Comment by paskozdilar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paskozdilar | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> How exactly do you learn this?

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer to this. My learning process is somewhat chaotic and random. Reading analytic philosophy and psychology definitely gave me important insights.

However, the method I've found works the best is try to imagine society as a system, and humans as processes in the system. Every human has their own will, and they decide what they will or will not do. Nobody owes anyone anything, so every human protocol relies on the will of the other person to follow the protocol with us. So the most important question for any kind of communication is "how do we get the other person to do what we want?".

This may sound selfish, but is (in my experience) more efficient than trying to read minds or conform to some abstract authority of how we should act, then being mad at other people when they act the way that doesn't fit the abstract authority. Even more, it makes dealing with you easier for other people, which makes other people like you more.

If what you say is true, would that mean you view human interaction as a series of manipulation games?

In a way, yes.

However, we need to know what we mean by "manipulation" here. Manipulation, in colloquial usage, refers to the act of deceiving others, and often causing harm, in order to achieve some selfish desire.

In general, "manipulation" as "human interaction" does not require malice (malice, in my experience, leads to extremely poor manipulation tactics, as humans are not stupid, and will realize what you're doing and retaliate).

E.g. when you're encouraging a friend to call a girl he likes by telling him about all the good things that may come out of it, you're manipulating him - you're telling him things that will affect his feelings in a way that will make him do what you want, i.e. call the girl. In this particular case, this kind of manipulation is actually benevolent.

Human beings can and do influence each others' feelings using words all the time. Most of the time, that influence is subconscious, and often it is harmful. Being aware of how your words and actions influence other people - i.e. knowing how to manipulate people - is a tool, and just like any other tool, it can be used for both good and evil (of course, "good" and "evil" are always subjectively defined, but you can take any measure you want and you will always be able to use manipulation for either).

I don't like using the word "manipulation" because of the above reasons. I prefer the more Wittgenstein-ian term "wordplay", because that's all it is - just playing with words in some contexts that we're familiar with, which we know will make stuff happen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com