Robin:

Hello, Agnes.

Agnes:

Hi, Robin.

Robin:

We're gonna talk about weirdness.

Agnes:

Correct. What makes a person weird, and why do we care that someone is weird? And I guess more specifically, why do we hate it so much? Do we? Claiming to like it. Yeah.

Robin:

Oh, okay. But we do claim to like it.

Agnes:

Yes. We do. That's that's an interesting interesting feature of our self presentation, our self understanding about weirdness, is that we have a lot of, like, stories, like, let's say, on TV shows and whatever of, like, the weird character who is, you know, excluded or treated badly by the people around them, where that story is told in such a way as to make the viewer feel very sure that she would be accepting of that weird person. So that the whole structure of it is to flatter you into thinking you're the one who would accept the weird

Robin:

I mean But we also have celebrities, like intellectuals, who are in fact chosen more for being different than for being the same. Right? That is in some areas of our life, we we seem to go out of our way to celebrate people who have certain kinds of interesting and compelling distinctiveness.

Agnes:

Right. I mean, I think if we look at, well, who celebrates that person? It might be the set of people who also have that property and maybe, like, are sometimes put down for it or whatever. So I don't think that's gonna cover all the cases, but it's gonna cover some of the cases. Like Some. There's, like, some, you know, nerdy guy, and he is celebrated for being nerdy. Like, LaPayle, a lot of his fans are nerdy, let's say. Not

Robin:

Okay. But but, for example, I think there's a trend in art and music and sculpture over the last centuries where, five centuries ago, the best singer, the best composer, the best artist, the best sculptor would be one who did things much like all of the other best. And scholars were like that too. The best scholar would tell you the view that the other best scholars would tell you. And then we switched more to wanting very distinctive performers. And I think in the last 20 quarter century, academics have also moved a bit more toward celebrating the more distinctive academics, the ones who give you a different point of view than the others will give you. Or maybe intellectuals, maybe a better sense. Public intellectuals, there's more of a celebration of an interest in people who have distinctive views.

Agnes:

I think there is some of the but if I just think about in academia, are people more are academics more like each other than they were twenty or thirty years ago, or are they less? I would say more. There's more like a type, and they're very similar. So I I don't know if I don't know if they're I mean and I I might say that about intellectuals, public intellectuals too. I don't know that we've actually gone ended up with more heterogeneity. But in any case, I think that there's a difference between weird and just different or exceptional. So maybe it's worth just spending a minute to say what weird is. I think of it as as a term, it's negative. It gets appropriated at certain points. Right? But its original intention is negative. And it picks out a difference that is experienced by others as some kind of a social problem or social obstacle. So the idea is, like, I don't wanna associate with this person because they're weird. Not just different, but different enough to count as weird, off putting, obscure. And that's the question. What is that? And, like, why why does it bother us?

Robin:

Well, that definition almost picks out the negative part of different. So we couldn't then think of the complement. The other people who are different but not that negative way, who are distinctive, interestingly diff you know?

Agnes:

Sure. I think they're not yeah. It's not called weird. But I'm interested in weird, namely in the negative part. And in particular, I don't think I don't think we assign to weird the whole of the negative part of people we don't wanna socialize with. So if you don't wanna socialize with someone because they're a thief or evil or a murderer or whatever. It's you don't say they're weird. Like like, they might be I mean, they're different. Right? Right. And they're different in a way that makes you not wanna socialize with them, but that's not weird. I think that there's something about the concept of weird where it picks out specifically a difference where we find it hard to say why it creates a social problem. So here's another kind of difference that doesn't that might create a social problem, but we wouldn't say it's weird. If we were in an environment where, you know, we we had to do a lot of work with our hands and then everything was right handed and a left handed person shows up and they you know, we'd have to get all new scissors and whatever, then we might be like, look. We can't, you know, include you in our activity because you're left handed. That is their left handedness is a difference that creates a social problem, but it's not they're we don't say they're weird. There's nothing weird about them. They're just left handed. And so I think sometimes we can pick out why the difference creates a social problem, and then we don't call it weird. We call it weird when we find it hard. I'll give an example from my own life that was just striking to me. I really don't like when people stand very close to me. Like, I'm talking to someone, cocktail party, whatever, I don't want you stand super close to me. And, I mean, nobody likes it if someone's, like, right up in their face. Right? But my tolerance like, is, a little I want them a little further than, you know, the median person thinks that they should be. But I also feel like I I my whole life, I've felt I can't quite say this to people. Like, like, can you please just step a little further back away from me? It's it's, you know, it's kinda hard it's kinda hard thing to say. But recently, I have an additional problem with someone standing close to me, is that my eyes, as I've aged, they're worse and I can't focus at a short distance. And so it's actually really, like, painful in my eyes when the person is close because I mean, if I took off my glasses, it'd be okay, but I can't be taking off my glasses all the time. And so I feel I'm able to say, can you please step back? I have trouble focusing at this distance. Distance. That's fine. K? K. Why? Because I could give a reason. And you'd be like, you know, I have this problem with my eyes that I can't focus at this distance. Before, I had this other problem, which is that I'm just kinda creeped out by the fact that you're close to me, Right. And I couldn't say I didn't find that to be assertable.

Robin:

So so I like to fix problems even if they're not relevant. So I suggest you just get a costume that has little sticks that stick out two feet from your clothes.

Agnes:

You're right. That would solve all my social problems.

Robin:

Just wear that regularly, and then people will have to keep a disc. And you can say, this is just my costume. You know? You don't even have to explain it. They'll get that they can't get too close.

Agnes:

But That will solve one problem.

