Yeah but calling them on their hypocrisy helps change the social context
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does it tho 🤔
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Kinda, yeah. If people get consistently called on their hypocrisy that's part of the social context, and putting together a good argument in public for why This Is Not OK removes plausible deniability and gives others who are already on side tools for promoting good behaviour.
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i think this basically doesn't work anymore on the internet, if it ever did. it might work with people you have existing relationships with irl. do you have any evidence that this works?
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realized i can gather data on this question myself
Quote Tweet
poll: has a "callout" post on social media from a stranger (e.g. a post dunking on some kind of hypocrisy that you engage in) ever motivated you to be a better person in any way?
Show this poll
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This poll doesn't test what I'm claiming though? You're missing the crucial step which is the actual proposed mechanism.
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My claim is that the mechanism is:
1. I talk about the thing.
2. Other people who are already mostly on side read it.
3. Those other people are now more likely to act usefully in situations where they have high leverage.
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I don't expect people who are being hypocrites to read these tweets and go "Yeah I'm being a hypocrite, I'll stop". I do think people who read these tweets and go "You're right, that *is* bullshit" to be slightly more inclined and better equipped to change the social environment.
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Also TBH even if they don't change the social environment I still think it helps to articulate why a behaviour bothers me, because I find that often other people are bothered by the same thing and haven't been able to articulate it yet.
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that's a mechanism i definitely believe in!
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this is mostly the target i try to hit with my writing - articulate things people already know but don't know how to articulate, so i don't have to convince anyone of anything. distributed Gendlin focusing twitter.com/DRMacIver/stat…
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what i don't believe in is the idea that pointing out hypocrisy causes people to improve their behavior. it's a super common assumption hiding behind a lot of moralistic internet posting and i think it basically doesn't work at all for improving the behavior of strangers
Replying to
Yes, I'd agree that this doesn't work for improving the behaviour of strangers. I've largely given up on the idea of improving the behaviour of people who I don't know and am not already broadly on side with though.
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Generally I assume that if a stranger doesn't already basically agree with me (or at least not disagree with me) on a subject this is the only useful mechanism I have access to because everything else is way too much work.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @GeniesLoki and @QiaochuYuan
My claim is that the mechanism is:
1. I talk about the thing.
2. Other people who are already mostly on side read it.
3. Those other people are now more likely to act usefully in situations where they have high leverage.
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Show replies
I think it's effective at influencing the behavior of observers, though--which is a more efficient way of transmitting norms
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