Okay, I disagree with a lot of views expressed in this piece, but still found it worth reading. It's well written. In particular, a lot of people here may agree with what the author wrote on housing.
> a lot of the points felt more like learning how to charm, manipulate, and game social interactions.
A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass. One of the characteristics of autistic-spectrum individuals is that they must make a conscious effort to achieve goals that are achieved unconsciously by most of us. If we prevent such individuals from learning all that rarely-written-down stuff consciously because it seems "distasteful" to us, then we are disadvantaging such individuals socially.
>A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass. One of the characteristics of autistic-spectrum individuals is that they must make a conscious effort to achieve goals that are achieved unconsciously by most of us.
I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it. Otherwise I think socializing would be excruciatingly boring. I think the distinction is that they had the capacity to learn from interacting with others, and had the confidence to iterate until they became comfortable with their social skills (which to others may appear 'unconscious').
I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
I read parent's wording of "manipulation" as not in the usual negative connotation, and more as making the other person do something specific.
For instance if you wanted a security guard to help you find your way in a shopping mall, there would be approaches that are more effective than others. For instance making it sound more like you have something important to do and they'd save your day by helping isn't specially abusing the person. They might feel pretty good about helping you, it's still somewhat part of their job so you're not tricking them either.
>I have to say this strikes me as a very distorted perception. I don't know about 'normal,' but a socially successful person isn't intuiting their behavior subconsciously, they have learned it, and are actively mindful of it as they engage in it.
Lots and lots of, if not most, social behaviors are intuited subconsciously.
And that's even if the person has actively studied and learned them (and most are picked up by osmosis, not consciously learned anyway).
>I also don't think normative social interaction has much tolerance for manipulation. Maybe in the scope of a night out socializing or a business transaction, but in the context of actual relationships, those people are often ostracized or avoided in my experience.
That's either oblivious to 90% of social interactions out there, or just understands "manipulation" at the con artist or sociopath level.
Even wearing nice clothes to make a better impression is a kind of manipulation. Same for using different manners of speaking and language in different social contexts, and lots of other stuff.
Yes, I think we have different definitions. Some people make a distinction between social behavior and manipulation that you apparently do not.
If I wear nice clothes and make a good impression on someone, I am creating an outcome we both wanted at the outset. If we are meeting socially, they probably wanted to like me, and I wanted them to like me. That was the shared goal. That is cooperative, not manipulative.
It's very strange that people are ok with people charming others "naturally" (while it's probably because they learned by imitation, often from parents) while "practicing it" is seen as bad and manipulative.
It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
> Physical attractiveness is a signal of reproductive fitness when it’s genetic, and not otherwise.
Nay, artificial physical attractiveness is also a signal of reproductive fitness. It isn't a given. It's the subject's genes that made a brain that was able to design (and to arrange to pay for!) the improved attractiveness.
It's not qualitatively different from brushing hair.
Yes, technically, having spare resources to devote to your own appearance is considered a positive signal, but it is an unreliable one, and often one not as valued by the people making the judgement. If there are many ways to signal wealth, a signal that has some intrinsic downside will lose its value if lots of people are sending the other wealth-signals.
The reductionist biological explanation might be obvious to you, but in the actual world, the reasoning and the moral condemnation of things like plastic surgery is never explicitly about giving false signals regarding one's reproductive fitness. Reasons "haters" cite are about vanity, narcissism, refusing to look your age, etc.
For me, motivation matters. If you want to learn social skills to make your life easier while not harming others, that's perfectly fine, admirable even, but if you learn it to damage others for your own profit, that's immoral.
Same for the motivation of surgeries. You might not be comfortable with yourself, and want to change something, and that's perfectly fine, but again to changing appearance signal something to benefit you and harm others with less effort, it's immoral again.
And, I believe, if you need to change how you behave or look to get acceptance from a circle, this means the circle is toxic and you'll be far happier elsewhere.
To me, a big factor that I subconsciously evaluate on is the "fakeness" of the appearance itself. Instances where plastic surgery results in the uncanny valley of "should be good but looks too perfect or messes up a critical aspect" disturb me. Plastic surgery isn't as powerful as Photoshop. Maybe that's more on the surgeon, and subjective criterion of attraction (such as mine), but it simply isn't the case that plastic surgery makes someone look good.
I guess that's totally fair. People are hard wired to pattern-match faces, and someone who deviates from the norm will attract attention.
I was more talking about judgement of people who did just to still look normal but better, similarly to the judgement of people who learn "social skills" like the TFA discusses.
That too is pretty obvious from the same perspective: Admitting you only care about someone’s genes is itself considered shallow, so people make up other justifications based on other, more accepted values.
While I certainly agree that it is an example of poor judgment and perhaps weak character to be broadly judgy about cosmetic efforts in general, I can understand the theoretical plight of someone who might be taken in by a deceptive person in that regard.
If you steelman the argument you can see the point, but it’s also unreasonable to assume that a person is living the steelman version of life (and being a deceptive person) just because they had a facelift.
OTOH, if you are admiring people’s genetics using their appearance as a proxy, I can see why it might seem like “cheating”
But the problem is not admiring good looks if they're natural, or expecting someone to be truthful, or anything of the sort that might or might not theoretically happen.
The problem is clearly with the bullying. And the assumptions around character. And basically using "changing yourself" as a proxy for hallucinating all sorts of completely unrelated bad characteristics. And the rationalizing around it.
It's the same for behavior: people are fine with the behavior of "naturally charming" people but as soon as someone mentions "learning how to do it" people immediately jump to conclusions and call it manipulative.
Someone having one consciously developed ulterior motive… does increases the likelihood of them having other consciously developed ulterior motives that might be hidden away?
The linkage isn’t as strong for unconsciously or subconsciously developed ulterior motives. Hence the huge gap in how people behave towards that.
Calling it "ulterior motive" is already a judgement call.
Being better at socialization is virtually demanded by society. "Not looking good" is also punished. There is nothing ulterior about anything.
The fact that a certain chunk of society demands both perfection and authenticity already makes it necessary for people to not be transparent about such things.
You might think that those people’s opinions don’t matter, but it turns out that ‘lots of other people value me highly’ is in itself a signal.
And yes, it is horrible, but if you want to solve a problem, you must first understand the problem, and ‘some people are just born with Evil in their hearts’ is not a very good sociological model.
