Why is it so hard engage people about indirect effects?
Why is it so hard get most people to care or even get them to engage in actual discussion about indirect effects of their actions?
I'm mainly going to be talking in the context of tech and privacy since that is my main sphere of concern but it applies to a lot more things.
I am not dismissing the effects of systemic incentives but there are trivial actions that anyone could do to lessen the likely negative effects that almost no one does.
The current climate makes it incredibly hard to actually eliminate personal impact but it still easy to minimize it with negligible impact on one's own life. Like in sw development the first 90% take 90% of the time and the other ten procent take the other half of the time.
Getting a minimal computer literacy of being able to navigate an unfamiliar GUI, explore and understand the settings and be able, read the messahes they are getting on the screen and willing to search their problems would make anyone much more resistant to any number of dark patterns, yet there is a tendency to defend tech illiteracy.
Personally I don't really do that much and I make compromises easily but sadly I get the impression that I am still in the small minority.
I think broadly speaking its because most people arent interested in unsolicited opinions about how they are not doing a good enough job of things, regardless of what specifically you want them to change about it.
The notion of having a "discussion" about something typically involves a back and forth exchange of ideas to reach a common understanding. But in the case where someone feels strongly enough about their disapproval that they have chosen to try and intercede, you dont really expect that they are going to accept any answer you give them. Whatever explanation you give, whats probably going to happen is they are going to dispute some aspect of what you said and try to argue with you about it so they can convince you to change your mind. Which you might not be interested in.
So even if you do engage with them openly and honestly and explain all your reasons for why you think what you do, its not likely to end with them saying "oh ok I guess thats fair go ahead and keep doing what your doing". Even if they did, you dont really need anyones approval to make your decisions. Theres no real reward or upside to choosing to engage unless you are just naturally interested in the discussion.
That is the point. If there was some reason given, even - I'm just not interested that would be perfectly fine.
But it is possible to see when someone has given no thought whatsoever to anything that was said.
Should it be considered okay to be willfully blind and refuse to reason about anything uncomfortable, even if done only in the privacy of one's own mind?
Genuinely, do you think there are areas you're willfully blind about in the same way?
Like, I don't know you but tech is an area of interest for you. Are you as aware of psychology or sociology at more than a surface level, more specifically what about say, suicide prevention? Do you know how to and understand the importance of how to repair your own car? What about your own clothes? Do you know the impacts of your daily purchases on people in disadvantaged foreign countries and what do you do to act on that knowledge? Are you aware of how racism is so deeply embedded in our current medical system and the impacts on your care and the care of others?
And if you do all of those things, what aren't you doing? Because none of us do or know it all.
Secondly, are people's eyes glazing over because they're tired of hearing about the topic from you or at all? As Grayscail mentioned, how are you approaching them? Are you meeting them where they are or talking down to them, because you're frustrated potentially or because this feels so simple to you?
Finally,
Yes it's "okay" to be willfully blind, in the sense that we all are about things. It's also "okay" to understand a thing, and choose to ignore that knowledge. Because we all do that too.
And if it weren't okay to be like that... What are you going to do about it? You can't control those other folks, you're not being successful at convincing them to your cause, what are you achieving by bashing your head into a wall over and over other than making yourself miserable?
Theres a difference in the questions of "is it ok" and "should it be considered ok", one is about doing and the other is about judging. Its always your right to feel however you feel about something, so if you want to judge other peoples choices thats your perrogative.
But the right to judge someone else is not the same as the right to decide for someone else. Its still unilaterally their decision what they are going to do. If you assert your right to judge someone, you do so at the expense of your ability to connect with them. When you look down on someone for their choices it creates emotional distance between the two of you.
Now, if the person in question is desperate for approval they might try to change themselves to meet your expectations, and that could lead to you being able to change their behaviors. On the other hand, they might also choose to reject your ideas out of spite if they are resentful of being judged.
As a result, if you have been consistently finding that your current approach is leading to people not even wanting to engage with you or consider your ideas, that could be a sign that being judgemental is interfering with your ability to do good things in the world. In which case you might consider it a moral imperative to set aside your judgement to maximize your chances at positively influencing people.
The tone of this thread generally and you specifically is pretty clear and I even partially agree. People should be allowed to make their own choices(within certain confines which are for their own discussion) and I am not particularly interested in engaging in it with someone who is not interested in discusing the point I try to make which is why I don't except when the talk goes there. Or as topics such as these.
