Undermining (was: Curiosity – Caffeine Is Bad)

Do you see ways you communicated a negative scenario?

No. I don’t think I said or implied that posting here was all I was doing, or that I had concluded caffeine is fine.

No. I think I explicitly communicated thinking there’s a potential problem with caffeine worth looking into and didn’t say anything contradictory to that.

If you said some ambiguously negative stuff, would you count that as negative or not? (Where there is a negative interpretation that’s reasonable, but also a positive or neutral interpretation that’s reasonable.)

No.

It wasn’t a yes or no question. I think you mean that you would not count ambiguity as negative.

So if you said 5 ambiguously negative things to or about curi in this topic, you would think that was innocuous, not negative or undermining? Why?

Sorry, You are correct that I meant I would not count ambiguity as negative.

One reason why is I think I am strongly biased by my recollection of my conscious intent.

I expect your answers to be what you think is true or correct, unless otherwise specified.

When you say you would think something due to bias, you aren’t giving a reason it’s true. That leaves me wondering if you do think it’s true. Or you think you’re wrong? Or you are unsure what you should think? How would you evaluate it if someone else did it?

I do think it’s true and correct that ambiguously worded statements in this thread should not count as negative.

I think there’s a subtle nuance in what question I answer in response to:

The first question I could answer, which is now what I think you’re looking for, is explicitly: ‘Give some reasons that might convince a neutral party that your position is true.’

A couple of reasons I’m aware of are:

  • Conflict avoidance - it’s common to interpret ambiguous statements positively rather than negatively to avoid unnecessary conflicts.
  • The existence of positive statements I quoted in the positive scenario.

The second question I could answer is explicitly: ‘What causes you to think your position is true?’

Since the broader context of our discussion is whether I have subconscious processes causing me to undermine curi, I originally thought this “What causes you…” was the why you were after. To give the reasons above in response to that question would be dishonest, since I am aware I’m biased in favor of my conscious intent and that bias may be what’s mainly causing me to think that ambiguous statements should not count as negative.

I think I’m too close to the situation to answer this reliably. My guess is that I would not count ambiguous statements as negative, but I have low confidence in that guess.

There may be a major disagreement here.

I think patterns of ambiguously negative statements are typical ways to attack, and even a single one is often a way to attack someone which is taken that way by the victim and audience members.

Unambiguous negative statements are considered super aggressive in our culture. Ambiguous negative statements are the more standard way to attack people in most contexts.

When people are being nice, they avoid ambiguous negativity.

Are you familiar with negging from Mystery Method? Negs are ambiguously negative comments used in flirting. They are used very sparingly.

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Of course this is balanced, as mystery says, with their attractiveNess where a 9-10 may need three negs/indicators of disinterest, a 7-8 maybe 1, and 6-7 none.

In other words, standard rules of thumb say a single ambiguously negative comment might be too much to handle for a girl with 7/10 or lower attractiveness, and three negs is the maximum to ever use even on someone with extremely high self-esteem.

But you seem to think that if you negged curi 5+ times in one discussion that wouldn’t be negative.

When you’re being more respectful towards someone, you avoid that ambiguous negativity.

Attacks in our culture are normally kept more ambiguous than this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exh1-JEseTA (which, if you think about the literal words being said, is actually quite ambiguous, even though people watching interpret it as strongly negative). When not attacking, people avoid saying things that could be an insult, social slight, social challenge, etc. If you don’t do that, it’s strongly disrespectful.

I have surface level / passing familiarity. Read some articles online but never investigated in depth, never read any books, never made a serious attempt to understand or apply its concepts. So anything I say or imply about it below could very easily be wrong and I wouldn’t be surprised.

I don’t know but assume the context of Mystery Method (MM) negs you quoted includes intentionality. I think the high level point of negs is approximately: you like/want the girl, but if you seem too interested / over-eager that will repel her. So saying some things to seem like you’re less interested in her than you are will improve your chances of getting her to be interested in you. But if they’re too strong / too many it’ll backfire & also repel her. So you have to intentionally choose the right type & amount of negs for the girl to get her to be attracted to you rather than repelled. [Again, I could easily be wrong and if I am feel free to correct - but seems like a reasonable approximation.]

So, if someone read MM material on negs, wanted to neg effectively but disagreed with the information you quoted about using them very sparingly and then intentionally negged someone 5 times, that’d be a major disagreement with MM about negging.

But if someone unintentionally said 5 things that were also negs in the MM material, that would not be a disagreement with MM about negging. It’d be something else - maybe still bad, like a social blunder, but not a disagreement with MM.

I didn’t intend to take a position on how many negs (intentionally ambiguous negative statements) I could write to curi in this thread without actually being negative. My best guess now is that I shouldn’t have written any negs, and I don’t think we have a major disagreement about that.

The position I was talking about is how I would interpret any ambiguously negative statements I found after the fact, knowing they were unintentional.

