Gaslighting discussion (split from: Justin’s Miscellaneous Posts)

Other
21

Any idea what the problem is?

FWIW I have needed to periodically load a new image on my Macs. A couple of Mac OS upgrade cycles I tried the upgrade rather than a reinstall, and regretted it due to stuff breaking or performing badly.

I also shut down my box every night. Rarely, I have something I want to keep running and don’t. Usually anything long running goes on a server, not my desk box. It’s not uncommon when I don’t shut down for a few days for stuff to get glitchy, slow, or outright crash / black screen of death which is a forced reboot, typically at the worst possible time. :frowning:

Whereas…Even an ancient 2013 Macbook Air with 8GB RAM I know of still runs decent, stable and reliable with a fresh image & nightly reboot. The person using it is obviously not doing CPU or RAM intensive stuff there, but it’s far from unusable.

22

Been having performance problems and various other issues for a while. Latest issue has been system running really hot and fans blowing constantly despite no program apparently using the CPU much. Room isn’t particularly hot. I tried using third party apps to control the fans manually and make them kick in less, but then when I did that the system ran super hot and performance went from bad to a slideshow. It’s been a series of problems for a while though. I’ve also had weird graphical glitches like red colored blocks appearing in splotches on the screen. I wonder if the logic board or GPU is going. Also tangentially my iMac display is messed up (severe burn-in/ghosting on edges).

Just a correlation but Monterey seemed to make things significantly worse.

I reboot regularly though not every night. I generally upgrade OS installations.

23

CAVEAT: I haven’t investigated thoroughly enough to be confident this is correct, but it might be a good lead.

After installing Big Sur I noticed unexpected periods of high temp / fan noise in my Intel Macbook Pro. I usually tracked this down to a process - often iMessages related, running flat-out (100%) on one or more cores. The process utilization I’m talking about was never related to actions I had initiated - like, I hadn’t touched iMessages for a week and hadn’t launched it since reboot but an iMessages sub-process was burning 100% of a core. When I initiate something CPU intensive I know I’m gonna get extra heat + fan noise - this is different. The spontaneous high CPU often happens when the machine nominally goes to sleep!

Perhaps what’s going on is Mac OS used to throttle these kind of background processes to keep this high CPU from happening. But with M1, I’d guess Mac OS just directs them to efficiency cores. Since Intel Macs don’t have efficiency cores, they just run flat out on regular cores causing the heat + fan noise.

My particular setup is good at dealing with heat - unless I’m actively mobile, my macbooks live on elevated perforated metal stands. For the Intel MacBook Pro I have a silent fan underneath that runs continuously, and 3 not-silent switchable fans I turn on when I’m expecting extra heat or hearing the Mac’s internal fans kick on.

Last year my battery bulged and Apple replaced it free even though I was out of warranty (impressed!). After that is when I added the extra fans as I suspected heat was at least contributing to the battery problem.

Other than that I’ve had no ill hardware effects. But I’d guess if I just plonked down this box on a desk like most people do I’d have a lot more heat related problems with Big Sur+ than I did with prior Mac OS releases.

Software-wise I haven’t noticed any real problems while these events occur. The processes seem to run flat out if they can, but they’re low priority so if I launch something myself they get out of the way and don’t hog cycles.

24

hmmph! that is an interesting hypothesis

25

I used to have a fan platform thing for my old MacBook Pro from years ago

26

You did multiple socially mean responses to Elliot. Your responses repeatedly ignored the point of what he said, including when he actually tried to bring up that issue and linked an article about it.

Your responses are bad enough that I am having trouble figuring out how to best explain the issue, since there are multiple parts of multiple different messages that are problematic. It’s hard to figure out where to start or what to point out. (Edit: I did not attempt to do that in this message, but I might write more messages later to explain some of the problems. This message only focusses on the sentence I replied to.)

He told you that you were gaslighting him, and instead of trying to figure out what he meant you disagreed and tried to argue with him. But your argument just had more mistakes, and didn’t actually address the issues.

If someone tells you that you are gaslighting them, and there is any good faith, you should try to figure out what it is that they think you did, not just argue with them and tell them they are wrong.

Imagine that someone really was gaslighting someone else (perhaps unintentionally), and the victim tried to tell the gaslighter. And then the gaslighter responds – without even finding out what the victim thinks was gaslighting or why – that they disagree they are gaslighting. Can you see how that would be a terrible response, and would just be even more gaslighting?

When someone tells you that they think you are wronging them in some way, hurting them in some way, gaslighting them in some way, etc, then responding simply that you disagree, without even trying to figure out what they are talking about is not a reasonable way to treat someone that you actually want to interact with.

I could see using that kind of response as a way to maintain a boundary with someone who has repeatedly broken boundaries with you. But doing it to someone who you have good will with, someone who you don’t think is lying and trying to manipulate you, is egregious. The fact that you responded in that way communicates that you think Elliot is unreasonable and not worth trying to talk to or even take seriously.

