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> "Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to weigh every possible motivation of another person?" Which is why people take the shortcut of assuming anyone w

by staunch 12y ago

> "Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to weigh every possible motivation of another person?" Which is why people take the shortcut of assuming anyone who says things they don't like is an asshole.

iamcreasy 12y ago
Here is where the cultural differences comes into play. In a particular culture, there is an usually semi-well defined set of protocols that assists us to decipher the non-verbal communications. But in a global village, I find it easier to give everyone the benefit of doubt. Why? Because to me it feels, we are mostly rational people and at the end of the day we don't want to do anything that will hunt our consciousness. So we will always try to balance out our good and evil.
- mreiland 12y ago
  And we can all link hands and sing Kumbaya. I don't have the mental energy to give everyone I come across the benefit of the doubt. When it's all said and done, the people who don't take the time to try and understand me get dismissed pretty quickly. I know, I know, that makes me a terrible person. But it's also true that some people are more considerate than others, and all things being equal, if I'm going to expend my limited energy on someone, it's going to be the person who is a little more considerate. I guess that's my failing, but whatever.
  - rmxt 12y ago
    There is this recorded saying that they've been playing on the subway in NYC... It's trite -- borderline oppressive when you're stuck in a sardine can of a subway car -- but it applies here: "Courtesy is contagious, and it begins with you." There's no reason for you or anyone else to think you're a terrible person because of what you're saying, but at the same time, it might be helpful for you to reconsider your position. What happens if someone catches you on a bad day in which you aren't trying to understand people? They "dismiss you pretty quickly" and you're left holding the bag.
    - mreiland 12y ago
      We're not discussing courtesy. I can excuse me and hello, nice to meet you all day long without a second thought. But I'm not going to spend my time trying to reconcile with someone who is being unfair to something I said when I could instead be using that time to reconcile with someone who is instead simply misunderstanding me. there is an idea known as irreconcilable differences, that idea applies here.
      - rmxt 12y ago
        It's called "courtesy" on the subway, but the analogous traits are "empathy" and "earnestness" in general discourse. My point was less about the specific trait and more that often times we can encourage/evoke the traits we want to see in others by first developing and portraying them in ourselves. I guess I am looking at the grey area between someone being unfair to you and someone who is misunderstanding you. I think that trying to empathize and understand the "other" often results in finding out that someone isn't actually being "unfair" to us, but rather, is actually "misunderstanding" us. That working point can give way to deeper understanding in a conversation/venture that might have otherwise been discarded because of "irreconcilable differences."
        mreiland 12y ago
        no, this is courtesy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5rIv4Qros https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5rIv4Qros If you're not willing to empathize enough to do this for another human being, then you're a terrible person who needs to work to be better.
  - dalek_cannes 12y ago
    > I don't have the mental energy to give everyone I come across the benefit of the doubt... people who don't take the time to try and understand me get dismissed pretty quickly. So you basically demand others spend mental energy on you, but you refuse to return the favor?
    - karmakaze 12y ago
