5 ms·

The money shot: "The distinction between manipulation and non-manipulative influence depends on whether the influencer is trying to get someone to make some sor

The money shot: "The distinction between manipulation and non-manipulative influence depends on whether the influencer is trying to get someone to make some sort of mistake in what he thinks, feels, doubts or pays attention to." I have stricter criteria, personally. If I am to persuade someone then according to my moral compass I have to respect their epistemic process, and participate in it in a way they would endorse. This is much harder to do than just being sincere and believing you're right / not trying to cause a mistake.

scarecrowbob 8y ago
I like your standard, but it is much harder to do; I've been finding it difficult to do even when I am aware that we have diverging epistemic processes... it's hard to tell the difference between thinking someone is misguided/dumb/evil and thinking that they just have a different idea about how to do things in this world. Pragmatics aside (it's much easier to rhetorically persuade someone if you understand their motives and rationale), there are situations in the world where we have real disagreements about what right action looks like: I can't support all the various epistemic situations I see in a moral sense even if I can appreciate how it's more effective. For instance, I can understand arguing that some jackbooted thug shouldn't summarily execute a person and arguing from that thug's position ("don't kill them because you'll have to do paperwork" or some such thing), but intuitively I don't feel like I have an obligation to respect that person's process and thoughts. In that case, it seems okay to be "manipulative" in the sense of your quote. But maybe not... Intuitively, I think that there has to be a good reason for this goal, and I feel like it is a goal I work towards (and yeesh, it takes a lot of real work on all parts of my identity and awareness), but I also feel like there are boundaries for that goal. Is there a larger ethical take away or underwriting rationale in your moral compass for why we should "respect others' episteme"?
- Kalium 8y ago
  Depends on what your ethical framing is. You sound pretty utilitarian, so I think your takeaway is that respecting someone else's thought processes is more likely to deliver the results you want more reliably. My advice is to never assume that someone is actively evil. People almost never think of themselves as evil. Instead, they have values to which they are attached and habits of thoughts to which they are accustomed. You're more likely to achieve genuine understanding of another's mental processes - or empathy, as it's often called - if you start from a place of being willing to respect them. This understanding generally gives you a better appreciation of how to persuade them in a manner that will leave them with a positive impression of you afterwards.
  - dabbledash 8y ago
    Do you believe a person can only be “actually evil” if they consider themselves evil? I think when one person describes another person as evil they usually mean “this person has values to which they are attached - and those are evil values.”
    - Kalium 8y ago
      I don't subscribe to the idea that my values are absolute. Thus, I don't accept the notion of an objective evil, and the notion of "evil values" is one I have trouble with.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - eric-hu 8y ago
        One could extend the the grandparent comment with yours: "When Alice says Bob is evil, she's saying Bob is attached to some values, and those values are evil by Alice's own value system". This definition avoids calling any view objectively evil, but admits some values are evil in a given value system. That should be uncontentious.
        dabbledash 8y ago
        Yes. And I think it can still be wise to avoid jumping to “this person is evil” too quickly. Most of us know we often behave in ways inconsistent with our own values (because of lack of information or just personal imperfection). But when we see other people behaving in ways we think of as wrong, we’re quick to assume their behavior reflects their deepest values, instead of weakness or ignorance or normal hypocrisy. Seems like a manifestation of the fundamental attribution error: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_erro...
  - scarecrowbob 8y ago