Robin:

Anyway, so if we could think of a taxonomy, I I mean, you're trying to define this one concept, but there are some nearby concepts that I'm intrigued by. So one thing is difference that, you know, you understand why difference that you like and difference that you don't like, And then there's difference when you don't like it that you understand Yeah. And that you maybe don't understand. Yeah. Seems like I noticed there would be the same set of four versions for sameness. There'll be the sameness that you like and the sameness that you don't like. And there'll also be the sameness that you understand why you like it and why you don't or dislike it, and the sameness you don't understand why you dislike it. I'll bet some people get creeped out by sameness. They don't quite know why. For example I mean, for example, somebody shows up at the party with the same dress you have or something. For some reason, that's that's a problem. But the question is, well, why exactly is it a problem?

Agnes:

It I don't know that you you you I think it would be a problem, but you wouldn't necessarily think it's problem with them. That is it would be equally Okay. The problem over the two of you. But yeah. Okay. Right.

Robin:

So I I was suggesting the song Little Boxes as something we could refer to here, and it's a complaint about sameness, looking down on sameness, even though it's not exactly very articulate about why sameness is bad. It describes initially a bunch of houses that all look the same even though they're different colors, and they're supposedly made out of bad materials. And this is apparently shameful. And then they go on to talk about how these people went to university and and got degrees, and and they're more the same because of that. And, again, it's not very clear why exactly these kinds of sameness are so terrible. Clear. We don't tend to think people are bad if they all have two arms and two legs. Example, For that's a kind of sameness that doesn't seem bad. But I I don't know whether there's something interesting in the opaque, you know, aversion of difference and the opaque aversion of sameness.

Agnes:

The one thing that's interesting about the song, I just looked at the lyrics, is that there's the first lyric is there are these little boxes on the hillside. They're all made of ticky dacky, and they all look just the same. And then you get a description. There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one. And I was like, click. They're not the cis. They're all four different colors. Right? Right. But but then they repeat the verse. They're all made out of ticky and they all just sing. Okay. So it's like, well, they have these different colors. It's almost like that's what's offensive, is that they came in the different colors because the colors create this illusion of diversity, but inside, it's just the ticky tacky. And it's the same with the next lyric. Right? All they all went to universities. They all came out just the same. There's doctors and lawyers and business tacky. And you might be like, well, doctors, lawyers, business, like, that's three different kinds of different Right. Lines. No. It just looks different on the outside. Deep down, it's the So the I think the song is trying to say something like, we have this attraction to variety, but it's we we content ourselves with surface variety and that very contenting of ourselves with surface variety allows us to ignore the fact that the deep thing is all rotten. It's not it's not just that it's the same. It's that it's bad. Like, it's ticky tacky or it's this bad kind of life of suburbia. And the we're distracted by the difference. Anyway, that's one reading I'm saw.

Robin:

Right. And you could also say that one reason for diff many people have often said that surface differences are indications of bad underlying differences. You know, in traditional cultures, anybody who was somewhat different was, in fact, suspected of being different in bad hidden ways. You wore different clothes. You had a different accent, different, you know, hairstyle. And I think that is in fact true. That is I've I've made the observation that if you're driving down the road and you want to avoid dangerous cars or vehicles on the road, and you're just wondering who's more dangerous or not. If there's any vehicle that's just different in any noticeable way, hasn't been washed, has a big scratch on it, has a, you know, big, I don't know, bumper sticker, it will, in fact, be more different in other ways, and one of those other ways is it might be more likely to cause an accident, and it makes some sense to distance yourself from cars on the road that are just generically different. Now, that's maybe not weird in the sense that you might well, I mean, it's in the middle because you don't have a very specific reason to avoid them. It's sort of a vague sense of unease and and and worry, but I do think it is roughly true on average.

Agnes:

So I think it makes sense to me with cars, but I think that part of why that's such a good example with the cars is that in an interaction with another car on the road, there's a lot of downside and not a lot of upside. Right? So, like, ideally, you don't interact. And, you know, I don't know, maybe there's the you could wave out your window and they could wait those. After some very small positives, then you could gain, but not much. Right? And so, you know, the the idea that when we avoid or stay away from or are creeped out by weird people, the thought is like, well, they're different in this one way, so they're dangerous, suggests that we're thinking a lot about, like, how safe the people around us are and how scary they are. But I I feel like their people aren't that scary. Like, that actually it's the opposite that the there's a lot of room for upside and not some huge room for down. There's just not a lot of murderers you're gonna interact with.

Robin:

I rewatched Pride and Prejudice recently. Yeah. And it describes a world where when anybody has any substantial negative side about anyone in their family, then other people are just gonna avoid them. Right? So it does seem like there's just a general high risk aversion. And there are many sort of Victorian stories of employees at firms who just get fired because there's any negative sign about them whatsoever. They were spotted with the wrong associates. Right? Any sort of rumor. There was at least an older world where any negative most any unusual negative sign about people was worrisome and could be the basis of excluding them from society or employment or other things like that.

Agnes:

Right. So when we we would want to sort of divide up our contexts in a way where it's like at one extreme, we're gonna have the road interaction where pretty much the only thing you care about is whether this person's gonna crash into you or not. That is there's a downside that you're alert to, and you don't care about the upsides. You know, the fact that the person that has the car painted a cool color might be more interesting because that's not gonna give you anything because you're just in a car. So that's, like, one kind of interaction. And it might be that in the Pride and Prejudice world, interactions are all more like that. More like that. And then at the other extreme, like, it'll be good to define some context where that kind of thinking makes the least sense. Like, I don't know. Maybe, like, on in choosing novels or something.

Robin:

Yeah. I was gonna say a TV show or movie. Yeah. You're flipping around. You feel like, oh, this looks interestingly different. You're not feeling much of a risk. But I think in the old Pride and Prejudice world, there was this sense of a risk of reading a risque novel or a political pamphlet that it would give you thoughts that would then put you at odds with the world around you. So I think that's not just a feature of TVs and movies, but of the modern world where we feel less and threatened by such things.

