ideas-philosopy-ethics-etiquetteAndComputationIsNotFree

Another place where my "Computation is not free" programme might touch is etiquette. Etiquette is particularly problematic when different cultures interact, because cultures usually have different etiquettes.

Following etiquette often takes some rather complex inference. It is easy to compute that violence is bad therefore it is bad to hit someone. It is more difficult to compute that, although there is nothing inherently insulting in X, X will remind people of Y, and Y is something that person A has failed at in the past, therefore mentioning X around A may give offense. If one knows of A's past failure, then one will be held responsible for not mentioning X around A; that is, etiquette holds people responsible for independently inferring various conclusions if they know the premises.

From the viewpoint of computation being expensive, this is problematic; it imposes a cost upon each participant.

Perhaps a greater problem is that exhaustive search is unnatural to the human mind. Etiquette holds you responsible for failing to notice the chain connecting X to Y to A; this implies that you have considered all possible chains (perhaps up to a certain length) involving the content of what you are about to say, and the people involved. Like contemplating all possible opponent moves after your chess moves, and all of your possible moves after that, etc, it is possible for the human mind to do this, but difficult, and slow.

Most likely what is happening is that participants in a culture are, over time, learning various shortcuts and heuristics for etiquette inferences in their culture, which allow them to make the correct computation the vast majority of the time without actually doing exhaustive search. Similarly, participants in a social group get good at remembering the particular issues relevant to the particular members of that group, and can therefore do the computation even faster with even less probability of failure. But when an outsider comes along, the outsider must proceed in the slow, explicit manner of exhaustive search, or risk a higher probability of offense.

Ironically, the problem is, in a way, worse in a multicultural society, because the common context leads to a proliferation of etiquettes in the different cultures present (or, even if all group accept a common etiquette, a proliferation of sets of 'particular issues' for the different groups) , but at the same time, an expectation that members of the multicultural society should be competent in all etiquettes, because the union of the set of __premises__ that would be needed to navigate each of the various groups is relatively small, and hence it seems reasonable to expect that every member should learn these premises. What is overlooked is that insiders in the various groups are better able to rapidly draw inferences from these premises due to their greater experience.

Some suggestions which arise:

First, it would be good to water down the expectation of etiquette that a person with knowledge of the premises is responsible for inferring all conclusions. Namely, the excuse 'Sorry, I knew of past event X but I didn't think of that when i said Y' should be cut more slack than it presently is.

Second, it would be good to cut more slack to outsiders, even when they have learned enough that they 'should have known' that X would give offense.

Third, it would be good to focus more on intent to offend, especially when outsiders are involved.