Principles of Interaction

July 4, 2025July 4, 2025 ~ cafebedouin ~ 3 Comments

Note: This essay is a work in progress, a way to think through some ideas I have about social interaction, reality testing, worldviews and what not.

Introduction

“Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.”—Edward Teller

I think about this Edward Teller quote a lot. What principle would Von Neumann have when he was talking to people? There are a couple of assumptions in this quote that should be made explicit.

If you are a once in a generation intellectual genius like Von Neumann, by definition, you are going to be surrounded by people who are less smart. But, intellect is only one type of gift. Some people are big hearted. Others are funny. Everyone has a unique blend of qualities that makes them, to some degree, unique.

Many people have the view that young children are empty vessels than need to be taught. But, perhaps the secret to treating children as equals lies in understanding that the ability to look at the world without preconceptions is an enormous gift. It obliges anyone in dialogue with that perspective to reconsider ideas that with another would go unquestioned.

So, I think the principle here is that our ideas about who is worth talking to are, generally speaking, incorrect. If two people of Von Neumann’s talent were able to talk together, would that be a better conversation than each could have with a person average intelligence or a child? What gives a conversation value?

The Value of Conversation

Not all conversation has value. It clear that some interactions simply aren’t worth having. Sometimes, one or both parties have an agenda and/or acting in bad faith. Other times, people have no common interests or interest in keeping a relationship with another person. There are people who are stupid, or they have such a narrow scope of interest – say, they enjoy complaining – that the is little of value in talking with them beyond their bad example.

But, what makes for a good conversation? There are many guides. We are told How to Disagree. Or, there are discussions on the nature of politeness. There are mental frameworks for thinking about it, such as adopting a perspective like the The Theory of Visitors, where the defining feature of all relationships is impermanence, which invites us to enjoy interactions because they are fleeting. And, yet others, that recommend that we should keep our shit to ourselves.

Fundamentally, I’ve really been struggling with the questions of the who, the what, the how, and the why of social interaction. In the end, conversation is the basis for any relationship. Not all relationships are worth having. Which are?

The Who

The first problem of our time is who should we spend time with? There are people in this world who are the walking dead. They don’t want new experiences. They don’t want to have to think. They don’t want to spend time with themselves. So, they distract themselves with a constant stream of entertainment or mindless activity. If they don’t want to spend time with themselves, why should other people spend time with them?

There are many variations on this theme. There are people in parasocial relationships with celebrities, where they believe they know them based on a character they have played, social media or a autobiography. There are people “falling in love with A.I.” A Twitter account I follow recently shared that she was talking about her emotions with an A.I. because she didn’t know anyone that cared to talk about them. On one level, this is a cry for help. On another level, this is why you need to work through your shit yourself because you shouldn’t be putting that kind of burden on other people.

People also go through arcs. Maybe someone who was once an addict has moved through that period of their life. Now, there is room for other people now that they are no longer in the grips of addiction. There’s also windows of opportunity. Maybe people just have a lot on their plate, and they don’t have room for more friends, activities or whatever.

But, how do we know that for ourselves? Maybe, because of other obligations, there isn’t room for new people. Or, maybe we are shifting in the other direction, maybe we do have more room, but how do we forge genuine connection with others?

And any talk of genuine connection needs to take into account that, broadening your social circle will invariably entail interacting with a lot of people. We know that 3-6% of people have a Cluster B personality disorder. How do you identify those people?

Moreover, just as there are people that argue in bad faith, there are people that interact in bad faith, in general. However, we must be careful to understand the percentages? Of any random selection of people, how many interact in bad faith?

I think this leads us to one principle: Know the person you are interacting with. If you don’t know that person, then you need to be very careful of how much time you spend in their company, whether literally or figuratively. There’s also a chicken-and-egg problem. How do you know someone without conversation?