    Actually, I think my concerns aren't the utilitarian ones, even if I want to acknowledge the validity of those concerns. I'm more interested in the deontic more something along the lines of the deontic idea that we should understand folks in the way that they understand themselves. I'm with you on the idea that we shouldn't assume folks are evil and that we should always try and understand them in te way they understand themselves. But I'm often finding myself working with and communicating with narcissistic people wholly lack that ability to see other people as having thoughts and motivations which are different from their own. In these cases, I suppose evil is just too strong a word... there are levels of understanding people that I try to filter out, specifically the dialectic between how they understand themselves and what I should take away from that understanding. So, at some point, I feel like we have to go beyond simply being agnostic about how people see themselves... of course we all see ourselves as driving as best we can. And we need to develop the empathy you're describing and understand the real differences between how we see things. But beyond that, I'm having a hard time with the idea that we're all just morally neutral actors who all see ourselves as doing the best we can, and I feel like if I can better understand why we might have a real ethical obligation to respect others' epistemic situations I'll have a better understanding of my own ethics... and I guess that was what I was hoping for: what's the underlying argument that we should attempt this ethical stance of respecting others beyond the pragmatic, utilitarian reasons that seem far more obvious.
state_less 8y ago
I've used the definition that persuasion is when you try to change a person's mind whatever the reason, even lying to get a change of mind. Justification is when you change a persons mind by giving a reason for why they ought to believe what you're telling them. A listener can analyze the reasons you gave and see if they accept the assumptions and conclusion, or in other words, is your justification sound? Manipulators often persuade, but would be happy with a justification too. Ultimately they want to change your mind. Someone who is giving a justification tend to be more open to seeing a fault in their own logic or justification.
TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
I "suffer" the same character "flaw," which has routinely limited my ability to affect change within the companies for which I've worked. I can't count the number of times that my suggestion to use a better technical choice has been overruled by people with a personal agenda that had nothing to do with technology. Additionally, I've had to work closely with a couple of genuine sociopaths, who have mislead powerful people to benefit personally, while putting the (very large) company in an objectively worse place, and at a competitive disadvantage. Would you be willing to compromise your position with an individual, or limited set of people, to achieve a large, positive organizational change?
- pmichaud 8y ago
  This gets complicated. At risk of putting something that could be misquoted, I am generally willing to play the game that people force me to play. I want to play the "everyone gets along and supports each others' goals by being respectful of each others' dignity and agency" game, but if someone wants to try to mug me for my wallet, then I'm going to defend myself with force. Similarly, if someone's epistemic process is "whatever I think works best for me, fuck everyone else" then I'll try to cause them to think that what I want happens to be what's best for them through whatever means happen to work. But it's tricky because maybe they have strong internal epistemics, while perpetrating manipulation on everyone else, and therefore I'm actually equivocating and doing a golden rule thing where I'm not respecting their actual epistemic process, but rather the epistemic process they are trying to enforce on others. In the case of people acting in good faith, there's little or no difference. In the case of a bad actor, there may be a huge difference. When I posted I was imaging the "good faith" scenario. Maybe the switch to "I respect the epistemics that people try to enforce on others" is fine, but it's not exactly how I put it in the post you're replying to. In practicality, just given the tiny summary you provided, my move would be to cause those powerful people to correctly see what was true or false according to their epistemics, ie. I'd try to counteract the manipulation. And if I were dealing with a bad actor I'd try to do it in a way that didn't position me as their enemy, but rather make it seem to them like they just failed to mislead the powerful person the way they had hoped.

