Codes of Misconduct
hintjens.com
hintjens.com
Predators exist, psychopaths exist, most harassment is probably repeat victimization by the same bad actors, but mistakes still exist.
[0]: I know I've asked this question about my own behavior before, I somehow suspect most of us have at one point or another.
We have all found ourselves on the wrong side of social mores and codes. The thing is, some of us move rapidly back, and others sit there happily, and on purpose.
What's your personal space? It varies based on where you were born and where you grew up. Invading someone's personal space is perceived as aggressive and noisome and perhaps even threatening, which makes it even worse to assume it must be based on pathology rather than "This person was born in Italy, I'm from Norway" or similar.
Similarly, saying things like "culture doesn't excuse bigotry" is rather pointless, given that culture defines what you consider to be bigotry in the first place. What's perfectly tolerant and open-minded in Russia might be unspeakable in Liberia and vice-versa.
My point is, add a culture out of step with the mainstream notions of propriety to someone with even a relatively mild social dysfunction (not necessarily diagnosable!) and you have a "harasser" in the making, especially if everyone castigates them on the first offense and nobody tells them what they're actually doing wrong.
Yet what constitutes abuse is universal, and what constitutes positive social interaction is universal. In every culture in the world, a man putting his hand on another's shoulder is a gesture of dominance, and putting his hand inside a woman's knee is a gesture of intimacy.
The size of personal spaces changes per culture. Just as some cultures speak louder than others. Yet it always follows the same dynamics, positive and negative.
Only if you define it down to the basics. Some jokes are considered abusive in one culture and funny, or at least innocuous, in another. You mentioned one man putting his hand on another man's shoulder, but back-slapping is certainly viewed differently across cultures, and then there are the subtle rules around eye contact which usually aren't written anywhere at all except maybe sociological research papers. All of those things can make someone feel rather uncomfortable if they meet exactly the wrong person, perhaps after everyone's had a few drinks.
Abuse is culturally dependent. Some things are regarded as universally wrong, perhaps, but vast swathes of things aren't universal in the slightest.
Let me explain: abuse is about identifying a boundary and then crossing it, deliberately, and repeatedly, to gain control over another person.
The boundaries shift from person to person and culture to culture. Yet it always the same dynamic, and you can see it, and you can stop it.
What an example of cultural confusion on display. Because this sounds absurd to me. Here, a hand on the shoulder, is a clear sign of friendship and would be relieve tension in a situation.
There are other universal dominance signals. For instance, keeping eye contact without smiling. Or, interrupting someone who is speaking. Or, being late for a meeting. Or, laughing at someone who makes a mistake.
> [I]f the organizers feel a particular individual is the cause of more than one complaint, and does not self-correct, they may exclude that person from the event.
There's room here to deal with someone who's merely boorish or ignorant without throwing them out of the con; with such a person, a word on the subject of minimal standards of behavior will generally suffice. In cases where that doesn't suffice, and the harassment continues, I am much of the opinion that the host's responsibility to his blameless guest outweighs that to the misbehaving one; sure, it's a shame if someone gets booted out of a con because he genuinely isn't equipped to behave in a minimally decent fashion, but it's much more of a shame if people feel like they can't safely go to a convention at all because there's a significant chance they'll be harassed by fellow guests.
> The mainstream theory of harassment (let's call it
> "Model A") has these assumptions:
> - Anyone can be the harasser.
> - Harassment is a motiveless act.
> - Outlawing harassment will stop it.
I think people who want a Code of Conduct generally see the primary reason for a Code of Conduct as a signal from organizers that they will take actions listed seriously as harrassment if they happen.
It's like a sign at a small rural hotel that says "Same-sex couples welcome". They don't mean that other couples are unwelcome, they don't mean they're catering exclusively for same-sex couples, they don't think you should change religion: they're just sending out a signal that if a guy and his husband stay there, they're not going to run in to official hostility.
A CoC sends the signals that: the organizers know harrassment takes place, they care, and they're willing to publically agree to address it and take it seriously when it occurs.
If there is a real risk of murder and mayhem, the sign needs to read, "If someone tries to murder you, please call 911!"
Harassment does not simple "take place" and that's the point. Participants enter zones of vulnerability caused by distance from home, separation from friends, alcohol, the need to socialize, etc. This draws in predators. The organizers need to understand that, and guard against it.
The term "code of conduct" is itself a problem as it strongly suggests "behave or else!" while talking to the entire audience.
