Affordance Widths

Okay. There’s a social interaction concept that I’ve tried to convey multiple times in multiple conversations, so I’m going to just go ahead and make a graph.

I’m calling this concept “Affordance Widths”.

Let’s say there’s some behavior {B} that people can do more of, or less of. And everyone agrees that if you don’t do enough of the behavior, bad thing {X} happens; but if you do too much of the behavior, bad thing {Y} happens.

Now, let’s say we have five different people: Adam, Bob, Charles, David, and Edgar. Each of them can do more or less {B}. And once they do too little, {X} happens. But once they do too much, {Y} happens. But where {X} and {Y} starts happening is a little fuzzy, and is different for each of them. Let’s say we can magically graph it, and we get something like this:

Now, let’s look at these five men’s experiences.

Adam doesn’t understand what the big deal about {B} is. He feels like this is a behavior that people can generally choose how much they do, and yeah if they don’t do the *bare minimum* shit goes all dumb, and if they do a *ridiculous* amount then shit goes dumb a different way, but otherwise do what you want, you know?

Bob understands that {B} can be an important behavior, and that there’s a minimum acceptable level of {B} that you need to do to not suffer {X}, and a maximum amount you can get away with before you suffer {Y}. And Bob feels like {X} is probably more important a deal than {Y} is. But generally, he and Adam are going to agree quite a bit about what’s an appropriate amount of {B}ing for people to do. (Bob’s heuristic about how much {B} to do is the thin cyan line.)

Charles isn’t so lucky, by comparison. He’s got a *very* narrow band between {X} and {Y}, and he has to constantly monitor his behavior to not fall into either of them. He probably has to deal with {X} and {Y} happening a lot. If he’s lucky, he does less {B} than average; if he’s not so lucky, then he tries to copy Bob’s strategy and winds up getting smacked with {Y} way more often than Bob does.

Poor David’s in a situation called a “double bind”. There is NO POSSIBLE AMOUNT of {B} he can do to prevent both {X} and {Y} from happening; he simply has to choose his poison. If he tries Bob’s strategy, he’ll get hit hard with {X} *AND* {Y}, simultaneously, and probably be pretty pissed about it. On the other hand, if he runs into Charles, and Charles has his shit figured out, then Charles might tell him to tack into a spot where David only has to deal with {X}. Bob and Adam are going to be utterly useless to David, and are going to give advice that keeps him right in the ugly overlap zone.

Then there’s Edgar. Edgar’s fucked. There is *NO AMOUNT* of behavior that Edgar can dial into, where he isn’t getting hit HARD by {X} *and* {Y}. There’s places way out on the extreme - places where most people are getting slammed hard by {X} or slammed hard by {Y} - where Edgar notices a slight decrease in the contra failure mode. So Edgar probably spends most of his time on the edges, either doing all-B or no-B, and people probably tell him to stop being so black-and-white about B and find a good middle spot like everyone else. Edgar probably wants to punch those people, starting with Adam.

In any real situation, the affordance width is probably determined by things independent of X, Y, and B. Telling Bob to do a little more {B} than Adam, and Charles to do a little less {B} than Adam or Bob, is great advice. But David and Edgar need different advice - they need advice one meta-level up, about how to widen their affordance width between {X} and {Y} so that *some* amount of {B} will be allowed at all.

In most of the situations where this is most salient to me, {B} is a social behavior, and {X} and {Y} are punishments that people mete out to people who do not conform to correct {B}-ness. A lot of the affordance width that Adam and Bob have would probably be identified as ‘halo effects’.

For example, let’s say {B} is assertiveness in a job interview. Let’s say {X} represents coming across as socially weak, while {Y} represents coming across as arrogant. Adam probably has a lot going for him - height, age, socioeconomic background, etc. - that make him just plain *likeable*, so he can be way more assertive than Charles and seem like a go-getter, *or* seem way less assertive than Charles and seem like a good team player. Whereas David was probably born the wrong skin color and god-knows-what-else, and Edgar probably has some kind of Autism-spectrum disorder that makes *any* amount of assertiveness seem dangerous, and *any* amount of non-assertiveness seem pathetic.

There’s plenty of other values for {B}, {X} and {Y} that I could have picked; filling them in is left as an exercise for the reader.

Does this make sense to people?

Everybody want to do me a personal solid? Yeah? Good.

Add on some example behaviors that fit this. They don’t have to be gendered or something like that. They can be very specific, they can be broad. Just things people can do an amount of and that bad things happen if they do too much or too little of them.

