# Failures in Kindness

There's a particular kind of widespread human behavior that is *kind* on the surface, but upon closer inspection reveals quite the opposite. This post is about four such patterns.

![](https://39669.cdn.cke-cs.com/rQvD3VnunXZu34m86e5f/images/41f32ee0b6efc6ec0edb0e1c42342d4eaa340f90bab3ed9d.png)

Computational Kindness
----------------------

One of the most useful ideas I got out of [Algorithms to Live By](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by) is that of computational kindness. I was quite surprised to only find a [single mention](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/62PRkMtu5jiBA9wLN/what-i-got-out-of-algorithms-to-live-by#Computational_Kindness) of the term on lesswrong. So now there's two.

Computational kindness is the antidote to a common situation: imagine a friend from a different country is visiting and will stay with you for a while. You're exchanging some text messages beforehand in order to figure out how to spend your time together. You want to show your friend the city, and you want to be very accommodating and make sure all their preferences will be met. So you simply ask them: "What do you want to do"? And maybe you add "I'm completely fine with anything!" to ensure you're really introducing no constraints whatsoever and you two can do exactly what your friend desires.

People often act like this, and they tend to assume they're doing the other person a favor by being so open and flexible. After all, this way the other person will have to make no trade-offs and can spend their time exactly as they please. The problem with this however is that it's computationally unkind: it offloads all the effort of coming up with ideas and making decisions to the other person. So while it is kind on one level (respecting their object level preferences), it's unkind on another (effort, and respecting their possible meta level preferences about the planning process). And particularly if the friend's preferences about what exactly to do are not that strong, it now gives them a difficult and uncertain task for very little payoff.

So what's the computationally kind way of approaching this situation? You could name a (not too long) list of concrete proposals of how you could spend your time. If you know the person really well, you could suggest a full-fledged plan. If you don't know them that well, you could ask a few clarifying questions about their general preferences and *then* come up with a plan. And *on top* of this (rather than instead of it) you can make sure to point out that you're open to anything and are happy to change plans in any way. This way, the other person can decide themselves how much cognitive effort to invest. They can just say "yes" to your proposal, or can suggest some adjustments, or even come up with an entirely new plan if they really want to go that far.

Responsibility Offloading[^a06rw3hn7v]
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A somewhat similar pattern to computational kindness is that of offloading responsibility. Imagine Alice and Bob, two friends who are just getting to know each other better, are hanging out at Alice's place. It's getting late, but they're having a fun time. Bob is unsure about whether and when Alice wants him to leave, but he's fine with staying much longer. So he playfully says "By the way - feel free to throw me out any time! I've got tomorrow off, so am flexible, but just let me know when you've had enough of me".

Sometimes this is indeed a good move. Particularly when Bob knows that Alice is an assertive person who doesn't shy away from stating her preferences. But there are cases where this puts a big burden on Alice. Imagine Alice is generally rather insecure and indecisive. She now has to feel solely responsible for terminating the hangout. This is now something on her plate that she has to think about and decide, and communicate to Bob eventually in a non-offensive way. There are Alices out there who would be rather stressed out by this, and who would prefer Bob to carry that responsibility, or to have the two of them figure it out together. And there are Bobs out there who have no idea that some Alices may feel that way, and these Bobs may think that saying "Throw me out any time!" is the kind thing to say, blind to the drawbacks this comes with.

A related situation I've encountered quite a few times is this: I'm hanging out with some people, and one of them pulls out a pack of cigarettes and casually asks into the round "do you mind if I smoke?". My honest answer in such situations is that I mind a lot and have a really strong preference for people in a 10m radius around me not to smoke. But when I'm put on the spot to now basically *decide* whether the other person can do the thing they happen to want to do, or to put in my veto and hence prevent them from doing so, I'm much more inclined to go with the socially so much easier option of saying "I don't mind", at which point they're happily out of the equation because it's now fully my responsibility to deal with being in a situation I don't want to be in, and I can't even blame them for it.