Of course, this is the mystery of small talk. We talk about things that don’t matter to help reveal the character of the Other. The hope is that it can serve as a bridge, one that takes us to caring for each other and talking about things that matter to us. But, just as some people are only looking for surface entertainment so they don’t have to spend time with themselves, those same people will hide in small talk because they don’t want to spend time with themselves, or really with other people. This is far more pervasive than people with malignant mental health problems, such as those 3-6% mentioned above.

On the other end, if we think that most people don’t have anything interesting to say, a la The Barker, in The Church of Interruption story, we cut ourselves off from others. A life cut off from others is the other end of the spectrum of people that hide in entertainment and small talk. It’s a little death, where we are broadcasting to the world from our little coffins and no one is receiving your broadcast.

The What

If we know the person we are interacting with, this leads to another principle: Interacting with someone is a relationship. So, if we know the person and want to be in a relationship with them, then small talks establishes and serves as a foundation that can be extended to things we care about and build a relationship.

We need to get find out: who they are, what are they interested in, etc.? Perhaps a guiding principle is: Can this interaction lead to human flourishing, either in me, them or the both of us? Prior to writing this essay, I think the only place where I have really followed this kind of interaction is with my young nieces. I am frequently thinking about how I can model certain types of behavior, how I might challenge them in ways that will help them grow in a beneficial way, and so forth.

I generally don’t look at interactions with adults in this way. Probably because I, personally, focus on autonomy and agency as values, and I think trying to influence people in particular directions undermines their autonomy and agency. The flip side of these values is that I also don’t want to be part of how people are using their agency. Ballot box political issues? Community or celebrity gossip? Sports? The latest hit show, movie or entertainment? I’m, largely, not interested. These are varieties of getting lost in small talk.

On a personal level, I have an internal dialogue that is withering. It’s absolutely brutal. I’m used to it. I think it is, in the main, useful in making me the kind of person I wish to be. But, I tolerate this kind of abuse because I see its value. Being that way to other people, however, is rude, particularly if you respect their autonomy.

Even if you don’t care about autonomy, I’ve found, over the years, that you cannot tell people anything. People get comfortable, like I’ve gotten comfortable with a rude internal dialogue I wouldn’t normally subject people I care about to. You cannot really predict how people will respond to anything you do. You certainly cannot predict whether it will end in human flourishing, however defined. So, what is left? What are we doing when we are talking to one another?

Are you interacting to pass the time? For amusement? Because we are maintaining relationships that are a product of luck and circumstance? There is a lot of talk about a loneliness epidemic, particularly among men. At base, are relationships about not being alone? What should they do for us, in shaping our character? Why spend time with other people? What makes our current relationships worth having?

The Why

The main question is: to what end? Why interact with anyone else?

If you are a genius like Von Neumann, you aren’t interacting with people because you’re likely to learn something you didn’t already know, particularly in your area of expertise. And, hidden in the quote above, I think that may also be a hidden assumption. That social interaction is about information seeking or refining our mental models of the world.

But, clearly, this is not how most interactions work. We aren’t looking for information. We are looking for validation. I remember hearing a quote that marriage is to bear witness to the life of another. I think there is some truth to that, and there is somewhat true of all our relationships. We get to see people on their best and worse days, and our response to those moments. In the crucible, gold is tested. All theory, any idea about how the world works, needs reality testing. There is nothing more real than the people around us.

This is not a view I’ve seen before. It’s a useful way of thinking about our social milieu. If our social interactions are primarily on the level of small talk, it is doing the opposite of reality testing. It’s hiding reality, and it is doing the same thing as immersing ourselves in entertainment.

The How

Looked at in this way, we now have a heuristic for thinking about our relationships with others. Does this person help me to hide from reality or test it?

Which brings us back to Von Neumann, children are all natural reality testers. They engage in make-believe. The imagine worlds that don’t exist. They make up rules and new games. They spend the majority of their time testing reality. Adults do not. Adults think they already know. But, even adults have constructed fantasy worlds, they just tend to believe they are real and are only doing limited testing.

But, we are all playing the child’s game. We all have ideas about how the world works. We all have a reality we have created in our minds. But, how many of us think we are testing it, seeing where the flaws are, where it is wrong? Most of us aren’t.