But this is the neurodivergent ‘just world’ blind spot.
The world isn’t just. People like people with good genetics, because being friendly with the strong gets you benefits more than it gets you costs. Especially if you’re able to influence (or even pathologically manipulate) them.
Most people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
Also, most attractive people work to be attractive because it’s often mutually beneficial (assuming they can counter manipulate or influence appropriately). Having people attracted to you gives you the ability to use other people’s resources for your benefit.
Most attractive people just know this, subconsciously. So they would probably even deny it. But it’s transparently easy to test, and even easier to see evidence of by just looking around.
This is generally kept covert, because like most covert power, it attracts negative attention if brought to conscious awareness - as then it’s perceived as manipulation, not influence, or encourages more jealousy, etc. as it’s not fair.
But life isn’t fair, except where we make it, and making something fair requires power.
And acquiring and maintaining power is fundamentally unfair.
Or it could still be, but have other explanation. E.g. you're called out if you ruin the signal to noise ration, but you're also called out if you genuinely give the unfit signal.
(Don't approve doing this or anything, just pointing the blind spot in your dichotomy, interested in the argument on a purely technical manner).
Of course, but just because you can throw a metaphor around doesn't make it true.
There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other. Using a card game to justify the behavior is just a rationalization.
>There is no "rule" in life that says that people have to be judgmental assholes to each other.
Apparently there is, which is why this judgement you speak of happens.
It just happens to be a social rule, and you don't like it, but it's a rule nonetheless. Doesn't have to be an official rule, agreed upon, and signed by each participant, or some physical law.
Hence, the card game metaphor has some merit. Like people think you shouldn't cheat in a card game, many people also think you shouldn't cheat with cosmetic surgery.
I 100% disagree. It is a minority making the noise and turning everything into life as a game.
Most people don't care, and I'm willing to bet that the ones rationalizing the behavior here don't go out of their way to care or talk about any of this.
>Yes, people who judge others like this are anti-social assholes
On the contrary, since many (if not most) people do it, they're on the social side.
>Once again: rationalizations don't make something true
When it comes to social truths, what most people do make them so.
If most people think X bad, X is bad is a social truth. Doens't matter if you think X is "not bad in reality". Reality doesn't care about good or bad anyway, it doesn't have a morality.
Nope. Actions that harm social bonds, judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
Also this post has the classic logical error of assuming that because something is a certain way, it should be that way.
> Reality doesn't care about good or bad
Likewise: What you call "social truths" are real in that they shape behavior and consequences, but they’re conventions, not objective moral facts, and they can be unjust or oppressive.
>judging that shames, excludes, or hurts is antisocial even if many people do it.
That's a modern dellusion.
Sociology (and common wisdom) tells us that judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" is necessary for the development of morality, social cohesion, and cooperation.
Note: not any random judgment "that shames, excludes, or hurts" has this possitive role, but plenty of judgements that "shame, exclude, or hurt", meaning that judgement that "shames, excludes, or hurts" is a useful social tool.
Says the person trying to rationalize away obviously common human behavior as not existing because it is bad?
Or do you think anti-social assholes do not exist or are not common? Or that any system of identification of people should not attempt to understand them?
>It's the same with genetics. Getting lucky with looks is fine but working for the same goal (eg surgery) is somehow bad and people often hide it.
We also tend to hide how hard we work to make our success look natural, but we reveal how hard we work on the extremes of success. For example, if I work hard and take a score of 17 out of 20 in a test people will say "I barely read last evening, phew", but if you're consistently scoring 19-20/20 people may even approach you to learn your studying methods and for tips, because they assume there are important takeaways that they can adopt.
It's my pet peeve with how society recognizes that someone is talented, which is blatantly flawed because all you can do is see what they're capable of doing. Someone may be talented yet unable (or unwilling?) to tap into their talent, but since we recognize talent by the output you can't really tell the existence of talent unless it's at the extremes of success, like the 8 year old who can solve mathematics that are a grade or more above the current grade.
I see talent like a genetic predisposition that can be appropriately cultivated to attain success. It's not much different than my height, because I didn't choose it, yet I can guess that there are men out there who hate the fact that I have their desirable height yet I never hit the gym, cultivate my social skills, or take advantage the fact that I look younger than I am. I am willing to bet everything that I met at least one person who thought of all of these things the first moments they looked at me.
But at least genetic predispositions like height are visible to the naked eye and no one can dispute the differences. When it comes to differences in the brain it's where we ignorantly proclaim that things are obscure therefore they can violate the very facts of observable nature.
In sort, not only I fully agree with you, but I also agree with the obvious double standards in society around it. If I take ADHD medication and that helps with my focus to improve my performance in school or work then I deserve that success as much as someone who naturally had no problems with ADHD. Why is this different for looks (like hair transplants, etc.) is beyond me.
That is a mistake I think. Many 'normal' people who grow up (emotionally) make a conscious effort not to instrumentalize their social interactions even if they do know how to do it. Certainly with friends they aim to be authentic.
I think emulating things that a serious person discards is a step backwards.
My take living as a relatively high functioning autistic (& other things) person and having many neurodivergent friends is that instrumentalizing is more often due to relational failures due to developmental social differences. The underlying of those is most often a hypersensitive (to sight, sound, smells, touch) individual having periods of being overwhelmed by the world around them. Couple that with parents who really don't have either the time, energy, or temperament to connect with such a kid.
This makes trying to figure out social cues difficult. After enough failures to connect, or being picked on to the point of feeling constant betrayal, we go to the safest place we can to try to play out interactions to avoid being hurt: our imagination. We make systems to predict behavior, we take to shallow taxonomies and try them on like tinted sunglasses. We are so masked, so protected, so... hardcore avoidant of the shame we feel just for existing, and we lean on this until we finally figure out that what we went through was really, really hard, and we find again the threads of our things that we never got a chance to develop, and start to grow them from the level they are, not where we pretend they are.
There's a lot of ways away from that, and those who instrumentalize might still be on the pathway upwards. Its hard to know where someone is from.
I think this is where the high incidence of neurodivergence in the trans community and certain subcultures (furries, roleplaying) comes to fore. Autism is often accompanied by identity conflicts - between what you're labeled as, and how people treat you, and how you feel about yourself - because communication disruptions are common when neurotypes are unaligned, and identity is both the reason for and the means by which much interpersonal communication takes place.