Do you have a better explanation for the antagonism many feel (and I personally used to feel) towards codes of conduct?
> However it's more like putting up a sign on a hotel
> saying "Murder and mayhem will not be tolerated."
> This draws in predators
> The term "code of conduct" is itself a problem as it
> strongly suggests "behave or else!"
> Do you have a better explanation for the antagonism
> many feel (and I personally used to feel) towards
> codes of conduct?
The key to solving this mess is, and I stick by it, to separate accidental clumsiness from predatory behavior. There is no grey overlap.
Once you separate these two, you can teach people to trust each other much more, while being properly cynical of the small slice of predators.
This isn't hypothesis: we use this approach in our open source communities to encourage and thrive on honest mistake while watching for, and blocking predatory actions.
I may add a piece to the protocol along the lines of, "Tolerance means accepting that people make mistakes, and working with them instead of treating this as a violation."
Or they did and were quickly disillusioned.
> Really? To me it says "these are our expectations".
Indeed. "Murder" is strictly legally defined and the definition is relatively universal, not so for some other behaviours. CoCs simply take the RFC option of defining what they're going to talk about beforehand so all participants can be on the same page.
Do you have a better explanation for the antagonism many feel (and I
personally used to feel) towards codes of conduct?
1) People actually want the right to be an asshole. They have come to believe that everyone should be allowed to say anything they want in any situation. They call this freedom of speech. Since a Code of Conduct contradicts this expectation, they blame the CoC because it is telling them to change themselves. Nobody likes to change themself.
2) People want to have a strict and narrow definition of what to do and what not to do. In our HN-like group, people want codes of conduct to be like programming languages for humans. Since CoCs must necessarily be vague because it's impossible to narrowly codify all human interaction, people feel unsure and fearful. They thus blame the problem on CoCs and would rather prefer anarchy and being allowed to act however they wish, without fear.
3) People feel like "their" "community" is being encroached upon by foreign individuals who feel "needlessly" victimised. An analogy of the most common case, the boys' locker room is now being opened up to everyone, particularly women. Since they cannot openly attack the newcomers, instead they attack their perceived work of authorship: the code of conduct.
When there's not a code of conduct and available avenues for reporting harassment and, more importantly, for others to recognize when someone is getting harassed and come to their assistance, then when there is a legitimate instance, the person getting harassed always ends up getting harassed more, by the very people they're trying to go to to resolve the situation. A code of conduct makes everything clear.
Just the very suggestion that harassment could occur causes some people to really get their hackles up, as if you just accused them of harassment. I think that's the ultimate reason people have strong reactions to insistence on the need to have a policy. "Why would we need a policy, I would never harass anybody!" That sentiment itself, expressed to someone with legitimate needs, is perceived as harassment.
But these acts are rare in tech events. The most common acts of behaviour we see that some people call for Codes of Conduct are not this severe. The most common types of things would include: telling lewd jokes, being loud and argumentative, questioning particular religious or political beliefs, or being not politically correct enough.
In short behaviours which do not fall into a right and wrong objective morality, but which depend greatly on the thoughts and feelings of those offended. They are subjective. These are the behaviours which I think many proponents of Codes of Conduct in tech events are thinking of.
This is why I tried to define "violation" from first principles as an unwanted intrusion into personal time and space. There must be (profoundly) the intention of damage. Offense is not damage.
That sounds good, but nothing in the rest of the write-up actually "removes incentives and opportunities" etc. It's the usual sort of "don't harass, don't touch, don't X Y Z ..." litany, without any procedural prescriptions as to what to do in case someone does X.
Removing incentive and opportunity means recognizing what creates risk for participants, and reducing that. Which I also did try to cover.
They shall be aware that the most important "date rape" drug is alcohol. That's un-PC to say, especially around drinkers, but it's true.
When I see a man (or woman) offering shots, time after time, to people who are already drunk and careless, I watch his face and his eyes.
It's interesting that it can be true, but not change much in practice due to gender imbalance at tech conferences.
Let's assume that 1% of attendees (of any gender) are bad actors attacking the other gender. If a conference has e.g. 800 men and 200 women, then there will be 2 female harassers vs 800 men, and 8 male harassers vs 200 women. That's a 16 times difference in likelihood of being harassed ((8/200) / (2/800)), just from attendee imbalance, and no fault of any gender.
Sometimes I don't think psychopaths, sorry, bad actors, care about sex at all, except as a tool for controlling people.