But the general attitude and the state of the society we are facing is discouraging and there is finite amount of vectors for change.
I don't see leaders making any, external factors will undoubtedly make themselves known but it is unclear if they will be for the better and popular sentiment is the last one.
How do you know they're willfully blind? How do you know they haven't already reasoned about a topic in the privacy of their own mind just to come to a conclusion that's not yours?
Basically what @grayscail said.
To be a little more direct, your topic was 'Why is it hard to engage people about indirect effects?' which sounded like an interesting discussion, so I clicked it.
But when I read your post, you didn't seem interested in a discussion. It was a very thinly veiled 'why do people not care about these things I find very interesting and necessary?' opinion, which I didn't ask for.
If that's the way you're approaching these conversations, they're not conversations. People aren't defending tech illiteracy, they're defending against a perceived attack on their intelligence, competence, or where they choose to invest their limited time.
I'm very interested in the subject you wrote out. But I'm not a software developer, and I don't care about messahes or an unfamiliar GUI. This feels like a bait and switch, where you said you want a discussion, and then unleashed about something that annoys you personally.
Because of this, I'm instinctively tuning out a broader point you may have been trying to make - which I guess is why you posted this in ~talk, and not ~tech.
I'm trying to post this in the spirit of constructive criticism, to help explain why people might not want to engage when you try and have discussions with them.
It is absolutely my fault for not making my point better, but the post was not about tech specifically. Honestly it did not help that I wrote it while very slightly drunk.
I could have added any number of examples such as excessive meat consumption, excessive consumption in general or refusing to vote. Any number of things that are not immediately bad for the person doing it but at least to me, self evidently lead to worse society for everyone.
It is profoundly frustrating seeing people refusing to even engage with them and it is not simply my lack of persuasive speaking. It is possible to see this in any number of places. Just for example stereotypes about vegans - that seems to me like a refusal to acknowledge anything uncomfortable or flat out denial of anything that might require some effort. And I am not even fully vegetarian, I simply try to minimize it where I reasonably can.
To your question, most people don't appreciate being proselytized about any moral or belief or ideological issue.
Some people have higher/ stricter standards for themselves. Some people do what feels good and are lazy/ easy going. Some people are heartless callous sociopaths. Many people work hard and are overwhelmed and don't have bandwidth for extra struggle.
If you want to convince someone, first figure out specifically what motivates that person as an individual.
People have a very limited amount of time, willpower, mental space, set of interests, so on and so forth. The universe, and even the world is a vast place, with trillions of interconnected processes, concerns, problems, and so on. A human being is so massively limited in comparison.
Because of that, most people don't care about most things. Including me, including you. For instance, while I vote, try to stay politically engaged, and don't litter, I eat meat. I drive a car. I don't compost. I hire people to do my lawn. I don't go to the doctor as much as I should. I'm usually late filing my taxes. I spend too much time on pointless pleasures. I don't donate significantly to charity.
I could go on and on, but I think ultimately it boils down to the fact that no one's perfect. I think you'll find that many of the people you have in mind who are doing things you percieve as bad for society (like being tech illiterate) are either doing things that you don't do which are good for society, or don't engage in harmful things that you probably do.
That's not to say that everyone balances out and we all contribute equally, but that it's just impossible to live a perfect life where the only impact you have on the world is a positive one.
I would say that there’s a lot of reasons for people’s indifference. The simplest of which is that people don’t care about things they don’t care about and it’s hard to convince them to care about something they don’t care about. I know this sounds sarcastic, but I genuinely mean it.
Let’s go outside the spaces you mentioned. I hate the NFL. It does not matter how passionate someone is about the NFL if they come up to me to try convince me why I should care about the NFL. I just don’t care and don’t see how it benefits me to care about it(don’t get caught up on this as a way to convince ppl e.g. “I swear this affects you”). I am, however, willing to listen to someone about the NFL or allow them to possibly change my mind about it if I have some other rapport with them. (I will consider something for the sake of considering it if the person tells me it matters to them and I have a good relationship with them). But this involves trust, curiosity, etc. all of which happen organically and cannot be forced (in most instances).
Not sure if you were looking for advice, but I’ll give you some if you want. I find it’s helpful to internally ask yourself “am I trying to change this person’s mind or just share something with them ?” If it’s the former I try to ask for permission first, “are you willing to hear me out and be open minded to changing your mind/perspective ?” People are more receptive if they don’t think they are being attacked or told to change themselves without being asked if they even want to change. Also be willing to accept, “No” for an answer. It’s hard at first, but gets easier.