I assume some people would now counter that it really *is* my problem if I'm too shy/careful/afraid/whatever to just say what I want to anyone anytime. [Ask culture](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/guess-ask-tell-culture) would be strongly in favor of the cigarette question, and probably of responsibility offloading in general, as *technically* this makes sense, is very explicit, avoids ambiguity and creates common knowledge within a group of people about where a certain responsibility lies. These are certainly real advantages! But it's also the case that this type of responsibility offloading tends to come at a cost for people with certain personalities, or people of (self-perceived) lower status in a given setting.

So what can we do about it? I think there's several options:

*   When asking for something, go out of your way to make extremely clear (*beforehand*, not after a person has already answered; see next section) that a *no* is perfectly fine and really comes at no risk to the other person.
*   Instead of flatly *offloading* responsibility the "throw me out whenever" way, invite the other person to discuss the modalities of the question together, by e.g. raising the question of when you should leave and then figuring out together what factors this depends on and how you want to make that decision.
*   An approach that may not be well received in all social circles, but probably in those closer to LessWrong, is to not ask binary questions such as "is it fine if I smoke a cigarette?" but rather quantitative ones such as "on a scale of 0 to 10, how irritated would you be if I smoked a cigarette now?". Ideally you would think of a threshold beforehand that would be acceptable to you. Probably the actually *kind* threshold here would even be 0. But even if you, being the utilitarian that you probably are, have a higher threshold, and somebody answers "3" and you decide that this level of irritation is acceptable in exchange for the utility you yourself get out of smoking: at least there's now shared knowledge about the other person being mildly bothered by your actions, arguably even doing you a favor by enduring your smoking, which is much fairer than them having to secretly suffer in silence.

Opt-In vs Opt-Out
-----------------

The distinction between opt-in and opt-out is quite well known from [nudging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory) and [choice architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice_architecture). The idea is that when people make some decision, e.g. have to set a checkbox in a form, many of them will stick to the default (whatever it is) instead of deciding on the other option. This phenomenon is usually discussed in policy contexts or group decision-making, but it's also present in close-up social settings.

Imagine that Arthur and Beth are both attending an event that is a bit further away. Arthur is planning to go there by car and invites Beth to join him. After their return, Beth expresses her gratitude and asks one of two questions:

1.  "Do you want me to cover some of the fuel cost?"
2.  "How much do I owe you for fuel?"

These two phrasings are pretty close to opt-in (1) and opt-out (2). The first question suggests that the default is that Beth was taken along for free, but if Arthur prefers to be compensated then Beth would be willing to pay him for the ride. The second question takes as a given that Beth will pay for the ride, and simply tries to clarify what amount would be reasonable.

In this case, the second option is much kinder to Arthur. In case Arthur does want compensation, he can very easily state the number. In case he doesn't, he can still say "Oh no, I'm happy to take you for free!", which gives him some kindness credit.

The first question on the other hand implies that the normal response for Arthur would be to not require any money from Beth. So if he says "no it's fine", he doesn't get any money, nor any social credit for being nice, because he's just doing what's normal and apparently expected. And if he does want some compensation, this implies he's stingy and unkind. One could go as far as saying Beth here claims the kindness credit to herself, by offering payment even though that would not be the expected thing to do.

Note that this says nothing about Beth's actual intentions. I'm sure people with the best intentions frequently ask opt-in-style questions in such cases even though they really would be perfectly fine with compensating the other person. But it's still important to be aware of the implications of the phrasing one chooses, and that it may affect the other person's response.

The Fake Exit Option[^a06rw3hn7v]
---------------------------------

Here's a situation I found myself in at an event of my EA local group a few months back: I was facilitating a giving game[^qhwa01tw4wb] with ~6 other people. Originally I was planning to provide the funding for it myself, but it turned out that a few of the present people were happy to add some money to the donation pool spontaneously. This then organically turned to one person after another stating if / how much money they would like to add. One of the attendees was pretty new to the group, and when it was their turn, I noticed that this was really not an ideal situation: it's certainly possible they experienced some pressure to follow the apparent standard of adding some money to the pool, and probably an amount similar to what the other people went with, even if they may have actually felt rather uncertain about it, or generally would have preferred to not spontaneously have any unplanned expenses that evening. Of course nobody would have minded at all if they had simply said "no I'd rather not add money to the pool" (in a way I would have even preferred that), but they had no way of knowing that for sure. So before I had really processed the whole situation, that new person had already agreed to provide a not so trivial amount of money.