Further, maybe we have incompatible visions, even if we meet another person that is actively trying to refine their ideas about the world. They may have ideas and values that are incompatible with our worldview. So, most interaction is talking past one another.

So, you have to choose. You have to chose who to interact with, after you know who they are. You have to be interested in knowing the contours of your and their worldview and have an interest in testing it. You have to think about your relationship, and how you can serve to help yourself and others to test your ideas.. But, we have limited capacity to do this kind of work. So, maybe the key here is selection.

If it is person you only know through social media, do you really know who they are? Are you sure you are not dealing with a fiction? For example, how would you determine whether you are dealing with an LMM, someone attempting to catfish / scam you? The answer is you largely you can’t. As time goes on, it will become harder.

So, you need to filter. Social media is good to get an acquaintance with what I think of as the over-id (a portmanteau of Emerson’s Oversoul with Freud’s id). It will expose you to fragments of memes, myths and other elements of humanity’s cultural legacy. But, at the same time, it is exposing yourself to a kind of mental illness of a powerful collective. There is room to use this for our development, but there also seems to be a lot of ways that it could go wrong, and drive us into ways of thinking that are destructive, or at least maladaptive. Certainly, away from any sort of reality testing.

There’s probably a continuum, where on one end is the over-id and on the other is an affinity group, a group of individuals with whom we can have flourishing relationships with. Chances are, our affinity group will be a small one.

So, perhaps the first task of someone like myself would be get the inner dialogue more in line with how I would like to speak with the group. As is common in Buddhist loving-kindness practice, we probably need to start with ourselves before we can show grow more skill at showing loving kindness to others. Then, we need to broaden our area of concern to those closest. And then, look at our friends, acquaintances and lastly, even the social media environment and look for people that we think they (and we) might be able to bring closer, and in a way that benefits everyone in the relationship.

I don’t know how Von Neumanm was able to interact with everyone as well as he did, given how talented he was. But, I imagine there was a process like this one that he used to be able to interact with a larger set of people and do it in a way that treated everyone as equals. Everyone has something to bring to the table. The question is whether yours is the right table, or not.

The Value of Social Media

January 4, 2024January 4, 2024 ~ cafebedouin ~ 4 Comments

“Avoid politics and the multitude of irrelevant struggles designed to channel your energies into someone else’s agenda.”

The key tension of social media is that there are a lot of bad ideas, but there are a few really good ones mixed in with them. The good ideas have the potential to give you insight, to change your worldview into something that views it more truly. But, on the other end, the vast majority of the ideas are bad, and there is a great deal of risk of incorporating bad ideas that make your worldview worse.

How do you avoid the bad ideas? How do you identify the good ideas?

Within that tension, we also see strategies emerge.

Opt-out: You could opt out of social media entirely and focus on something like books or even the canon. This way you are exposed to literature, or ideas that have stood the test of time.
Filter bubble: You could define as good anything the corresponds with your current belief system.
Skeptical: Assume all ideas are bad, and then accept a very small few as a working set necessary to navigate the world, and to constantly be pruning that set, trying to make it smaller.
Contrary Corner: The cynic who brings unwelcome ideas and norm busting behavior to every door, as a tool to break conformity of thought

:This is not an exhaustive list, but it does point to the fact that the best approach might be multi-modal, where each of these strategies can be employed with some profit. But, if you rely on only one of them, the trade-offs mute much of the benefit.

So, when to make the trade-off? When use one strategy versus another? Some of it is understanding the media and what it offers. Social media is a kind of OverSoul, or collective brain of humanity. So, it is a good way to get a sense of what it happening right now, and what people are thinking about. This is useful because we interact with one another in real time, and taking the temperature of the room or the world is an important skill.

But, it is also a different skill that knowing what has long-term value or seeing something problematic in your social milieu that you need to challenge. There’s also the question that there are communities of practice or ideology. Often, when we join a community, we do not have a good sense of its culture. Or, perhaps, the culture changes in a way that we find an improvement or a detriment. I’ll write more on this later.