This is particularly awful given that there is currently a harassment campaign against him. You are an active poster on his forum. But you are treating him as if he were an unreasonable person who isn’t worth trying to reason with and understand. Do you see how that sends a message that would be encouraging to the harassers? Even his own fans think he is unreasonable and lies about being gaslit?

Btw, I don’t actually think this is your intent. I think that you would be horrified to realize that you were doing anything that might contribute to the harassment. I think what happened is something like you felt attacked in some way, and got defensive as a means to protect yourself. Mistreating Elliot was just a side effect of that, not your intention. But if someone tells you that you are gaslighting them, that should be a clue that something is going wrong somewhere, and you need to change modes and find out more about the situation.

27

I’ve been stuck in how to reply and try to make progress in this thread for a couple of days and have been quite unhappy about that. I’m not sure how to go about replying in a way that I’m okay with and that others are okay with. I’m talking pretty generally cuz I think it might be more problematic if I try to get into details.

I think I need to resolve the issues in this thread to be okay with posting in general. The issue came up while discussing USB hubs, so I don’t think there are some safe topics I can confine myself to while trying to figure this issue out - I don’t think the issue here was that I was discussing a tough topic for me and that I had bias and irrationality from that. So I haven’t been posting about anything at all until I figure this out, and since I haven’t figured this out, I haven’t posted anything (despite wanting to).

I don’t know that this post is helpful, but it seemed better to say something, even if pretty vague, than to just be completely silent - especially since I have been thinking about and bothered by the situation.

28

I’ll try saying one smallish thing at a time and see if I can get anywhere with that without causing a problem.

I understand gaslighting to be a psychological abuse technique/emotional manipulation tactic in which the abuser repeatedly lies in order to get the victim to try to question their own reality, with the purpose of gaining/furthering some sort of psychological domination or control over the person. People often associate it with the context of domestic abuse and also with what they call psychopaths or sociopaths. So, given that understanding of the term, yes, I felt attacked by the claim that I was engaging in gaslighting. It seemed a couple of orders of magnitude more serious a claim than “that last post was mean” or something of that nature.

29

Gaslighting means more than one thing.

It is a bit like the TCS Coercion concept. There is the act of purposely trying to coerce someone. But it is also possibly to unintentionally coerce someone. So if someone says that you are coercing them, your response shouldn’t be to assume that they mean you are intentionally coercing them and get upset by that, and deny that you are coercing them. They could just mean that your actions have the effect of being coercive, and not be trying to say anything about your mental state or the purpose behind your actions.

30

Okay I think I get how you could be doing something innocuous or even trying to help but the other person experiences it as coercive and they aren’t passing judgment on your motives when they tell you that you are coercing them. I’m having trouble applying this understanding to gaslighting though. Cuz basically I understand gaslighting to be a certain set or pattern of bad acts/behavior.

So like what would unintentional gaslighting be? Here is some brainstorming

  1. (Focused on behavior of gaslighter) You go around psychologically abusing/emotionally manipulating people without an awareness of what you’re doing. It’s just like automated social behavior for you, like various social behaviors are for lots of people.

  2. (Focused on effect on victim) You (somehow) induce in others a sense of feeling like they’re questioning their own sense of reality. (This seems more analogous to unintentionally coercing someone)

I think 2 is too vague and not a very good statement of the issue, and there is something I am missing there (I say this to make clear I’m not trying to set up a straw man definition to refute). I don’t see how it makes sense to call something gaslighting without some kind of bad/negative behavior on the part of the gaslighter. Cuz eg a religious believer might feel like their sense of reality is called into question if they encounter a convincing atheist, but I don’t think that would be right to call gaslighting. So a definition of gaslighting that’s just focused on the effect on the victim doesn’t seem to make sense. So I think I’m misunderstanding something important.

31

If you felt that way at the time, it would have been better to directly address that. Instead of directly stating that you thought you were being attacked, or that the claim was unreasonable, you dealt with it in a less direct way.

This is related to a common problem that I think people have. (Not just with Elliot, but it seems to come up a lot with Elliot.) Basically, they don’t want to directly state when they think they have been wronged in some way. Sometimes they justify it to themselves by saying it’s because they don’t want to argue, don’t want to be mean, don’t want to call someone out, etc.

But what happens is that they never state their grievances, and instead just keep them to themselves, and sort of silently hold them against the other person. So what happens is that the other person never get a chance to defend themselves. They never got to explain their actions or say why they did them or what they meant by them.

Basically you just end up holding on to your negative interpretations of another person, and remembering them as what really happened, without ever giving that other person the chance to explain what they think happened.

32

It is kind of funny, cuz I did wind up brining the issue more directly, but only after a couple of days of being upset about it … which seems kind of pointless in retrospect (the being upset part).

33

I didn’t actually make any claims about this. I was talking about whether something was intentional, not whether it included any bad/negative behavior.