People who don't feel resonance between their label, treatment, and self-concept will question why that is, up to questioning aspects of their identity themselves. Once unmoored from a proscribed identity, people can find the ambiguity uncomfortable and untenable, and may adopt a concrete identity that fits more closely.
That doesn't make the adopted identities any less true, of course. Identity is socially-constructed, so deciding that you feel more comfortable presenting as a woman isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood at birth. Calling yourself a wolf or an orc is probably more extreme, especially in general contexts, but at a convention where you're surrounded by a thousand other people who find it easier to connect when they've thrown on a (literal or figurative) bear sark? Go ham.
In the end, of course, you're just you. All of the labels - even the ones you internalize and externalize - are just ways of trying to communicate, and to make being around you easier for other people, in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you by, because that's what our pattern-matching ape-brains like. The mask is a mask; it's a cover, not a substitute, for the totality of a person's being.
> in part by giving them a box to put you in and to understand you
Identity is a lookup for a custom zlib dictionary, so communication compresses better! Which means we can pick and choose per communication channel. :) Thanks for that thought!
I completely disagree, I find this claim to also be unsupported by the current evidence. Identity is only a part of being trans and often comes much later.
The goalposts for "sexism" have moved to the edge of the galaxy if people today think that's sexism.
Parent says that "identity is socially-constructed", they defend trans people, they say it "isn't any less justifiable than being assigned good ol' football-playin', roughhousin', English class-hatin', red-blooded American manhood"
- but the fact they said "presenting" as opposed to "being" a woman is sexism, as if they're some "chauvinist pig"?
This poster is a well known transphobic troll that makes new accounts every week and implies that trans women are autistic males who "pretend" to be women because of sexism.
That being said, saying presenting instead of being is not ideal indeed.
It is sexism, in that this promotes sexist stereotypes regarding how women should present themselves. There is similar sexism inherent in the concept of "manhood", as well.
The irony of your white knighting is that its in reply to a kind thoughtful and insightful reply to probably one of the most gender non conforming people you've ever interacted with, who didn't see any problem with it.
I think many of the “manipulations” are actually more like dances; both people engage in a consensual proxy display of willingness to cooperate. Any “manipulation” occurs only when one person is unaware that the “dance” exists and mistakes a protocol negotiation for a call to action, or where one person is deceptive and intentionally mis-signals their intentions.
I can see why someone not understanding the “dance” could easily mistake it for “innocent” manipulation… but when it’s basically a scripted give-and-take that serves as a symbolic representation of a persons willingness to cooperate and their advertised intentions, it isn’t really manipulation at all, but rather a type of communication that allows (hazy) inferences about a person’s character and intellect in the guise of insignificant banter.
Although, I agree that for average people, over instrumentalizing your interactions becomes fake (although, to be honest, most could use a bit more, including myself, to communicate more effectively with those close to us).
Still, agree with others, seems like you're generalizing what is good for the average person is also good for those with personalities that are more at the extremes. Yeah, know a couple of people who just don't understand what people are thinking or feeling, ever. And so they have to learn a system of cues to look for to figure out whether a person is angry or sad or happy... These people need to create systems to make socialization work.
I wouldn't say just friends either. The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think. If somebody doesn't like me, cool - there's plenty of other people. If they do? Awesome, because they're getting the 'real' me, so it's probably going to be a good relationship.
Basically I think a lot of people's issues with social stuff starts with something analogous to a boy who never asks a girl out for fear that she'll say no. People don't engage in interactions, or try to be overly pleasing, to try to appeal to other people.
But that's never going to lead to a good relationship, because it's fake, and it'll feel exhausting. By contrast when you stop caring, you might be surprised to find people like you even more, it becomes even easier to form "real" relationships, and suddenly social interactions aren't tiring at all.
This becomes even easier after having kids because you're probably not really seeking relations in any meaningful way, so you completely genuinely just don't care. And then paradoxically it becomes so much easier. Well, at least it becomes wisdom you can hand down to your own kids, or random anons online.
> The biggest leap I made in social stuff is to simply stop caring what other people think.
If you do care what other think, you alter your behavior to make them think what you prefer, and it becomes inauthentic on your part and manipulation of others. That's not to say that all things for others are manipulation; if you find out that you don't listen to people well and improve that, they might like being around you more because being heard is an important core part of relating.
You should probably figure out why - unless you are ok with nobody liking you.
If _everyone_ finds you annoying or difficult being around, you most like are annoying and difficult to deal with.
How you go about figuring what bugs people is perhaps the hard part.
You might not be understanding what is annoying to people, or you might understand it quite well and are using that adopted identity as a shield. You can’t lose what you don’t have.
Either way, if you aren’t content with your situation in this regard, I would recommend study, introspection, and perhaps therapy. Dale Carnegie produced some excellent work in this regard, aiming towards win/win interactions. He’s more business oriented, but that context is easy to strip away, and the principles stand on their own.
You speak as if you are an expert on everything in the universe at all times. Way too much black-and-white thinking. And many people often strongly disagree with your statements... a great deal of your comments are quite often downvoted and/or flagged.
There is a reason you have been banned from several different platforms now. Disagreeing/arguing with their actions is not how you improve yourself, and you can't explain your way out of it, you have to want to change how you act, and work hard at it. You have to be ok with being wrong. Your weaponization of logic has destroyed your empathy. You are craving validation through technical dominance, but this just further isolates you/alienates others.
I think real intelligence by definition requires empathy and humility, which is typically the opposite of such dogmatism in my opinion. "As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."
The Dunning-Kruger effect also applies to smart people. You don't stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self estimates.
Also you seem to like to claim that almost everything is illegal and then not back up your claims with any useful sources, instead telling people to look it up themselves or give vague non-answers like "it's in the German law code". That and most of your comments are just plain negative in general, and I think this ultimately stems from some kind of childhood trauma that you have not dealt with.
Many of your comments are you condescendingly implying other people are stupider than you, and you have a disproportionate number of comments targeting me specifically.
These words are unfortunately loaded. "instrumentalizing" is so close to "instrument" for me to see them as unrelated in meaning. But lots of similar words drift in meaning, or have several interpretations.