Lastly, try not to be so hard on yourself. It sounds like you take a lot of responsibility on your own to solve problems and help others better themselves, which is admirable. But can lead to burnout and apathy or hatred.
Buckminster Fuller was known to say "I find people only listen to you when they ask you to talk to them." I've gotten my family members to switch to Firefox, because I've provided a huge amount of computer help to them over the years and am known as a computer guy. They think of me as a nice, helpful person who knows what he's talking about, so they're willing to take my advice.
I do not expect I would be able to have some random person on the street or on the Internet take my advice. I also don't think I could persuade my family to switch to Linux unless I could very clearly demonstrate that the benefit to them personally would be worth the learning curve. Doing stuff "for the greater good" is great until the third time it annoys you personally.
I asked my Facebook feed for advice on a new laptop a few years ago and specifically reached out to a friend that had drifted a bit but who'd helped me in the past. He games much more than I do and is more up on current tech. I gave him my wants and one of those was a touchscreen because my work computer has one and I was tired of feeling dumb touching my home computer and I liked the functionality.
His response was "you don't want a touchscreen." Whatever came next didn't matter because he proved he wasn't listening to me. He could have shared why he advised against it, or said he couldn't make a good rec with it, or any number of things. Instead he told me how I felt and recommended a desktop that I didn't want or need. And we haven't actually talked since (we didn't talk a ton before at this point.)
Whatever knock on effects there are of a touchscreen, he never told me them. He didn't just tell me I was wrong for wanting something but that I didn't want it, and then gave me what he thought I should want.
Its a horrible way to be a friend, to do sales or to try to convince someone of something.
All of which to say it sounds like you're the opposite and doing a great job
Thanks! Sorry about your friend, and I hope you found a laptop you liked.
So far I'm just using the previous one, finances postponed my upgrade but it still runs fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it worked out
The awesome person Buckminster Fuller.
I heard him speak once.
In my experience, with many people the issue isn’t actually unwillingness to build computer literacy, but rather poor comprehension and/or problem solving skills.
I am not saying this to deride or dismiss anybody, but a shocking number of people just aren’t great at these things, many likely due to things beyond their control (parents, environment, school, etc). “Just” reading error messages and acting based on their contents requires a set of skills that for one reason or another these individuals never developed particularly well.
It’s the inevitable result of the majority coming to embrace technology as well as a great case for improving public access to quality education.
Well and they have their own areas of expertise and knowledge of those effects that are probably just as opaque to other folks.
And I think many of us are overwhelmed enough that I can know there's privacy concerns but I'm tired and Google probably already owns me, so like, sigh why not.
Otherwise I cosign @grayscail
My family had computers for as long as I’ve been alive, and I got my own personal laptop at age 13, and tinkered with it until it broke in a way that needed a complete wipe and reinstall (multiple times!) so my familiarity with computers and troubleshooting is probably significant for anyone who doesn’t literally work in IT.
It was only in the last few years that I’ve found myself working within a large corporate structure with a dedicated IT department (previous jobs were much more physical and a lot less need for computers day to day) and I’ve gotta say the way my hands are bound is something that took a while to adjust to. I still follow troubleshooting steps if I can, but genuinely the number of times I look up an issue and the top results are “download X program” or “change Y setting” or “add Z into RegEdit” is well above 50%
I can easily, easily imagine that just about every person I work with could have had their life’s experience of computer interactions being significantly limited from day 1 by an IT system that doesn’t want you breaking shit, from the school computers in early education all the way through to their careers in larger organisations.
In that environment, there’s just no way anyone would learn that they can just keep digging to eventually find an answer and a solution that they can enact. I don’t even think I could call it learned helplessness because it’s just that they’ve literally never had the opportunity to learn at all through their lived experiences.
That’s a great point. My exposure to such IT environments has been quite limited since I’ve only worked at small companies where people are kinda expected to be their own IT for the most part.
