I wonder if it might help you to talk to someone from Community Health and ask them to tell you (anonymized) stories about the sort of things that led them to ban people from conferences, or enact other penalties. Maybe this would reassure you that you’re not likely to be “close to the line” in your default behaviour—or, flag to you that some common things you do could make people very uncomfortable. (fwiw tho, please don’t mask your excitedness—I really don’t think people will interpret that as flirtatious by itself)
Maybe you’ll say ‘that won’t help me, because even if I can avoid those specific actions, I won’t know the rules that they violated’. Maybe CH can tell you what rule or heuristic was violated too! But partly… like I sympathise with you—I am also an enjoyer of explicit social norms—but I’m not sure if it’s possible to come up with a set of rules for social behaviour that are perfectly comprehensive like this. (This is a big part of the AI alignment problem, right—turns out trying to very-precisely specify what you want an entity to do and not do, with no misunderstandings or rules-lawyering, is really hard).
If it would help, I’m happy for you to message me and ask me questions about stuff like this, no question too silly. This goes for readers of this comment too. Caveat: I’m pretty high-openness and probably at least a bit neurodivergent, so you shouldn’t necessarily trust my answers.
To be frank, if the rules were very detailed and very different from my usual behavior patterns I would have trouble following them. My brain, you see, simply works on autopilot a huge proportion of time. If there are just a couple of rules which would require me to alter my behavior, sure, I will remember about them and do my best to follow. If there are too many—it will be just super hard for me to memorize it and could make me super anxious that I’ll break some rule because I forgot it!
My interest is more in writing down rules that already exist. So that shouldn’t change anything about the rules except that there’s a place where one can check what they are.
This ties in with:
Believing that your values and behavior associated with your culture and class are the only right ones and everybody should know, understand and follow them, is fundamentally different from assertively vocalizing your boundaries and needs. The second is a great, mature behavior. The first feels a bit elitist, ignorant and has nothing to do with safety, equality and being inclusive.
It’s basically a third alternative. Not assuming that all rules are universally known, not figuring out what the boundaries are on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis, but collaboratively writing down some set of rules that has already emerged. I imagine (hope) almost all of them will be super obvious so that we don’t need to memorize them.
I wonder if it might help you to talk to someone from Community Health and ask them to tell you (anonymized) stories about the sort of things that led them to ban people from conferences, or enact other penalties.
Yes, that’d be great! Or better yet a public summary of all the clusters of bad behavior so that it’s useful for others too, and I don’t need to deanonymize myself.
fwiw tho, please don’t mask your excitedness—I really don’t think people will interpret that as flirtatious by itself
Thanks for the encouragement! :-D
Maybe you’ll say ‘that won’t help me, because even if I can avoid those specific actions, I won’t know the rules that they violated’. Maybe CH can tell you what rule or heuristic was violated too!
Depends! Your reply to a previous comment of mine was useful in that regard, and I’ve also asked other people. Once I notice that I don’t understand some particular thing, it’s much easier to ask questions about it than it is now when the question basically is, “Is there something I don’t know yet?” I’m sort of like a Stuart Russell kind of AI that may not know things about the world but is eager to get and update on feedback on seemingly great plans, ideally before it implements them.
If it would help, I’m happy for you to message me and ask me questions about stuff like this, no question too silly
I wonder if it might help you to talk to someone from Community Health and ask them to tell you (anonymized) stories about the sort of things that led them to ban people from conferences, or enact other penalties. Maybe this would reassure you that you’re not likely to be “close to the line” in your default behaviour—or, flag to you that some common things you do could make people very uncomfortable. (fwiw tho, please don’t mask your excitedness—I really don’t think people will interpret that as flirtatious by itself)
Maybe you’ll say ‘that won’t help me, because even if I can avoid those specific actions, I won’t know the rules that they violated’. Maybe CH can tell you what rule or heuristic was violated too! But partly… like I sympathise with you—I am also an enjoyer of explicit social norms—but I’m not sure if it’s possible to come up with a set of rules for social behaviour that are perfectly comprehensive like this. (This is a big part of the AI alignment problem, right—turns out trying to very-precisely specify what you want an entity to do and not do, with no misunderstandings or rules-lawyering, is really hard).
If it would help, I’m happy for you to message me and ask me questions about stuff like this, no question too silly. This goes for readers of this comment too. Caveat: I’m pretty high-openness and probably at least a bit neurodivergent, so you shouldn’t necessarily trust my answers.
To be frank, if the rules were very detailed and very different from my usual behavior patterns I would have trouble following them. My brain, you see, simply works on autopilot a huge proportion of time. If there are just a couple of rules which would require me to alter my behavior, sure, I will remember about them and do my best to follow. If there are too many—it will be just super hard for me to memorize it and could make me super anxious that I’ll break some rule because I forgot it!
My interest is more in writing down rules that already exist. So that shouldn’t change anything about the rules except that there’s a place where one can check what they are.
This ties in with:
It’s basically a third alternative. Not assuming that all rules are universally known, not figuring out what the boundaries are on a case-by-case, person-by-person basis, but collaboratively writing down some set of rules that has already emerged. I imagine (hope) almost all of them will be super obvious so that we don’t need to memorize them.
Yes, that’d be great! Or better yet a public summary of all the clusters of bad behavior so that it’s useful for others too, and I don’t need to deanonymize myself.
Thanks for the encouragement! :-D
Depends! Your reply to a previous comment of mine was useful in that regard, and I’ve also asked other people. Once I notice that I don’t understand some particular thing, it’s much easier to ask questions about it than it is now when the question basically is, “Is there something I don’t know yet?” I’m sort of like a Stuart Russell kind of AI that may not know things about the world but is eager to get and update on feedback on seemingly great plans, ideally before it implements them.
Oooh! Thank you!