Remember school bullies? Same thing yet more subtle and stealthy.
Often the model of harassment is indirect. For instance you have a group of people who are happy and working together. A predator arrives and sees opportunity. He sees another guy is protecting and coaching the group. So he slowly undermines and destroys this guy's credibility, provoking him to anger and finally making him leave. Then, the group is exposed and easy to play with.
You almost never see it. Even when it happens to you, you can almost not see it. It is so slow, careful, smooth. This is why education of these patterns of stalking, isolation, and attack are so important.
I'd love to see sensor hardware combined with computer vision techniques employed to combat this problem.
Smart glassware already exists, but a major caveat is that it doesn't catch the perpetrator.
It's also not an article written to sound like someone in the above category wrote, but in fact is being written by someone who understand the social dynamics, and just has an agenda.
In fact the article is sincere, and correctly identifies the "problem". There are many things I find abhorrent about the proposed world described in the article, but I will refer to only one of them. Btw, even if I find abhorrent this "new" world order, it's much better than the world order imposed by the Yes We Can people.
> Additionally, they shall have one or more "hosts" who do not drink alcohol, and who are trained to observe and catch violations should they occur.
Yeah, this casual suggestion that some sort of "police" should exist to monitor people's behavior and catch policy violations quickly is the worst thing that is currently happening to humanity in my opinion, and ultimately results in a world I don't want to be part of.
The police part is bad in itself, but much worse is how casual this "final solution" is proposed, and how little people complain about it. People were bred into obedience and submission. We already lost.
There's very little for me to do about this. All I can do is vote with my money, e.g. I don't go to conferences where people are not adults enough that they don't know how to live, yes, live life, without CoCs and police, even though I am one of the nice people at those conferences, not one of the "bad actors" the author mentions. Of course this doesn't affect the world in the slightest.
One example: we had a party downstairs with several hundred guests. It was a Congolese wedding, so people were drinking a lot. I go to sleep, and around 2am get woken by extremely loud noises. I put on some clothes and go down, and find a battle raging in the entrance to my building.
Seems two young guys (North African) had come in and were caught stealing from peoples' jackets. The crowd had caught them. One had escaped, one was still prisoner. The one that fled had come back with reinforcements, so I found about eight young men hammering on the doors of my building with a steel bed frame (don't ask me where this came from). Inside, a group held the other young man down, while he was shrieking for help, afraid they would murder him.
It took only a few seconds to get this whole story from various people. I picked up the young man by his arm and dragged him out, and threw him at his friends. "You will leave now, or the police will be here," I told them. They put the bed down and left. I told the party goers, "are you utterly insane? What did you think was going to happen?" and ushered them back into the party room.
It all took maybe 5 minutes.
If I'd had even a small amount to drink, no way I could have done this.
Now, such incidents are extreme. Yet when you have guests in your home or event, and you offer them alcohol, you have (in my mind) to look after them. No ifs or buts. Bad stuff can happen.
I also learned after this night to have professional security, which is another thing that can help.
Hope this helps. The host absolutely does not monitor peoples' behavior. He/she intervenes quickly when there is an issue, before it gets out of hand.
Thanks for your feedback, it was helpful.
What alternative do you suggest? Putting the entire weight of dealing with predators on the people they seek to victimize? I mean, you seem to be invoking Godwin's law over an example of the responsibility borne by a host to a guest -- "final solution"? Really? -- so I'm not expecting a reasonable discussion with you on this subject, but I figure I ought to ask just in case.
Sometimes police have to be involved, but in the vast majority of situations people can handle issues as they arise when they are at a supermarket, a public park, a bus stop, a bar or even a tech conference.
Involvement of authority figures and police monitoring at every single public gathering might slightly reduce certain problems, but the price is too high.
The article under discussion suggests nothing more than that a convention's hosting organization take a slightly more active role, in discharging its responsibility to its guests, than is embodied in the standard code-of-conduct model requiring a victim of sexual misconduct to complain to the organizers in order for anything to be done.
If I invite two guests to my home, and while they're there I see that one of them is refusing to be politely dissuaded from making sexual suggestions that the other finds uncomfortable, then it's part of my responsibility as a host to intervene. (This isn't a hypothetical situation for me; it's actually happened.) If my organization invites N people to my convention, our responsibility is just the same: they're here because we asked them to be, so while they're my guests, we are bound to look after them.
