list comprehension question

[Bengt Richter]

On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 17:24:02 +0100, Laura Creighton <lac at strakt.com> wrote:

>It wasn't the Robot books where I was thiking of looking, but a different
>short story.  I actually believe that apologies are something which
>are necessary due to one's-own need to behave rightly, rather than
>somebody else's need to receive redress.  A society with both

ISTM apologies are part of a very stateful communication protocol
of humans, trying to manage state transitions at both ends.

Both ends, depending on sophistication, include cached recursive models
of the state at the other end, leading to complex calculations for maintaining
the cache and generating communication signals, e.g., "She may be thinking that
I think xxx and if I format my apology message with content yyy and my assumption
about her thinking is wrong, it may lead down a bad part of the trellis of possible
futures, so I will say zzz hoping to prevent a disconnect at least, also
hoping that she does not infer too much calculation on my part and transition
to impersonal mode, setting filters to deny warm fuzzy metasignals, requiring
total renegotiation of that subchannel's connection, but also trying to prevent
a transition in presumed respect relationship by not formatting an overly obsequious
apology, and to hell with it: msg= "Let's cut the BS, do you want this relationship or don't you?"
"Is that a threat or a question or a pecking order position assertion or
all of the above?" (meta)"Sorry, ..." negotiate, negotiate, negotiate...

You can imagine a politician's "need to behave rightly" and a true spiritual
seeker's "need to behave rightly," interacting over some occasion for apologies.
Imagine the states and cached other-site-model states. The first problem is
to find a layer in the communication stacks that halfway matches ;-)
Now imagine a true spiritual seeker in the role of politician. Very complex
state management ;-)

IOW, I think the "need to behave rightly" is as complex as humans, and based
in large part on the need to maintain communications for cooperation in survival.
And apologies are part of the communication protocol.

By apologizing, you do not just satisfy your own need to act consistently
with your concept of yourself (whether saint, good girl, or smooth con),
unless you are living in a world where others are just incidental props that
you don't relate to beyond their cliche proxy representations in your imagination.

The "need for redress" in the other, if present (other than material
damage/reparation issues), is ISTM a need be able to permit themselves
to continue communicating in a valued interchange. IOW, the other may
have protocol rules that do not permit needed communication, and the
"need for redress" is a need to satisfy that protocol, so that the other
may permit him/herself continued communication. "I won't talk to you
until you apologize properly." And other than saints, people have a
hard time moving from that state without satisfying a redress protocol.

Fortunately, the bots of the P

>Asimov-type robots and small children needs to do something
>about the small child's propensity to order the robot to go jump
>out the space station airlock.  When Mom says 'decent children don't
>order robots to do foolish things' she can't make an appeal to the
>robot's feelings, but to other things such as the anti-socialness
>of waste.  Once such considerations come into play, the social value
>of apologising needs examination -- and certainly, in a society which
>is not based on enslavement, there is no room for somebody who is
>'too big to apologise'.  People who regularily avoid apologising when 
>they know perfectly well that they are in the wrong need to do so far
>more for themselves than for other people.  That is trying to opt in and
>out of society whenever it suits you.
>
They first need to reach a state where they have a non-sociopathic
motivation for an apology. ISTM that is what you are pointing to.
Some people's abuse of human protocol is itself a signal in another
(distasteful and destructive) human communication protocol. I.e,
the meta-message is, "I do this to assert that I am powerful enough
to provoke without expectation of challenge, and I expect to accomplish
my goals through exercise of commanding power." Of course, the meta-meta
message is a pitiable despair of working in real human relationships.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you may not some time have to kowtow
to someone pitiable ;-/

>Now I remember reading this and thinking this was pretty powerful stuff
>when I was 14 or so.  And nun-dominated boarding school, where I escaped
>classes that I was not interested in taking by illegally clibing trees,
>reading books where I could not be found since 'tree-climbing' was so
>much more forbidden than cutting physical educaiton classes that nobody
>thought to look for me in the trees.  I'd sit in the top and watch them
>seek and call for me at ground level.
>
Ah, memories ;-)
>Since thoughts that 'leopards kill their prey by dropping on them out
>of trees' featured hightly in my thoughts at such a time, the discovery
>that I might be damaging myself by opting out of society hit rather hard.
>And I believed that it was Asimov who mentioned that -- until today.  It
>doesn't sound like him.  It sounds more like Heinlein, but the Heinlein
>fans have posted every satement he has ever written to the net, so if
>I can't find it there, it is almost certainly not from Heinlein.  (He
>does state this:
>
>  In a family argument, if it turns out you are right - apologize at once!
>
But patronize and you will be disconnected at an important level.
Of course, if you feel motivated to patronize, you are already there ;-/

>But it is doubtful that this quote would have had such an effect on me,
>my status as 'woefully misunderstood intellectual' was running at an
>all time high then.  But figuring out if I wanted to reject all of society
>or only my status as child within it was a nice problem.  And, arrogant
>worm that I was, I took great comfort in the fact that all the people whom
>I felt owed me apologies, (and there was quite a list) were secretly
>damaging themselves in nasty permanent ways.  It was only much later
>that I was able to connect their ability to treat me and the other children
>so cruelly with the sort of damaging they were doing by not apologising.
>
Again, I think it's a protocol-abuse meta-protocol based on power when direct.
Indirectly, a cruel disconnect can happen when adults see children as aforementioned
"incidental props" and simply don't recognize the possibility of dialogue with and
caring respect for a being at another stage of development.

>However, all of this would only have been funny if the quote about half
>of the apologising being for yoruself was from Asimov.  In usenet fashion
>I will find the answer to who wrote this about 20 minutes after I post this.

And also figure out how it relates to list comprehension ;-)

Regards,
Bengt Richter