My uni had something like that but the machines weren’t as locked down as you might expect, which led to me figuring out a way to make an admin account and running updates on a woefully ignored Mac Mini G4 that was sitting unused in the dorm because its OS, browser, etc were so many major releases behind that it was largely useless. Almost immediately after I updated it, it started getting used by my dorm mates. The IT crew was pretty pissed about that when they came by at the end of the semester, but nobody ratted me out haha. Unfortunately they reverted that machine to the outdated state so the next dorm crew wasn’t able to benefit…
My first exposure to computers was back in 1996 at about age 7, and I got my first computer as a hand me down on 2000. As soon as I had a computer to myself, I was tinkering with it constantly. It was a Mac, and so much of that was doing popular aesthetic mods, theming it was Kaleidoscope and using ResEdit to hack on its resource files to customize things like the startup screen, icons, etc. and a year or two later learned the same things for Windows when I somehow became the IT person for my mom’s Dell tower. I broke things plenty of times, but also learned how to fix them.
It’s absolutely an invaluable experience, and it’s too bad that between overbearing IT and OSes both being somewhat hermetically sealed and “just working “ well enough to not need tweaks that people aren’t getting these experiences any more.
My experience is different. I work with a lot of experts. At work I interact with more people with PhDs than people without. They are very good at what they do with great problem solving skills, otherwise they could not do what they do. I still end up teaching them basics about various software programs they use on a daily basis, even though I don't have any particular IT training.
So, I honestly think it's an unwillingness to learn outside the domain they're used to.
Lots of professionals are notorious for this kind of thing. Doctors, lawyers and so on.
I think when you get into such a technical field that requires so much study and logical power dedicated to it, there becomes room or energy for much else. When I did IT support, doctors and lawyers were notoriously my absolute worst customers. Aggressively tech illiterate, while also with an air of arrogance that the entire concept of learning how to manage files were beneath them.
I think much of push back on IT things from these sorts of professionals (especially lawyers) comes down to how valuable they view their time versus an IT person's time. If a lawyer is learning to do a tech thing or dealing with a tech issue it's potentially costing them billable time and it makes many of them angry, abrasive, or rude.
Lawyers were definitely my least favorite clients as IT support because of their attitudes.
Is it unwillingness or a matter of priorities? To my ear calling them unwilling still carries an assumption that they ought to care. But if they are paid to carry out task X or be a SME on topic Y, then why would they want to spend energy/focus on something someone else is paid to do? Rather they depend on the other members who are strong in the areas that they are week. Doing otherwise is inefficient.
Maybe I should have worded my comment better. It's not everyone that needs a lot of help with software. It tends to be fairly polarized, with scientists either able to self resolve almost any problem they have the permissions to fix, or the kind of people that don't bother learning the software well and often ask for help. Asking for help means waiting, which a lot of people are not interested in doing.
Of course you need will along with the skills, but the skills are more important because without them, even if the will is present, learning is going to be much more difficult.
I’ve heard similar stories about highly educated individuals like those who have PhD’s. I have spent little to no time with this group though, most people I’ve spent time with are much closer to average, with the exception being fellow software devs I’ve worked with, many of whom outstrip me (sometimes greatly) in education and general smarts.
This really really to me as "Why do other people not care about these things that I care about?", which could be for many reasons. If you care about these people, I suggest that you ask them this question more directly and, if they say that they do not care about these topics, drop it. This doesn't seem to be about the concept of indirect effects, but about personal convictions. I suspect there are many things your colleagues/friends/whatever care about that you have never heard of.
Are there trivial actions? What makes these actions trivial or how did you determine they were trivial?
It came across in your post as though this was an example of a trivial action, since you followed the part about trivial actions with this. I wouldn't necessarily classify navigating an unfamiliar UI to be trivial. I'd say there's definitely sliding scales of difficulties but it's also very relative to the prior experiences and knowledge the user already has among other factors. I was born in a not poor family so I grew up with a computer, and subsequently I developed computer literacy that I was able to constantly iterate on from a young age. But it would be wrong of me to say that it would be trivial for someone else who was a similar age as me to think they should have the same capabilities when I have no clue what their life experiences were relative to mine.
You also mentioned in some comments some other general examples, like eating less meat or just less consumption in general, which I also don't think are necessarily trivial. Just because something isn't trivial doesn't mean I think people can't do it, people can overcome lots of difficult challenges, but I think it is a misunderstanding to classify these problems as trivial because I don't think it accurately values the effort or energy it may require for some people to address them.
Furthermore, no one can be better at everything. So you are picking things you value, and because you value them you place your effort here so you improve at them and wonder why others don't, but are you so sure that other people don't place value in some things that could be argued to be ethically superior to a position where you may currently be indifferent or unaware? Let's say hypothetically you eat chocolate. Do you get ethically sourced chocolate? Why is less meat consumption where you put your focus and not on where you get your chocolate from? Maybe you do consider your chocolate sourcing, I don't know, I'm just trying to illustrate that it's a certainty that somewhere there is something you will be ignoring because there's not enough time in the day to give all of it energy.
