Weirdness Points
20Matt Goldenberg
15Gordon Seidoh Worley
16lsusr
9Said Achmiz
5lsusr
16Said Achmiz
6Caleb Biddulph
5Martin Randall
5Said Achmiz
2Martin Randall
3Said Achmiz
5Martin Randall
2Said Achmiz
6Jiro
4Isha Yiras Hashem
3NoriMori1992
1daijin
4Self
1daijin
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Object-level and meta-level norms on weirdness vary greatly. I believe it's true for your friends that it doesn't cost weirdness points to being them to your Zendo, and the same is true of many of my friends.
But, its not the case that it won't cost weirdness points for everyone, even those who want to be invited. They'll just think, "oh this a weird thing my friend does that I want to check out".
But if many of those things build up they may want to avoid you, because they themselves feel weirded out, or because they're worried that their friends will be weirded out.
Same for wearing a suit, or in my case, a sash. I've had many people who actually appreciate the sash, say it lends a sense of authority. Most won't mention it, but still have a slight sense of "this is a bit strange and I should be wary." One struggle with my ex was that she was sensitive to any hint of that wariness, whereas I am just ok with it and find it a great filter to bring the right people into close relationship.
It's very easy to not pick up on that wariness as people are supposed to hide it. Especially because the people who end up getting close to you are ones who it actually doesn't bother.
But you shouldn't mistake that for a universal "just do whatever you want in a respectful and confident way and others won't be bothered" rule. It's just not how everyone works.
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So while your point is mostly true, I want to highlight there are some situations where simply asking people to respect your food norms is a problem, and they mostly arise in a specific sort of culture that is especially communal with regard to food and sees you as part of the ingroup.
For example, it's a traditional upper-class Anglo norm that it's rude to put your hosts out by asking them to make you something special to accommodate your diet. You're expected to get along and eat what everyone else eats. You will be accommodated if you ask, but you will also be substantial downgraded in how willing to get along you are, and you'll be a less desired dinner guest, and thus get fewer invites and be less in.
I've heard of similar issues in some East Asian cultures where going vegan is seen as an affront to the family. "What do you mean you won't eat my cooking?!? Do you think you're better than your mother???!"
The problem is that food is tied with group membership, and you're expected to eat the same food as the rest of the ingroup. If you're not a rare outsider guest, you'll be seen as defecting on group cohesion.
But most Westerners are not part of cultures like these. Western culture is highly atomized, and everyone is seen as a unique individual, so it's not unusual that individuals might have unique food needs, and it becomes polite and a sign of a good host to accommodate everybody. But this is historically an unusual norm to have within the ingroup.
It is indeed rude to ask your hosts to make you something special to accommodate your diet. That's why I don't do it. This is part of how I try to not be a problem for other people. If I'm not expecting vegetarian options, I just eat in advance and then nibble on the bread or something. I did this around Anglos even back when I ate a normal diet, because Anglos often serve so little food.
My East Asian family doesn't see it as an affront (though I can't speak for everyone—especially not anyone under the age of 18). To the contrary, it's a source of common ground between me and my vegetarian Pure Land Buddhist Taiwanese great aunt. It's just about getting the right framing. East Asians understand that Buddhists often eat a vegan diet.
I often get my friends to eat vegan food. It doesn’t cost me any weirdness points. To the contrary, my friends reciprocate with generosity. Here’s how it works. I invite my friends over to dinner. I cook them dinner, or buy take-out. I insist on paying for everything, and refuse their offers to chip in. The food is vegan because I’m the one providing it. The food is tasty because I’m a good cook, because I know what all the good restaurants are, and because I know what kinds of foods my friends like. Do my friends complain that the food is vegan? Of course not. It doesn’t even cross their mind. They’re appreciative that I’m providing them with a tasty dinner.
I don’t believe that this doesn’t cost you any weirdness points.
It would be rude to explicitly speculate on the thought processes of your actual friends, so I will use fictional analogues. Consider a hypothetical Alice who behaves as you have described, and her hypothetical friend Bob:
Alice: Bob, I’m having the usual crowd over for dinner on Friday—I hope you can make it!