I don't have any issue with people doing things for "natural" reasons, vs. realpolitik analytical reasons, when the motive is still benefit-neutral, or benefit-benefit relative to ourselves-others.
> A lot of stuff "normal" people do is charm, manipulate, and game social interactions. Except because they are not conscious about it, we give them a pass.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to what’s describe in this blog post.
The writer describes taking on different personas and trying different tricks with other people portrayed as subjects of some sort of experiment.
The casual mentions of how they tried some conversational trick and got someone into full on sobbing was particularly striking because there was hardly a mention of concern for the other person. The only discussion was about the trick used to elicit the response.
That is what I do not agree is consistent with normal interactions. Most people would feel some degree of guilt or dirtiness, for lack of a better word, if they used some of these tricks to lure random interactions into a false sense of connection and feigned friendship, especially if for no other reason to experiment on the other person.
I don’t think neurotypical people can ever understand this process but I’ll try to explain what it was like for myself, a neurodiverse person:
- yes, I was consciously trying different ways to fit in
- yes, I felt uncomfortable that it was forced and unnatural
- no, it didn’t occur to me at all this was a deeper issue; I had all kinds of naive explanations: oh I’m not as confident because I because I started school a year earlier than the other guys; girls don’t like me because I’m not as handsome as other guys; I’m not as social because I don’t have an older brother to learn it from, etc.
- over the years, as I got better at what I now know to be “masking”, I just subconsciously embodied the idea that consciously working on every little aspect of social interactions is “normal”
- it took me 30 years to realise, wait a minute, it’s probably not normal that I had to put so much effort into all of this, and got myself a brand new shiny autism diagnosis at 40
the only book worth reading on this topic is "how to appear normal at social events" by Lord Birthday
Like you I was disgusted to see OP's link posted to these hallowed grounds, a bunch of filthie normie jibber jabber waxing poetic about how great it is to have cracked the normie code
The “trick” you are referring to, requires you to care about other people in the first place.
As I recall, the section this came up was when they were coaching.
This does feel like another instance of how people have a deep instinctual grasp of social interactions, but a shallow ability to articulate the moving parts in detail.
I think the analogy was “everyone know how to use the flush, but they can’t explain the mechanisms behind it”
What comes across as creepy about the techniques is that the approach doesn't seem to involve personal consequences; it seems to be sterile, like a game with no negative effects if it goes wrong. Normal people have all sorts of anxiety and potential hurt if they do these things, since they know how they affect others.
Personally I'd prefer that "spectrum" individuals just be themselves. I take it as my own shortcoming if I can't establish a dialog. I like the challenge of interacting with someone who does things very differently. This of course assumes there's a genuine desire to connect. I knew someone who had some techniques like this, and it was weird interacting with him. The techniques put up a barrier and it didn't feel authentic.
Maybe I'm jaded but I see it as a failure of the "normal" person if they can't deal with someone who communicates differently. All their issues just get triggered, not the fault of the spectrum individual, and not their responsibility to overcome. As a practical measure for just dealing with these people, I could see using techniques. But not when you actually want to relate with someone.
As a neurotypical person (I don't think the term "normal" is appropriate) I'm probably doing or did the same things the article is talking about. And I never thought about negative consequences, except when I was extremely anxious.
If anything, people on the spectrum, introvert, or just awkward are probably thinking about the consequences (positive or negative) way more than someone like me.
I also agree with the sibling post. The failure of most (?) neurotypical people to accept people on the spectrum as-is shouldn't be a burden on them. If society can't make them safe, they should do whatever is best for them. "Authenticity" (which is just an illusion anyway) be damned.
By authenticity I mean being able to speak your thoughts without having to strategize around the other party being unable to handle it like a mature adult.
Yes, my whole comment was about me and my experiences. That specific point was that I don't see it as a burden that someone is interacting me differently than most people do.
You sound like a nice person, but the typical reaction is different, so the people on the spectrum spend their entire lives training to protect themselves against that, i.e. masking. It would probably take some time to gain their trust.
A lot of normal people may routinely act charming and game social interactions, but they generally aren't being "manipulative" in the process. "Manipulation" is really just a polite word for routinely lying and BS'ing people on the off-chance that they are going to be fooled and/or not want to call you out on it.
If you're reasonably socially skilled, you can usually see it coming a mile away and react accordingly, but what gets you in trouble is the not-so-common case where you actually fall for it, since the consequences can be quite bad. None of this is describing ordinary social interaction, tough; these are really two entirely separate topics, and there's little reason to conflate them.
So for the same set of actions, it's fine if you're unaware of the underlying mechanisms, and manipulation if you are aware?
If you dig through the weeds of it you can argue just about everything we do socially is manipulation. We are social because we're social animals and will die without help from other humans (well, particularly thousands of years ago). At the end of the day, we are nice to people to get things from them that we need - food, shelter, knowledge, strength. It's always been like that. But because it makes us feel fuzzy and good, apparently that's not manipulation, that's being nice.
You can absolutely be charming towards people and play the "game" of social interaction while being quite aware that this is what you're doing. The point is that this need not involve outright lying or BS at all and that the latter is what such terms as "manipulation" actually imply in a very practical sense; not that it somehow counts against you if you're aware of what's happening at a pure level of social interaction. (In fact, the opposite is generally the case; active social awareness and mindfulness is a big part of what people variously call "EQ", "empathy", "cross-cultural competence", etc.)
Looking at the definition of manipulation, it occurs to me that manipulation must be a win-lose situation. Otherwise it is persuasion. You could use the same technique, but if it is win win for both it is persuasion, but if you are gaining from their expense it is manipulation. At least according to Wikipedia.
There are also white lies. Are you manipulating children if you are claiming santa exists? Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
That seems a little bit of an odd interpretation to me.
Persuasion is honest. "Hey, I think you should do this thing because of reasons a, b, and c, there are some downsides like y and z. It may mean something to me peronally, so I may also to appeal to you to do it for me as a favour. I may even play up how important I think it is."
Manipulation is dishonest. "Hey, I'm going to use an underhanded technique to make you feel like you're missing out on something, or are inadequate, to get you to do this thing. Maybe I'll go overboard on flattery and inflate your ego to achieve my end. I also might lie or omit some of the downsides to give a distorted view of the risks"
Even if it's a win-win situation, it's still manipulation if you're seeking to bypass someone's agency.
