That's... quite extreme. Who draws the bright line between gossip and non-gossip speech? Does that bright line always stay in sync with changing social mores?
It feels like you have a specific notion of gossip in mind that's very different than my own, and I wonder if some kind of "negative consequences" predicate is baked into it. If so,…
That's... quite extreme. Who draws the bright line between gossip and non-gossip speech? Does that bright line always stay in sync with changing social mores?
It feels like you have a specific notion of gossip in mind that's very different than my own, and I wonder if some kind of "negative consequences" predicate is baked into it. If so, then why not just directly deal with the negative consequences? Clearly we need emotional communication between people. Some of that communication definitely looks like gossip but still functions mostly as a means of bonding and emotional processing. Don't we want to not punish positive functions like this?
By "gossip" here I mean what Dynomight refers to in the post as social punishment. Something like "that guy is evil, don't cite his ideas", and not "did you hear that John and Mary always squabble?". Is that the kind of gossip you mean? (that's definitely a more common usage of the word)
My opinion is that no one should be judged and persecuted by evil tongues not bound by procedure, requirement to tell the truth, or anything else. If there are punishments, then there should be bright lines that are decided by the people and applied consistently.
That's a nice, clear articulation of your opinion. Thanks! So you're advocating for a kind of legibility (at least in principle) of punishment or negative consequence structures. That does sound nicer than impenetrable implicit rules that might some day punish you without warning.
To a first approximation, I'd say we already have some of what you want with defamation law and its ilk. "The people" have decided what constitutes legally punishable "gossip" and it is applied as consistently as we're able. But how far do you take it? Do you want judicial oversight of all the minutiae of raising a child?
What happens if you have a one-sided relationship with a friend and want to amicably part ways but they don't? Are we now bound to paying the cost of court cases to decide the matter? Now making friends or forming any kind of relationship effectively amounts to entering into a formal contract by today's standards. Steep potential downsides, so people will be way more cautious.
More generally, I see a continuum of possibilities. On one extreme you have zero judicial rule over social constructs and on the other every interpersonal interaction is bound by large swathes of law. The former has historically led to clear exploitation, and the latter obviously looks like a 1984-esque dystopia. So where is the optimum balance point and how do we find it? How does finding that balance point look different than the system we already have?
Personally, I'd almost take a different tack. If social interaction and potential ostracization feel like looming spectres in one's life, instead of forcing others to make things more legible, it seems more expedient and robust to improve one's social literacy. Or rather, maybe we should have better education on how to relate well with our fellow humans.
I agree with your view of the problem as a continuum. Clearly, legislating every minutiae is an overkill.
The people should decide where we land on the spectrum. If nobody bothers to sue their former friends, it will remain unregulated. Or if there is a precedent because some thin-skinned person was gravely offended and did sue the ex-friend, it doesn't have to be a binding precedent: if two former friends don't want to sue each other, they shouldn't be required to.
As to the difference from the current system: I guess it would be in making it acceptable to deal with the issues this way, and for people to understand why it is a better way (if it indeed is. I don't have a manifesto, a plan, or certainty that this is a good idea).
Thankfully, I'm not personally threatened by ostracization. However, I am annoyed by its effects on the conversations held in a polite society (a part of the society where most intellectual conversations happen). It is detrimental to frank discussion of potentially interesting ideas. Forbidding to talk about the Nazi-philosopher-who-shall-not-be-named just removes information from the world, making us all poorer.
That's... quite extreme. Who draws the bright line between gossip and non-gossip speech? Does that bright line always stay in sync with changing social mores?
It feels like you have a specific notion of gossip in mind that's very different than my own, and I wonder if some kind of "negative consequences" predicate is baked into it. If so, then why not just directly deal with the negative consequences? Clearly we need emotional communication between people. Some of that communication definitely looks like gossip but still functions mostly as a means of bonding and emotional processing. Don't we want to not punish positive functions like this?
By "gossip" here I mean what Dynomight refers to in the post as social punishment. Something like "that guy is evil, don't cite his ideas", and not "did you hear that John and Mary always squabble?". Is that the kind of gossip you mean? (that's definitely a more common usage of the word)
My opinion is that no one should be judged and persecuted by evil tongues not bound by procedure, requirement to tell the truth, or anything else. If there are punishments, then there should be bright lines that are decided by the people and applied consistently.
That's a nice, clear articulation of your opinion. Thanks! So you're advocating for a kind of legibility (at least in principle) of punishment or negative consequence structures. That does sound nicer than impenetrable implicit rules that might some day punish you without warning.
To a first approximation, I'd say we already have some of what you want with defamation law and its ilk. "The people" have decided what constitutes legally punishable "gossip" and it is applied as consistently as we're able. But how far do you take it? Do you want judicial oversight of all the minutiae of raising a child?
What happens if you have a one-sided relationship with a friend and want to amicably part ways but they don't? Are we now bound to paying the cost of court cases to decide the matter? Now making friends or forming any kind of relationship effectively amounts to entering into a formal contract by today's standards. Steep potential downsides, so people will be way more cautious.
More generally, I see a continuum of possibilities. On one extreme you have zero judicial rule over social constructs and on the other every interpersonal interaction is bound by large swathes of law. The former has historically led to clear exploitation, and the latter obviously looks like a 1984-esque dystopia. So where is the optimum balance point and how do we find it? How does finding that balance point look different than the system we already have?
Personally, I'd almost take a different tack. If social interaction and potential ostracization feel like looming spectres in one's life, instead of forcing others to make things more legible, it seems more expedient and robust to improve one's social literacy. Or rather, maybe we should have better education on how to relate well with our fellow humans.
I agree with your view of the problem as a continuum. Clearly, legislating every minutiae is an overkill.
The people should decide where we land on the spectrum. If nobody bothers to sue their former friends, it will remain unregulated. Or if there is a precedent because some thin-skinned person was gravely offended and did sue the ex-friend, it doesn't have to be a binding precedent: if two former friends don't want to sue each other, they shouldn't be required to.
As to the difference from the current system: I guess it would be in making it acceptable to deal with the issues this way, and for people to understand why it is a better way (if it indeed is. I don't have a manifesto, a plan, or certainty that this is a good idea).
Thankfully, I'm not personally threatened by ostracization. However, I am annoyed by its effects on the conversations held in a polite society (a part of the society where most intellectual conversations happen). It is detrimental to frank discussion of potentially interesting ideas. Forbidding to talk about the Nazi-philosopher-who-shall-not-be-named just removes information from the world, making us all poorer.