Bob, thinking: Ugh, and of course it’ll be her usual vegan stuff. Damn, but I really hate vegan food. But I can’t very well say no, can I? I mean, maybe once or twice, but then what about the next time, and the time after that…? I do enjoy hanging out with everyone who’ll be there, so I guess it’s not so bad… hmm, could I convince Alice to serve meat for once…? No, what am I saying, that would be absurdly rude; she’s the host, who am I to tell her what to cook. I guess there’s nothing for it; I’ll just have a bit of this and that, and on the way home I’ll pick up a burger. Ah well, I suppose we must all tolerate one another’s quirks… Alice is a good friend, after all, and really it could be worse…
Bob: Wouldn’t miss it!
Alice: Great! See you on Friday!
I solve this problem by telling jokes and expressing opinions so far outside the Overton Window they'd get me stoned to death by the general public. After setting the honesty baseline that high, it would be bizarre for my friends to fudge their food preferences.
On the contrary, there would be nothing at all bizarre about that; it would be perfectly normal and totally commonplace.
What you are doing by expressing opinions outside the Overton window is not, in fact, “setting the honesty baseline”—because there is no such thing as “the honesty baseline”. There is “telling politically incorrect jokes is tolerated in this social context”, and there is “telling my vegan friend that I hate vegan food and I tolerate his vegan dinner parties with gritted teeth and a forced smile would hurt his feelings to no purpose whatsoever”, and there is not all that much in common between those things.
Here’s a question, if I may: the last time one of your friends told you that they disliked something you’d cooked, how did the resulting conversation go?
(Of course you are under no obligation to answer, and demurring on privacy grounds is perfectly reasonable. Please feel free to treat the question as a rhetorical one.)
Also, maybe you have an honesty baseline for telling people you dislike their cooking, and maybe your friend understands that, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to match your norms.
My experience is that however painstakingly you make it clear that you want people to be honest with you or act a certain way, sometimes they just won't. You just have to accept that people have different personalities and things they're comfortable with, and try to love the ways they differ from you rather than resenting it.
I don't think that's about weirdness. Bob could have the exact same thoughts and actions if Alice provides some type of "normal" food (for whatever counts as "normal" in Bob's culture), but Bob hates that type of food, or hates the way Alice cooks it, or hates the place Alice buys it, or whatever.
Alice and Bob are having trouble communicating, which will cause problems no matter how normal (or weird) they both are.
It certainly is about weirdness—because, for one thing, the weirder the food is, the more likely it is that many or most people will dislike it; and for another thing, if the weirdness of the food is in the form of a constraint (as “vegan” is) is, then this limits the possible scope of the food’s appeal (as compared to “food selected with no constraints and optimized for appeal”), and thus again increases the chance that the food will be disliked by any given person.
I agree that constraints make things harder, and that being vegan is a constraint, but again that is separate to weirdness. If Charles is hosting a dinner party on Friday in a "fish on Friday" culture then Charles serving meat is weird in that culture but it means Charles is less constrained, not more. If anything the desire to avoid weirdness can be a constraint. There are many more weird pizza toppings than normal pizza toppings.
Given the problem that Alice and Bob are having, a good approach is that they communicate better, so that they know there is a problem, and what it is. An approach of being less weird may cause more problems than it solves.
I don’t think that your first paragraph there makes sense as a response to what I wrote.
Given the problem that Alice and Bob are having, a good approach is that they communicate better, so that they know there is a problem, and what it is.
Perhaps. “Communicate better”, as advice, is hard to disagree with (what’s the alternative—“communicate worse”? “don’t try to improve how well you communicate”?); but (as is often the case with applause lights) what is not clear is how to apply the advice. What exactly would you suggest Bob do, in my fictional scenario?
An approach of being less weird may cause more problems than it solves.