Agnes:

Right. So as you start to live in, like, a safer world, you become more sensitive to the upsides, and then being different can be more of a positive.

Robin:

Right. So I I think for a TV or movie, the main thing the people marketing them fear is that you will think it's just the same as some other movies you've already seen, and they want to stand out somehow. Unless there's like if if it's the fourth in a Marvel series or something, and you lots of people like them, then they wanna say, see, this is number four. You'll like it again. But for a lot of the rest of them, they're really trying to convince you this is different.

Agnes:

I mean, I think that they are trying to convince you this is different, but it's of a kind where you're gonna like it. It's like, you know, it's there's just a lot of resemblances between TA shows. It'll be like, you know, a procedural with some detectives, and the one detective is more by the book, and the other detective really goes rogue or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, if there's enough of that that they care, he must be trying to produce wild dogs.

Robin:

Okay. So we've identified one factor here that would predict whether you're focused whether you like sameness or whether you like difference. But you were highlighting initially this issue of whether that those factors that make you go one way or the other are opaque or transparent. So now we have to wonder, when do you see difference or sameness, and you have an aversion or attraction that you don't understand? Because you're gonna say weirdness is the aversion to difference that you don't fully understand. It's not transparent to you, but you still feel that aversion.

Agnes:

Yeah. So so I wanna know if we can come up with an example as whether there really is a sameness parallel there. That is, is there a case where you feel an aversion to sameness that you don't understand?

Robin:

Twins. So in history, twins were actually a bit creepy. Like

Agnes:

In some cases, sometimes they were revered.

Robin:

Okay. But it can go both ways, certainly. It was more commonly, I think, creepy.

Agnes:

But, like, I get I mean, that makes total sense to me. It's like you got the same prison twice. That's what it looks like. Right?

Robin:

But you don't know why that's bad. I mean, you just it it's a little Yeah. But that's the point. Right? So the question is you you'll the point isn't difference that you can't tell if it's different. The question is difference that you can see is different, but you're not sure why it's so bad.

Agnes:

But, like, when people meet so so I I agree, but when you you meet someone's family member and they look really similar to them, people tend not to be at all creepy. Deja vu. Oh, that's a great example.

Robin:

That's a sameness. That's creepy.

Agnes:

That's a great example. So I think the thing is that, like, the the phenomenon of encountering another human being who's different from you and then recoiling from that, but in ways that you can't fully theorize, and so maybe you're leaving a little bit ashamed of because you're not, like, treating them that way. You're not being inclusive. It's just that there's no parallel to that with sameness that is yes. You're right that there are these uncanny samenesses, like deja vu or but, like, I don't know. I never heard anyone say

Robin:

Choeing's artist people that are the same.

Agnes:

Yes. But I never heard anyone say, I met this person, and they were so similar to me that I was creeped out by them or something.

Robin:

But but apparently in history, like before the modern era, there were more cases of people who were twins who had there was a bad reaction to them socially.

Agnes:

Sure. But that's just not a thing anymore.

Robin:

Fine. But but it was something in history, so, like, I don't know how recent you need your examples to be.

Agnes:

But, like, at the same time as when there's that, there's just there's always been this thing of people being different and being excluded for being different in one way or another. That is the twin thing seems like a just a tiny thing versus, you know, oh, those people are Persians. They're barbarians. They wear pants. They, you know,

Robin:

Well, like do do we know why we don't like nepotism? I mean, like, we often don't want family members in the same organizations. And is it clear why? I mean, it's a kind of sameness.

Agnes:

I guess I've always thought that the worry is that the desire to satisfy the family bonds will cause bad, like, decisions.

Robin:

Right. And I I think that was a big issue a lot longer ago. But now once, you know, if you know somebody plays golf with the boss or whatever, it's it's not clear that them being a family member is that much bigger a deal than any of the other ways that people can favor their associates. But again, I think there's aversion to it. Or or like dating your sister or your cousin, that's a sameness that's creepy and not fully understood emotionally, I think.

Agnes:

Yeah. But it isn't it just isn't the case that we routinely, socially reject people for being similar to us in the way that we routinely socially reject people for being different from us. Right? There's just an asymmetry there. There's what I'm talking about with in this is specifically that we choose not to associate with someone because they are not similar to us. Not so twin case is different because it's they're similar to someone else, not to us. Right? Okay. Like, if you met your own twin for the first time and then Yeah. And turns out that's not a thing. People do wanna like, if they found like, the the movie Three Identical Strangers, they were excited to meet their twin.

Robin:

Okay. So I guess dating your cousin might be an example. You you might once they realize they're they're your cousin, you might go, oh, I don't wanna date you because I'm you're too similar in in some family structure way. But

Agnes:

Right. In some family structure way, but, that you know, if you met someone and they looked really similar to you and they had all the same interests as you and they grew up in the same place as you and they were really similar personality to you, you wouldn't mind dating them. And if any of but then if it turns out you have a genetic link, now you're like, so I feel like that's I mean, they could have been really similar and you were fine with it. Right? It's this particular form of similarity, and it's like we have this strong social norm against incest that I'm not sure is really about similarity.

Robin:

So I guess we're focused on the opaque kind of aversion, and now we might wanna ask, well, uncertainty doesn't have to be creepy. So what is creepy about this particular kind of uncertainty? So there's someone who's different. You're not you're a bit averse to that, but you don't know exactly why. But why why is not knowing why some special interesting category? Because we know there's lots of things in our world where we just don't know things, and we make decisions over uncertainty, and it's not creepy or stressful or or odd. So there's something different here about this kind of uncertainty. So maybe it's threatening. There's maybe some theory that it suggests about for example, maybe we're fearing being, you know, the analog of racist or sex or whatever. We're fearing being prejudiced, and our inability to understand or give a reason for our aversion just, you know, supports this theory of prejudice. And then that's what makes us feel difficult, where it wouldn't if it was just uncertainty.

