I’d say that in general in the West, if you as a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive (bc it’s often a precursor to/intended as unwanted sexual attention, rather than just being an arbitrary social norm). But it’s not in itself offensive: if it’s a friend that you have a level of trust with such that she can believe there’s no unwanted sexual attention behind the comment, I don’t think it’s considered offensive. Perhaps the person who told you this didn’t realise you were friends with the person you complemented? Or perhaps they didn’t realise that by calling something ‘offensive’ you would think it was a transgression rather than just a faux pas?Like I’m pretty confident that overhearing someone calling another person ‘pretty’ is not a red flag that would enter on a community health person’s radar.
Basically my read of the situation is that you were spooked due to miscommunication from one person, and understandably extrapolated an inaccurate belief from that. But given how specific this interaction was, I don’t think it’s fair to say that in general people would easily feel like all their interactions are being monitored.
It also seems like there was some information lost in this anecdote being relayed to Constance—ie she believed that monitoring had taken place, rather than it being likely for people to believe monitoring was taking place (if I’m correct in understanding that you were the person she got the anecdote from).
This is always the danger with information being relayed 2nd and 3rd hand—e.g. I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Yes I can confirm that I was the person Constance got the anecdote from. It was also my belief at the conference and at the time I spoke with Constance that participants were monitored for community health, because I understood that community health 1) had an objective of making sure the event is welcoming and considerate, 2) had power to not admit participants to future events, and 3) had staff walking around the venue looking for something. From other commenters I learned that 3) was false (they were looking for trash, not monitoring interactions).
So re information lost, I want to be clear that nothing was lost when it’s relayed to Constance. I wrongly believed monitoring had taken place and told her just that in our chat.
Re your comment about calling someone pretty: it was meant to be an example of how cross-cultural understanding was difficult. It was the first example that came to mind when I wrote my comment, but certainly not the only example. I thought it was a good example to make the point that normal social interactions in one culture could be considered deeply inappropriate or offensive in a different culture.
Coming back to your comment that “a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive”. I’d like to refer you to this blog post (may not be the best source, I just Googled it) where it is mentioned that “people in China often address women who they don’t know” “beautiful woman” or “beautiful girl” to create connections and make the person being addressed to feel good. So in the example I gave, whether the person was a good friend of mine would not have mattered.
Just to clarify, my point was that the ‘whether the person was a good friend’ part mattered for the question of whether you were told an accurate statement about what’s ‘offensive’ in the West. This question doesn’t rely on anything that’s true of any other culture, so I’m a bit confused why you mentioned the China example?
Re the communication between you and Constance, that’s my bad. I had understood your comment of “but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored [emphasis mine]” (in your initial comment before the clarification from others about the trash issue etc) to mean that you were already aware from not long after the experience that monitoring hadn’t actually taken place. ie that the issue you wanted to raise was about CEA staff was that they didn’t consider how easily others would perceive their actions as monitoring.
The point of the example in my original comment is to demonstrate that well-accepted social norms in one culture can be deemed offensive in another.
Your counterargument is that 1) the conclusion is drawn from only one example, and 2) even that example could be due to the person who gave me the feedback misunderstood the situation, ie my example was bad luck and not generally applicable.
In my reply to your counterargument, my claim of this being just one but not the only example is the response to 1). And the China example is the response to 2), that is, even if she were a new EA I just met for the first time, I could still have remarked on her good appearance, a polite and friendly gesture in my local culture, and be correctly deemed offensive by someone from the West. Therefore the main story line in my example still holds and is representative of difficult multi-cultural situations.
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
This is a minor point, but I did notice Constance’s revised application had long answers with lots of content, and as she said she spent two hours on it. Is this usual/expected?
I usually just write a few sentences for each question, and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent more than an hour on one.
I’m interested to discuss this, but am slightly confused about your 2nd paragraph haha: are you saying that you’ve never spent more than an hour on one question, or an hour on one application? Just because it reads like you’re saying the former, which obviously with at least 2 questions in the application, is compatible with Constance’s 2 hours on the application overall as well. Or are you interpreting her as saying that she spent 2 hours on each question?
I don’t think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott’s entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
To clarify, my point has nothing to do with being critical of another person. I just think the take that ‘even someone who is so aligned with EA had their application rejected, so clearly there’s something broken in the admissions process’ probably assumes that person was aware that it even was a real application that they were filling out, not just a formality.
