "affective empathy". I'm sorry to hear that you feel you are manipulated in face-to-face discussions. For a long time I tried to maintain a neutral affect to avoid similar kinds of things. These days I consider a consistently neutral affect in the face of changing internal emotional states to be more of a liability and an unhealthy habit than anything else. The reason that we express our emotions so strongly in our body language is because our ancestors that did so were more likely to survive than our ancestors that didn't, in spite of the fact that this made them easier to manipulate. The fact that you feel like this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may either be a completely rational response to an unhealthy environment or a maladaptive response to a normal environment.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > The fact that you feel like this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may either be a completely rational response to an unhealthy environment or a maladaptive response to a normal environment. Whether I have PTSD or aspergers, etc whatever. This is always a hard problem to know for certain, the things that keep me grounded are 'maintain interest in pure mathematics and computation' and 'be aware of reality as reality actually is'. Not getting caught up in the imagination of the way things could get interpreted and what that implies as to how things can unfold. Present minded. > What you do want is for me to: I believe you have the right idea in general, but my advice from experience is, don't get caught up in the minutia of conversation having to be perfect. There is no perfect so long as there are more things to discover and know. I'm not sure why most people come onto hacker news, but I mainly come here to learn. I find myself getting pulled into conversations of which I believe I have some wisdom about (or perhaps I'm just humoring myself), sometimes it hurts, sometimes it helps. On the whole though, I work to stay positive, progress oriented, stuff, life, ebbs and flows. Shrug.
lcuff 8y ago
> I don't agree with that. As someone who has communicated primarily online since childhood, I feel as though I > am much more attenuated to some group of people's emotional state through text, whereas in person, I fee > like my emotions are obvious to everyone besides me, which makes them feel like they are much more able to be > subject to manipulation. Interesting. Thanks for saying this. I didn't communicate online until relatively late in life (it wasn't an option when I was young). My own sense of what you are describing though - 'my emotions are obvious to everyone besides me' is what I'm thinking of in my original statement. The-in-the-moment experience is in public view. This may be uncomfortable, or you may not like the ensuing dynamics (yes, being manipulated sucks), but the irony or humor or hurt or whatever we are feeling that people might miss in text is somewhat more noticed in person via tone of voice et al.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  > but the irony or humor or hurt or whatever we are feeling that people might miss in text is somewhat more noticed in person via tone of voice et al My point is just that, not everyone is good at processing this kind of information. I tend to learn people's vocal intonations as I retain relationships with them. They don't map from person to person for me, specifically. They are unique and individual. It's a magical thing I can manage to understand comedians, but humor has always been much more of an intellectual thing for me, as are most emotions. I can see an emotion on a face, body language, but that data must be aggregated with listening to a person, and not trying to predict how that person feels dependent on previous interactions with different people. When people are socialized in relatively 'static' environments, it is easy to take all of this stuff for granted because people tend to develop habits that are reflective and resonate of another - thus perpetually reinforcing, convergent - the appearance of 'known constants'. If you've grown up with and have lived a lifestyle where you are constantly moving, interacting with different people, always in different places, always open to what is new - then these things are much more variant. But that also has to map back to some base foundation of socialization you have, because that's where you get the 'reflection' of understanding that continues to enforce a sense of consistency and stability. I look at all components of a social system to be aware of this, coupled with the modular/analytical/functional mentality of a computer scientist. I'd rather people call it aspergers than anything else, I personally have had far too many labels applied to me in the past, labels that continue to be heavily stigmatized. Invisible pain, humor, irony...