> Are you manipulating a person if you either omit a truth or do a white lie because you know truth at that moment in time would be worse for their life.
Yes, certainly, and that's why people often get upset about "little white lies" too. Maybe you are doing a good thing, maybe you're not, but removing agency from someone by keeping the truth from them is always manipulative.
The wiser question may be "is manipulation always wrong?"
And I'd argue that if it gets your kids to calm down and go to bed on Christmas Eve, maybe not ...
If I get sad or angry when a friend tells me a story, this feeling is a expression of my inner state, not a strategic choice I make to get to a certain place. And this inner state usually translates into how people act later. So if I am enraged how my friend was treated I may be inclined to take steps that help them get even, for example.
Manipulation, however, is when I (feeling nothing), pretend to feel a thing with the goal of getting a certain response.
The border between the two is of course not totally clear-cut and people can manipulate themselves into truly feeling things without following through with any actions etc. So a complex topic, but the reason why the manipulation works in the first place is because the feelings people express towards us are more often than not an expression of how they will act towards us as well. If a guy on the street screams at you, your #1 interpretation won't be that he does it to manipulate you, but that that person is experiencing an actual feeling that may convert to physical action pretty soon.
"we are nice to people to get what we want" is flat out not true. We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level. On a micro level this kind of attitude sometimes/often prevails, we call the people who act like this "jerks", and the people who try to justify it with these kinds of rationale "sociopaths", because to the group as a whole its so incredibly damaging, and to the individuals on the other side of it, insufferable.
> We are nice to people because cooperative societies out performed the non-cooperative ones on the macro level
I.e. biology gets what it wants... We want to survive, mother nature wants us to survive, society wants to survive.
I am absolutely not suggesting that outright jerkish behaviour is acceptable (although to suggest jerks have no social success is probably untrue; plenty of people who are attracted to jerks). I am arguing that if there was no personal advantage whatsoever to being social and nice to people, we wouldn't do it. We'd be lone animals, spread out across the land rather than concentrated in towns and cities. There's a spectrum of selfish behaviour, right? We are somewhere in the middle because it's advantageous to be.
Both are true. We want to survive and being nice to others increases our likelihood of survival. Wanting to survive is also selected by evolution and wanting to be nice in order to survive in a group setting that increases survival odds too.
What about intentionally making conscious effort to remember to use people's names when talking to them?
And other similar things that increase someone's odds of being liked or convincing or getting someone to do what they want more likely?
Doing those things is not BSing, not lying, yet people can consciously be doing those to increase the likelihood of getting what they want.
Many people will obviously do it naturally. I personally have to make a conscious effort every time for such things.
Does having to consciously decide to do those things make me a sociopath? I certainly wouldn't bother saying someone's name if I didn't think it mattered for reaching my life goals. Extra same with small talk.
Then what about memorising some funny, self deprecating stories from my life to make people laugh so they would like me more?
Then what about asking questions, keeping up conversation etc, etc, even though I would rather be in my own thoughts doing my own thing?
I do it all consciously and intentionally for my own self benefit. Some to avoid bad things happening to me, some to make good things more likely to happen to me.
If I didn't do those things people might think I am awkward, weird, silent, boring, pass me on for promotion at work, etc.
Do you really think you're the only person who's heard of that "technique"?
When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
> When someone uses my name in conversation, it makes me think less of them, because it's so unnatural and clearly they might be doing it to manipulate me.
Oh man, I always find it so slimy when people do that! I've also noticed it's mostly HR people or sales people who do this, so clearly it's a phony technique they learned somewhere. But I suppose it gets taught because it works, maybe for people who don't pick up on the fact that it's so forced?
I'm not entirely sure what constitutes "normal" anyway. A frequent tongue-in-cheek topic of conversation between my wife (a counselling psychologist) and me is how we're weird, and everyone else seems to be normal, where "normal" in this thread of conversation usually describes some sort of puzzling behaviour.
Each one of us occupies our hallowed space in the rich tapestry of neurodiversity. Only a few people design our social institutions though. "Normal" is looking like those few, and tbh, varies widely. Compare normal at a Cambridge academic department and normal at the local gym and normal at the BBC.
Sometimes we find it distasteful to have things we're fully aware of explicitly spelled out. A trite quip here is "nobody wants to see how the sausage is made".
Yeah. I wonder why that is - is it because it highlights a conflict between our actions and values? If left unexamined, it's a non-issue, so having it spelled out feels like a problem being created?
I think sometimes this is when we find our way to the middle of two relatively simple drives: "be an orthodox group member/ avoid being a social outcast" and "avoid the discomfort of cognitive dissonance / admitting hypocrisy".
If there aren't immediate consequences for inaction (especially if there ARE costs and/or social consequences for action) were very good at convincing ourselves to ignore it (or tell ourselves we will EVENTUALLY deal with it but just not right now)
I would much rather assume the people I'm interacting with are honest and conveying their real feelings, vs playing some (probably) Machiavellian game with N levels of dishonesty and manipulation from what could easily be a malevolent person at the core. At least that tends to be the assumption when you pick up on a lack of authenticity in this way.
When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator, it's very understandable that you should use an abundance of caution. That's probably an instinct in us at this level.
Of course everyone is at least a little aware that they're putting on a bit of a ruse with their public persona, but that needs to be tethered to some level of authenticity or you'll just be sending out Patrick Bateman vibes.
This strikes me as a glass-half-empty interpretation. Why is the stuff from the blog post necessarily machiavellian and manipulative?
I didn't read any of that into that blog post.
Rather, it was about how to create win-win situations where the people involved genuinely enjoy each others company. No need for bad intentions here.
> When you have a real indication of dealing with a master manipulator
This statement seems like a paradox. Forgive my "No True Scotsman" example. If the person is such a "master manipulator" what indications do you have? The social normies will miss them, or will think they are the ones making the suggestions/decisions. This is the hallmark of master craft sales people.
Wouldn't you think it is more important what the goal for the other person is? If their goal is to enrich and make both of your lives better, does it matter whether they consicously use social techniques or have natural automatic ability to do so?
It is also autism vs psychopathy. Patrick Bateman is nowhere close to someone autistic trying to learn those socially successful behaviours. Patrick Bateman is a terrible human being not because they are inauthentic, he is a terrible human being because of the acts he did and wanted to do.