Well, “be less weird” isn’t really an “approach”; it’s too general to be called that. Indeed, I am not even suggesting that anyone be less weird. My objection was merely to the claim that no “weirdness points” are being spent by something which seems to pretty clearly be weird. No problem can be solved if you refuse to admit that it exists; but if you see the problem clearly, you are free to decide that it’s not a problem after all. That’s a question of preferences and values, which is not my concern here.
Alice should already know what kind of foods her friends like before inviting them to a dinner party where she provides all the food. She could have gathered this information by eating with them at other events, such as restaurants, pot lucks, or at mutual friends. Or she could have learned it in general conversation. When inviting friends to a dinner party where she provides all the food, Alice should say what the menu is and ask for allergies and dietary restrictions. When people are at her dinner party, Alice should notice if someone is only picking at their food.
Bob should be honest about his food preferences instead of silently resenting the situation. In his culture it's rude to ask Alice to serve meat. Fine, don't do that. But it's not rude to have food preferences and express them politely, so do that. I'm not so much saying "communicate better" as "use your words". If Bob can't think of any words he can ask an LLM. Claude 3.7 suggests:
"I'd love to come! I've been having trouble enjoying vegan food - would it be okay if I brought something to share?"
It's a messed up situation and it mostly sounds to me like Alice and Bob are idiots. Since lsuser doesn't appear to be an idiot, I doubt he is in this situation.
Alice should already know what kind of foods her friends like before inviting them to a dinner party where she provides all the food. She could have gathered this information by eating with them at other events, such as restaurants, pot lucks, or at mutual friends. Or she could have learned it in general conversation. When inviting friends to a dinner party where she provides all the food, Alice should say what the menu is and ask for allergies and dietary restrictions.
This is all true as far as it goes, but what it cashes out as is “don’t host a vegan dinner party for a bunch of non-vegan people”. Well, I agree with that; but is that the point you were making to begin with? If it is, then it seems like you’re basically agreeing with me, yes?
Bob should be honest about his food preferences instead of silently resenting the situation. In his culture it’s rude to ask Alice to serve meat. Fine, don’t do that. But it’s not rude to have food preferences and express them politely, so do that. I’m not so much saying “communicate better” as “use your words”.
Sure, but in the scenario we’re discussing, Alice already knows that Bob isn’t a vegan, and doesn’t prefer vegan food. She just thinks that her vegan food is so good that Bob likes it anyhow. It turns out that she’s wrong! If Bob tells her this, then what he’s saying is “you’re not as good a cook as you thought” (which is, in this hypothetical scenario, objectively true!). Will Alice’s feelings be hurt by that? Probably yes.
If Bob can’t think of any words he can ask an LLM.
I’m sorry, but I have no interest whatever in an LLM’s suggestions on this subject (nor on most other subjects).
It’s a messed up situation and it mostly sounds to me like Alice and Bob are idiots.
Well, hypothetical Alice is acting in the same way that OP describes himself as acting. Is that idiotic behavior? I suppose opinions may differ. Is hypothetical Bob’s behavior idiotic? I don’t know, it seems fairly reasonable. We’re not talking about a scenario where Bob just can’t stomach any of Alice’s food at all. Bob just wishes that Alice would cook normal food, like a normal person. It’s not really clear what the best play for Bob is. I don’t know what he could say that would both be true and tactful. Bob has decided that he’d prefer to be tactful, givens the pros and cons of the available courses of action. That doesn’t seem obviously stupid to me.
1The same goes for wearing a suit. I don’t imply that anyone else should wear a suit, and the people around me don’t imply that I shouldn’t wear a suit. Telling other people what to do isn’t socially expensive because it costs “weirdness points”. It is socially expensive because people don’t like it when you tell them to do things they don’t want to do.
By that reasoning you could refuse to ever say "please" and "thank you". After all, you're not telling anyone else not to say "please" and "thank you".
There are two things going on in the vegan example that you haven't noticed. First, it's possible for something to be bad for more than one reason. Something can be pushy, and weird even ignoring the pushiness, at the same time. Second, being vegan by itself doesn't cost you that many weirdness points, because being vegan is a thing that people are familiar with as part of our society, not just as something that one strange guy does.
