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Using strangers as unwitting tools in your own psychological therapy without their consent seems super sketchy to me.

• morelisp 5y ago
  You're just not thinking rationally enough.
  • klyrs 5y ago
    What does "thinking rationally" mean in this context?
    • anotherman554 5y ago
      The article references some seminar on rationality, so "thinking rationally" means "thinking like the person at the seminar says people should think" presumably.
    • morelisp 5y ago
      As idlewords once described it, "AI cosplay" - a dumb person's idea of what a smart computer would do. It's honestly a little heartening that comments on HN don't immediately recognize the movement anymore.
      • klyrs 5y ago
        I've heard of a few flavors of "rationality" and I was mostly curious what rationalism would specifically recommend in this situation. Particularly, I know that regionalists strive for a Vulcan-like emotionless mindset -- but even Vulcans are capable of reasoning about others' emotional processes. Simply ignoring/dismissing the emotions of others is absurdly irrational -- one might as well refuse to account for the effect of gravity because we don't fully understand it.
• EsperHugh 5y ago
  My psychologist suggested I partake in 1 act of kindness every day, doesn't matter if in favor of a loved one or a stranger. This was to help me deal with some mental problems I had. Following this advice in multiple occasions I actively helped people on the streets, be it by helping them put the groceries in their cars or by taking something that fell off their pockets. I would say this helped me immensely, would you find it super sketchy?
  • sirmarksalot 5y ago
    It gets complicated, doesn't it? I mean, in your example, you're doing things that help people, vs. the author creating social pressure to do unreasonable things, but in either case, you're both still pulling people out of their comfort zone without their consent. The way society works vs. community makes all of these things ethically difficult. Communities get built when people step out of their comfort zones and help each other, but society only works because at some point people mind their own business and let people go about their day. So I think it's a delicate balancing act, and there's no easy test for whether it's good or bad. I think holistically it can come down to what kind of energy you're putting into your environment, and whether it's positive or negative.
    • beaconstudios 5y ago
      I'm not sure how social alienation (everybody just pretending each other don't exist) can be framed as a good thing for keeping society together. In my eyes, it's an extremely negative side effect of economic individualism. We'd be better off if we were all a bit more connected to the people around us.
      • sirmarksalot 5y ago
        Social alienation is a coping mechanism, and like most/all coping mechanisms, it provides some value, but at a cost. The value of social alienation is that you can walk down a crowded street and not be asked by every single person how your day is going, what you got up to last night, how your cat's doing, etc. etc. Caring about the intimate details of everyone else's life just doesn't scale. At some point you need to be able to call out some people as being more important to you than others, and ignore the rest. And of course, this can damage you emotionally, make you numb to the needs of others, and prevent you from forming a community with the people around you.
• tiborsaas 5y ago
  Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2538/ https://xkcd.com/2538/
• henriquemaia 5y ago
  Thank you for your comment. I came here to say roughly the same thing. Yes, in a way we are always using others as means to an end. But to make this interpretation true, I have to really push the boundaries of what I mean by using others, by mean, and by end. However, let us try to think this from a different perspective. How about what others in this _experiment_ felt? How would you feel if someone came out of nowhere and asked you to give them this or that when you cannot even fathom why they are doing it? To me, this so-called therapy may work for the people exposing themselves in order to get exposed to negative reactions. But this is just a very self-centered way of treating other people as cardboard cutouts, not as real persons. They are merely background features like trees, cars or streetlights. In the end, maybe you get a kick out of getting out of your comfort zone. But you're also training yourself to be indifferent to the feelings of others. If that's the trade-off of this _therapy_, no thank you.
  • slibhb 5y ago
    > But you're also training yourself to be indifferent to the feelings of others. Obsessive focus on the feelings and opinions of others (self consciousness) is at the root of many people's social anxiety. Complete indifference makes you a pyschopath but there's such a thing as being too concerned about other people's feelings.
    • henriquemaia 5y ago
      Empathy is not being obsessive with the feelings of others. Others are as real people as you are. If you go that way, thinking of what others feel instead of empathizing with what they're experiencing, this immediately becomes an abstraction and you fail to realize the humanity, or lack of, in this.
      • slibhb 5y ago
        It's not a binary. Becoming more indifferent to other people is necessary for the kind of people who go through this sort of therapy. To open your mouth and speak to another person is to risk offending them. There are people who are so afraid of that possibility that they never speak. In that case, less empathy/more indifference is good.