That's not what I got from the article. Firstly they seem to be saying that they were not seen as phony (hard to judge). Sure they're using tricks, but they were copying tricks off other people! Not all social interaction is genuinely raw.
I thought the article was more about leaning into their own style, becoming more intuitive over time.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I would take it further and say that the more light we bring to this subject, the less it becomes the exclusive domain of snake oil salesmen and the "sales tips 101" type books, and the more inoculated the general public becomes to manipulation.
Why dontou consider it "manipulation"? Would you consider what goes into you resume, or performance/promotion packet "manipulation"? In every interaction there are spoken and unspoken rules, and those who excel tend to be those who can understand the subtext and express themselves effectively.
Depends how you define outright BS. I bet most people at least cherrypick the best data points amongst thousands of possible, giving a look that doesn't really represent them as a whole. And then they omit some undesirable things. Similar to how people on social media will only post their best moments, giving inaccurate representation of their lives and themselves while overall causing others to feel like they are missing out, etc.
So here is the skill of being able to cherrypick data to give the best representation of yourself as opposed to true average honest overview of oneself. Then the skill of avoiding answering questions you don't want to answer to by answering by talking about what you want to talk about (think politicians).
Same is with real life interactions. Among 1000s of things you could say or do there is always some that are more effective than others in reaching a certain goal, whether it is getting a job, making a sale, convincing someone, making a friend or whatever.
Is it manipulative only if you make up something or if you are able to get people to do what you want by being able to cherrypick the most convincing ideas, arguments, facts etc.
If they have thousands of examples to cherry pick from... That's a signal of experience. So it's not entirely manipulation. If you can pick from your experience and find the best examples and you have several... You have experience.
It really depends on the topic. You can do a lot by cherrypicking and omitting stuff. Simple example, I can talk about all the stock trades where I hit big and leave an impression that I am super good with picking the right stocks, but not talk about my losses. This is super obvious example, but in real life there is infinite nuance to all of it. The stories I choose to tell and stories that I choose to leave out.
But in the context of job interviews.. It applies. But also that applies in trading, if you have a bunch of experience winning or losing, that's useful experience and I want your input on my team. The fact that you cherry picked is built into the evaluation. You have experience. Whether or not you have some innate talent for it is aside. I care about your experience.
Yes in interviews it is expected and people do cherrypick. But the ability to cherrypick can show a lower skilled person in better light compared to a higher skilled person who may not cherrypick as well or tends to not like cherrypicking the best examples since it doesn't feel honest. Sometimes this honesty can work well, sometimes not. Sometimes if honesty doesn't work well it just means the job wouldn't have been a good fit anyway, but other times it is just putting you at a huge disadvantage.
I have a friend who is somehow super good at that, it is fascinating to me. But he can't be bothered to do actual work. He performs extemely well in interviews, gets high paying job, and then stays there for 3 months, gets bored. Of course he doesn't put that on his resume. He doesn't really lie, but he definitely cherrypicks, embellishes etc. I am kind of the opposite of him. I have stayed at the same place for years and am naturally passionate about software eng, but troubled socially. He is very confident and has no shame.
I don't know how to filters those people. But I'd say in general if people have positive things to show... It doesn't mean they don't have negatives. They can be hiding all kinds of negatives... That's hard to test. But if you have several good examples you probably have some experience. I assume you pick the best. Maybe that's problematic. Maybe some hyper-honest people try to pick a mixture that better represents their skills. But I don't know how you balance for that. I want them to represent themselves and sell themselves.
But job applications aren't the same as normal life so this is probably a tangent. In normal life, though, I kinda assume I'm seeing what people want me to see. But if it looks really good it probably means they have good sample of experiences to cherry pick from.
Yeah, I mean it is tough, but I guess my main point is that it is never super clear what is manipulation, what is persuasion, what is bs, what is honest, etc. Many people cherrypick and omit intentionally, consciously, many people subconsciously and naturally. Many will simply remember only the good things about themselves and radiate only that, others are extremely self critical of themselves, and radiate that. Sometimes one works better than the other.
Two different people can have the same achievement and one thinks it is the most awesome and special achievement ever, and embellishes it, the other thinks it is not even worth mentioning or words it completely differently.
E.g. for job interviews when are you considered to be "mentoring" someone? Someone might do few code reviews and claim they have mentored juniors, other one can have 1 on 1s giving valuable career advice, tech advice, but still not think of themself as a mentor.
I agree. I don't know which segment you fall into... But for applications and interviews I would recommend to radiate... Find your best work. Open source or otherwise. And sell yourself.
That doesn't mesh with normal human behavior. It feels weird. But the corporate world and the private social worlds are disconnected. For me at least. So it's weird. Actually ... That's a weird concept.
I guess I recommend having two minds... One with friends and one with the corporate world. And they don't play by the same rules.
Yeah, agreed here. Ideally you want to have friends who you can be authentic with just so you can have actually meaningful discussions about each other lives and thoughts. Corporate and career can be totally different. Early dating can be a mixed bag etc. And of course there are some other social events too, different types of people you may need to navigate around etc.
I don't know if this is a toxic thing to say or not... But I enjoy my tech friends and I value our discussions. But I most value my science nerd friends outside of tech. Like.. I kinda don't want my friends to be peers. Not because of competition or anything like that. But I want them to nerd out to me about things I'm not steeped in. And I want to get to nerd out to them about computer science and the boundaries of philosophy and math and logic. But having a friend group is central.
...and the more low-trust becomes the society, as if it's not already the case in plenty of places.
It's no coincidence that people always judged and shunned such overt manipulators, as well as tried to downplay the underlying mechanisms of manipulation in general (outside of the sales types, which are often looked upon as slimy and not deserving of trust).
Nah, that's definitely not a norm. By that definition me and a lot of people from where I come from including whole family and friends/classmates would quality as autistic. I know form experience this is baseline for some people and they simply can't work 'naturally' with others but I'd grade them as 1-2 out of 10 in sociopathic spectrum. That is by no means a negative denigration of them just describing their behavior (and struggles) in the best way I can.
Interestingly not current corporate banking work, where this would be true but then this is highly sociopathic environment with dominant culture that doesn't do direct honest feedback generally. But generally finance attracts the worst of the (smart) crowd so thats not in any way a reference of mankind.