Wearing a suit when people don't expect a suit is more like refusing to eat round foods, or taking all your meals on green plates, than it is like veganism. If you just made up the weird action (not the thing you're basing it on--suits already exist, but round foods already exist too), it's going to be seen as a lot weirder than something seen occasionally in society.
I'm probably a very weird person, even if I do live a very standard stay-at-home-mother life. At least in rationalist circles, I seem to use up all my weirdness points just by being a stay-at-home mother, fearing G-d to the point of not spelling it out, and being a biblical literalist. And yet, I'm here.
The real problem is meta-awareness—thinking about yourself too much. If you're focused on others instead of monitoring your own status, it matters less. I wouldn't say I'm the most socially normal person—I lean more, um, socially experimental—but I do care about how other people feel. If someone is genuinely uncomfortable and I can adjust without triggering a motte-and-bailey about my own values, I will. But if there’s nothing I can reasonably do to change the situation, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.
As for food, I don’t pretend to be an exceptional cook. But if I have a guest who’s gluten-free or vegan, I’ll do my best to accommodate them. I also have chickens in my own yard, and I think they’re very well cared for. So at least for anyone concerned about animal rights, don’t worry, my chickens have a high quality of life.
To me, it's hard to ignore how this post skates over why some vegans are pushy, and how that makes statements like "There's a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values" and "If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won't like you" difficult for them to swallow. If a vegan is "radical" or pushy, it's probably because they think killing animals is wrong; possibly to a similar, identical, or perhaps even greater degree than killing humans is wrong. And I don't think anyone trying to convince a serial killer to stop murdering people would appreciate being told "There's a big difference between you making choices according to your values, and you telling other people to make choices according to your values", or "If you tell other people they should make choices according to your values instead of their values, then other people won't like you." That isn't necessarily less true about serial killers than it is about a meat-eaters, but I'm sure it's intuitive to you that if you said that to an anti-serial-killer (i.e. most normal people), the response would be something like "Excuse me?" I get the sense that your argument is meant to be a purely pragmatic one — "You're not going to get anywhere with this, and it's wasting resources you could use on more tractable problems, so you should change your approach or just stop entirely" — but I think that the people who most need to hear that argument (on any subject where it obtains, not just veganism) wouldn't even realize that's your argument. They view their bugbear as an extremely important moral problem; insofar as your argument fails to address that perspective, and instead treats the bugbear as a mere cultural difference that they're "weird" for objecting to, I think it isn't going to sound like a pragmatic argument that their approach simply isn't working. At worst, it will sound like you're saying "Why are you so worked up about murder? Don't you know that murder is acceptable in some cultures? Why are you so intolerant?" At best, it will sound like you're missing the point, because it will sound like you're just saying they would have more friends if they got less worked up about murder. I'm sure you can see why they would not even find that argument relevant, let alone persuasive. They wouldn't be so pushy in the first place if they cared more about having friends than about people doing less murder.
2'Weirdness' is not about being other from the group, it is about causing the ingroup pain, which happens to correlate to being distinct from the ingroup (weird). We should call them ingroup-pain-points.
Being loudly vegan is spending ingroup-pain-points, because being in front of someone's face and criticising their behaviour causes them pain. Serving your friends tasty vegan food does not cause them pain and therefore incurs no ingroup-pain-points.
There is a third class of ingroup pain point that i will call 'cultural pain point'. My working definition of 'culture' is 'suboptimal behaviours that signal ingroup membership'. If you refuse to partake in suboptimal behavior, this does not cause you pain, but since you are now in a better position than others in the ingroup, you have now caused them pain. This is why you can be vilified for being vegan in certain 'cultures': you are being more optimal (healthier) relative to other people in a way that is (implicitly or explicitly) identified as a signalling-suboptimal-behaviour.
I'd say weirdness is about not being predictable
Perhaps along some generalized conformity axis - being perceived as a potential risk to the social order.
Another consequence of this is that inviting your friend to zendo is not weird, but inviting all your friends publically to zendo is.