
Larissa MacFarquhar on Getting Inside Someone’s Head - jeffreyrogers
https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larissa-macfarquhar-writing-altruism-e4767f7bb78d
======
paganel
> I think this notion that trying to help people, sacrificing yourself to help
> people was a sickness became very widespread, especially in the ’70s and
> ’80s under the better-known term codependency. It’s part of our now
> unconscious culture, the way we look at altruists. When we hear about them,
> many people think first, “Are they sick?”

I personally wouldn't go that far as calling a person "sick" for being
extremely altruistic but it is generally well-known that gifts/free things are
never really "free".

For a sociological view on gifts/altruism not being genuinely "free" there's
Marcel Mauss's classic "The Gift" [1], while from personal experience I can
tell that I used to be taught by both my peasant Eastern-European grand-
mothers to never accept free stuff from our neighbors (like going to eat at
their place or something similar), the reasoning being that those neighbors
would most certainly want something in return at some point in the future.

In a similar vein there's this Seinfeld season 3 episode called "The Pen" [2],
where Jerry accepts a "free" pen as a gift from one of his parents' neighbors
and, obviously, that turns out not to have been the best idea.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_\(book\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pen)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _from personal experience I can tell that I used to be taught by both my
> peasant Eastern-European grand-mothers to never accept free stuff from our
> neighbors (like going to eat at their place or something similar), the
> reasoning being that those neighbors would most certainly want something in
> return at some point in the future._

Isn't this essentially antisocial advice? That is: society is literally built
out of these types of exchanges. I help you in your need, you help me in my
need later. I do something nice for you, you do something nice for someone
else, someone-{n}-else does something nice for me.

Gifts stop being gifts when strings get attached explicitly.

~~~
paganel
> Gifts stop being gifts when strings get attached explicitly.

It's already very difficult to get out of that stupid "Secret Santa gift"
tradition that has encompassed most of the world's corporate offices, i.e.
gifts that almost nobody really cares for, which are not given with "strings"
attached, but you'd have to be a very brave individual to say to your office
colleagues "hey, this year I'm not going to play this Secret Santa game".

You can sort of also see this in action in the FOSS world. Most of the FOSS
code doesn't have anything in its license on the lines of "you should not
criticize the makers of this free software" but, nevertheless, I have met lots
of cases (and it has happened to me, too) of FOSS users being reprimanded by
the code's creators for daring to say that some things don't work as they
should, with replies such as "it's free code! If you care so much about it why
don't you contribute back?".

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It 's already very difficult to get out of that stupid "Secret Santa gift"
> tradition that has encompassed most of the world's corporate offices, i.e.
> gifts that almost nobody really cares for, which are not given with
> "strings" attached, but you'd have to be a very brave individual to say to
> your office colleagues "hey, this year I'm not going to play this Secret
> Santa game"._

I think it's because a lot of people see this as an externally imposed custom,
the kind of "teambuilding" bullshit in which you _technically_ don't have to
participate, but will earn negative social points if you don't. I dislike
Secret Santa too. I have no problem buying someone a gift just because I like
them, but being forced to do that by external circumstances feels just wrong.

BTW. this applies to Christmas as well. I don't think I've ever seen or heard
of a more "joyful holiday" which so many people secretly hate. It's that one
time of the year where cultural norms force everyone to pretend to be super-
nice to each other.

Those are some observations, but I don't have any clarified opinion on whether
customs like these are net good or bad. But they seem to turn into strings for
many.

\--

RE FOSS and reprimands, a lot of this feels like an issue of temper and
personal manners - which many don't have[0]. Also, FOSS creates a peculiar
type of self-imposed burden on creators. You're not just giving a piece of
software away, you start to feel responsible for maintaining and
troubleshooting it. If you don't have time or will for that, you'll fall
behind, and as issues start to pile up, you can start to feel bad about
yourself. I regularly feel bad about a bunch of outstanding tickets I have on
a _small animated cat_ for Emacs, a joke project I made 8 years ago. I can
easily imagine how overwhelmed people can start lashing out, when a ticket
description or a comment pushes them over the edge. It takes some self-
reflection and maturity to recognize that most of the problem here is self-
imposed.

Human psychology is weird.

\--

[0] - In "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", Dale Carnegie makes an
observation that expecting gratitude is a fool's errand, and if you predispose
your gift-giving on expectations of gratitude, you'll be unhappy.

------
gwern
For a sample, see her excellent article "Last Call: A Buddhist monk confronts
Japan’s suicide culture." [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/last-
call-3](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/last-call-3) (Also
surprisingly relevant to maintaining OSS packages, IMO.)

------
yboris
I absolutely LOVED her book _Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic
Choices, and the Urge to Help_

[https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Drowning-Impossible-
Idealis...](https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Drowning-Impossible-Idealism-
Drastic/dp/0143109782)

------
oskkejdjdkjd
I thought this would be about the psychology of “getting inside” someone’s
head. I think it’s a very interesting phenomenon when someone says something
to you and you can’t seem to shake it, and it bothers you for days or weeks.
I’m very sensitive to it. I believe it’s a very important window into how the
mind works. That’s one reason why it’s interesting. The other is that
understanding this phenomenon would be very powerful — to never allow anyone
to “get under your skin” would make you a much more powerful and productive
person.

I have read that the unibomber, before he started bombing, was subjected to an
experiment under the mk-ultra program. The experiment was psycological cross-
examination. Ted was taken into a room and asked about certain things, things
that were probably very important to him — fundamental beliefs that perhaps he
didn’t even realize were fundamental to his psychology. Then, with all of that
established, he was cross-examined and inconsistencies in those beliefs were
brought to his attention or in some way de-stabilized. It was after this that
his descent into insanity began which ultimately resulted in the bombings.
This concept of “getting inside your head” is much more important than it is
given credit for — completely untapped and unexplored as far as I can tell. I
really wish I could understand it. But I can’t really find much when I google
around for it. Nobody seems to talk or think about this online. Not in the way
I do which is viewing it as an exploit in the human mind.