For the problem at hand, I think the key thing is to keep open to ideas and influences, but develop a strong, skeptical filter than starts on the assumption that new ideas are all, at least partially, false. Getting into a back and forth, reply guy style is probably a waste of everyone’s time. So, perhaps the best approach there is to make a determination, and unless it is a person you know personally, let it go by without comment. You don’t need to clean up the information stream, you just have to collect something drinkable for yourself.

Everywhere Connected, Yet Unable To Connect

April 29, 2022April 29, 2022 ~ cafebedouin

“Just as we need certain things to suck in order for others to register as cool (Beavis and Butthead, 1994, MTV), so too must we experience resistance or difficulty in order to understand the nature and depth of our own desires…
…Frictionless exchange almost always involves an unseen toll. One of the most insidious features of our digital regime is the way in which it mystifies the role of labor in daily economic life…
…Few devices have done more to obscure the efforts of human labor than the smartphone. Fewer still have vacuumed out of our lives as much human interaction as has been lost to our oblong, digital assistants…
…We are everywhere connected, and yet we are unable to connect…
-Gabriel Kahane, “In Defense of Friction.” gabrielkahane.substack.com. April 26, 2022.

Strange little essay in the “you’d be happier without your smartphone” genre. Some real nuggets in it.

I’m thinking of updating my phone. Part of me wants to get a 5G phone, for more speed, presumably the Pixel 6a 5G that is likely to be announced next month. Part of me wants to get a Mudita Pure, which is basically a modern flip-phone with a long battery life. Part of me wants to get a PinePhone, a functioning Linux phone. Part of me thinks I should just keep using the old S5 with LineageOS I bought off eBay for ~$50.

The thing that this essay brings to mind for me is that there’s a lot of parts and different, conflicting wants in that paragraph above. In the end, it really doesn’t matter which phone I use. If you were to review the different devices I have used in my life, did any of them really matter? At the same time, an old S5 with LineageOS is a temperamental phone: slow, a flashing display when it is cold, and other problems.

It makes me think of that Amish story, where the question is whether a tool is both good for the individuals and the communities using it. Does having access to social media through a phone bind us closer to each other? Or, enable connections that wouldn’t happen otherwise? In some cases, it does. But, there are costs too. How many of us are taking a really close look at that ledger?

Mass Movements & Affinity Groups

November 4, 2021November 4, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

“You don’t have to have a deep and intimate knowledge of the left or any of its manifestations to be part of its future. If you disagree with my values, if you think the left should change from what it has been, the path is simple: do the work. Convince people. Convince me. Organize. Get off of social media and into real-world spaces, otherwise known as your actual community. Do the shitty grunt work that real activism entails, the boring, dispiriting, exhausting trudge to slowly winning over one convert at a time. Lose and actually experience losing, by which I mean experience the pain and humiliation without dulling it with the numbing poison of irony. Organize with people who are not like you, people who you have fundamental disagreements with, passionate disagreements with, but who you recognize as sharing a significant degree of self-interest with you. Articulate your values and why they’re superior. But don’t show up online, sneering at everyone else as a way to hide your lack of confidence, and snidely make assertions about a history you know nothing about. And stop fucking asking “what happened to you?” like you know or care how people used to be. That’s just bullshit internet social control and I have no patience for it.
I love newcomers to socialism and organizing. I always have. But I also know my history, and ours, and will not let myself or my movement be defined by anyone else. Sorry. Not here, not about this. I am a leftist, a socialist, a Marxist, and will remain so. I was born here, and I’ll die here.”
-Freddie deBoer, “I’m Still Here.” freddiedeboer.substack.com. November 1, 2021.

I enjoy Freddie deBoer’s writing, and I’ve been thinking about this piece for a bit since I read it. The conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s not my job to convince you. I’m not interested in a mass movement, where we all collectively convince each other on some course of action and take it. Ultimately, I think that’s what’s wrong with leftist politics.

