Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I solicit psychoanalysis. There are some behavioral patterns that bug me a lot! But I have a hard time articulating what exactly. And why exactly.
Read: Failures in Kindness, The Asshole filter. The aforementioned articles capture some of them, the class of behavioral patterns I am talking about.
Both the articles describe 5 distinct behavioral patterns that I can best describe as sloppy. What they have in common are:
Note that these patterns are not negligent, malicious or particularly difficult to oppose.
Nevertheless, my flight or fight response kicks in when I even imagine someone doing any of these things. Why? I am not big on trying to introspect why I feel the way I do, afterall my brain is a mushy piece of shit running caveman software, and I am best of ignoring what ticks off the lizard.
But seriously why? Why do I feel such scorn, revulsion and anxiety at even the mere thought of these behaviors ? Like I literally think you are a lesser being if you ever committed any of these things.
I think it's the indirect manipulation, no? There's an expectation there that you will read, understand and even change your behaviour. And if you don't, you're "the problem".
There are also elements of attempted mind-reading and meta-planning (not just what will happen but in what way to manipulate the events so that the correct ones take place).
I dunno, my attitude whenever I come across this type of thinking is "Just be a reasonable person and spend time with reasonable people."
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We have any actually qualified psychiatrists here? Or at least someone who completed their training? (I know Scott has an account, but god knows the last time he used it)
Oh well, guess I don't have competition.
The thing is, from a place of love, LessWrong is a place made by the autistic, for the autistic. And I say that someone who identifies with them and has an account with a decent amount of karma. Half their shtick is formalizing and exploring situations that are naturally/intuitively handled by neurotypicals.
Which is not a knock against it, evidently that's highly valuable to a lot of them.
Leaving aside autism, you're drawing from a pool of very intelligent, highly conscientious and somewhat anxious people. Most of them are nice, and the thought of even accidentally imposing on someone fills them with instinctual revulsion. Nice to a fault even, given that they're busy arguing with how attempts at being kind might be accidentally unkind.
The second post, it's far more universally applicable. If you make it so that all the people who aren't assholes feel like they have to assholish to make it to you, then you're filtering for assholes.
Or people who don't give a shit, at the very least.
If I had to guess, you're also intelligent, hard working, conscientious, considerate of others, and hate feeling like you're coercing them. If that's a psychiatric condition or amenable to psychoanalysis, well I couldn't find it in the DSM-5. Do a lot of coke or become a meth head if you wish to change it, caveat emptor.
That'll be $7250 and change please. Thanks!
Wait, Scott has an account?
He does. I don't remember the exact name, but it was ScottA or something. It's obviously not active right now, or everyone would know. Last interaction I can personally recall was a year or more back.
You're right, he is ScottA. It looks like he only commented in that one thread.
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I mentioned this before, but I again recommend you read "Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process" by Nancy McWilliams.
Easy to grab a copy on the high seas, you'll find it will expand your view of human behavior outside just the DSM (see: neurosis) and it's written in basic enough English that anyone clinical will get a lot out of it. Hell, I've tossed it at some of my big business family members to help them understand toxic behaviors in finance.
Previously I would have hit you with "no you'll have these patients in every field and it is going to help." Now I am very pleased to hit you with "bruh it's your field, get a bit ahead of it."
I'm already digging into Fish's Psychopathology and the Oxford Handbook, but I certainly will visit libgen again to pick me up a copy!
Talk dirty to me daddy, I still can hardly believe it myself lol.
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It seems likely you've had some bad relationships or experiences with people who behave in that way, and haven't completely gotten over it.
The scenarios in the Kindness article, especially, strike me as weird.
Sure, it's pretty lame to just be vague and open about what to do with a friend when they visit. But it's also kind of weird for the friend to just kind of passively expect you to play tour guide, rather than just asking about a good restaurant or museum or something, and if you want to join. When I've shown up places with vague expectations, I'm not at all surprised if we just have tea and I'm left to wander around the city or follow them on a grocery trip or something.
The second one is also odd. A man has gone to a woman's house, is there late at night, just the two of them, and is planning to stay until she kicks him out? So he's, what, going to either fall sleep or make a move, but it basically indifferent as to which? Or he likes her so much, but as a friend, he'd be interested in staying up all night together platonically? None of that has much to do with "kindness" or lack thereof on his part. And this is in the same category as lighting up a cigarette in a group of people, as long as you ask how annoyed they'll be first? Isn't the convention to announce you're going around the corner to smoke, and offering one to anyone who wants to join?
I'm pretty sure the convention for gas is to wait until they stop for gas, and then buy the gas?
Umm... giving game. Right.
Anyway, everyone described sounds so foreign that interacting seems like it would be an interesting cultural experience.
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My guess, extrapolating from my own similar albeit weaker feelings, is that it's something along the lines of corruption of virtue. Taking what should be positive qualities and wasting them or subverting them. Similar to a beautiful delicious barbecued pig falling into the dirt and feeding the flies and germs instead of a person. Turning from something nourishing and healthy to people into something that only feeds rot and disease.
That is, kindness has the potential to do good things and have value and make the world a better place. But misplaced kindness that rewards bad behavior will incentivize them and make them more prevalent. The vast majority of toxic behaviors we see in society are there not because the people who do them are stupid people who can't figure out how to be kind, but because they have been systematically rewarded for those behaviors in some way or another. Being toxic works, at least on some level for some people. To the extent that toxic behaviors are analogous to disease, systematically feeding them with misplaced kindness is comparable to someone going out and feeding expensive high quality meat to a wild rat colony, or a beautiful woman allowing mosquitoes and hookworms to feast on her blood. Not only are they wasting something good, but they are actively allowing badness to reproduce for everyone else to have to deal with. It's disgusting.
I feel less scorn and revulsion for people who do this accidentally than I would for someone doing this on purpose. And less for people doing this on a social level than with literal diseases. But it's still gross in a similar way.
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