Of course, like any adults, they'll still look out for themselves to the extent they're able; it would be foolish to imagine otherwise. That's where the "polite dissuasion" part comes in. The host's responsibility begins where harassment escalates beyond that point, and all the article under discussion suggests is that hosting organizations ensure there's someone at hand, in a situation like a con hotel bar where such escalation is historically speaking most likely to occur, in order to intervene in the improbable event that it actually does.
As for the nature of that intervention, the article goes into a lot of "good actor/bad actor" business which, while not without interest, IMO just clouds the basic issue. Speaking, again, as someone who's actually done it, this kind of intervention doesn't start with the police, and it would be stupid to imagine otherwise. You start with a firm, quiet word in the ear of the miscreant, on the subject of the standards you expect your guests to uphold, and with a note that those who fail to do so cease to be welcome. If that doesn't do the job, you tell your former guest he's no longer welcome and escort him out, or in the convention case have your security staff do so. If he refuses to leave, then at that point he's made himself a de jure trespasser, and if that's not enough to get the point across, then and only then is it appropriate to involve the police.
Such a response is measured at every stage, and titrated from zero up to the minimum necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of a host. Those merely too dense to take a repeated hint will get the idea at step one, and curtail their misbehavior. Those who fail to do so will be removed from the situation so that they may no longer maltreat your guests. If merely escorting them off the premises will suffice, then that's all that is done; only someone thick enough not to get the idea at that point risks incurring force majeure.
And nothing in the article implies otherwise. But, hey, if you want to imagine the author's talking about stationing uniformed police in every con hotel bar, to descend with flashing nightsticks upon he who makes a pass at a colleague and finds himself turned down, then go for it, I guess.
Nice example of dehumanizing the enemy. We now have our very own untermenschen.
> It will speak to bad actors and say, clearly: you are welcome as long as you act decent. Otherwise, we are watching, and we will catch you.
Is this why we, a bunch of adults, congregate in technical conferences? So we can hunt down the "baddies", play the policing game, recycle some old presentations so we can feel good about our technological choices and at the same time pat ourselves on the back for finally being able to bully someone as a group?
My book The Psychopath Code (http://psychopathcode.com) makes it quite clear I don't consider psychopaths as enemy or bad guys. It's much more fun than that.
So not to feel safe and protected, like when we were children?
> I don't consider psychopaths as enemy or bad guys
But you consider them "bad actors". Furthermore, you simplified everything by declaring that every unsavory character suffers from the same pseudo-psychiatric pathology. And you're supposed to be an authority on the matter because you wrote a book?
The term "bad actor" is widely accepted and understood. If you have a better term, I'm all ears. The term is accurate when seen from the perspective of the majority, which is the perspective I'm taking in this article.
As for my authority, no, all I can say is I've studied this dynamic in depth for many years and have a lot of good data on it, and tools that work. You're free to use those tools, ignore them, etc.
And it's not a pathology. It is something far more profound than that. If you're interested, and perhaps you are, read just the first chapter of that book (the PDF is free to download).
That's a common infosec term. Eg: http://www.csoonline.com/article/2124416/malware-cybercrime/...
"Bad actor" is a term. "Bad" is an adjective. It's like saying "apple" and "pine apple" must be the same fruit. We're smart enough to give different meanings to the same word, in different contexts.
Bad actors act in a specific way that we can observe, model, understand, and predict. This is independent of perspective. "Bad" is a moral judgement that only exists in the head of the target.
A beetle parasite of an ant colony is a "bad actor." It is not "bad."
No, it's like saying that a "bad apple" is not necessarily bad.
I'm not making this up as I go along. Almost four years ago I wrote (http://hintjens.com/blog:18) "The Economics of Evil" explaining why bad actors (I used "bad guy" in that post) were necessary (so "good" overall).
Nothing radical here. Predators are bad for individual prey animals yet essential for the health of the prey species.
I'm curious what you are trying to argue here because while this is interesting stuff, it seems quite random.
>A small percentage come to prey on others.
I think you would agree that here you are excluding the majority ("most of us") from a minority (a small percentage") of predators.
> This is just how it is, no good or bad.
This is thus a contradiction. You state that most people are good and some people are bad.
I would suggest that there is indeed "no good or bad" but that it not "just how it is". Rather the same people who contribute, have worth, and are open to learning and collaborating may also have the bad behaviours.
The term is there, I'll change it if anyone has a better one.
