Tit for tat and the evil bit

Posted by on 2010 Jan 02, Sat in Thoughts, Society

You've already met the evil bit, now I will introduce you to another concept that is handy when analyzing social interactions - tit-for-tat.

Tit-for-tat is another way of saying "do to others what you would like to be done to you". The best and most interesting way to learn about it is to watch Dawkins' documentary called "Nice guys finish first". It is one of the most interesting documentaries I've ever seen; if your first words after watching it are "now.. wait a minute... this applies to everything!" - you are not alone.

I strongly advise you to continue reading this after you watch the movie, it will only take ~45 minutes of your time, and it is an excellent investment!

Once you view the film, you will see that tit-for-tat is more than just the "golden rule" promoted by philosophers, it is an efficient playing strategy, the success of which is confirmed by game theory experiments.

It is also an efficient strategy of life. If you apply tit-for-tat in your social interactions, you are already one step ahead of the crowd, and you're helping this planet become a better place. However, there are ways in which you can turn yourself into an even better person, and make the world better faster.

As I have previously argued in "Synchronized loss of synchronization", many relationship problems are the effect of incorrectly interpreting a message or an action. A tit-for-tat player will retaliate by not cooperating when they see that someone tricked them or offended them in one way or another.

If the other person is not reasonable, you can be sure that they won't "reward" retaliation with anything but [more aggressive] retaliation. You will soon find yourselves locked in the "mutually assisted destruction" mode, in which the only way to win is not to play.

But what if your retaliation at the first step was inappropriate? What if you were wrong when you interpreted their action as defection? In other words, are you sure their evil bit was enabled?

When you familiarize yourself with the idea of the evil bit, it is easier to be a more prudent tit-for-tat player. All you have to do is be aware of the fact that distortions are easy. Further, you must also be aware of how difficult it is to express ideas clearly. I won't be surprised if statistics reveal that we get frustrated (in human relationships) most often when we are misunderstood, rather than when we are contradicted.

Once you learn to see our society as "people who are bad at wording ideas" and "people who are bad at interpreting messages" - it becomes easier to be more forgiving.

No, they are not out there to get you! They're just misguided minds, lost on their way to learn how to express themselves and how to listen to others carefully.

We are all prisoners of the spotlight effect. Wasn't egocentrism replaced by heliocentrism a few centuries ago? :-)

Think about it.

2 comments

Comment from: M Visitor

Once you learn to see our society as “people who are bad at wording ideas” and “people who are bad at interpreting messages” - it becomes easier to be more forgiving.

I totally agree with your statement, but believe the innate need to allocate blame that humans feel elludes anyone ever being able to forgive anyway. By that I mean who is wrong, the person who misintreprets or the person who has bad delivery? Otherwise the only option is that BOTH parties see that its all a misunderstanding equally and therefore don’t need to allocate blame - but to find 2 understanding people in a conflict is next to impossible - if they were both understanding, chances are they’d never have reached a point of conflict…right?

thoughts?

Comment from: gr8dude Member

You raise a good point.

I think that we should start by avoiding the trap of a false dichotomy - the way you worded it means that someone will be placed in a bad light, being the wrong one; while the other person is right, hence they’re good.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Think of a good teacher who explains something to a student, do they do this with an “haha, you dumbass, this is how you do it right” attitude? Now think about the bad teachers you’ve had, and try to guess what they had in common and what made them different from good teachers.

I think this should be reworded as “the burden is on the shoulders of whoever thinks they know better [and has arguments to support that opinion]". If you feel that something is an interpretation fault, then you should do something about it; if you stop at simply concluding “interpretation error” and “I am right anyway” - you are not doing anything to address the problem.

What happens next is the following- if you’re dealing with a reasonable person, your counter-argument will make them think about it one more time, then a consensus is reached.

If you’re dealing with an unreasonable person, they will most likely see you as someone who is in “defense mode” and is trying to recover by justifying themselves.

That’s the problem of the one who knows more :-) People will often interpret your attempt to find compromise as a sign of weakness. You can use this as a filter - if they act that way, do you really need to continue the interaction with them?

Sure, you need to try more when it is happening with someone you care about very much; even if it appears to be happening at your loss. Why?

Because if you don’t try, you will blame yourself for not trying, you will have remorses and thoughts about going back in time and undoing something or doing it again. Also, quite often you will blame yourself for one simple thing - “why didn’t I say it?".

The only rule I think that needs particular attention in such contexts is: be polite when pointing out others’ mistakes.

What happens often is that we are not polite when we correct someone, so naturally they are biased towards entering “defense mode", which is based on another false dichotomy: “if I am my ally, then they must be my enemy"… And so the forces of evil are unleashed :-)

I think that not handling interpretation errors is the #1 cause of conflicts between intelligent people.

Basically, what you need to do is make sure you shift them into an adult state during the discussion (don’t let them stay in the state of a parent or a child) - see this awesome series of short videos about transactional analysis.

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