I understand your position and that is why I argue for awareness, wilingness to learn and minimization not elimination of these behaviours.
For the GUI example personally if I open unfamiliar program(and I include os here) I have no idea and try these things depending on several things:
Given the prevalence and importance of computing technology in everyday life I honestly do not believe that it should be unrealistic to expect some variation of this process to be the norm.
And yes no one can know everything and I have my blind spots which comes back to the first paragraph and specifically wilingness to learn.
Have you ever done tech support?
Some people are unaware of the entire concept of search when it comes to navigating a computer interface. They memorize symbols/icons to interact with and actions to take to achieve what they want with the program but if the visual presentation or location of those symbols/icons changes they are completely lost.
Re your statement of should for computer knowledge, many people are likewise innumerate aside from very basic arithmetic. Some people are entirely illiterate and too many are functionally illiterate and never read.
Idk. I feel like I want to recommend you watch one of many brilliant old movies featuring a missionary/ moralist/ uptight style character interacting with a go along to get along cynic about human nature and society. Guys and Dolls is the one that came to mind, but if I remember correctly, the African Queen would be another good choice. Even the Odd Couple would show the difference between people who live with many rules for themselves vs few.
I am arguing that this state is not what we should want for society because of very clear and real examples of what happens at this level of power balance and intensity of resource exploitation.
I also consider a very basic profficiency and understanding of tools someone uses in potentionally nearly every interaction to be desirable by itself.
Idk what the solution could be though.
I suspect I agree with some of your goals for society.
People are going to be people though and not want to be told how to live their lives.
Public libraries frequently offer courses in computer literacy. You could probably volunteer if you have time.
What effects in particular are you worried about?
Privacy erosion, personal agency degradation, generally available information decline and I am sure I am not mentioning a lot of things.
I'm going to be honest with you. These things are probably sitting pretty at maybe #2000 or so on most people's priority lists.
People care about things like covering this months rent, not getting fired, having health insurance, what to make for dinner this week, making their significant other happy, worrying if their friends really like them, trying to have sex, what that mole on their arm is, and about a thousand other things before they're stopping to consider some nebulous concerns about privacy that they wouldn't even begin to know how to address.
Unless you work in the technology field or are already heavily interested in it, this just won't be on most people's radar, because they have other, more real concerns that directly affect the.
Furthermore, the more packed and stressful a person’s life is the further down the list these things go. Someone who’s struggling to keep the bills paid and grappling with a child who’s having trouble in school probably sees things like software privacy concerns or the ethics of their food a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the perpetually-sinking “Titanic” that is their life. They might even agree that these things are important logically, but realistically where is the time, energy, and mental/emotional bandwidth required to act going to come from?
That’s why I think that before anything else, we need to be trying to get society as a whole to a point where it’s not running on fumes just trying to exist. Accomplishing that opens up room for so many other things.
This is the dominant position. I simply hope that more people will consider their behaviour in longer term broader context because these ephemeral things shape the society and ultimately impact concrete comcerns.
I think Grayscail covered it really well.
I'd add that I think a lot of these topics are "ethereal". You can't drive someone to the privacy factory and show them what is changing and why it's bad. In fact you can't explain why privacy loss is bad without dipping into hypothetical situations that most people can't relate to because they don't think they could find themselves in those situations. That's at the root of "I don't have anything to hide, so why should I care?" It's actually pretty hard to convince someone (who doesn't care to be convinced, as Grayscail points out) that they should care.
The damages done by the things you mention very rarely impact individuals. I'm not arguing that they aren't real practical damages, only that they sneak by because they're largely damages to systems that most people don't need until they no longer have them.
My point is view on this kind of thing is cynical. I don't know how to fix it. How do you make people want to learn things that are hard and uncomfortable to learn, and feel harmless to ignore?
I think it simply comes down the fact that people do not feel any material impact related to these choices, and therefore do not care.
Human nature favors convenience. We are lazy and it is easy to rationalize lazy decisions. It’s easy to procrastinate. It’s easy to indulge. Marketing and other powerful forces influence us to be more indulgent. “You need this to be happy and you deserve it” is one of the most common ad tropes.