Agnes:

I think that, I guess I'm inclined to think there's something deeper going on here, that it isn't just pure uncertainty. It's that, we are picking up on something that we find it hard to articulate or identify because it's something that we it's it's a feature of the social interaction that we are not fully conscious of. There are a lot of features of social interactions that we are not conscious of, that we're not aware of as they're going on. And I think at least some of the time, that's what's going on with the person who's coming off as weird. So here's, like, an example that occurred to me. You know, in we we watched this movie Freaks from, like, the nineteen thirties, from these people it's so it's full of, like, basically circus shot sideshow people, but actual people who actually were that. And, you know, they are people who, like, basically have various disabilities. And we I read, anyway, on Wikipedia, like, the the when they were filming it, they had to make a separate cafeteria for the those actors because the other actors didn't wanna be around them. And they're, like, creeped up by them. And but so that's one fact. Right? So these people were different. They were very visibly different, And and and and people are fascinated by that in a way. I mean, they wanna go to circus sideshows, and, you know, this movie was sort of showcasing these people. But we're also like, we feel something repulsive or alienated in relation to them. But and so here's the the detail that fascinated me. One of these characters was called half man, and it's basically like he looks like somebody was caught off at the waist. I think he actually had, like, tiny, like, feet that were not visible, but he looks like half half a person. And he was just born that way. And this guy apparently became, like, the director's friend and was kind of accepted by everyone. And in fact, from young childhood, was not bullied and was the star of the show in his, like, class in his school. He was just very charismatic. And and so he he was a very different category from the other freaks. He was freak, fully freak, but different in that he had, like, some kind of insane level of social skill that was able to compensate for his freakishness. And so it occurs to me that maybe one thing that's going on when we meet someone who is different is, like, we're not sure we're gonna be able to navigate this interaction. We think something could go wrong. And if that person can convey to us, no. I've got, like, an insane amount of social skill, that can compensate for the fact that we are not gonna know how to navigate the interaction. And so we can be okay with it and even extra happy because now we get credit for our tolerance and hanging out with the half man. Right? So so you could see how once he got over that hump, he would go far over it. And maybe this is just gonna be a general thing that that there's something there's something that happens in social interactions that we are not fully consciously aware of and we are worried about how that thing is gonna go when the other person is weird. So there's something invisible. There's an invisible transaction that takes place.

Robin:

You and I watched Billy Jack once, I think.

Agnes:

Uh-huh.

Robin:

And it also has people who are different being socially excluded

Agnes:

Mhmm.

Robin:

If you recall. But in that story, the stereotype wasn't that people felt that the interaction would be awkward. It's that they just categorized these people and just dislike them. Yeah. There was just an immediate dislike of somebody given that you you know they have a certain category of background. And it didn't look at all like they thought, oh, I'd have trouble talking to you. That's why I don't like you. Right?

Agnes:

Right. So I have a theory about that. So let's say that when somebody is different from you, you have this reaction where you feel creeped out somehow by them, but you can't say why. You're not gonna like this about yourself. You're not gonna like this reaction. And now imagine how different it is if the person was evil. They were murderer or whatever. You'd be like, I don't wanna hang out with you. I don't wanna be around you. Like, well, given my great reason. Right? It's like me with the please don't stand close to me versus my eyes can't focus up this distance. And so when somebody is different, there's, like, a strong incentive to be like, actually, I hate them. There's something really objectionable about them. I have a really good reason for wanting to stay away from them. So you could sort of see how that could arise as a way of justifying to yourself this situation. Culturally, that's a change we've experienced is we made a rule you're just not allowed to do that. Before we made that rule, people just did that all the time. Someone's different, you hate them. Now you have a reason, I hate them. Right? We made we made nope. That's not a move you're allowed. So now they're different. I'm creeped out. I don't know what to say. Maybe I just hold them at a distance. I'm But

Robin:

I think we

Agnes:

said that about the the circus freaks that, like, I hate them.

Robin:

Right. So I but I think we should you have this theory that people are deciding they hate them because that will make sure they have an excuse for why the interaction will go badly. But it could also be they just have reasons to hate them. Right?

Agnes:

Oh, here. If they think right. Absolutely. So so I think that there's a different sort of case where it's like, well, your people have always been attacking my people and be like, well, my people your people are attacking my people. So absolutely. I I was imagining a case that was not like that. But there sir, there could be cases where there's just long standing antagonism between two groups. You still have to wonder, well, how did those antagonisms get started? Maybe it was like, it had to be that somebody noticed the difference and then people it, like, crystallized out of that. Right? Like, there was an aversion, and there was a bit of a fear, and then there was a kind of assumption that the interaction would go badly. And so then some interactions did go badly, and now they all hate each other.

Robin:

Right. Well, the example of, say, a prostitute comes to mind. Is that an do we understand why we might feel uncomfortable talking to a prostitute? Is is that an example of a weirdness or just a difference that we do understand? Because we have this key category, differences where we're not sure we understand why it's awkward and situations where we do understand why.

Agnes:

I think that's a good example of we don't understand why. Even if you're opposed to prostitution, even if you think prostitution is morally wrong, I think you might feel like, well, but that doesn't mean that I know with respect to a given prostitute, like, enough to judge them. And so it's more like you're just kinda creeped out by the fact that they're a prostitute and you don't know how to handle that in the interaction. And a test of this approach would be, like, somehow if you met a particular prostitute who was just extraordinarily socially skilled, if she's just able to turn every encounter into like witty banter, everything out of your mouth becomes witty banter in her presence or whatever, difference? Does that make you feel more comfortable interacting with a prostitute? And the answer is probably yes. And if so, like, probably you didn't have some big moral objection. Probably it was that you didn't think you'd be able to navigate the interaction. Interaction.