I think these also include intent unless one is unaware / making a social blunder rather than an attack.

I know I’m quite capable of making social blunders. It’s one reason I don’t like / have avoided sales and other customer facing roles in my career. So in addition to it being plausible to me that I’m subconsciously seeking to undermine curi, it’s also plausible to me that I’m routinely making social blunders in my posts.

[I see the following as a tangent, but important enough to mention:]

I think that’s an example of something different than what we’ve been discussing here. I think it’s an example of backhanded compliments. Explanation and more examples: 25 Backhanded Compliments You Might be Handing Out!

I don’t know if negs and backhanded compliments are the same thing in MM. In ordinary life, I think of backhanded compliments differently from ambiguously negative statements.

I don’t think I gave curi any backhanded compliments. If I did, it was also unintentional.

Yeah that’s the gist. Unintentional negs matter too and for flirting it’s important to get your social signals and behaviors under control. Recipients generally can’t tell whether negs are intentional or not, which is part of the design. And if a neg is unintentional, that doesn’t make it better. Being disrespected by someone’s autopilot is kinda worse than being disrespected on purpose – it’s more condescending if you didn’t even have the conscious attention of the person negging you.

There are two different types of unintentional. One is a total accident. Both your conscious and subconscious missed a particular ambiguity. The other type is you didn’t consciously intend something but your subconscious did it on purpose. Your subconscious is over half of your mind, of what you are mentally. It’s you. Whatever opinions it holds are your opinions. So you’re responsible for it. If your subconscious attacks someone, then you attacked them.

I think you do a lot of things that way – it wasn’t a total accident, there was knowledge in you that caused it, but it wasn’t your conscious intent either. So going back and saying you didn’t consciously intend things as negs doesn’t really matter. It’s not the point. If some things were just a total accidental blunder that would matter, and maybe a couple were accidents, but I don’t think most were. One doesn’t get patterns of behavior by random accident.

Make sense? If so maybe the next thing to do is examine a few things you said.

Yes, I agree.

I don’t have an adequate mental model for subconscious opinions and responsibility.

I know some things I consider subconscious opinions are very hard to change, and I think at least part of responsibility is having effective control. One example is sexual orientation. I think that whether you’re sexually attracted to men, or women, or both, neither, etc. is a subconscious opinion. In theory, fully changeable. But I don’t know how responsible people actually are for their sexual orientation, since they can’t effectively control it.

OTOH for example I don’t think I agree with the distinction between first and second degree murder: if someone catches their partner in bed with a rival and immediately shoots the rival because of subconscious ideas about jealosy and anger, I don’t think they’re any less responsible or deserving of less punishment for the killing than someone who thinks about it consciously then plots and executes an elaborate plan to shoot the rival from a secret hiding place next year. But as I understand it, the law does make such a distinction which is a red flag to me that there’s more going on than I am aware of or considering.

It’s not simply a matter of thoughts vs. actions, or respecting vs. violating rights, either. For example, I think people are responsible for their religious beliefs even though I know such beliefs are mostly a product of subconscious opinions that are hard to change rather than conscious thoughts. But I don’t think people are normally responsible for pulling under and drowning someone who was just trying to rescue them from drowning (Why Rescuers Die While Drowning Victims Survive).

Anyway, because I haven’t worked out a consistent model for subconscious opinions and responsibility, I currently neither agree nor disagree with the second quote above.

Given what I said about the second quote I’m not sure it’ll be productive. But I don’t know a better way to proceed than to examine a few things I said.

Are there any things you said which you intuitively (or consciously) think

  • might be negative or undermining
  • are things I might think are negative or undermining
  • are things other readers might think are negative or undermining

?

Any candidates?

The only candidates I find[1] are:

[1] I only looked in this thread at my posts above your comment:

The reason I limited my search that way is presumably you’d seen enough in this particular thread by that comment to reach a conclusion.

Let’s look at this text in isolation.

This is negative (did not convince), ambiguous (it sounds like you dismissed Elliot’s reasoning, but you might not have), and undermining.

Undermining basically involves negativity plus indirectness. Undermining can also involve attacking something’s foundations and doing gradual damage over time.

How is it indirect? You didn’t give arguments for Elliot to respond to. You didn’t engage in debate. You didn’t directly, openly say what the issues/criticisms are, which would let readers judge for themselves about each point. You suggested his arguments aren’t good enough without being specific. It’s indirect because, instead of (directly) stating your criticisms, you talked about them without sharing what they were. There’s no good way to defend against or counter that kind of negativity.

Negativity that is expressed directly can be responded to directly. Indirect negativity is problematic because if you respond in an indirect way it’s not a good defense. E.g. if you say “you didn’t give arguments, so you should be presumed wrong and ignored” that doesn’t counter the unstated criticisms and actually gives the person more attention. And it’s often messy because the person did give some arguments about something, just not direct responses to the article text. And people often will respond to a direct defense by denying they were even attacking the article (while continuing to hint that they are).