So its cultural quite a lot. I presume you meant some rather extreme situation of above by describing it as autistic-spectrum.
> A complex society or a natural disaster (a la dinosaurs) wiping out megafauna sounds much more plausible than the equivalent of the primitive societies we see today.
The problem with your argument is best illustrated with that famous picture of airplane with bullet holes; the only primitive societies you see today are those that are more or less sustainable; any unsustainable primitive society would have gone into a conflict with a major industrial power and ended up being wiped out. That of course does not prove that unsustainable primitive societies never existed; in fact I would say they were the norm as humans were expanding (when the frontier is constantly expanding, there is no need to sustain anything!).
> For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are blocking the Chinese electric cars?
This is a very strange criticism. Why is it wrong to try to make impact on the environment without fully destroying the domestic industry? Let's follow up on this a bit further. If the EU counties did in fact become hardliners on the environment to the point of fully destroying their own industries, then you would no longer attack the perceived "hypocrisy" but would instead attack their policy of deindustrialization. So you don't seem to have problems with hypocrisy, you instead seem to have a problem with environmental movement/policies as such or at least insofar as they are implemented by the EU block.
If the EU countries completely abandoned their environmental slogans, and went on an ultra-industrial path, would you still be a critic? Given your other comments (why can capital travel but people cannot?), something tells me that yes, you would. It is difficult for me to perceive your criticism as anything other than coming from a supporter of an _ipso facto_ enemy economic block. You are not interested at constructively helping EU countries anymore, you are looking for a hammer to destroy your chosen target with.
One thing about social media is that it allows anyone to have a voice. The problem of "anyone" is that it ignores the fact that we do not live in a post-human utopia, we live in a real world where the concept of an "enemy" is real. There are real people out there who seek our destruction. This is not a pleasant thing to speak about but it is something that seems to be unfortunately the case. Because English is such a popular language, chances are the enemy speaks English and is on social media. What content do you think he posts?
This is a fallacy. People are not buying Chinese instead of European because they want destruction, they buy it because the European industry failed in making better or cheaper products.
If we are bailing out an industry, this can't be on the shoulders of the public who doesn't have anything to do with the failure. If we are going to save it, make sure those responsible for the failure are paying too. You are asking for Europeans to pay almost half a year of their salaries to save these industries, then at least take away the properties of those involved in the failure. Maybe it wouldn't change much but are in this together or not?
Tell me again why 400M people should pay a half a year worth of salary as extra to buy an inferior car to save the jobs of those who failed to make a good product? Let them fail, pay them unemployment to prevent social issues then go get the cheap good cars and pay a bit more tax for social security. Cut out the shareholders and executives.
If you do that often enough, at some point the state won’t have enough money to pay the unemployed any more. Also, there are reasons why the same product can be manufactured more cheaply in China than (say) in Germany, that have to do with different standards for labor rights, safety standards, and so on, not with anyone failing to make a good product. And it’s not like China doesn’t subsidize its automotive industry as well.
A lot of the things that we buy in Europe are already manufactured cheaply in China with different standards etc. We are moving a lot of manufacturing back to Europe, mostly in the eastern part of it. That part is still 'cheap' aka they can put the made in eu logo on the box, pay employees eastern Europe prices and ask buyers western Europe prices.
The same thing with the eu car companies... they even took the money from the states where they had factories (Germany, Belgium, France) which greatly subsidized them, increased their profits and margins then moved to the next EU state and beyond.
At a certain point, if you don't approve of another regions labor policies, you have to buy less of their exports, otherwise you won't be able to produce your own goods.
Better? That needs a proof and I bet you won’t be able to find a peer reviewed example.
Cheaper? You raise an easy target here if you ignore the massive subsidies, completely different financial systems and politics. China ignores international trade rules and Europe, USA etc. can’t ignore this if they want to save their industry and - at the end - democracy.
The EU subsides their car makers just the same. Part of Renault belonged to the French government for the longest time and all the governments are providing incentives to drive the sales of new cars.
See the cash for clunkers program that was running for years after the 2008 crisis.
Using tax payer money to artificially reduce the cost of a new car, If that is not a subsidy, then what is it?
Peer review for cars? Interesting mental gymnastics. Just let people buy whatever they want.
> you ignore the massive subsidies, completely different financial systems and politics
Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend the money you saved on something that you want instead of forced.
Thank you for acknowledging that it’s not possible to prove that Chinese cars are better. After all, you’ve already retracted your initial claim.
> Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend the money you saved on something that you want instead of forced.
Your mental gymnastics needs some training if you think that importing cheap cars instead of selling and exporting your own cars and therefore protecting your own industry and jobs is a better deal or mechanic for EUs fight against climate change.
Maybe you are unaware of „The WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures disciplines the use of subsidies, and it regulates the actions countries can take to counter the effects of subsidies.“?
The episode starts with a strawman (that Ukraine never had nukes) and proceeds to beat it up. It's a strawman for reasons I will not go into for long, but ones that should be obvious to a fourth grader: physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to make it (which Ukraine also had) are far more important than electronic systems of control. This now classic 1993 paper by Mearsheimer is a much more clear-eyed take, his recent positions notwithstanding. https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
Aside from either, how many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Apart from Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero. Finally (and this also applies to my post), social media is the worst place for any foreign policy discussion because it offers asymmetric returns to a foreign actor attempting to subvert a country's policy who happens to speak the country's language, and English is a very popular international language spoken by many people abroad at this point in history.
How many nuclear states have been invaded in the past 80 years? Aside from Ukraine invading Russia's Kursk oblast last summer, the answer is a big fat zero.
The answer is Israel was subject to a full-scale invasion in 1973, despite having nuclear weapons since 1966. There have been regular border skirmishes between India and Pakistan since long after they both went nuclear. We also have Argentina's seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Israel didn't, and still hasn't, claimed to possess nuclear weapons. While it now is widely believed they do, that is far less of a deterrent. It's also worth noting that the US, one of Israel's closest allies and possessing arguably the best intelligence apparatus in the world, was not aware that Israel had the bomb until 1975, it's extremely doubtful the surrounding arab states knew earlier.
None of the conflicts between India and Pakistan since either of the powers got Nuclear weapons (1974 and 1998, respectively) could be reasonably characterized as invasions.
