4 ms·

Shifting the definition of manipulation and gaslighting is itself a kind of manipulative gaslighting...

abecedarius 5y ago
Their definition of manipulation would forbid any negotiation move other than laying all of your cards on the table. ("Withheld information to alter someone's behavior or beliefs.") So yeah.
- User23 5y ago
  Tangentially, when negotiating I’ve had pretty good luck with just straight up asking what the other party’s best offer is. Usually I have to iterate a couple rounds of course. Rarely is the first response actually their best offer. Since I really am willing to walk away, it’s worked well for both professional and personal relationships. Obviously the framing and presentation is different between a job interview and a first date, but in the end it’s basically the same principles at work.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    Yeah, I actually lean towards openness too (though I once had to give up on an exciting job offer because I naively anchored the salary discussion with my previous government-salary-band-for-a-high-school-dropout, instead of just not answering). But it's gotta be a free choice; someone demanding it of you, as a supposed norm, is being pushy.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  Would their definition forbid it, or would it just label such behavior as "manipulative" and you happen to have a negative association with that word? I do personally view many (but not all) "aggressive" negotiations as manipulative. And yes, withholding pertinent information is deceitful as far as I'm concerned.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    But I didn't bring up aggressive negotiations at all: I said that withholding any information about my private, personal valuation of a prospective trade constitutes "manipulation" according to the definition given. It's true that withholding of information can be manipulative. Either this definition left out how we are to judge this (and so failed to establish that it's "actually very clear") or you think you have a right to the private contents of my mind and 100% of the gains from trade. > Would their definition forbid it Our context is a discussion of good or bad norms. Technically you could want to live under bad norms.
    - mind-blight 5y ago
      That's a great critique of my definition. I don't think people are manipulative by withholding private or personal information. Withholding relevant information isn't manipulative in certain contexts either: i.e. those where all parties agree that there is no expectation of transparency. So, we could either argue that 1) deception implies that there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure, or 2) update the definition to explicitly say "...withheld information when there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure..." For example, if I invest in a publicly traded company, I expect the company to be honest on their quarterly filings, but I don't expect to have access to all of their financials. If a company withholds pertinent information because they don't want to impact the stock price, that is manipulation. If they withhold the same information honestly believing it isn't significant to the stock price, that's not manipulation (though it may be incompetence). Another example: If I target financially illiterate people with predatory loans, that is often manipulative. I'm deliberately targeting people who I wouldn't expect to be able to analyze repercussions of the loan, and I'm lying when I say it will be positive. If I target financially illiterate people and give them credit cards that I believe are within their means, then I'm not being manipulative - even if some of those folks default or their lives are made worse by the loan.
      - abecedarius 5y ago
        (Sorry for the late reply.) Yeah, I think this is reasonable. IANAL but I have the impression that manipulations like these would go under "fraud" -- most debatably the last couple. The OP was about pressures to establish laws and norms that are more open to interpretations: > we also seem to include some more flexible offenses, such as “brainwashing”, “propaganda”, “manipulation”, “deception”, “misinformation”, “harassment”, and “gaslighting”. Again the key is that these tend to be defined less in terms of what exactly was done wrong, and more in terms of a disliked result. so I just wanted to object to a claim in this context that "manipulation" actually is open-and-shut. If I'm right that your last couple of examples are where "manipulation" leaves more discretion to enforcement than the "fraud" standard, then I don't think you're disagreeing much with the OP on this point (though probably you are on whether this discretion is excessive).

Their definition of manipulation would forbid any negotiation move other than laying all of your cards on the table. ("Withheld information to alter someone's behavior or beliefs.") So yeah.

User23 5y ago
Tangentially, when negotiating I’ve had pretty good luck with just straight up asking what the other party’s best offer is. Usually I have to iterate a couple rounds of course. Rarely is the first response actually their best offer. Since I really am willing to walk away, it’s worked well for both professional and personal relationships. Obviously the framing and presentation is different between a job interview and a first date, but in the end it’s basically the same principles at work.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  Yeah, I actually lean towards openness too (though I once had to give up on an exciting job offer because I naively anchored the salary discussion with my previous government-salary-band-for-a-high-school-dropout, instead of just not answering). But it's gotta be a free choice; someone demanding it of you, as a supposed norm, is being pushy.
d110af5ccf 5y ago
Would their definition forbid it, or would it just label such behavior as "manipulative" and you happen to have a negative association with that word? I do personally view many (but not all) "aggressive" negotiations as manipulative. And yes, withholding pertinent information is deceitful as far as I'm concerned.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  But I didn't bring up aggressive negotiations at all: I said that withholding any information about my private, personal valuation of a prospective trade constitutes "manipulation" according to the definition given. It's true that withholding of information can be manipulative. Either this definition left out how we are to judge this (and so failed to establish that it's "actually very clear") or you think you have a right to the private contents of my mind and 100% of the gains from trade. > Would their definition forbid it Our context is a discussion of good or bad norms. Technically you could want to live under bad norms.
  - mind-blight 5y ago
    That's a great critique of my definition. I don't think people are manipulative by withholding private or personal information. Withholding relevant information isn't manipulative in certain contexts either: i.e. those where all parties agree that there is no expectation of transparency. So, we could either argue that 1) deception implies that there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure, or 2) update the definition to explicitly say "...withheld information when there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure..." For example, if I invest in a publicly traded company, I expect the company to be honest on their quarterly filings, but I don't expect to have access to all of their financials. If a company withholds pertinent information because they don't want to impact the stock price, that is manipulation. If they withhold the same information honestly believing it isn't significant to the stock price, that's not manipulation (though it may be incompetence). Another example: If I target financially illiterate people with predatory loans, that is often manipulative. I'm deliberately targeting people who I wouldn't expect to be able to analyze repercussions of the loan, and I'm lying when I say it will be positive. If I target financially illiterate people and give them credit cards that I believe are within their means, then I'm not being manipulative - even if some of those folks default or their lives are made worse by the loan.
    - abecedarius 5y ago
      (Sorry for the late reply.) Yeah, I think this is reasonable. IANAL but I have the impression that manipulations like these would go under "fraud" -- most debatably the last couple. The OP was about pressures to establish laws and norms that are more open to interpretations: > we also seem to include some more flexible offenses, such as “brainwashing”, “propaganda”, “manipulation”, “deception”, “misinformation”, “harassment”, and “gaslighting”. Again the key is that these tend to be defined less in terms of what exactly was done wrong, and more in terms of a disliked result. so I just wanted to object to a claim in this context that "manipulation" actually is open-and-shut. If I'm right that your last couple of examples are where "manipulation" leaves more discretion to enforcement than the "fraud" standard, then I don't think you're disagreeing much with the OP on this point (though probably you are on whether this discretion is excessive).