I’d say that in general in the West, if you as a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive (bc it’s often a precursor to/intended as unwanted sexual attention, rather than just being an arbitrary social norm). But it’s not in itself offensive: if it’s a friend that you have a level of trust with such that she can believe there’s no unwanted sexual attention behind the comment, I don’t think it’s considered offensive. Perhaps the person who told you this didn’t realise you were friends with the person you complemented? Or perhaps they didn’t realise that by calling something ‘offensive’ you would think it was a transgression rather than just a faux pas?Like I’m pretty confident that overhearing someone calling another person ‘pretty’ is not a red flag that would enter on a community health person’s radar.
Basically my read of the situation is that you were spooked due to miscommunication from one person, and understandably extrapolated an inaccurate belief from that. But given how specific this interaction was, I don’t think it’s fair to say that in general people would easily feel like all their interactions are being monitored.
It also seems like there was some information lost in this anecdote being relayed to Constance—ie she believed that monitoring had taken place, rather than it being likely for people to believe monitoring was taking place (if I’m correct in understanding that you were the person she got the anecdote from).
This is always the danger with information being relayed 2nd and 3rd hand—e.g. I’d be surprised if Scott Alexander would have included Constance’s comment in his post if he’d realised that she’d not spent any time on the applications that were rejected (obviously because she didn’t realise she was meant to!)
Hi Rebecca,
Yes I can confirm that I was the person Constance got the anecdote from. It was also my belief at the conference and at the time I spoke with Constance that participants were monitored for community health, because I understood that community health 1) had an objective of making sure the event is welcoming and considerate, 2) had power to not admit participants to future events, and 3) had staff walking around the venue looking for something. From other commenters I learned that 3) was false (they were looking for trash, not monitoring interactions).
So re information lost, I want to be clear that nothing was lost when it’s relayed to Constance. I wrongly believed monitoring had taken place and told her just that in our chat.
Re your comment about calling someone pretty: it was meant to be an example of how cross-cultural understanding was difficult. It was the first example that came to mind when I wrote my comment, but certainly not the only example. I thought it was a good example to make the point that normal social interactions in one culture could be considered deeply inappropriate or offensive in a different culture.
Coming back to your comment that “a guy just go up to a random girl on the street and complement her looks, yes that’s considered offensive”. I’d like to refer you to this blog post (may not be the best source, I just Googled it) where it is mentioned that “people in China often address women who they don’t know” “beautiful woman” or “beautiful girl” to create connections and make the person being addressed to feel good. So in the example I gave, whether the person was a good friend of mine would not have mattered.
Hi Jonathan, thanks for your response.
Just to clarify, my point was that the ‘whether the person was a good friend’ part mattered for the question of whether you were told an accurate statement about what’s ‘offensive’ in the West. This question doesn’t rely on anything that’s true of any other culture, so I’m a bit confused why you mentioned the China example?
Re the communication between you and Constance, that’s my bad. I had understood your comment of “but I hope it’s clear from what I described that the current measure can easily let all interactions feel monitored [emphasis mine]” (in your initial comment before the clarification from others about the trash issue etc) to mean that you were already aware from not long after the experience that monitoring hadn’t actually taken place. ie that the issue you wanted to raise was about CEA staff was that they didn’t consider how easily others would perceive their actions as monitoring.
Hi Rebecca,
The point of the example in my original comment is to demonstrate that well-accepted social norms in one culture can be deemed offensive in another.
Your counterargument is that 1) the conclusion is drawn from only one example, and 2) even that example could be due to the person who gave me the feedback misunderstood the situation, ie my example was bad luck and not generally applicable.
In my reply to your counterargument, my claim of this being just one but not the only example is the response to 1). And the China example is the response to 2), that is, even if she were a new EA I just met for the first time, I could still have remarked on her good appearance, a polite and friendly gesture in my local culture, and be correctly deemed offensive by someone from the West. Therefore the main story line in my example still holds and is representative of difficult multi-cultural situations.
This is a minor point, but I did notice Constance’s revised application had long answers with lots of content, and as she said she spent two hours on it. Is this usual/expected?
I usually just write a few sentences for each question, and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent more than an hour on one.
I’m interested to discuss this, but am slightly confused about your 2nd paragraph haha: are you saying that you’ve never spent more than an hour on one question, or an hour on one application? Just because it reads like you’re saying the former, which obviously with at least 2 questions in the application, is compatible with Constance’s 2 hours on the application overall as well. Or are you interpreting her as saying that she spent 2 hours on each question?
I’m saying I’ve never spent more than one hour on the application form.
I don’t think this assessment is true (see quote below), since Scott’s entire post was about opening up EAG to anyone (it seems odd that he would be hyper critical about how much time she spent on an application if this is what he believes).
To clarify, my point has nothing to do with being critical of another person. I just think the take that ‘even someone who is so aligned with EA had their application rejected, so clearly there’s something broken in the admissions process’ probably assumes that person was aware that it even was a real application that they were filling out, not just a formality.