Edit: in my experience, the same motives that drive people to be bad actors makes them poor, even toxic, at collaboration.
Toxicity can kill. You still don't see how you're being a bully by exaggerating the effects on community of people you don't like?
I'd rather deal with the genuinely obnoxious, than with the entitled amateur policeman that can kick people out by pointing some item on a list.
I'll even tolerate bullies like you, if you're not given any administrative power over the rest of us. You want to organize your own little tea party, on your own terms? Do it in your own "safe space conference" instead of hijacking the technical ones.
It is advisable to do some research before character assassinations, so you don't ask a man if he's having his period ;-)
I really like that you do not classify offence as damage.
I do not like the intrusion of time and space as damage without also recognizing people vary considerably in their ability to handle this. To be completely fair, you did in some degree by allowing for complaints to be evaluated, but that's just not good enough.
Personally, I'll handle these people and work to a favorable place. Often, their perception of time and space varies from my own. People can work with that. I have made many friends this way, and once I have this friendship and degree of trust, I can model better behavior norms and options to great effect. Often, what I find are pretty good people, who just have more texture than other people do. Where their intent is not nefarious, a lot boils down to socialization.
This leads me to empowerment, which is a natural outcome of socialization.
The idea that we need a patrol or some more dominant authority is not inclusive enough. When intent moves from undesirable, which is highly subjective, to nefarious, less subjective, having that authority and or structure is valuable. When we are talking about things that are not nefarious, an authority of that kind can be oppressive and or a source of inhibition that can do a lot more harm than good.
Consider people experiencing the kinds of things being discussed here outside the context of that "security blanket" type authority. What do they do then? They could seek more authority, or they could start avoiding lots of scenarios that are likely ordinary and valuable given they have some perspective and tools to handle them.
In between nothing and that authority, is the idea of giving people better tools to navigate these things.
In your example, Alice could take any number of more active means to relieve herself of a boorish or poorly socialized maybe ignorant, but not nefarious person. Additionally, other savvy people could step in to nudge people in subtle ways, giving everyone the "out" they need to avoid negative consequences and half the time it's not even all that noticeable. Where these simple, human things are an option, we really should use them and share them.
In my experience, those of us who have these skills and understanding of people can be modeling it for those in need. Simple education and role play can do wonders here too.
And we don't blame or judge people for not having many tools, instead we make sure they see them in action and provide opportunities for them to improve. When they see it modeled, they are free to observe and adopt things they find will give them options where perhaps none existed, or were inadequate in some way. This happens without the person having to communicate some need or inadequacy. For people who do not consider those an issue, or inhibition of some kind, the active role helps them progress quickly and take more direct education and advice, all of which are very good things for them and their peers, and in the end, all of us.
Quite frankly, some of us enjoy the diverse nature of people and have few issues with it in the non nefarious intent scenarios. We prefer to share that and help our peers improve in their level of appreciation and by doing so, their overall sense of personal security and confidence. The longer term value of this may exceed the value of your conduct proposal while preserving a lot of basic human freedom of expression.
A secondary objection here is related to cultural differences and other sources of basic discrimination. Say someone is alternative, tats, piercings, etc... and that stage of their life is past. They may be a much different person today, yet they may struggle with perceptions. A more inclusive set of norms can help here. Or consider a person, of good intent and character, from an older time, or different part of the world. Understanding who they are can help to also understand intent, and intent counts for a lot. Knowing another isn't acting with nefarious intent can bring a lot of security, lower inhibition, and that all helps marginalize boundary conflicts of the kind you are seeking to manage.
Well equipped, socialized people have what they need to evaluate others and understand them better without having to rely so much on rule of thumb type information, or stereotypes that may clash hard with who people really are.
The likely outcome of your policy and norm proposal is frankly, stale. Uninteresting in the people sense. I'm not writing your opinion off, just highlighting that it's not entirely sound, and your basis for marginalizing those objections is not inclusive enough to warrant the merit you've implied lies behind it.
On the topic of style, I must point out, you are making an advocacy case for a different set of policy and norms at conferences, and that advocacy does involve emotions and character in addition to the strong reason you have used to support your policy and norm vision.
Because of this, it is bad form to dismiss emotion in rebuttals. Doing it by going right to character didn't help at all here.
It would improve your case to address those emotional arguments instead as there are subjective elements in play that have emotional and personal components.
Secondly, doing this would likely lead you to a place where some reconsideration of your overall proposal may make a lot more sense.