When I mention my dad’s abuse, I usually mention salient things – physical pain, insults, and controlling behavior. These are “clearly bad” – if I tell that he you often told me I was lazy and would fail horribly at life once I left home, you know it’s bad, because it’s concrete, easy to imagine and obviously unkind. But this wasn’t the worst of the abuse; the most terrible parts were extraordinarily hard to understand or describe.
I actually really like your post! And you! And especially your polls about moral dilemmas. And I think you're probably smarter than me! But I have some objections to this post, fwiw:
1. Every bit of culture you consume affects your frame in some small way, subconsciously. If you want to pathologize "having some detrimental effect on you through modifying your frame, regardless of intent", then almost any friend, blogger, celebrity, writer, director, news outlet, tech company, etc that you've ever seen has probably done a little bit of that at some point.
2. Someone causing you to update your frame is a good thing if the update is towards truth! But good epistemic arguments are rarely conveyed through unspoken subtexts. Maybe it is bad to convince people of things through unspoken subtexts. But this seems socially ubiquitous. I'm not sure what to do with this.
3. "We instinctively know the kinds of things to say to communicate the right unspoken functions." Not sure about that, considering the nerdiness of the audience. I've never been diagnosed with Aspergers, but I struggle with that and tend to be more direct in my communication style.
4. Someone gaining "power over you" through convincing you to do what they want you to do, without violence, is not inherently toxic. It can be, if they convince you of false things, or cause you to do things that are harmful to yourself or others.
5. Strongly agree with "You don’t have to justify your preferences". Nobody should ever push back on a request to knock before entering your room because "whose room is it" trumps any conflict of preferences there. But outside of personal property, conflicting preferences need to be negotiated and come to some voluntary arrangement. Maybe the platonic form of the evil frame control that can be embedded in these negotiations is the use of (rhetorical dark arts that convince people without making explicit valid arguments) combined with self-centered motives.
6. A related concept that Warren Buffett has repeatedly talked about is that he likes to have an "internal scorecard", in other words to avoid letting his utility function be contaminated by other people's utility functions without really thinking it through. I think the opposite is the default for humans (A friend says they like X, and Bob updates towards liking X. A friend says Bob did a great job, and Bob updates towards thinking you did a great job.) A lot of this "groupthink" can be rational unless you are trying to optimize for having a lot of correct contrarian takes.
I actually really like your post! And you! And especially your polls about moral dilemmas. And I think you're probably smarter than me! But I have some objections to this post, fwiw:
1. Every bit of culture you consume affects your frame in some small way, subconsciously. If you want to pathologize "having some detrimental effect on you through modifying your frame, regardless of intent", then almost any friend, blogger, celebrity, writer, director, news outlet, tech company, etc that you've ever seen has probably done a little bit of that at some point.
2. Someone causing you to update your frame is a good thing if the update is towards truth! But good epistemic arguments are rarely conveyed through unspoken subtexts. Maybe it is bad to convince people of things through unspoken subtexts. But this seems socially ubiquitous. I'm not sure what to do with this.
3. "We instinctively know the kinds of things to say to communicate the right unspoken functions." Not sure about that, considering the nerdiness of the audience. I've never been diagnosed with Aspergers, but I struggle with that and tend to be more direct in my communication style.
4. Someone gaining "power over you" through convincing you to do what they want you to do, without violence, is not inherently toxic. It can be, if they convince you of false things, or cause you to do things that are harmful to yourself or others.
5. A lot of this seems like citrus advice in the sense used by this talk: https://www.pathsensitive.com/2018/12/my-strange-loop-talk-you-are-program.html (Heuristics that usually work but don't concisely cut down to the root of the problem and explain it exactly). I want to find the vitamin C in this.
5. Strongly agree with "You don’t have to justify your preferences". Nobody should ever push back on a request to knock before entering your room because "whose room is it" trumps any conflict of preferences there. But outside of personal property, conflicting preferences need to be negotiated and come to some voluntary arrangement. Maybe the platonic form of the evil frame control that can be embedded in these negotiations is the use of (rhetorical dark arts that convince people without making explicit valid arguments) combined with self-centered motives.
6. A related concept that Warren Buffett has repeatedly talked about is that he likes to have an "internal scorecard", in other words to avoid letting his utility function be contaminated by other people's utility functions without really thinking it through. I think the opposite is the default for humans (A friend says they like X, and Bob updates towards liking X. A friend says Bob did a great job, and Bob updates towards thinking you did a great job.) A lot of this "groupthink" can be rational unless you are trying to optimize for having a lot of correct contrarian takes.