klodolph 8y ago

I'm trying to understand the first part of your argument... it sounds like you are saying that it is much easier to understand people's emotions face to face, even too easy, but this is exactly what the parent comment was claiming with the term "affective empathy" (although it's worth discussing the difference between cognitive and affective empathy). > They either latch onto a specific point (irony) or a key phrase that doesn't jive appropriately with their perspective, and that constructs the direction of the discussion. This is a good way of putting it. If you are trying to make some kind of point or to say something, then you don't want me to mechanically react to some word you used or a particular choice of phrasing or example. What you do want is for me to: 1. Understand what you are trying to communicate, what you had in mind rather than the particulars of how you express it, and 2. React appropriately. This is not too far from a textbook definition of "affective empathy". I'm sorry to hear that you feel you are manipulated in face-to-face discussions. For a long time I tried to maintain a neutral affect to avoid similar kinds of things. These days I consider a consistently neutral affect in the face of changing internal emotional states to be more of a liability and an unhealthy habit than anything else. The reason that we express our emotions so strongly in our body language is because our ancestors that did so were more likely to survive than our ancestors that didn't, in spite of the fact that this made them easier to manipulate. The fact that you feel like this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may either be a completely rational response to an unhealthy environment or a maladaptive response to a normal environment.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
s-shellfish 8y ago
> The fact that you feel like this makes you vulnerable to manipulation may either be a completely rational response to an unhealthy environment or a maladaptive response to a normal environment. Whether I have PTSD or aspergers, etc whatever. This is always a hard problem to know for certain, the things that keep me grounded are 'maintain interest in pure mathematics and computation' and 'be aware of reality as reality actually is'. Not getting caught up in the imagination of the way things could get interpreted and what that implies as to how things can unfold. Present minded. > What you do want is for me to: I believe you have the right idea in general, but my advice from experience is, don't get caught up in the minutia of conversation having to be perfect. There is no perfect so long as there are more things to discover and know. I'm not sure why most people come onto hacker news, but I mainly come here to learn. I find myself getting pulled into conversations of which I believe I have some wisdom about (or perhaps I'm just humoring myself), sometimes it hurts, sometimes it helps. On the whole though, I work to stay positive, progress oriented, stuff, life, ebbs and flows. Shrug.

lcuff 8y ago

> I don't agree with that. As someone who has communicated primarily online since childhood, I feel as though I > am much more attenuated to some group of people's emotional state through text, whereas in person, I fee > like my emotions are obvious to everyone besides me, which makes them feel like they are much more able to be > subject to manipulation. Interesting. Thanks for saying this. I didn't communicate online until relatively late in life (it wasn't an option when I was young). My own sense of what you are describing though - 'my emotions are obvious to everyone besides me' is what I'm thinking of in my original statement. The-in-the-moment experience is in public view. This may be uncomfortable, or you may not like the ensuing dynamics (yes, being manipulated sucks), but the irony or humor or hurt or whatever we are feeling that people might miss in text is somewhat more noticed in person via tone of voice et al.

s-shellfish 8y ago
> but the irony or humor or hurt or whatever we are feeling that people might miss in text is somewhat more noticed in person via tone of voice et al My point is just that, not everyone is good at processing this kind of information. I tend to learn people's vocal intonations as I retain relationships with them. They don't map from person to person for me, specifically. They are unique and individual. It's a magical thing I can manage to understand comedians, but humor has always been much more of an intellectual thing for me, as are most emotions. I can see an emotion on a face, body language, but that data must be aggregated with listening to a person, and not trying to predict how that person feels dependent on previous interactions with different people. When people are socialized in relatively 'static' environments, it is easy to take all of this stuff for granted because people tend to develop habits that are reflective and resonate of another - thus perpetually reinforcing, convergent - the appearance of 'known constants'. If you've grown up with and have lived a lifestyle where you are constantly moving, interacting with different people, always in different places, always open to what is new - then these things are much more variant. But that also has to map back to some base foundation of socialization you have, because that's where you get the 'reflection' of understanding that continues to enforce a sense of consistency and stability. I look at all components of a social system to be aware of this, coupled with the modular/analytical/functional mentality of a computer scientist. I'd rather people call it aspergers than anything else, I personally have had far too many labels applied to me in the past, labels that continue to be heavily stigmatized. Invisible pain, humor, irony...