I think that most cases of gaslighting include bad/negative behavior on someone’s part. (I think the same probably applies to coercion, especially if you are defining “bad/negative behavior” broadly, but I haven’t thought this through very much.)

Part of what you said about gaslighting, from the message I was replying to:

So that’s more than just bad/negative behavior.

I meant that just because someone accuses you of gaslighting doesn’t mean they are accusing you of that (the stuff you said in the quote, e.g., being like a domestic abuser or sociopath). It doesn’t mean they are accusing you of intentional/purposeful psychological manipulation & abuse.

But you have jumped to saying that you don’t see how gaslighting could happen without some kind of bad/negative behavior, as if I said something that implied otherwise.

BTW, this reminds me of the issue you were having with the math problem, which I pointed out and you replied to here. Basically, in that problem, you had missed some information that was written in the question itself. I think this is a similar issue: you are misreading the thing you are replying to in some way, and coming to conclusions based on your misreading.

34

Right okay that makes sense. There’s a lot of space in between domestic abuse and just doing something bad/negative.

Interesting. Yeah I think I can see the connection there. Also, in general, re: math, the problems where they want me to prove something seem like the hardest for me, which I think indicates that I have trouble with connecting arguments to conclusions or something like that.

35

re: the DisplayLink hubs, the WAVLINK did not work for me (it made an obnoxious electrical humming sound constantly that was pretty loud), so I’m trying this one now:

I had some initial issues with it for one of my monitors (some kinda flashing to black every once in a while), but switched around the connections some and it seems to be working okay for now. Need more time to be confident it will work consistently though.

Some downsides of DisplayLink:

  1. no Night Shift
  2. it messes with Apple Watch unlock (DisplayLink uses screen monitoring or something, which prevents the unlock from working).
  3. no current support for display rotation (though this is coming imminently)

still, i think it’ll be okay for my purposes if i can find an affordable dock that works decently

36

Initially I was going to complain that I didn’t attribute such claims to you - that I was just brainstorming. But I was brainstorming trying to understand the thing that we were discussing - the meaning of gaslighting - so that would have been a silly objection. Later on I realized that the reaction I had - to want to say “hey I didn’t say you claimed stuff” - might be that reaction I have where I try to avoid sticking my neck out. I wanted to say “oh I was just brainstorming” to try to avoid taking responsibility for my implicit claims about what you said.

Also I’m not sure it matters anyways … like whether I was just “brainstorming” in a way that wasn’t directly related to what you said, or trying to understand what you said, you offered a criticism of what I put forth as my understanding, and if my goal is truth-seeking (rather than trying to win debating points or derail the conversation) i should focus on that criticism.

37

When I read your post (the one with the brainstorming), I actually went back and re-read my own post because I was confused about what I had said to get that kind of response from you. I read your post as responding to my post, so I thought that the things you were arguing with and brainstorming about were meant to be a response to things I actually said. But I didn’t remember having ever said the things you were responding to, so I was confused and wondered if I wrote something unclear or something that I didn’t remember.

Your current response doesn’t actually read like you accept that you did make implicit claims about what I said: You say that you objected to what I said [about you having made implicit claims about what I said], and then decided that maybe you are wrong about the issue, but that it doesn’t really matter anyway.

This is an underhanded way to undermine what I said. You aren’t directly arguing with me, only saying that maybe I am wrong, while also saying maybe I am right or maybe it doesn’t matter either way. This plants seeds of doubt with what I said, while also making me look aggressive if I pursue disagreement or insist upon some kind of resolution. So you have undermined my claims and at the same time made me look bad if I try to defend those claims.

Edit: added the part in square brackets for clarity

38

Right. That’s reasonable. It was also literally (in the technical forum sense) a reply to your post, and not a reply to the topic generally, so that’s additional evidence. You also talked about unintentional coercion and I talked about unintentional gaslighting in a manner that was trying to build on what you said.

I had some idea that “Here is some brainstorming” was supposed to indicate some sort of marker of “hey here’s a bunch of stuff that’s just blue sky thinking and not necessarily building on the previous stuff” but I don’t think that actually makes a lot of sense cuz 1) it’s not a particularly good/strong marker for that (brainstorming can be brainstorming while still being very contextually limited) 2) the other stuff I mentioned in the previous paragraph clashes with that message.

39

oh btw I think I should gather up the gaslighting posts into a separate unbounded thread (I’ll do this after people are done replying unless anyone objects)

40

a33: X.

JCEO: Talks about Y as if a33 had said Y.

a33: Denies saying Y.

JCEO: omg why are you reading implications into what I said and implying that I said you said Y? By denying you said Y, you’re making an implication about what I said! But I never wrote the words “You said Y” so that’s unfair.

Me: Did y’all notice how JCEO was the one implying what someone else said? He feels like the victim who is being implied about, but he did it first and the thing he’s now complaining about was someone trying to defend themselves against his implications (a context he’s dropped).