If you want to change the world, you start on the ground you are on and find fellow travelers. You find people that, in the main, agree with your political point of view. In anarchist circles, these are called affinity groups:

“An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. You can form an affinity group with your friends, people from your community, workplace, or organization.
Affinity groups challenge top-down decision-making and organizing, and empower those involved to take creative direct action. Affinity groups allow people to “be” the action they want to see by giving complete freedom and decision-making power to the affinity group. Affinity groups by nature are decentralized and non-hierarchical, two important principles of anarchist organizing and action. The affinity group model was first used by anarchists in Spain in the late 19th and early 20th century, and was re-introduced to radical direct action by anti-nuclear activists during the 1970s, who used decentralized non-violent direct action to blockade roads, occupy spaces and disrupt “business as usual” for the nuclear and war makers of the US. Affinity groups have a long and interesting past, owing much to the anarchists and workers of Spain and the anarchists and radicals today who use affinity groups, non-hierarchical structures, and consensus decision making in direct action and organizing.”
-Shawn Ewald, “Affinity Groups.” The Anarchist Library. 2008.

Affinity Groups are a completely different model from major party, first past the post politics of liberal “democracies” that impose various forms of tyranny of the majority on the world they inhabit or the communism with its vanguards, opening the path for the hoi polloi.

I don’t have any illusions that there is anyone on this planet that is going to agree with my politics. But, there are enough people that might get close, who believe in decentralized organization, home rule, direct action and who have views that large governments, on balance and looked at over the course of their entire histories, are probably more a force for harm than for help for the vast majority of people. Say this to any person that identifies as Democrat / Liberal / Labour or what have you, and you’ll immediately get labeled as some variety of conservative. Maybe, but not the kind you are thinking of.

If you are busy, like Freddie, trying to convince Trump supporters and people like me to join your political cause, whether that cause is socialism, party politics, abortion or your political action of choice, then it’s unlikely you’ll spend a lot of time developing an affinity group because you are looking to be part of something larger.

This is why affinity groups aren’t more common. The politics of the day are designed to suck out the energy that would go into creating small groups and forming the bonds where the politics we wish to see in the world manifest and can be used to create real change for the people in those affinity groups. It’s not dependent on the will of Congress or your local politician, who are beholden to moneyed interests that fund their campaigns and get them elected.

When’s the last time you’ve seen a political argument that you should focus on the 5 to 20 people nearest and dearest to you and try to remake the world in some small way with them? We don’t because our lives have been atomized to the point that most of us probably don’t have five people in our lives we would want to form an affinity group with. That’s not an accident.

The Social Obscene

June 21, 2021June 21, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

“In certain young people today…I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.
I find it obscene.”
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS.” chimamanda.com. June 15, 2021.

I found this discussion of the “controversy” around this essay pretty interesting. Why did she choose to write this? It seems like setting yourself up for a lot of bother. But, I think the central idea that the incentives of social media tends to do something to people’s perspective – removing nuance of thinking, increasing self-centeredness, etc. is valid. How do you mitigate this problem, for yourself and in relationship with others using these platforms?

Silence & Wanting to Be Heard

June 18, 2021June 18, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

“Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?” he asks. “Can anyone, any single one, can anyone shut the fuck up about anything, any single thing? Can any single person shut the fuck up about any single thing for an hour? Is that possible?”
Burnham seems aware of the irony of him not shutting up about anything for an hour and a half, but maybe that’s the point: It’s an impossible request. It’s human nature to want to be heard, and the internet has amplified our voices, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Now, it’s up to us to recognize when the world has heard enough. Burnham knows it better than anyone: No one really wants to shut the fuck up.
-Scaachi Koul, “Why Bo Burnham, Jenna Marbles, And Shane Dawson All Logged Off.” Buzzfeed. June 16, 2021.

I had never heard of Bo Burnham, Jenna Marbles or Shane Dawson prior to reading this piece of criticism. I read the quote above and it resonated. I guess, for me, I have found a happy medium for this blog in just trying to find one thing interesting a day to point to or talk about. But, there are days, and some weeks, when even that feels like a lot, where I think to myself, perhaps it would be better to post nothing at all and be silent.