I agree my statement was indirect with regard to Elliot’s article in the way that you say.

Here’s my guess as to why I didn’t see it before: I did not want to debate Elliot about caffeine. That’s one reason why I said I was undecided, rather than in disagreement. Instead, what I wanted to contradict and debate was anonymous57’s summary of my position, to which my statement was a direct reply:

I didn’t (and don’t) know how to concisely contradict anonymous57’s summary without being indirect with regard to Elliot’s article. I could have simply said the summary is incorrect because I’m undecided about whether caffeine is bad in general or for me specifically, omitting any mention of Elliot’s article. I don’t think that would have actually been better WRT Elliot’s article though. The context of this thread implies I read and was unconvinced by the article but my revised statement doesn’t say that outright (maybe I just didn’t read the article yet, but maybe I did and was unconvinced). So it’s just more indirect, not better.

Any ideas about what I could have said to debate anonymous57’s summary of my position without being indirect WRT Elliot’s article?

Maybe it seems like that’s what I’m doing here. From my (conscious) perspective, I was getting drawn into a debate I didn’t seek and didn’t want to have. Maybe my subconscious wanted to have it, but if so I don’t know why. I really am undecided about caffeine and don’t want to take the pro-caffeine side in a debate.

I don’t object to that claim.

It seems like you got some of my point. Let’s try some other examples. I’ll start with one from a couple years ago because I think it makes a good example.

Summarizing: You said you considered whether Elliot was cult leader. You determined that he wasn’t. And a reason you gave is that he’s not charismatic like cult leaders.

Do you remember this and does the summary seem not wrong? (I know I left things out and changed the emphasis.) And do you see some negatives and undermining?

I remember what you’re talking about generally. I recall thinking and possibly writing something to the effect that Elliot doesn’t try to be charismatic. He doesn’t do things like post pictures or videos of himself, never mind the photoshopping & other enhancements people who are trying to be charismatic commonly do to their baseline appearance. He doesn’t polish the voice in his videos & podcasts for sounding smooth and authoritative. That sort of thing.

Possibly incorrectly, I assumed that he didn’t want to be charismatic and didn’t think he was charismatic because he wasn’t trying. I would have (and still would) find it very surprising if he was unaware, or was actually trying to be charismatic and failed, or if he thought he was already / naturally charismatic and was wrong. I kind of lumped it in with the social stuff / PUA: Elliot knows about it, and could be good at it if he wanted to try, but doesn’t because he thinks it’s bad and doesn’t want to.

FWIW I don’t think I’m charismatic, and I don’t try to be, because I think it’s bad. So it’s possible I was projecting my own beliefs onto Elliot.

I can see how if Elliot actually did want to be charismatic my comments would be a backhanded compliment & negative. Without specific quotes I don’t know how indirect (and hence undermining) it would have been. I deliberately tried to be direct in my statements above, but don’t know how direct I was originally and it’s plausible I wasn’t very / at all. I’d guess I was mainly focused on refuting the “cult leader” charge.

But this leads me to wonder: Why the particular (charismatic) instance? Elliot was quite clear with the title of this thread (“Caffeine is Bad”) what his position on caffeine is so I can see how it appeared I wanted to debate that even though I didn’t actually want to. OTOH while I could be wrong about Elliot not trying / wanting / thinking he is charismatic, I can’t think of anywhere he’s stated or implied a pro-charismatic position. So I don’t see how it could appear I wanted to debate that, indirectly or otherwise.

My guess is you have something in mind for “undermining” in this case other than an indirect debate about Elliot’s charisma, but I don’t know what it is.

You’re undermining ET in multiple ways in your response. This isn’t your first time doing that since you started talking with me.

Trying to take one thing at a time:

You’re somehow missing the larger undermining aspect from the example: you considering that ET might be a cult leader. That is not a thing one normally considers about somehow. So the consideration itself sends an (indirect) negative message.

This is troubling to me because:

  • I don’t consciously want to
  • I am actively trying not to
  • I don’t know what to do about it other than stop talking altogether, which I don’t think is the right answer

I didn’t recognize that as a negative message because I explicitly said he wasn’t a cult leader.

I can now see how it would be negative if it was said in a normal situation. In a normal context you’re right, being a cult leader is not something one normally considers about someone. So saying I considered it would definitely be negative.

However, unless I’m grossly misremembering the context I don’t think this was a normal situation. I remember Elliot being accused of being a cult leader multiple times by other people before I made my comment. I remember making the comment in response to someone accusing it again. I remember wanting to refute the accusation. I don’t think that’s a normal situation, and given that specific abnormal situation I think it is a normal thing to consider.

Do you disagree that it’s a normal thing to consider in the context of repeated accusations?