      This is a very common case. Both sides attempting to communicate their point and get acknowledgement that it's been understood and at the same time neither side making an attempt to understand. Sometimes it's not even a disagreement, just a difference of expression, aka. 'in violent agreement'.
      - mreiland 12y ago
        Which is of course a misunderstanding of my point. The question is going to be will you start telling me what my point is? because I'm not going to waste my time on you. No reasonable person who has been online for any length of time is going to really argue with what I just said. There is no way you sit and really contemplate and try to communicate as best you can with everyone you come across online, you would never make it out of a single youtube video. There's how you view yourself and then there's the way you really are. You pick and choose just as readily as I do, the only difference is I'm pretty open about it.
  - mak4athp 12y ago
    You recognize the irony here, right? You won't give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but only take seriously the people who offer it to you. That strategy doesn't seem like it would pan out very well!
    - mreiland 12y ago
      check out this video, it's ironic too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc
VLM 12y ago
That's the primacy effect from the article. Where assuming 50% smoothly distributed random assholery in the general population (for the sake of easy math) and X opinions, then people who know significantly more than two times X people (lets say ten X) will tend to have met at least one person with the "wrong" opinion who is an asshole therefore by the primacy effect the next person they meet with the "wrong" opinion has been sabotaged by someone from their past to be autocategorized into asshole status much like that jerk from 8 years ago or whatever. This all came up in a verbal discussion I had with someone as to why evolution hasn't "fixed" memory, it subjectively seems technically possible looking at skill memory (riding a bike, etc), and the theory we more or less proposed is social cohesion is reproductively valuable and social cohesion is destroyed if people remember minor slights (or, worse than minor slights...) forever. So a population where people forget is a population that will be more reproductively successful over time and outcompete a more petty society where members remember everything. And that's why google searches and/or social media are a net negative for society, or rephrased its a competitive advantage for a culture not to have google/facebook integration. I don't think that was the result they were looking for, and now as per the above any time that poor bastard runs into a new user of the Socratic method of discussion he's going to auto-categorize the new guy as an asshole, all my fault. Oh well, at least its not google searchable (aside from here), LOL.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  > social cohesion is destroyed if people remember minor slights (or, worse than minor slights...) forever. Quite a few cultures worked like this. Minor issues of "honour" would turn into persistent and violent multi-generational vendettas. Unfortunately, violence isn't necessarily a problem for social cohesion. It makes your culture a horrible place to be, but it doesn't keep humans from breeding successfully. Re: memory, I think it's more likely that a better memory would take extra energy and perhaps a different brain structure, but would add no obvious survival benefits. Early humans basically needed enough memory to find their way around an environment, to recognise each other, and to know a few heuristics for group values and survival practices (often camouflaged as myths and stories.) There was no need to learn every possible back-of-the-book calculus formula or the entire syntax of Haskell. From that pov, human memory is already an order of magnitude better than it really needs to be. Interestingly, some cultures were allegedly much better at memory than we are. Supposedly epic poets and druids endured long and incredibly arduous trainings with huge amounts of rote memorisation.

