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> What in such a scenario gives the impetus to the charitable interpretation (that they simply could not get tickets)? The cognitive distortion is taking uncer

> What in such a scenario gives the impetus to the charitable interpretation (that they simply could not get tickets)? The cognitive distortion is taking uncertainty and replacing it with the worst possible interpretation. Or, inserting artificial uncertainty into a direction and using that opening to pretend that an alternate explanation is true. > People can intend one thing and harmful outcomes still result. One could drive drunk without any intention of anything bad happening and still get into an accident. One could fire a gun randomly into the air with no intention of harming anyone and the bullets still come down and hit someone. Your examples aren't really relevant, though, because they have concrete and definitive harms. The article is about imagined harms that only arise from different subjective interpretations of something. There is no subjective interpretation of getting hit by a bullet or killed by a drunk driver in which the person isn't harmed. Claiming good intent doesn't bring someone back from the dead. You're making the mistake of equating speech with violence, which is explicitly discussed in the paper.

apocalypstyx 5y ago
But what gives the right to the most positive one?
- dymk 5y ago
  A general predisposition to assuming a good nature of your fellow humans?
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    A notion that seems very culturally hidebound, rather than something that describes a general state of human psychology that policy should dictate that humans should be brought into alignment with.
    - dymk 5y ago
      No, it seems to be a universal truth that humans _generally_ cooperate, else we'd have all killed ourselves off (or been forsaken to eternal tribal squabbling, never able to coordinate enough to build a "real" society).
      - Dracophoenix 5y ago
        Yes, humans cooperate. But it's not a universal truth. Indifference is the default state of man's relation to man and it is man's prerogative to decide who should receive his consideration. With this in mind, it's better to say humans are contractual. They can cooperate when the incentives (or disincentives) align towards doing so. They can also ignore or attack each other when such incentives are ineffective or insufficient.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  If someone gave you a perfectly reasonable and logically consistent explanation, what makes it right to automatically assume they're lying and substitute the worst possible alternate explanation? The point isn't that you have to trust 100% of what everyone says. The point is that it's a problem if you're trusting 0% of what everyone says and using that as an artificial opening to insert your own, alternative explanation in which you are the victim.
throwawaygal7 5y ago
Eh, without any qualifying circumstances I think you have to be pretty naive to make a positive judgment in this type of circumstance. Kim got triaged out of a social gathering, other people were given tickets instead. While there could be other motivates, when this happens in general you take the friends you really like and cut people you like less. Is it the end of the world? No but it's a reliable signal about where you stand socially.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  The concert example was was taken out of context. The paper used it in a section about people believing a specific, unlikely alternative explanation in the face of contradictory evidence of intent. > People can believe something to be true because it “feels” that way. To illustrate, please read the following passages > B.Ted’s boss told him that his performance at the company has been good. Yet, Ted wonders if he could have done better. In fact, he feels like a failure. Consequently, he starts to believe he is a failure The point isn't about whether or not the statements are 100% factually true. The point is that some people will discard the statements entirely and substitute their own worst-case alternative explanation, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. If you're focusing on the statements, you're missing the point of the paper. The point is about assuming the worst in the face of uncertainty.
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    What contradictory evidence is provided in the sample? It doesn't say that they drew lots. As the statement is presented it only sates that a group of people told one person they can't come. The number of tickets does not by itself justify why this particular person isn't going. With such a lack of evidence we could say the reason is unknown, intent is an unknown quantity, but that isn't the desired reasoning because the very fact of the unknowns implies ill intent as a possibility, which is not charitable, therefore the only implied correct position to hold is the actively non-negative one.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
apocalypstyx 5y ago
But there is the possibility they don't get hit by a bullet. No harm done. Do they still have the right to become angry of a mere possibility that didn't pan out? At that point it's pure conceptualization. 2nd, this seems very much to be predicated on Cartesian dualism, that the mind is independent of the body. Would someone growing up in a society where they were subjected to daily derogatory statements in regards to some group to which they belong, would their physical wellbeing be divorced from their mental wellbeing? If the subjective is to be discounted, then there is little in the realm of human reality that will remain. Everything that a human perceives is part of their imagination. Our consciousness does not touch the real (so far as we may know); it constructs sensory data models that are by definition subjective. Why should the speaker be granted carte blanche any more than the listener? The language game is not merely the pitcher and the passive receiver. Even silence is an interpretable phenomena. There no way out of the dance of meaning.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > But there is the possibility they don't get hit by a bullet. No harm done. Do they still have the right to become angry of a mere possibility that didn't pan out? Firing bullets into the air and driving drunk are both crimes and there's zero dispute about it, so does this one really need discussion? These extreme examples aren't even relevant to what the paper is discussing. If someone goes around using well-known racial slurs but then later tries to claim good intentions, it won't pass scrutiny. Claiming good intentions isn't a free pass, but it's not what the paper is claiming anyway. > Why should the speaker be granted carte blanche any more than the listener? No one is saying the speaker should be granted carte blanche. I don't know where this strawman argument came from, but it's not what the paper is about. This paper isn't about a free pass to say anything and avoid scrutiny. It's about listeners denying the speaker's intent and substituting their own worst-case interpretations and rejecting the possibility of any other explanation.