Robin:

Or I might fear offending them, or I might fear that if my wife saw me talking to them that she would take the wrong message. I mean, there could be a lot of other sort of fears you might have as opposed to just this conversation will be awkward.

Agnes:

Well, fearing offending them is that's part of the awkwardness. Right? It's that is an awkward thing Like, where you when you accidentally offend someone, that's an awkward moment in a conversation. And the point is that if somebody is different from you, you don't know how to avoid this.

Robin:

Right. So I'm realizing we're focused here on people who are weird in an interaction, which would be different than people who are weird where you don't have an interaction with them. You just might not be able to understand them as well or something. Like, there might be a main character of sub story, and you just can't relate to this character very well. And maybe that's why you don't wanna watch this story, but it's you're not gonna actually interact with them. So so is that weird, or is is that a different category?

Agnes:

I guess my reason for being interested in weirdness was this kind of social exclusion issue. And so

Robin:

But social exclusion in personal interactions. That's Yeah. Because there's lots of others.

Agnes:

Right. I mean, I don't I don't think you can socially exclude a fictional character. I think that if somebody speaks a language that you don't speak, and so and they don't speak your language, then you're gonna have a hard time understanding them. That is they're gonna be unintelligible to you. Right? But you don't find them weird. They're, like, they're unintelligible, but they're not weird. I mean, they could be, but they don't have to be. And so weirdness is not just about not understanding. It's specifically, I think, about the kind of non understanding that motivates you towards not being as willing to interact.

Robin:

So by your definition here, basically, somebody who is extremely unskilled socially in conversation is just weird regardless of their other features. Like, this weirdness concept is really a concept of social skill in the interaction or or the how well the interaction will go. So, you know, just although it has to be relative to a scenario. Like, a baby is gonna be very unskilled in the interaction, but it's not gonna go badly because the expectations are really low about the up all supposed to happen.

Agnes:

Yeah. So I think that here's the thing I've noticed. I've known some people who are very unskilled in social interactions, but they don't come off as weird because they're very shy.

Robin:

They just don't interact much.

Agnes:

Right. So I think that actually people who have lower social skills compensate for that by being less willing to interact and more restricting their interactions to a set of interaction partners that know them well enough that those people are not going to be creeped out by them.

Robin:

Right. I I just worry that this concept of weirdness doesn't track some other associations with weirdness concept because you could have some people who are just very un very predict you just know exactly what they are. You just know they're very unskilled. So for example, if people are assigned to take an acting class, and now everybody has to go on stage and do a, you know, a skit with some other partner. Now the shy people can't avoid that. And we're just gonna know that that's gonna if I'm their partner on this skit, it's just gonna go badly because they're just a really bad actor, and they're just really bad socially skilled. Are they weird?

Agnes:

So I think it's it it really is important, like, what other differences they have from you because there's a question, how difficult will the interaction be to navigate in the first place? So if someone in 1930 is interacting with Half Man, as he was known, I can't remember his actual name, The that interaction, even though forget about his level of social scale for the moment. They might be alarmed about the difficulty of that interaction. Right? And if half men just had an average level of social scale, just the level of the norm, might not be enough to ease that interaction. So my thought is that other differences, differences that don't have anything to do with social interaction, will come into play in terms of or they could anyway come into play in terms of the difficulty of the interaction. So here's an example. At the bus stop, you will choose to have a discussion about the weather. Right? You're not gonna choose to have necessarily discussion about politics or global warming or what is the concept of weird or whatever because you're not confident that you can navigate that harder interaction with this person. But the weather one is a really easy one to navigate.

Robin:

And so the Right. But if you talk about the politics instead, that doesn't make them weird all of a sudden. Right? Whether they're weird or not doesn't depend on which topic you talk about.

Agnes:

Agree. But so whether they're weird or not, what that does is it sets the level of difficulty of the interaction. So the fact that half man looks like half a person makes interactions with him more difficult for most people.

Robin:

Then we could say half man is a weird person who it happens to be easy to talk to. That would be a differ right. I thought you were gonna say, and therefore half man isn't weird because he was so skilled that we could talk to them well.

Agnes:

No. I I I I think that he is able to compensate for his weird. Okay. So I think that what makes you weird is the sort of difference that presents a social obstacle, but that could be compensated. Like, I think people still would have said he was weird, but they and they and they would have patted themselves on the back, but it's like he lived on the work to compensate.

Robin:

Okay. But you you said somebody speaks another language, that's also an obstacle, but it's not weird. So we need obstacles that are opaque in some key way.

Agnes:

Yes. That's so and that's why I raised that objection to myself because that's right. It's it's that there's some kind of obstacle to the social interaction, but you can't say what it is. And my point was, that's why I brought in, there's some invisible transaction that's happening in the social interaction. Something we can't see, that's the issue.

Robin:

So take the person who's who's just shy and socially awkward Yeah. In the acting class. You know, you're assigned to do a skit with them. You can predict this is hard. That is the obstacle here is that they are socially bad actor. Mhmm. And that's gonna make it hard for you to do a good skit with them. But this isn't weird because you understand why. Right? Why you understand what the obstacles like the language, so this makes that not weird?

Agnes:

What so someone just having poor social skills isn't quite enough to make them weird because you might like, let's say that you can say that. You could say, well, this person has poor social skills. That's why I don't wanna interact with them. Like, that's a reason you can give.

Robin:

Like, for the half man, why can't you say because he's a half man? Because why

Agnes:

is that relevant? Like, that is the poor social skills. You can sort of say, like, that's just to say I don't wanna interact with them because they're bad at interacting. That's a reason. It's like, why don't you wanna carry a couch with someone? Well, because they're very weak. Okay.