~~~
renholder
It isn't anywhere near as unexplored or untapped, as one might believe.

Waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay[0] is a principal example of how these
exploits have been explored and later implemented. The tools were "developed"
somewhere, tested, "perfected", defined, and then later implemented by
training people to execute the methods and then the later execution of those
methods.

The problem with these "psychological operations", as they're called, is that
they don't take into account the ill-effects we've seen in time immemorial.

Let's say, for example, you've been tortured for 'x' days. How long before you
'break' and just admit to crimes you've never committed or implicate innocent
people - all just to get the torture to stop?

"...but that wouldn't happen. People would never point the finger at other
innocent people." Oh, yeah? See: The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism as
principal examples. (I'm assuming that you're American, at least, and - as
such - you'd already be familiar with how those played-out.)

In normal parlance, this has been grouped into two seperate notions:
Pychological Operations[1] and Psychological Warfare[2].

MKUltra[3] was, itself, specifically about mind-control, in order to obtain
information and/or confessions.

So, you're definitely not the only one interested in it or in talking about
it; however, it's entirely plausible that having an interest in this is
something that lands us on yet another list... Yay. =[

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#Torture)

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_\(United_States\))

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_warfare)

[3] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>...but that wouldn't happen. People would never point the finger at other
innocent people." Oh, yeah? See: The Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism as
principal examples. (I'm assuming that you're American, at least, and - as
such - you'd already be familiar with how those played-out.)

Nitpick: The Boston area was basically settled by the Christian Taliban (they
were kicked out of England for being too fundamentalist) so when it comes to
human rights and treating people with dignity they were behind the times (to
put it charitably). The witch trails of the 1690s are roughly analogous to the
local warlord having a few minor criminals shot in order to send the message
that everyone needs to get their shit together and quit fighting among
themselves. You saw that kind of stuff a lot in the middle ages where some
lord might have a family cut down without due process because they had some
grievance and refused to pay tax/tribute. The Salem witch trials only made it
into the history books because the rest of the world had long since moved on
from that sort of thing.

Obviously that sort of stuff isn't compatible with modern values but that's
just how society (in the Boston area at least) worked back then.

~~~
likpok
The Puritans were weird and deeply religious, but describing them as the
"christian taliban" is not accurate.

To start, they were kicked out of England for being _protestant_ , not "too
fundamentalist". The schism between the Church of England and everybody else
(e.g. Scottish Presbyterians) was a longstanding source of conflict (partially
because the church considered itself the arm of the state, and tithes as
taxes. Non-Anglicans didn't want to pay these). And, in fact, many Puritans
came back (or sent support) when Oliver Cromwell seized control. It's
certainly true that the Puritans didn't come seeking religious freedom, but
the ability to combine _their_ religion and government).

They were a strongly egalitarian and highly educated culture, featuring near-
universal literacy both among men and women. They had a strong dedication to
economic equality -- one town distributed equal-sized plots of land to it's
settlers.

They had harsh laws about adultery, which were enforced against men and women
relatively equally. They also had laws against "novelties" (i.e. anything new)
and wasting time, so don't think this is a defense of their modernity. But
it's only vaguely accurate to describe them and "the taliban" as alike. They
are both cultures with deep religious drives, but those drives are different
and expressed very differently.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>but describing them as the "christian taliban" is not accurate.

> It's certainly true that the Puritans didn't come seeking religious freedom,
> but the ability to combine their religion and government.

> They are both cultures with deep religious drives, but those drives are
> different and expressed very differently.

My comparison to the Taliban was more about the harsh way they ran their
communities than their specific religious belief and social structure The
puritan settled areas were highly superstitious and authoritarian communities
where there is perceived (religious) justification for very harsh punishment
on anyone who violates the community norms. The strictness with which the
puritans ran their communities was far in excess of the norm for the time
(which is why the witch trials were a big deal). In that way they're like the
Taliban.

It's hard to make comparisons to the current US social/political landscape
without pissing everyone off. The puritans pretty much planted the seed of
authoritarianism in the US and we're still fighting off that legacy today.

>They were a strongly egalitarian and highly educated culture, featuring near-
universal literacy both among men and women. They had a strong dedication to
economic equality -- one town distributed equal-sized plots of land to it's
settlers.

It's a shame that 400yr later those aren't the traits that stuck around in our
culture.

------
Pyxl101
I'm sorry to post off-topic but... I find this very hard to ignore:

When did Medium gain these huge annoying banners that can't be dismissed at
the top and bottom of the page?

> Never miss a story from Conversations with Tyler, when you sign up for
> Medium. Learn more. Get Updates

I tend to read at larger than 100% font and these banners take up a
disproportionate amount of space. At 125% zoom these banners together seem to
take up about a third of the total vertical reading space.

If this B.S. has to be there for some reason, why not it put on the side of
the page which is otherwise unused whitespace? Sigh. Or why not put it at the
end of the article? If people really like Conversations with Tyler, and want
to read more, then they've presumably read to the bottom of the page.

~~~
Brajeshwar
Recently, I discovered Outline[1] here on HackerNews. I just hit it when
reading articles that are not focused on the article (ads, sidebars). I
believe Outline is for a different purpose but this is good for me to just
read the article.

1\. [https://outline.com](https://outline.com)

~~~
mirimir
That's very cool! Thanks.