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    The very phrase 'denying the speaker's internet' posits and assumes such a thing which is beyond the speaker's pure self-conception. I would say the problem here is that, in a vacuum, what establishes the speaker's intent as any more authoritative than the assumptions of the listener? The right to choose what it is you meant and to choose what it is you interpret are equally weighted here. Any additional weight that is to be applied must be applied within the context of a specific interpersonal relationship at a particular point in time. Therefore generalized mappings of the weighting of such interactions cannot likely be established preemptively through a process of pure reason. The divorce of intent (or lack thereof) in various scenarios exactly points out that there is not some unified notion of the necessity of intent (or lack thereof) being applied in order to come to judgement, but instead the conceptualization of when intent (or lack thereof) should matter is deployed, seemingly, on the very fundamentally subjective basis of 'I know it when I see it' or in terms of society: 'when it has been culturally deemed such'. So the friction here would not seem to be one of the misapplication of a schema, but the friction of running against a social more.
joe_the_user 5y ago
The cognitive distortion is taking uncertainty and replacing it with the worst possible interpretation. Nah, it seems the designers of this test, along with X percentage of HN, suffer from "low social intelligence". If there's an event where you expect to go with your friends and they call and say they you can't come, they have dissed you. There are no good reasons. If there's an event where I'd normally go with friends and we can't get enough tickets, we go elsewhere. That's how actual friends behave. If we can't get enough tickets and we want to go, we just don't tell the person, called a "white lie" - it's shitty but not as shitty as just saying "oh sorry, this event matters more than you". The article is about imagined harms that only arise from different subjective interpretations of something. Human society is based on a lot of subjective but well established interpretations of actions. The people who don't know or understand these are generally considered socially inept.
- skim_milk 5y ago
  Nobody (that matters in psychology) considers "social intelligence" as an official metric. Most (minus maybe the genetic researchers) agree that various childhood traumas usually explain strange behavior. What if Kim had a traumatic childhood, and had common issues with this like abandonment anxiety and poor boundaries? She could not see how her group could make decisions without her and her negative childhood experiences are projected onto the situation causing anxiety. What if Kim was a healthy adult? She would maybe not have negative experiences projected onto the scenario and perhaps could easily switch to making plans by herself without her group with healthy boundaries. What if the group was traumatized as well? The group would probably treat Kim like they were forced to treat their parents: giving Kim their full focus and emotional libido in order to avoid a fallout. This group would certainly project their insecurity onto Kim and assume her devastation. What if the group was healthy and had healthy boundaries? The group would, perhaps, know they could not assume how the other individual would react and video call her to see if she was OK and negotiate on-call. (Any assumption of Kim's response is just projection - and studies show that the older and more experienced with social situations a person becomes the more they know they can't accurately assume how a person reacts) Positive feelings are projected onto the situation and no one projects negative experiences. "Low social intelligence" isn't considered by most people, but childhood trauma is - and childhood trauma would clearly affect what happens. Childhood trauma causes negative affective emotions in social situations, good-enough parents cause positive affect in social situations - *NOT* social intelligence pseudoscience.
claytongulick 5y ago
I think I might fall prey to this but I'm not sure. In this situation, if I were Kim, I'd try to objectively evaluate my relationship with the ticker holder, and adjust accordingly. When I have an objective measure, I think it is a cognitive distortion to view it in any way other than the facts: the ticket holder decided not to include me in the group that was going. In this case, my adjustment would be based on my expectations from my relationship: if I'm very close to the ticker holder, and they know I would have wanted to go, it informs me that the relationship isn't reciprocated, and I need to adjust my expectations. If I don't really know the ticket holder, or I know them well and know that they don't think I'd want to go, then my expectations from the relationship are met, and no adjustment is required. So, is this a cognitive distortion? Am I assuming the worst possible interpretation of events? I think so. I'm 46, and the reason I do this is because my life has taught me that more harm results from assuming best intent when the evidence is clearly contradictory.
sam0x17 5y ago
> The cognitive distortion is taking uncertainty and replacing it with the worst possible interpretation. So being a good computer scientist / engineer?