Robin:

Well, Say something.

Agnes:

Why you carry a couch with someone because they have blue hair seems irrelevant. But a lot of times, we feel weirded out by someone who has blue hair, and it's like, it doesn't seem relevant.

Robin:

Say we are introduced to somebody who was in The Middle East and captured and raped for six months, and now we know that's gonna be weird to talk to them. But is that do we we understand why, don't we? Those are I'm I'm probing the to what extent do we or don't we understand why in these cases? Like, it seems like there's many cases where somebody is just very different, but we sort of get why that would be awkward to talk to somebody who's different.

Agnes:

Okay? Not sure we do. Like so so I I I in that case like, I feel very unsure about that case. I mean, I don't think it's in a way, it it would be less of a problem case for me if I said we know why, because I don't necessarily think people would be inclined to call that person weird.

Robin:

They But you know the interaction would be difficult.

Agnes:

Right. But there there could be other reasons why an interaction would be difficult. That is the weirdness is is gonna be when it comes in a particular in my causal story, it's coming in a particular way, namely

Robin:

But but I think, like, victims can be weird, but we were reluctant to blame them for the weirdness because they are the victim.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

Right? So if if it was the rapist, for example. Right. That would also be

Agnes:

Like, they're evil, and so you have the evil reason. So that's that's fine. But yeah. But I mean, like, shouldn't we be reluctant to blame someone for, you know, having been born without the lower half of their body? Like, that's not anymore. And yet people were still weirded out, and then they probably would have been weirded out by the rape victim as well. Right? It's I think it's more that, like, nowadays, we have really strong norms against expressing that, that sentiment. But

Robin:

Well, here's another exam example.

Agnes:

Imagine. Let me ask you about that case. So I think that in the case of the person who was captured and raped, we are a little bit inclined to think that it is our defect that we don't know how to talk to such a person. Like, that in some sense, we can't handle their life, that it's, like, it's our problem. It's a yeah. It's a defect in us. And so we're, like, a bit ashamed. And when we call someone weird, it's saying that it's on their end. And so we're like, no. This person's so weird. I'm just defective.

Robin:

Right. So that seems like an extra condition now to add on your your characterization. It has to be something that has a social optical interaction to a smooth interaction, something that you can't quite fully understand, but also something you're willing to pin on them rather than you.

Agnes:

Yeah. That's true.

Robin:

Now I was thinking of the example of, say, an economist talking to a sociologist or even a philosopher that is like, initially, you and I had difficulty understanding each other, still do, of course, to to a substantial degree. Yeah. That's a difference that we it's an obstacle. Yeah. In some sense, we understand the abstract because, well, yeah, they have a whole different disciplinary background. But do we really understand it? Is this weird, or is this an understood difference?

Agnes:

I think it's weird, and I'm often put off by it, I get annoyed at you. I think you are less find it weird. So it's just okay between us.

Robin:

Well, but the fact that you get annoyed, that doesn't mean it's weird. Right? By our by your definition, annoyance isn't part of the definition.

Agnes:

No. I agree. It's not that that doesn't mean that it's weird. But I I guess I think here's the part that means that it's weird. It's like, I get annoyed, but I don't feel really justified in being annoyed. That is like, I'm it may which makes even more annoying.

Robin:

Okay. But that might not be because you don't understand it. Like, there could be ways in which you get annoyed and you don't feel justified in in it, but it's because of things you fully understand.

Agnes:

I don't think so because I think that it's like, there's a certain case where I would fully understand why I was annoyed, and it would be I would think, yeah, because I had a good reason to be because he did something genuinely bad. And so that's one way to fully understand it. And another way to fully understand it would be I got annoyed, but he didn't do anything genuinely bad, and so I had no reason to be annoyed, and then to not be annoyed because of that. Those are the two fully understood cases. And the case in the middle, which is not fully understood, is the case where I don't I can't see any reason, but I persist in being annoyed. And then I haven't fully understood it.

Robin:

But it's it's an intermediate language case, if you like. You said you understood why someone had spoke a different language, you'd have an obstacle, and that was not weird because you understood it. Isn't speaking different disciplinary languages the same kind of understanding of why the communication is hard?

Agnes:

I think it potentially is, but actually isn't. And I think maybe I am much less persuaded by the different inter different disciplinary languages approach to us. That is, you're an atypical economist, and I'm an atypical philosopher. And so I am not sure that us not understanding each other is, oh, economists have trouble understanding philosophers.

Robin:

But if it were, just counterfactually, maybe.

Agnes:

Yeah. If it were just that, I think I would be much it would feel much more comfortable to me.

Robin:

And therefore not weird Right. Because it was understandable.

Agnes:

Yeah. And and but also because, like, I feel like it would be sort of straightforwardly fixable. Like, when I'm reading an article in a psych journal and they use a word like monitoring or whatever in some weird way that's a psych way of using it that I didn't understand, And then I can, like, look up and be like, okay. We actually psych people mean by this word and translate, and then I'm okay. And I feel like there's no process like that with you. There's no translation. But

Robin:

when you have very different disciplinary backgrounds, often there's this large theoretical infrastructure, and you can't just look up a word to figure out what something means. You have to have seen this whole background. And that's part of why it's hard to speak across disciplines. If it was just about translating words, it wouldn't wouldn't be very hard.

Agnes:

That that that's fine as an abstract theoretical explanation, but, like, I do talk to a lot of people in disciplines that are different from mine, including a lot of economists, and it's the kind of misunderstanding is nothing like the kind that I have with you. And so it just I'm suspicious of the explanation.

Robin:

But I it's less about the explanation of our differences, which things counts weird. So, again, like Right.