The Falkland islands are a British overseas territory. They are self governing, but the UK is responsible for their defense and foreing affairs. Classic protectorate. Obviously invading the Falklands is very different from invading the UK.
I guess you could look at their non-admission as evidence to the contrary, but it's not like they're selling enriched uranium as a souvenir to tourists at Ben Gurion international.
Further, while it was widely suspected Israel had a nuclear weapons program, that's a very different thing than having a bomb. Iran is believed to have had a nuclear weapons program. So have many countries.
That's very much not what matters. If you wanted to travel to the UK and your plane took you to the Falkland Islands, you'd be very pissed off and say "you didn't take me to the UK!" If someone says "where is the UK?" the correct answer is not "the south Atlantic." There is the United Kingdom the nation and United Kingdom the place. An invasion means troops in the place.
> (physical possession of an object as well as of factories used to produce are far more important than electronic systems of control).
Sure, but I don't think you understand what goes into keeping nuclear weapons ready. Even assuming Ukraine can manufacture the complete supply chain required for ICBMs, they still have to make and maintain their own warheads. That means either refining nuclear material domestically (where it will get destroyed at any cost by Russia) or importing it from an ally a-la the United States who has no desire to deal with the consequences of that. Ukraine is a strong country, but they cannot sabre-rattle the way Russia can.
Also, I don't think you can cherry-pick Mearsheimer so easily. Even in Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent we see him discounting NATO as an impotent defense, an assumption that that very much isn't true today and one that he (somehow) still seems to believe in. I think his essay is showing it's age, and then some.
Read Mearsheimer's paper again. Nuclear deterrent is far cheaper than equivalent conventional deterrent. A country under existential threat will find means, one way or another, to fund it.
It seems to me that the selection task is tricky because it concerns interpretation of language. "Every card that has a D on one side has a 3 on the other" makes a claim: that there is a directional dependency "D => 3" but it makes no claim that "3 => D". However the absence of the latter claim is not stated explicitly, it is supposed to be inferred from the original statement. The English language seems to lack a way to encode unambiguously the "A => B" relationship. So it should not be surprising that students used to looking out for language pitfalls when checking proofs also happen to be the students who do better on this task.
> It doesn’t: “If A then B” encodes it unambiguously.
No, actually it doesn't
> Some authors have argued that participants do not read "if... then..." as the material conditional, since the natural language conditional is not the material conditional.
> It’s just that as you said, many people don’t think hard about the difference between this and similar-but-different concepts like “B only if A”.
While a nice simplistic answer it's likely not what's going on here. There is more here than "People just aren't good at thinking".
If your statement were true, then you'd be forced to say that the following statement is also obviously true:
"If the Nazis won World War II, then everybody would be happy"
The fact that you can rightfully say that sentence is false, means that your comment above about implication and "if" statements is wrong.[1] Language is more complex then you're giving it credit.
For what it's worth, I think that the problem lies in the solution feeling "obvious" and people being a little lazy - I don't think the problem lies with inability.
I also think that if A then B is unambiguous, the counter that languages are different doesn't really fit with what I think I observe in the wild. For the full house, I also fail to see how that means I must accept that your example statement is obviously true.
> My understanding is that these incredible distances are achievable less by "flapping" and more by leveraging small adjustments to harness the incredibly powerful forces
That is not correct. This particular bird (Bar-tailed Godwit) has never been observed to "dynamically soar" nor does it have the proper wing shape for that type of flight. If you ever seen Godwits in the wild, you will know why, it's a flapping only bird, they have no other mode of flight.
Albatrosses on the other hand do employ dynamic soaring and fly even greater distances than Godwit does (they can circumnavigate the Southern Ocean several times) although albatrosses have additional advantage of being able to use water for rest (Godwits cannot).
This is interesting. Let’s say 600g Bar-tailed Godwit goes on 13500 km flight and spends very optimistic 200g of fat. Theoretically, if fat is only used for going up, it can climb to 170km (i.e. potential energy). This means that to get to destination in needs to glide by dropping 12.5m per km, or have glide ratio of 80.
Best human gliders have glide ratio of 60. So Godwit still needs to be very efficient glider, or, what is more likely also knows how to use winds and updrafts.
What this calculation shows is what glide ratio Godwit must have if it spends 1/3 of its body weight very efficiently to gain altitude and reaches destination in completely calm air. By the looks of it it doesn’t have this glide ratio, and I doubt it spends 1/3 of its weight only gaining altitude.
So it means that it must gain altitude and, perhaps, travel speed by alternative means, most likely using updrafts and riding winds.
Your calculation is interesting, but I beg you to go outside and look at how Godwits actually fly. Godwits fly in a straight line using rapid powerful nonstop flaps. They are relatively heavy birds with high "wing loading ratio" and their entire body plan is hyper-optimized for this type of flight and no other. This is especially true during migration when they accumulate lots of fat and their wing loading ratio is particularly unfavorable for soaring. Godwits are among the fastest-flying birds in a straight line, and they have never been observed to engage in any other mode of flight, nor can they. They cannot use regular soaring. They cannot use dynamic soaring. They do not fly like seagulls. Their wing area is simply too small to allow any other type of flight. They also typically do not wait for favorable wind to fly. They just take off and go.
I agree with your points. What this calculation shows that godwits must rely on favorable winds and updrafts (which benefit any flying object, including birds, since motion is relative); if this is not the case, they just not going to reach claimed distances given their weight and how much fat they are carrying.
I would argue that it does not matter. The AI could even be "smarter" on pure IQ/reasoning, but in terms of practical reasoning that humans need that depends on exposure to real world, the AIs will still take decades to catch up.
The radiology AIs are technically more accurate than radiologists on any sufficiently large dataset, and yet they still have not replaced radiologists (or even are anywhere close to).
There’s an interesting sideroad here: A lot of medical jobs are there because of legal culpability: If someone fails the blame can be placed on them and not on the hospital who hired them. It might be a long time before they get to have that same protection with AI (probably miles and miles of contracts negotiated with a 3rd party who owns and operates the AI that’s used).
Unconvinced. Europe simultaneously exists and does not exist, depending on whether one uses the term pejoratively or not, which makes it impossible to subject anything in it to criticism. It's like a Schrodinger continent.