by staunch 12y ago

iamcreasy 12y ago

Here is where the cultural differences comes into play. In a particular culture, there is an usually semi-well defined set of protocols that assists us to decipher the non-verbal communications. But in a global village, I find it easier to give everyone the benefit of doubt. Why? Because to me it feels, we are mostly rational people and at the end of the day we don't want to do anything that will hunt our consciousness. So we will always try to balance out our good and evil.

mreiland 12y ago
And we can all link hands and sing Kumbaya. I don't have the mental energy to give everyone I come across the benefit of the doubt. When it's all said and done, the people who don't take the time to try and understand me get dismissed pretty quickly. I know, I know, that makes me a terrible person. But it's also true that some people are more considerate than others, and all things being equal, if I'm going to expend my limited energy on someone, it's going to be the person who is a little more considerate. I guess that's my failing, but whatever.
- rmxt 12y ago
  There is this recorded saying that they've been playing on the subway in NYC... It's trite -- borderline oppressive when you're stuck in a sardine can of a subway car -- but it applies here: "Courtesy is contagious, and it begins with you." There's no reason for you or anyone else to think you're a terrible person because of what you're saying, but at the same time, it might be helpful for you to reconsider your position. What happens if someone catches you on a bad day in which you aren't trying to understand people? They "dismiss you pretty quickly" and you're left holding the bag.
  - mreiland 12y ago
    We're not discussing courtesy. I can excuse me and hello, nice to meet you all day long without a second thought. But I'm not going to spend my time trying to reconcile with someone who is being unfair to something I said when I could instead be using that time to reconcile with someone who is instead simply misunderstanding me. there is an idea known as irreconcilable differences, that idea applies here.
    - rmxt 12y ago
      It's called "courtesy" on the subway, but the analogous traits are "empathy" and "earnestness" in general discourse. My point was less about the specific trait and more that often times we can encourage/evoke the traits we want to see in others by first developing and portraying them in ourselves. I guess I am looking at the grey area between someone being unfair to you and someone who is misunderstanding you. I think that trying to empathize and understand the "other" often results in finding out that someone isn't actually being "unfair" to us, but rather, is actually "misunderstanding" us. That working point can give way to deeper understanding in a conversation/venture that might have otherwise been discarded because of "irreconcilable differences."
      - mreiland 12y ago
        no, this is courtesy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5rIv4Qros https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5rIv4Qros If you're not willing to empathize enough to do this for another human being, then you're a terrible person who needs to work to be better.
- dalek_cannes 12y ago
  > I don't have the mental energy to give everyone I come across the benefit of the doubt... people who don't take the time to try and understand me get dismissed pretty quickly. So you basically demand others spend mental energy on you, but you refuse to return the favor?
  - karmakaze 12y ago
    This is a very common case. Both sides attempting to communicate their point and get acknowledgement that it's been understood and at the same time neither side making an attempt to understand. Sometimes it's not even a disagreement, just a difference of expression, aka. 'in violent agreement'.
    - mreiland 12y ago
      Which is of course a misunderstanding of my point. The question is going to be will you start telling me what my point is? because I'm not going to waste my time on you. No reasonable person who has been online for any length of time is going to really argue with what I just said. There is no way you sit and really contemplate and try to communicate as best you can with everyone you come across online, you would never make it out of a single youtube video. There's how you view yourself and then there's the way you really are. You pick and choose just as readily as I do, the only difference is I'm pretty open about it.
- mak4athp 12y ago
  You recognize the irony here, right? You won't give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but only take seriously the people who offer it to you. That strategy doesn't seem like it would pan out very well!
  - mreiland 12y ago
    check out this video, it's ironic too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc

VLM 12y ago

That's the primacy effect from the article. Where assuming 50% smoothly distributed random assholery in the general population (for the sake of easy math) and X opinions, then people who know significantly more than two times X people (lets say ten X) will tend to have met at least one person with the "wrong" opinion who is an asshole therefore by the primacy effect the next person they meet with the "wrong" opinion has been sabotaged by someone from their past to be autocategorized into asshole status much like that jerk from 8 years ago or whatever. This all came up in a verbal discussion I had with someone as to why evolution hasn't "fixed" memory, it subjectively seems technically possible looking at skill memory (riding a bike, etc), and the theory we more or less proposed is social cohesion is reproductively valuable and social cohesion is destroyed if people remember minor slights (or, worse than minor slights...) forever. So a population where people forget is a population that will be more reproductively successful over time and outcompete a more petty society where members remember everything. And that's why google searches and/or social media are a net negative for society, or rephrased its a competitive advantage for a culture not to have google/facebook integration. I don't think that was the result they were looking for, and now as per the above any time that poor bastard runs into a new user of the Socratic method of discussion he's going to auto-categorize the new guy as an asshole, all my fault. Oh well, at least its not google searchable (aside from here), LOL.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
> social cohesion is destroyed if people remember minor slights (or, worse than minor slights...) forever. Quite a few cultures worked like this. Minor issues of "honour" would turn into persistent and violent multi-generational vendettas. Unfortunately, violence isn't necessarily a problem for social cohesion. It makes your culture a horrible place to be, but it doesn't keep humans from breeding successfully. Re: memory, I think it's more likely that a better memory would take extra energy and perhaps a different brain structure, but would add no obvious survival benefits. Early humans basically needed enough memory to find their way around an environment, to recognise each other, and to know a few heuristics for group values and survival practices (often camouflaged as myths and stories.) There was no need to learn every possible back-of-the-book calculus formula or the entire syntax of Haskell. From that pov, human memory is already an order of magnitude better than it really needs to be. Interestingly, some cultures were allegedly much better at memory than we are. Supposedly epic poets and druids endured long and incredibly arduous trainings with huge amounts of rote memorisation.