Agnes:

But it's that's why it counts as weird because I don't think this explanation is right, and I don't know what the explanation is. And at a deeper level, I think it's like, at some level, what I'm saying is, wait, which one of us is the weird one? That's what I wanna know. Right? And it's like, is it you or is it me?

Robin:

Well, two different languages, you know. Alright. Alright. Look, I don't think that makes sense because if we're saying it's the uncertainty and opacity, then if you knew the truth, neither would be weird. Is the weirdness is a feature of this shared situation of the opacity. You know, once you learned all the particulars and the opacity went away, there would be no more weirdness. Right?

Agnes:

Right. Right. So maybe there's something So I

Robin:

can't be weird. It's only a relationship that's weird.

Agnes:

Right. But maybe right. I think that that's that that's right. But yeah. And yet, it still feels to me like it's very significant

Robin:

Yeah.

Agnes:

To that naming as weird that you're placing it on that person. That you're saying, well, you're the one that's weird, not me. Like

Robin:

You can say weird to me maybe, and maybe we often get in the habit of we're we're among other people for whom if it's weird to you, it would be weird to me as well so we can share the categorization.

Agnes:

Right. Maybe maybe weird essentially involve that feeling that you are part of a group, all of whom would find that person weird. So, like, with half married. Right. So that there's no indeterminacy over whether you're the weird one or not. And in our case, there is an indeterminacy.

Robin:

What what if I find it hard to talk to myself, and I don't know why? Am I weird?

Agnes:

I know Say,

Robin:

I read I read my writing from, well, for years ago, and I and I and I struggle understanding what I was saying. And so that's a way in which I'm not communicating with myself very effectively, and I'm not sure why.

Agnes:

Right. I mean, I have heard people express sort of rejecting or disdainful views about their past selves. Often, it's like embarrassment. So maybe you can just find your past self to be weird.

Robin:

And therefore, by anticipation of the same thing continuing, you can find your future self weird.

Agnes:

Well, if I

Robin:

You're gonna write stuff now, and you'll realize they might well look at this and not really understand it very well.

Agnes:

I think, though, that people often think, no. We're done now. I've now figured out how I'm gonna be, and my future self will understand me. I actually think often that's not crazy. That is Right. When we look back on our past self, we're often looking back at, like, our teenage self or whatever that really was pretty different. That is we don't keep changing our whole lives. We change the early parts.

Robin:

But I wanna push this a little farther because I feel like when people are closer to us, we are more ambitious in the kinds of things we cry to try to communicate, and we are often, like, using shorthand and, you know, indirect references and hoping and presuming they can pick up on it. Mhmm. And then we often have difficulty communicating with the people closest to us and not understanding exactly why, but I don't think we call that weird. So but it meets your definition, you see. If you have a spouse, say, you've known for twenty years, and you have trouble communicating with them now, and you don't understand exactly why you have trouble communicating with your spouse of twenty years, are they weird? I don't think that that's the use that's the way people would wanna use the term, but it meets your definition.

Agnes:

So I was conceding that we might need to add something to my definition. In particular, something about groups and who can who it can be pinned on. Right? So in the case of the spouse, it's like maybe one of you is weird, but you don't know which. I also think that in the case of one spouse, when you find you can't communicate with each other, like, as we saw in watching a lot of episodes of couples therapy, that, apart from a therapy context, that very quickly gets translated into ascriptions of ill intent. That is the couples are very sure that they're perfectly capable of communicating anything if anyone really wanted to, and so they think that they each sense of the other that they have some kind of ill intent.

Robin:

I think they might perform that more in therapy, but I do think most people who have trouble communicating to their spouse don't blame them as being evil. I I think people see that they grow apart and that, that's just a thing that happens to people.

Agnes:

I mean I think it's not a great example because I just think that maybe that it's it's it's one that doesn't resonate with me. Like, how many people would admit to having trouble communicating with their spouse or really think of it that way? But maybe, like, your parents, as a good better example. Like, when you grow up and then you're, you know, dealing with your adult parents and a

Robin:

lot That's good enough for my purposes here. You're not gonna call your parents weird or call your kids weird.

Agnes:

Communicate with their parents. And so I don't think so so if you my definition of weirdness did not involve this social difficulty. My definition was it's a situation where there's some difference, and that difference makes you reluctant to associate with the person, and you can't say why. And then I have a theory about the causation, but my theory isn't part of the definition. It's just the theory about how the causation works. And the theory is that this difference that they have somehow ends up making the interaction more difficult, the interaction with them. And I think with your parents, in many cases, what we have are a set of formulaic interactions that we really know how to have with our parents, and so it doesn't matter that much how well we can communicate with them. We can interact with them just fine.

Robin:

Well, you might say if somebody said, why didn't you talk about your sex life with your parents? You might say, it would be weird to do that.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

So now we've got weirdness as a feature of different kinds of topics you'd have with the person.

Agnes:

Right. And but I think it would be weird if that way, in the way the weirdness is weird when the when you don't wanna associate with the weird person, namely, it's an interaction with your parents that you don't feel comfortable managing. And if you had an extraordinary parent or you were an extraordinary child and you had some extraordinary level of skill, maybe you could. But most people would not feel that they could manage their that interaction with their parents, or many people, anyway, feel like.

Robin:

Right. So we can have situations where we see that the interaction would be awkward, but it isn't necessarily blamed on an unusual feature of them. Right? So weirdness is where you're blaming the the difficulty interaction on some unusual feature.

Agnes:

Well, now what we're seeing is we can actually generalize it. Right? Because we say it would be weird. You're not saying your parent is weird.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

But you're saying it would be weird. Right? Interaction. And there, it's but it's a similar situation, which is that there's a kind of barrier to the kind of interaction. It's just that when we call a person weird, we're saying, and it's on them.