• exo-pla-net 5y ago
  It's sketchy if you frame it in such an awful, uncharitable way. Behold: Talking about the weather = using strangers as unwitting tools in your compulsive need for social interaction. How about rejection therapy = "Harmlessly interacting with other humans to overcome your trauma, so you can become a more productive member of society"?
  • munificent 5y ago
    Asking someone the weather is not at all the same. The whole point of "rejection therapy" is to interact with a stranger that pushes against their boundaries such that they feel the need to assert themselves in order to reject you. I'm all about helping people overcome their trauma, but not at the expense of making nonconsenting strangers uncomfortable.
    • extheat 5y ago
      Non consenting to what? A conversation? Do people need consent now to talk to other strangers? Should people look away from problems and mind their own business? I don’t know but comments like these don’t seem healthy to me.
      • munificent 5y ago
        I feel like we're talking past each other. Did you read the article? Rejection therapy isn't just talking to someone. It's making some kind of request of them that you know they don't want to do in order to force them to actively reject you so that you can experience the rejection. It's not, "Hey, how's the weather." It's, "Can I see what's in your wallet?"
• papandada 5y ago
  I feel like I use strangers as unwitting tools in my own psychological therapy all the time, but yes here it's sketchy because rejecting someone (the intended response) is an unpleasant activity.
  • sacrosancty 5y ago
    Perhaps those people who suffer rejecting-unpleasantness should do their own therapy where they go around rejecting people's requests!
    • shreddit 5y ago
      They could go into stores and wander seemingly helpless around, to be asked whether they need help. This could be discouraging towards “new” employees though. Maybe they should walk around and learn getting rejected… oh well
    • munificent 5y ago
      You know, if a whole bunch of rejection therapy and rejector therapy folks want to get in a room and work through their stuff, I am all about it because then they've all agreed to participate.
      • openknot 5y ago
        I'm sympathetic to this view, but from my experience living in a dense city, I'm effectively consenting to be randomly approached whenever I step outdoors to go in public. I may not like it, but people regularly approach to ask for money, to sign up for a recurring donation, to sign a petition, to give a flyer, to sell a CD of music (yes, even in modern times), or to give a product sample. I may also get photographed by a street photographer. A small request that can help someone with their problems looks relatively mild compared to most of these other actions.
• majormajor 5y ago
  Asking favors vs just interacting with people feels potentially sketchy to me, but on the whole, I think strangers in-person would be well off interacting with each other more these days, not less. I've always liked how Terry Pratchett put it: “Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are...well...human beings.”
• dtrent 5y ago
  It wouldn't pass an IRB. This sort of thing is fundamentally selfish. At best de minimis but you can imagine how annoying public life would get if tacitly recruiting strangers as unpaid therapists was at all common.
  • InitialLastName 5y ago
    Third Place [0] theory would suggest that places where you can meet and interact with (semi-) strangers are critical to building communities. I'd argue that a part of that is the internal self-development function that is served by talking to strangers (effectively 'recruiting strangers as unpaid therapists`). Done well, it is mutual (you are each building social trust by interacting with one another). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
    • dtrent 5y ago
      Would it or does it? In fairness, I used to write like this too. If the theory endorses selfish deceptions then its not worth adherence. If it doesn't endorse them, then it doesn't support the practice in the article, and its not worth discussing here.
    • munificent 5y ago
      Talking to strangers is great. Third places are great. Contriving a way to talk to a stranger such that your goal is to force them so far outside of their comfort zone that they assertively reject you is not great. These are not at all the same thing. I'm not saying don't talk to strangers. I'm saying don't use unwitting strangers in your contrived boundary pushing scenarios for your own psychological growth at the expense of their comfort and consent. You wouldn't walk around putting spiders on people and tell them, "It's cool, bro, I'm just doing spider therapy."
      • openknot 5y ago
        There is nuance in my view, as I believe that the action matters more than the intent. Putting spiders on people is immoral because it causes psychological distress and potential harm due to spider bites. However, other behaviors are far more reasonable (e.g. asking for their newspaper, for a few dollars, or for a food sample from, say, an ice cream store). In isolation, these other behaviors sound perfectly reasonable in other contexts. However, I agree with you for some of the other examples in the article (e.g. asking to try on someone's shoes or someone's sunglasses) wouldn't be reasonable or useful in other contexts.