You said you wouldn’t tell anyone about your friend’s secret, but this seems like a situation where they wouldn’t mind, and it would be pretty awkward to say nothing…etc.
This isn’t your main point, and I agree there’s a lot of motivated cognition people can fall prey to. But I think this gets a bit tricky, because people often ask for vague commitments, that are different from what they actually want and intend. For example, I think sometimes when people say “don’t share this” they actually mean something more like “don’t share this with people that know me personally” or “keep it in our small circle of trusted friends and advisors” or “you can tell your spouse and therapist, but no one else” (and often, this is borne out when I try to clarify). Sometimes, I think they are just trying to convey “this info is sensitive, tread with care”. Or, they might mean something more intense, like “don’t share this, and aim not to reveal any information that updates others substantially towards thinking it’s true”.
Clarification can often be useful here (and I wish there were more verbal shorthands for different levels of intensity of commitment) but sometimes it doesn’t happen and I don’t think, in its absence, all agreements should be taken to be maximally strict (though I think it’s extremely important to have tools for conveying when a requested agreement is very strict, and being the kind of person that can honor that). And I think some EAs get intense and overly scrupulous about obeying unimportant agreements, which can be pretty unwieldy and divorced from what anyone intended.
I think “do you keep actually-thoughtful promises you think people expected you to interpret as real commitments” and “do you take all superficially-promise-like-things as serious promises” are fairly different qualities (though somewhat correlated), and kinda often conflated in a way that I think is unhealthy and even performative.
I super agree it’s important not to conflate “do you keep actually-thoughtful promises you think people expected you to interpret as real commitments” and “do you take all superficially-promise-like-things as serious promises”! And while I generally want people to think harder about what they’re asking for wrt commitments, I don’t think going overboard on strict-promise interpretations is good. Good promises have a shared understanding between both parties. I think a big part of building trust with people is figuring out a good shared language and context for what you mean, including when making strong and weak commitments.
I wrote something related my first draft but removed since it seemed a little tangtial, but I’ll paste it here:
”It’s interesting that there are special kinds of ways of saying things that hold more weight than other ways of saying things. If I say “I absolutely promise I will come to your party”, you will probably have a much higher expectation that I’ll attend then if I say “yeah I’ll be there”. Humans have fallible memory, they sometimes set intentions and then can’t carry through. I think some of this is a bit bad and some is okay. I don’t think everyone would be better off if every time they said they would do something they treated this as an ironclad commitment and always followed through. But I do think it would be better if we could move at least somewhat in this direction.”
Which, based on your comment, I now think the thing to move for is not just “interpreting commitments as stronger” but rather “more clarity in communication about what kind of commitments are what type.”
This isn’t your main point, and I agree there’s a lot of motivated cognition people can fall prey to. But I think this gets a bit tricky, because people often ask for vague commitments, that are different from what they actually want and intend. For example, I think sometimes when people say “don’t share this” they actually mean something more like “don’t share this with people that know me personally” or “keep it in our small circle of trusted friends and advisors” or “you can tell your spouse and therapist, but no one else” (and often, this is borne out when I try to clarify). Sometimes, I think they are just trying to convey “this info is sensitive, tread with care”. Or, they might mean something more intense, like “don’t share this, and aim not to reveal any information that updates others substantially towards thinking it’s true”.
Clarification can often be useful here (and I wish there were more verbal shorthands for different levels of intensity of commitment) but sometimes it doesn’t happen and I don’t think, in its absence, all agreements should be taken to be maximally strict (though I think it’s extremely important to have tools for conveying when a requested agreement is very strict, and being the kind of person that can honor that). And I think some EAs get intense and overly scrupulous about obeying unimportant agreements, which can be pretty unwieldy and divorced from what anyone intended.
I think “do you keep actually-thoughtful promises you think people expected you to interpret as real commitments” and “do you take all superficially-promise-like-things as serious promises” are fairly different qualities (though somewhat correlated), and kinda often conflated in a way that I think is unhealthy and even performative.
I super agree it’s important not to conflate “do you keep actually-thoughtful promises you think people expected you to interpret as real commitments” and “do you take all superficially-promise-like-things as serious promises”! And while I generally want people to think harder about what they’re asking for wrt commitments, I don’t think going overboard on strict-promise interpretations is good. Good promises have a shared understanding between both parties. I think a big part of building trust with people is figuring out a good shared language and context for what you mean, including when making strong and weak commitments.
I wrote something related my first draft but removed since it seemed a little tangtial, but I’ll paste it here:
”It’s interesting that there are special kinds of ways of saying things that hold more weight than other ways of saying things. If I say “I absolutely promise I will come to your party”, you will probably have a much higher expectation that I’ll attend then if I say “yeah I’ll be there”. Humans have fallible memory, they sometimes set intentions and then can’t carry through. I think some of this is a bit bad and some is okay. I don’t think everyone would be better off if every time they said they would do something they treated this as an ironclad commitment and always followed through. But I do think it would be better if we could move at least somewhat in this direction.”
Which, based on your comment, I now think the thing to move for is not just “interpreting commitments as stronger” but rather “more clarity in communication about what kind of commitments are what type.”