Robin:

Right. So that that raises the question. When we find interaction weird, how often is it attributable to some stable feature of them as opposed to some other context feature of the topic Yeah. Or our state of mind?

Agnes:

Right. I mean, it's plausible to me that we often get this wrong and misattributed. That is we have we we have an interaction with someone that doesn't go well, especially first time interaction, and we think they're weird. And in fact, in the space of possible interactions, that was just a kind of outlier, and we could have been perfectly good friends with them and had perfectly ordinary interactions, but we just happened to have a bad one. So, yeah, I think that that

Robin:

So could we return I guess we're running out of time, briefly to the issue of our wanting to feel like we don't dislike weird? Because that's something we haven't been talking about so much here. We've been talking about what is weird, but, I mean, in in the past, people were much more okay with disliking weird.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

And now people seem less okay with disliking weird. But we might ask

Agnes:

point where people positively gravitate towards calling themselves weird because then you've put yourself in a protective class that the the person is not allowed to dislike you now that you're weird. So yeah.

Robin:

So why would we go so far as to pretend that we liked weird if, I mean, if everybody understood that this was what the concept was, the concept itself explains why you should be averse to weirdness, so we must have some different concept of weirdness maybe, that we're confused about what weirdness really is, and that's why we have this other So

Agnes:

attitude toward it here's so I I I don't it's a good question, and I don't really have a full answer, but here's my my thinking about the answer, is that so weirdness, there's an obstacle. There's a social obstacle. There's some people, and we have trouble integrating them into our community. And it's not just that they're left handed because if that's all it was, we could get the left handed scissors. It's this other problem. And I think that our old solution to this problem is something that I call the ethos of conformism. Namely, the weird people are supposed to get their acts together and just try to act more like the other people, and then we'd all be fine. Right? So we were telling the weird people, look. Just behave yourselves. Just be like

Robin:

It's your problem, not our problem.

Agnes:

Exactly. K. That was the old way of thinking. And I think we've shifted to the ethos of inclusion, which is to say, those weird people were fine. They were perfect just the way they were, and there was nothing they should have to do to change. And it's the rest of us normals who need to become more tolerant, more accepting, etcetera. We need to stop being bothered by it. And so we now all buy the ethos of acceptance, inclusion as well, ethos of inclusion. And so to be in when you live in the world of the ethos of inclusion, being a good person is being the kind of person who is performs that labor on your end rather than asking the rude person to perform the labor on their end.

Robin:

But for many other kinds of exclusion, we we we see that, in fact, it will be labor on our end. We admit that.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

That is we know that it'll be work. So for example, you know, disabled, like ramps or or, you know, stairs or railings. Right? We we have a bunch of rules about disabled access or for teachers.

Agnes:

Good. Good. Good. Right. So so So

Robin:

we we know that we're paying these extra costs

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

For companies.

Agnes:

So here's the thing that I think is really interesting. Let's compare two things. One is the fact that you need to build the ramp so that the disabled person can't in the building, and the other is you need to stop being freaked out by disabled people so that when they're in the building, you can interact with them. Right? So these are two different things. And I think that we're like, look. We get that the ramp costs money, and we like, that we can handle. That's like me saying you have to stand this distance because I can't see you. But the other one, we have this idea that it's just you just poof it out. Like, you just like, just poof wheel it. Just make yourself not be creeped out by, like, that's your that's a you problem. I yeah. I'm just gonna shame you into, like, pretending like you aren't creeped out by the disabled person. And but I think that that reflects sort of being taken in by the appearance of the fact that this thing, this problem with the interaction was invisible. And so you could be like, oh, was something there. But there was something there. It's not the same thing to say there's something there is not the same thing as saying it was a disabled person's fault or they'd done anything wrong. But it so I yeah. I think that in moving over to the ethos of inclusion, we have here's a way to think about it. Back when we had the ethos of conformism, what we were really saying to the weird people is pretend to be like the rest of us. Because, obviously, if they could have easily done it, they would already have given the social benefits. Right? Right. And so we're like, yeah. Act like it. And so if now that we have ethos of acceptance, really what we're saying is, look, pretend like you're not disturbed by disabled people. Like, put on a good app. Because there but there is this underlying thing that is not being dealt with, which is the invisible thing that was bothering everyone in the first place. So that's what I think we need to focus on. So your eye out what that is.

Robin:

Notice how this ethos of inclusion imposes much smaller demand on the socially skilled than on the socially unskilled. That is, if we take a socially skilled person and we say, pretend like this isn't a problem, they go, okay. I'll just make it not a problem because I have all this extra social resources to do so. And therefore, they will smoothly seem to be moral by our morality standards, and then the socially awkward people will seem to not just be awkward. They'll be immoral because they can't hide the fact that this is awkward.

Agnes:

Yes. Correct. And that's true. But I but but I but but I'm I'm I and I am sympathetic to the plight of the socially unskilled. But I think over and above the problem that there is a differential incidence of cost here on the skilled versus the unskilled, there's a problem that we're just asking everybody to pretend that that's not a good that's not a good request. Right? Right. Is there's something really interesting here about what is this invisible force that we're feeling but we don't really see a thing that's happening in the interaction that we don't really grasp? Sorry?

Robin:

And why can't we see it?

Agnes:

Yeah. Why can't we see it? Like, I'm that's the interesting bit. Is that there's some, like, there's some interaction dark matter that because if we understood what that was, we could maybe actually solve the problem with the weird person, the disabled person, etcetera, and figure out how to make the interaction just go well so that people don't have to start pretending it's going well.

Robin:

Well, I think we're about out of time, and I suspect we may return to this topic sometime in the next few years. But for now, I guess we'll have to leave it

Agnes:

there. K.

Robin:

Good night.

Agnes:

Bye.