scarecrowbob 8y ago

I like your standard, but it is much harder to do; I've been finding it difficult to do even when I am aware that we have diverging epistemic processes... it's hard to tell the difference between thinking someone is misguided/dumb/evil and thinking that they just have a different idea about how to do things in this world. Pragmatics aside (it's much easier to rhetorically persuade someone if you understand their motives and rationale), there are situations in the world where we have real disagreements about what right action looks like: I can't support all the various epistemic situations I see in a moral sense even if I can appreciate how it's more effective. For instance, I can understand arguing that some jackbooted thug shouldn't summarily execute a person and arguing from that thug's position ("don't kill them because you'll have to do paperwork" or some such thing), but intuitively I don't feel like I have an obligation to respect that person's process and thoughts. In that case, it seems okay to be "manipulative" in the sense of your quote. But maybe not... Intuitively, I think that there has to be a good reason for this goal, and I feel like it is a goal I work towards (and yeesh, it takes a lot of real work on all parts of my identity and awareness), but I also feel like there are boundaries for that goal. Is there a larger ethical take away or underwriting rationale in your moral compass for why we should "respect others' episteme"?

Kalium 8y ago
Depends on what your ethical framing is. You sound pretty utilitarian, so I think your takeaway is that respecting someone else's thought processes is more likely to deliver the results you want more reliably. My advice is to never assume that someone is actively evil. People almost never think of themselves as evil. Instead, they have values to which they are attached and habits of thoughts to which they are accustomed. You're more likely to achieve genuine understanding of another's mental processes - or empathy, as it's often called - if you start from a place of being willing to respect them. This understanding generally gives you a better appreciation of how to persuade them in a manner that will leave them with a positive impression of you afterwards.
- dabbledash 8y ago
  Do you believe a person can only be “actually evil” if they consider themselves evil? I think when one person describes another person as evil they usually mean “this person has values to which they are attached - and those are evil values.”
  - Kalium 8y ago
    I don't subscribe to the idea that my values are absolute. Thus, I don't accept the notion of an objective evil, and the notion of "evil values" is one I have trouble with.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - eric-hu 8y ago
      One could extend the the grandparent comment with yours: "When Alice says Bob is evil, she's saying Bob is attached to some values, and those values are evil by Alice's own value system". This definition avoids calling any view objectively evil, but admits some values are evil in a given value system. That should be uncontentious.
      - dabbledash 8y ago
        Yes. And I think it can still be wise to avoid jumping to “this person is evil” too quickly. Most of us know we often behave in ways inconsistent with our own values (because of lack of information or just personal imperfection). But when we see other people behaving in ways we think of as wrong, we’re quick to assume their behavior reflects their deepest values, instead of weakness or ignorance or normal hypocrisy. Seems like a manifestation of the fundamental attribution error: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_erro...
- scarecrowbob 8y ago
  Actually, I think my concerns aren't the utilitarian ones, even if I want to acknowledge the validity of those concerns. I'm more interested in the deontic more something along the lines of the deontic idea that we should understand folks in the way that they understand themselves. I'm with you on the idea that we shouldn't assume folks are evil and that we should always try and understand them in te way they understand themselves. But I'm often finding myself working with and communicating with narcissistic people wholly lack that ability to see other people as having thoughts and motivations which are different from their own. In these cases, I suppose evil is just too strong a word... there are levels of understanding people that I try to filter out, specifically the dialectic between how they understand themselves and what I should take away from that understanding. So, at some point, I feel like we have to go beyond simply being agnostic about how people see themselves... of course we all see ourselves as driving as best we can. And we need to develop the empathy you're describing and understand the real differences between how we see things. But beyond that, I'm having a hard time with the idea that we're all just morally neutral actors who all see ourselves as doing the best we can, and I feel like if I can better understand why we might have a real ethical obligation to respect others' epistemic situations I'll have a better understanding of my own ethics... and I guess that was what I was hoping for: what's the underlying argument that we should attempt this ethical stance of respecting others beyond the pragmatic, utilitarian reasons that seem far more obvious.

state_less 8y ago

I've used the definition that persuasion is when you try to change a person's mind whatever the reason, even lying to get a change of mind. Justification is when you change a persons mind by giving a reason for why they ought to believe what you're telling them. A listener can analyze the reasons you gave and see if they accept the assumptions and conclusion, or in other words, is your justification sound? Manipulators often persuade, but would be happy with a justification too. Ultimately they want to change your mind. Someone who is giving a justification tend to be more open to seeing a fault in their own logic or justification.

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago

I "suffer" the same character "flaw," which has routinely limited my ability to affect change within the companies for which I've worked. I can't count the number of times that my suggestion to use a better technical choice has been overruled by people with a personal agenda that had nothing to do with technology. Additionally, I've had to work closely with a couple of genuine sociopaths, who have mislead powerful people to benefit personally, while putting the (very large) company in an objectively worse place, and at a competitive disadvantage. Would you be willing to compromise your position with an individual, or limited set of people, to achieve a large, positive organizational change?

pmichaud 8y ago
This gets complicated. At risk of putting something that could be misquoted, I am generally willing to play the game that people force me to play. I want to play the "everyone gets along and supports each others' goals by being respectful of each others' dignity and agency" game, but if someone wants to try to mug me for my wallet, then I'm going to defend myself with force. Similarly, if someone's epistemic process is "whatever I think works best for me, fuck everyone else" then I'll try to cause them to think that what I want happens to be what's best for them through whatever means happen to work. But it's tricky because maybe they have strong internal epistemics, while perpetrating manipulation on everyone else, and therefore I'm actually equivocating and doing a golden rule thing where I'm not respecting their actual epistemic process, but rather the epistemic process they are trying to enforce on others. In the case of people acting in good faith, there's little or no difference. In the case of a bad actor, there may be a huge difference. When I posted I was imaging the "good faith" scenario. Maybe the switch to "I respect the epistemics that people try to enforce on others" is fine, but it's not exactly how I put it in the post you're replying to. In practicality, just given the tiny summary you provided, my move would be to cause those powerful people to correctly see what was true or false according to their epistemics, ie. I'd try to counteract the manipulation. And if I were dealing with a bad actor I'd try to do it in a way that didn't position me as their enemy, but rather make it seem to them like they just failed to mislead the powerful person the way they had hoped.