Unreasonable

[learnteach]

It seems to me that in many relationships, that being unreasonable wins and is a good strategy, mathematically speaking.

This comes to me after reading about the threats to all westerners by gun carrying men in the Gaza, who claim that they are insulted because a few European papers printed a charicature of their religous figure. Now it's all over the news, and they're rioting in the streets.

In the matters of the various political moves in America, it seems unreasonable to me to use the rules to get your way--but that's the way the game is now playes.

Reasonable...what does it mean? It means to do the expected thing, the polite thing, the thing you're told to do as a child. Not to throw bottles onto the roller derby arena. Not to scream at people to get your way, or to treat them as your lessors.

But it's a tactic that works, because those who avoid challenge will think thrice before going up against your unreasonable position. And those who think of a chivalrous response--my definition of chivalry being that you respond at the appropriate level to the insult--are horrified.

Armed gunmen in the street being threatening? Arrest them with force and jail them. But they lose nothing (because they have nothing, but their lives, a community that is willing to expend them, and a gun. Also...the knowledge that they will gain respect. And what else?

In my personal life, being reasonable makes me easier to get along with. But not, I think, as much fun, nor as true to myself.

This week, I will be less reasonable.

Comments

[tsgeisel.livejournal.com]

"The squeak wheel gets the grease."
"Well-behaved women seldom make history."

Western society favors the bold. How else would Donald Trump have survived so long?

This as opposed to "The nail that stands up, gets hammered down." which, I've always heard as a Japanese expression.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I've always liked "The higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more he exposes his rear."

[ianhess.livejournal.com]

I agree unreasonable, willing to push the limits of reprisal, deliberately being a challenge in people's faces... it all works. I also think its the sort of thing that if you put out into your social circle, eventually you get back at at least the same volume.

I wonder if the goal is effectiveness, I would be happier having a deliberate switch that can be thrown into an aggressive headspace? Once there, being abrasive, pushy, manipulative and combative are all just tools. Then again, mostly I don't want to be that guy. I'd rather be less effective most of the time, even though I really don't like that realization.

[ermine-rat.livejournal.com]

We will always have these problems when we reward bad behaviour. Our social desire for peace will make us tolerate the most ridiculous and nasty things in the interests of public and private harmony. There are those who prey on that desire.

Public protests come to mind in how they don't persuade, but they make the people who share that belief happy, and enrage those who don't. So the protest is really designed to make people who don't share your beliefs angry. What a nasty thing to do.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes the bad behavior that we are conditioned to tolerate isn't bad on purpose, it is merely oblivious. Himself's initial example is certainly bad behavior ... such people are waaay over-reacting to someone else's opinion. The cartoonists weren't drowning puppies or selling baby cutlets, they were just expressing opinions, which, as editorial cartoonists, is their job.
But, there was a prime example of bad oblivious behavior that everyone, including me, just put up with on the bus today. A lady with a big back pack that stuck out beyond her physical boundries got on the bus. She stood in the aisle right near the doorway. This was one of those double length buses and there were plenty of seats. She also had an umbrella which stuck accross the part of the aisle that she wasn't taking up. Everyone getting on the bus had to push past her. She was a human turnstile but didn't move farther back in the bus, or sit or anything. Nor did anyone point out to her that she was blocking the aisle so she might want to move back or sit. She didn't get mad at people pushing past her, but she didn't seem to notice that she didn't need to be taking up that particular chunk of space either.
Not only do the wolves get more attention then the sheep, but the sheep will jump over the boulders rather than roll them out of the path.
JIMR

[anthraxia.livejournal.com]

Someitmes, particularly within the SCA, we define "good" as not doing something to upset or challenge another. With the result that bad behaviour that is done through ignorance or lack of boundaries never gets addressed until it is well beyond serious. In other words, because we are all nice, honourable, chivalric people, we won't turn around and challenge another person about their smoking next to the list field, or their uber-modern sunglasses, or their talking on a mobile phone three feet away from the Queen - or their habit of yelling down anyone who challenges their interpretation of their religeous text, or their absolute condemnation of a lifestyle and belief system that is different to their own without knowing very much about it - and so the only time when we do step in to "interfere" is when it is about to blow up (or more sadly, has just blown up, metaphorically or, worse, literally).

My answer is we need to learn that nice does not mean quiet, good does not mean doormat, and education is not the same as confrontation.

Within an SCA context - part of a Peers oath is "to speak and to be silent" - yes, there are times you just bite your tongue and you shut up. There are times you stop the rot and the bad gossip by not passing it on. There are times you do not tell about an issue.
But the first one is to speak - to say "this is wrong", to point out to someone "my lord/lady, thy strange manner may distress the Queen, pray put away thy amulet" or to say "Before you start screaming about X's intentions, what do really know about X?"

I believe that one of the definitions of wisdom is knowing when to speak and when to be slient. And one of the marks of courage is actually doing it.

Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma

[terpsichoros.livejournal.com]

Robert Axelrod, in the book "The Evolution of Cooperation" found that the strongest, most stable strategy in an iterated Prisoners' Dilemma environment is "tit for tat" - essentially making there be a consequence for bad behavior, but otherwise behaving well. (Always defecting is a *stable* strategy, but a world of defectors is much poorer.

From what you're saying, and from what I've observed, in most social interaction, most people are following "nicer" strategies than tit-for-tat, which allows people with "mean" strategies to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

As far as I know, nobody has modeled the IPD in a social environment where players have knowlege of other players' interactions with other players. I suspect that the results would be similar, though.

The question is whether in a universe populated mostly by "nice" players (with "nicer" strategies than tit-for-tat), but knowlege of outside interactions and the ability to refuse interactions, how much information is required to effectively isolate "mean" players. (Model some inaccuracy of the information about other players' transaction history to make it even more realistic.)

A quote from George (Bernard Shaw)

[chareth.livejournal.com]

To heck with being reasonable? :)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw , Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"