Annoying People With Principles, and what befalls them

Here are two beliefs that are sort of haunting me right now:

1. Folk who try to push people to uphold principles (whether established ones or novel ones), are kinda an important bedrock of civilization.

2. Also, those people are really annoying and often, like, a little bit crazy

And these both feel fairly important.

I’ve learned a lot from people who have some kind of hobbyhorse about how society is treating something as okay/fine, when it’s not okay/fine. When they first started complaining about it, I’d be like “why is X such a big deal to you?”. Then a few years later I’ve thought about it more and I’m like “okay, yep, yes X is a big deal”.

Some examples of X, including noticing that…

• people are casually saying they will do stuff, and then not doing it.

• someone makes a joke about doing something that’s kinda immoral, and everyone laughs, and no one seems to quite be registering “but that was kinda immoral.”

• people in a social group are systematically not saying certain things (say, for political reasons), and this is creating weird blind spots for newcomers to the community and maybe old-timers too.

• someone (or a group) has a pattern of being very slightly dickish in some way, where any given instance is not that bad, so if you call them out for that instance, it feels out of proportion. But, they’re doing it a lot, which is adding up to a substantial cost they’re inflicting.

Society depends on having norms. Someone gotta uphold the norms. Someone gotta figure out where society is currently wrong and push for better norms.

But, it’s super uncomfortable to tell a bunch of comfortable people “hey, the behaviors you are currently doing are actually kinda bad, it’d be way better if you did this other thing.”

So, most people don’t.

The people that do, are people who are selected for a mix of “conflict-prone-ness” and “really really care about the hill that they are dying on, to an excessive degree.”

There’s a first order problem, where they are kinda more aggro than I/most-people think is worth putting up with about their pet issue. (Even if I’ve updated that “actually, that issue was quite important, I should internalize that principle”).

But there’s a second order problem that I’ve seen in at least a few cases, that goes something like:

Alice decides Principle X is important enough to make a big deal about.

People don’t seem to understand the issue. Alice explains it more. Some people maybe get it but then next week they seem to have forgotten. Other people still don’t get it.

A problem I’ve previously talked about is Norm Innovation and Theory of Mind where Alice is overestimating how easy it is to explain a new norm to someone, and kinda assuming logical omniscience of the people she’s talking to.

But, there’s another thing, which is: people… keep mysteriously not understanding why X is a big deal. Any given instance of it is maybe explained by “actually the reason for X was a fairly complicated idea, and maybe some people legitimately disagree.” But, something feels epistemically slippery. It feels like Bob and Charlie and everyone else keep… systematically missing the point, sliding off it.

One explanation is: it would be really inconvenient for Bob and Charlie and everyone to accept that X is important enough to change their behavior around. And Bob and Charlie etc end up sort of implicitly coordinating to downplay X, sometimes while paying lip service to it, or finding excuses not to care. A subtle social war is waged.

And Alice eventually begins to (correctly) pick up on the fact that people aren’t merely not getting it. They sort of systematically choosing to believe or say false things or bad arguments, to avoid having to get it.

This gives Alice the (sometimes) correct sense that (many) people are gaslighting her – not merely disagreeing, but, disagreeing in a way that sure looks like people are implicitly colluding to distort their shared map of reality in a way that let’s them ignore Alice’s arguments about X, which conveniently lets them not have to adopt weird new beliefs or risk upsetting their other friends.

Each of these people contains two wolves multiple motivations driving them. When I’ve been Bob, it’s often been the case that I both am executing some kind of good faith investigation into whether X is true and also, part of me was motivated to do something that let me feel important / in control or whatever.

Society has a bunch of people in it. Some are more well-meaning than others. Some of the well-meaning people are more implicitly colluding than others. Some of them are actively colluding. Sometimes Alice accuses someone of acting in bad faith and it really is a false positive and then they get mad at Alice. And, sometimes the person is acting in bad faith, maybe even deliberately, and they get mad at Alice too, using the same arguments as the well-meaning person.

Alice ends up in a world where it looks like people are systematically trying to undermine her, and she starts engaging with the world more hostile-y, and then the world starts engaging more hostile-y back.

This… can end with Alice being kinda paranoid and/or traumatized and/or trying to argue her point more intensely. Sometimes this sort of radicalizes Alice.

This ends up in a feedback loop where… idk, I think “Alice has become a little crazy” is not that unreasonable a description about it.

But, Alice was right (at least about the broad points in the beginning).

Alices are not fun to be around, and sometimes they end up conflict-prone and absolutist in a way that I think is actually kinda bad and I end up avoiding them because it’s not worth the cost of dealing with.

But, Alices are also rare and precious – they are the ones who noticed something was wrong and worth calling out, and, who were willing to actually push past social awkwardness about it.

(But, but, also, the world contains Alexes, who are not right about their pet issue, they just have a pet issue that doesn’t really make much sense and they also go kinda crazy in the same way but they didn’t actually really have a good point that was worth listening too in the beginning. idk watch out)

…

This essay does not end with me particularly knowing what to do. But, at the very least, I think it’s appropriate to at least be sympathetic to Alices, when you’re pretty sure their core ideas were at least directionally right.

…

Maybe, the move I wish people had was:

First, cultivate the skill of noticing when you’re (at least partially) politically motivated to believe or disbelieve something. Notice when you are being epistemically slippery. Especially if it seems to come alongside someone complaining about something you don’t really understand.

Then, when you notice in your heart that you’re not going to apply Principle X because it would be really annoying and inconvenient, just say “Yep, I am just not applying Principle X because it’s inconvenient or too costly or not worth the tradeoff”, instead of making up reasons that Principle X is wrong.

(This does require Alice to actually accept that graciously. It’s a bit awkward figuring out what the norms should be, because, well, Alice in fact does think Principle X is worth fighting for and Bob saying “cool, but no I’m not gonna do that” doesn’t really resolve that conflict. But, at least within that conversation, probably Alice should accept it from Bob and move on, at least if she values not getting subtly gaslit by Bob)

I’m not sure if this would actually help, but, it feels like a marginal improvement over the status quo.