Now, at that point, I could have said something like the following: "Ah, wait a second. It's really amazing that you're willing to add some money as well! But I notice that the situation maybe wasn't ideal and you maybe felt a bit pressured into it, because all the other people were giving money as well. I just really want to point out that it's completely fine for you to keep your money, it's no problem at all!" - but this would be what I'd call a "fake exit option": I'm technically offering this person the option to revise their decision now. But I'd argue that the vast majority of people, *even those who did make the decision out of pressure and who may already regret said decision*, would not change their decision at that point. And the reason is simply that changing your mind after such a statement would seem really embarrassing. You would basically acknowledge that "yes, I did make that original decision only because I felt some pressure to conform, and actually I wanted something else, but I was too scared to reveal my true preferences. But now that I have your permission to decide in a different way, I will do so". I would argue that the type of person who would be willing to admit such a thing is precisely the kind of person who would not succumb to the initial pressure to begin with.

So at first the person made a decision under pressure and maybe decided differently than they would upon reflection. But by then pointing this out and asking if they *really* want to make that decision, you in a way force them into committing to their original decision even more, and publicly and explicitly so. On the surface, asking them for confirmation this way and allowing them to change their mind seems like the kind thing to do. But in practice you just make the person own their initial decision, while once again shifting the responsibility for this whole situation fully to them.

So what can we do? What would a "real" exit option look like? It's hard to say, and very much depends on the concrete situation and people involved. Ideally you would think ahead far enough to avoid ending up in such situations to begin with. If it does happen anyway, some sensible things might be:

*   Talk it through with the person *in private* rather than in front of a bigger group, which reduces the social cost of them changing their mind.
*   Suggest a time-out, and ask them to postpone that decision for some time, to ensure they have more time to reflect (and to maybe even come up with an "excuse" that allows them to revoke their decision without losing face).
*   Possibly make the decision for them, e.g. in the scenario above I could have said "Oh it's really great you want to add money to the pool! But I notice that this was really spontaneous, and all the others knew ahead of time that this was coming as they've participated in giving games before; so I wouldn't feel so comfortable taking money from you right now." (and then probably talk to them again after the event and apologize for the mildly awkward situation) - on the other hand, some people might find that patronizing and a bit stupid.
*   Talk to the person later, e.g. the day after, to allow them to reverse their decision. Ideally giving them some time to think it through, rather than asking for a response in person on the spot.

Isn't This Just Overcomplicating Things?
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This post certainly has a bit of a "you shouldn't do all these things" vibe. But maybe taking so many ifs and buts into account just makes you a hopeless overthinker who never spontaneously communicates anything because there's always some risk that what you say or ask may make people uncomfortable.

The degree to which one should[^ywh133jkwz] keep such risks in mind surely varies a lot. It depends on questions such as whether you *want* to be "kind" to the people you interact with, on your role in different interactions, and on your own predisposition to occasionally experience the downside of such behaviors from others. If for instance you've often been inadvertently pressured into decisions and didn't feel comfortable to stand up for your preferences, then you're probably more aware of this issue in your own communication. But a lot of people, a lot of the time, don't consciously notice these patterns, so we keep bumping into them blindly, which is not a great situation to be in[^ohs5qpux3h].

[^a06rw3hn7v]: As I didn't find any established term for the concept, I made one up. 

[^qhwa01tw4wb]: "Giving game" means that we had a certain amount of money available to donate, and wanted to collectively decide which charitable organizations to donate this money to. This was one half of an evening event, so took something like 1-2 hours. 

[^ywh133jkwz]: Although in the end this post is not meant to be normative and not meant to make any such should-claims. Rather it is about describing some not so obvious complexities of social interactions in order to make them easier to recognize, and thereby prevent (if so desired). 

[^ohs5qpux3h]: Particularly for those of us who are involved in any kind of community building.