But, on the other hand, I also enjoy the discipline. I’ve had at least one idea worth capturing or came across some snippet that is worth preserving as I’ve gone about my life today, haven’t I? Of course, it depends on the time scale too doesn’t it? In the grand scheme of things, nothing we do will be preserved.

As a reference point, think about all the time that Medieval monks spent copying manuscripts. This was certainly a valuable service that preserved writing from antiquity, but where is their work now? If it still exists, it is stored away in a special library or rare books collection, rarely seen by anyone. Even for something digital and assuming infinite storage capacity, what is the value of preservation anything we might say. Who is going to read it?

Or, consider how many people actually spend time reading the works of Shakespeare outside the classroom. Among a small subset of people, I’m sure he is well read. But, for most? He’s a name only. Pick a major piece of literature from antiquity to the present, and it is the same. However, maybe it is like the Japanese idea of tsundoku, of buying books and never reading them. Perhaps the value is simply that they are there as potential, whether they are ever read is besides the point.

But, perhaps, we are just engaged in wishful thinking on that score. Perhaps, the Rule of St. Benedict was right, and it is best to keep in silence.

The Misinformation Virus

April 22, 2021April 22, 2021 ~ cafebedouin

“Online media has given voice to previously marginalised groups, including peddlers of untruth, and has supercharged the tools of deception at their disposal. The transmission of falsehoods now spans a viral cycle in which AI, professional trolls and our own content-sharing activities help to proliferate and amplify misleading claims. These new developments have come on the heels of rising inequality, falling civic engagement and fraying social cohesion – trends that render us more susceptible to demagoguery. Just as alarming, a growing body of research over the past decade is casting doubt on our ability – even our willingness – to resist misinformation in the face of corrective evidence…
…To successfully debunk a myth, the authors conclude, it helps to provide an alternative causal explanation to fill the mental gap that retracting the myth could leave. Counterarguments work too, as they point out the inconsistencies contained in the myth, allowing people to resolve the clash between the true and the false statement. Another strategy is to evoke suspicion about the source of the misinformation. For example, you might be more critical of government officials who reject human-caused global warming if you suspect vested business interests behind the denialist claims…
…[When personal identity and values are involved, people tend to cherry-pick their data towards pre-determined conclusions, which] hints at a vexing conclusion: that the most knowledgeable among us can be more, not less, susceptible to misinformation if it feeds into cherished beliefs and identities…
…Since each individual has only negligible impact on collective decisions, it’s sensible to focus on optimising one’s social ties instead. Belonging to a community is, after all, a vital source of self-worth, not to mention health, even survival. Socially rejected or isolated people face heightened risks of many diseases as well as early death. Seen from this perspective, then, the impulse to fit our beliefs and behaviours to those of our social groups, even when they clash with our own, is, Kahan argues, ‘exceedingly rational’. Ironically, however, rational individual choices can have irrational collective consequences. As tribal attachments prevail, emotions trump evidence, and the ensuing disagreement chokes off action on important social issues.
-Elitsa Dermendzhiyska. “The misinformation virus.” Aeon. April 16, 2021.

This article hits at many of the main points of why there are so many bad ideas floating around: a funky media environment, our need to make sense of the world, personal values that conflict with the demands of reality, in-group/out-group dynamics, etc. Thinking about it as a pathogen is probably a useful mental model. Social media is like the Plague and we are in the early 1350s in its transition. Humanity will likely need a few centuries to develop cultural antibodies for its effects, and while there may be policy interventions that might have some effect in the short term, it’s still going to take a long while for us to come to grips with the social disruption of this new kind of communication.

If you think about it, this is true of every type of new communication format, even in just the last two centuries. Telegrams, radio, and television all changed the landscapes of societies, and they are still doing it. Part of what makes the Internet so powerful is that it creates an abstracted layer for these forms of communication that can also be tailored to focused audiences, mass media transformed into media for one, which is much more engaging. It’s going to take awhile to come to grips with it.