apocalypstyx 5y ago

But what gives the right to the most positive one?

dymk 5y ago
A general predisposition to assuming a good nature of your fellow humans?
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  A notion that seems very culturally hidebound, rather than something that describes a general state of human psychology that policy should dictate that humans should be brought into alignment with.
  - dymk 5y ago
    No, it seems to be a universal truth that humans _generally_ cooperate, else we'd have all killed ourselves off (or been forsaken to eternal tribal squabbling, never able to coordinate enough to build a "real" society).
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      Yes, humans cooperate. But it's not a universal truth. Indifference is the default state of man's relation to man and it is man's prerogative to decide who should receive his consideration. With this in mind, it's better to say humans are contractual. They can cooperate when the incentives (or disincentives) align towards doing so. They can also ignore or attack each other when such incentives are ineffective or insufficient.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
If someone gave you a perfectly reasonable and logically consistent explanation, what makes it right to automatically assume they're lying and substitute the worst possible alternate explanation? The point isn't that you have to trust 100% of what everyone says. The point is that it's a problem if you're trusting 0% of what everyone says and using that as an artificial opening to insert your own, alternative explanation in which you are the victim.

throwawaygal7 5y ago

Eh, without any qualifying circumstances I think you have to be pretty naive to make a positive judgment in this type of circumstance. Kim got triaged out of a social gathering, other people were given tickets instead. While there could be other motivates, when this happens in general you take the friends you really like and cut people you like less. Is it the end of the world? No but it's a reliable signal about where you stand socially.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The concert example was was taken out of context. The paper used it in a section about people believing a specific, unlikely alternative explanation in the face of contradictory evidence of intent. > People can believe something to be true because it “feels” that way. To illustrate, please read the following passages > B.Ted’s boss told him that his performance at the company has been good. Yet, Ted wonders if he could have done better. In fact, he feels like a failure. Consequently, he starts to believe he is a failure The point isn't about whether or not the statements are 100% factually true. The point is that some people will discard the statements entirely and substitute their own worst-case alternative explanation, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. If you're focusing on the statements, you're missing the point of the paper. The point is about assuming the worst in the face of uncertainty.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  What contradictory evidence is provided in the sample? It doesn't say that they drew lots. As the statement is presented it only sates that a group of people told one person they can't come. The number of tickets does not by itself justify why this particular person isn't going. With such a lack of evidence we could say the reason is unknown, intent is an unknown quantity, but that isn't the desired reasoning because the very fact of the unknowns implies ill intent as a possibility, which is not charitable, therefore the only implied correct position to hold is the actively non-negative one.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago

apocalypstyx 5y ago

But there is the possibility they don't get hit by a bullet. No harm done. Do they still have the right to become angry of a mere possibility that didn't pan out? At that point it's pure conceptualization. 2nd, this seems very much to be predicated on Cartesian dualism, that the mind is independent of the body. Would someone growing up in a society where they were subjected to daily derogatory statements in regards to some group to which they belong, would their physical wellbeing be divorced from their mental wellbeing? If the subjective is to be discounted, then there is little in the realm of human reality that will remain. Everything that a human perceives is part of their imagination. Our consciousness does not touch the real (so far as we may know); it constructs sensory data models that are by definition subjective. Why should the speaker be granted carte blanche any more than the listener? The language game is not merely the pitcher and the passive receiver. Even silence is an interpretable phenomena. There no way out of the dance of meaning.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> But there is the possibility they don't get hit by a bullet. No harm done. Do they still have the right to become angry of a mere possibility that didn't pan out? Firing bullets into the air and driving drunk are both crimes and there's zero dispute about it, so does this one really need discussion? These extreme examples aren't even relevant to what the paper is discussing. If someone goes around using well-known racial slurs but then later tries to claim good intentions, it won't pass scrutiny. Claiming good intentions isn't a free pass, but it's not what the paper is claiming anyway. > Why should the speaker be granted carte blanche any more than the listener? No one is saying the speaker should be granted carte blanche. I don't know where this strawman argument came from, but it's not what the paper is about. This paper isn't about a free pass to say anything and avoid scrutiny. It's about listeners denying the speaker's intent and substituting their own worst-case interpretations and rejecting the possibility of any other explanation.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  The very phrase 'denying the speaker's internet' posits and assumes such a thing which is beyond the speaker's pure self-conception. I would say the problem here is that, in a vacuum, what establishes the speaker's intent as any more authoritative than the assumptions of the listener? The right to choose what it is you meant and to choose what it is you interpret are equally weighted here. Any additional weight that is to be applied must be applied within the context of a specific interpersonal relationship at a particular point in time. Therefore generalized mappings of the weighting of such interactions cannot likely be established preemptively through a process of pure reason. The divorce of intent (or lack thereof) in various scenarios exactly points out that there is not some unified notion of the necessity of intent (or lack thereof) being applied in order to come to judgement, but instead the conceptualization of when intent (or lack thereof) should matter is deployed, seemingly, on the very fundamentally subjective basis of 'I know it when I see it' or in terms of society: 'when it has been culturally deemed such'. So the friction here would not seem to be one of the misapplication of a schema, but the friction of running against a social more.

joe_the_user 5y ago

The cognitive distortion is taking uncertainty and replacing it with the worst possible interpretation. Nah, it seems the designers of this test, along with X percentage of HN, suffer from "low social intelligence". If there's an event where you expect to go with your friends and they call and say they you can't come, they have dissed you. There are no good reasons. If there's an event where I'd normally go with friends and we can't get enough tickets, we go elsewhere. That's how actual friends behave. If we can't get enough tickets and we want to go, we just don't tell the person, called a "white lie" - it's shitty but not as shitty as just saying "oh sorry, this event matters more than you". The article is about imagined harms that only arise from different subjective interpretations of something. Human society is based on a lot of subjective but well established interpretations of actions. The people who don't know or understand these are generally considered socially inept.

skim_milk 5y ago
Nobody (that matters in psychology) considers "social intelligence" as an official metric. Most (minus maybe the genetic researchers) agree that various childhood traumas usually explain strange behavior. What if Kim had a traumatic childhood, and had common issues with this like abandonment anxiety and poor boundaries? She could not see how her group could make decisions without her and her negative childhood experiences are projected onto the situation causing anxiety. What if Kim was a healthy adult? She would maybe not have negative experiences projected onto the scenario and perhaps could easily switch to making plans by herself without her group with healthy boundaries. What if the group was traumatized as well? The group would probably treat Kim like they were forced to treat their parents: giving Kim their full focus and emotional libido in order to avoid a fallout. This group would certainly project their insecurity onto Kim and assume her devastation. What if the group was healthy and had healthy boundaries? The group would, perhaps, know they could not assume how the other individual would react and video call her to see if she was OK and negotiate on-call. (Any assumption of Kim's response is just projection - and studies show that the older and more experienced with social situations a person becomes the more they know they can't accurately assume how a person reacts) Positive feelings are projected onto the situation and no one projects negative experiences. "Low social intelligence" isn't considered by most people, but childhood trauma is - and childhood trauma would clearly affect what happens. Childhood trauma causes negative affective emotions in social situations, good-enough parents cause positive affect in social situations - *NOT* social intelligence pseudoscience.

claytongulick 5y ago

I think I might fall prey to this but I'm not sure. In this situation, if I were Kim, I'd try to objectively evaluate my relationship with the ticker holder, and adjust accordingly. When I have an objective measure, I think it is a cognitive distortion to view it in any way other than the facts: the ticket holder decided not to include me in the group that was going. In this case, my adjustment would be based on my expectations from my relationship: if I'm very close to the ticker holder, and they know I would have wanted to go, it informs me that the relationship isn't reciprocated, and I need to adjust my expectations. If I don't really know the ticket holder, or I know them well and know that they don't think I'd want to go, then my expectations from the relationship are met, and no adjustment is required. So, is this a cognitive distortion? Am I assuming the worst possible interpretation of events? I think so. I'm 46, and the reason I do this is because my life has taught me that more harm results from assuming best intent when the evidence is clearly contradictory.

sam0x17 5y ago

> The cognitive distortion is taking uncertainty and replacing it with the worst possible interpretation. So being a good computer scientist / engineer?