I’ll start with eating. You can eat too much food (short term sickness, long term obesity) or too little (starvation).

This applies nicely to gendered vs. cross-gendered behaviours with punishments of negative stereotyping on either end.

Adam, as an attractive heterosexual man can appear as butch or as femme as he wants within pretty large limits and people are just going to compliment him on it. 

Bob, a less-than attractive heterosexual man can act more masculine without too much fear of reprisal but can’t generally slip into more effeminate behaviours without negative comments about his presumed sexuality. Charles, as a gay man, needs to ensure that he confirms to gendered expectations as much as possible to avoid derisive stereotyping for effeminate behaviours.

David, as a trans man, is pretty much screwed if he acts the least bit feminine, but can occasionally avoid accusations of transitioning poorly if he loads up on balls out machismo.

Emily, being a trans woman, gets screwed over in that she can’t act effeminate without being accused of re-enforcing sexism and can’t act masculine without getting accused of not-being-trans-enough and pretty much gets assaulted with both negative outcomes simultaneously anyway.

Emily feels sick when she sees Adam dance around in lingerie she fears even buying, David considers punching Bob in the face for always being on his case about going to the gym too much.

Thanks for the addition! This is a really insightful take on this. I’m glad to see people contributing as I think the original post was missing at least one good example. It’s also enlightening to see just how well this can apply to such a wide array of social behaviors and expectations.

HOT SHIT THIS IS A GREAT MODEL FOR A THING THAT I HADN’T THOUGHT MUCH ABOUT BUT IS REAL AND IMPORTANT.

Also… The OP made a graph. Bless you, OP. 😍

I’ve thought about exercise like this for a long time. X is when you aren’t really doing anything, like, heart rate isn’t up, muscles aren’t trying that hard - it’s not bad, but it’s not actually helpful in any way. Y is when you do too much, end up aching and exhausted in a bad way, maybe feel like barfing or just lying down and not moving for a week. Or worse. The goal zone is where it feels good - the pleasant burn, the breath lost but catchable, the actual building of muscle and slimming of fat and etc. Endorphins.

Most people are in the Adam or Beth group. I, with a muscle tissue disorder and one partially collapsed lung, am a Charlie. I’m a fan of powerwalking and yoga. And I know people who are Denise or Elton, with chronic pain and no or very minimal win conditions.

Exercise was the first thing I thought of when reading this, too. Also, there’s Fritz and Gus.

Fritz’s graph changes from day to day, too fast for them to make plans that will help them stay between X and Y, plus other people are going to keep saying “why can’t you do that today? you managed it fine yesterday.”

And Gus’s measuring, graph-making, and/or graph-reading apparatus is broken, so they can’t monitor what’s happening with their body (or with their social reception, if this is about gender presentation not exercise) and have to rely on other people for input on how much of the thing they should be doing. Which is a problem if the person advising them is Adam, and Gus’s graph (if they had one) is more like Charles’.

Not your fault at all!! I was shadowbanned during that time period (without realizing it) and only got it resolved a few days ago -- hence it only showing up then. There was literally nothing you could have done there.

Thank you! I love the fish.

for the last 1,200 days someone has left a comment on every single manyatruenerd video, asking him to play zoo tycoon. each comment has kept a tally of how many days it's been since they started asking, steadily ticking up and up and up. it's been over three years of polite but incredibly persistent bothering

congratulations to this one very dedicated person

Imagining the sheer and utter bliss they felt typing this out

Out of curiosity and also guilt over my own coffee intake. I wanna ask:

Now I'm not talking about when you're studying and so you drink 3x the usual amount or something like that. This isn't me asking what your record is. I'm talking about the most basic, average day, how many coffees you drink?

Really crazy seeing a bunch of hate for nonbinary people, like god damn you're okay with trans people but not nonbinary people? Woah geez buster sorry I didn't realize it was wrong of me to want to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Sorry buddy I didn't realize I had to cater my existence to what you feel comfortable with, really wont make that mistake again. Like god damn do you just hate people? Do you- do you hate it when people feel comfortable around you?

Like there are some people really acting like they/them can't be used in a singular context, goodness gracious.

as an aroace, im particularly dangerous, because i wont fuck or marry. i only know how to kill.

#murderbot on the opening of asr (via @grammarpedant)

Depression is such an effective tranquilizer that it creates a great opportunity for plot twists in your real life. I have a pretty consistent opinion of myself which is "low" and "never ending guilt and shame for reasons I don't understand."

Recently received feedback from two different editing clients that started with "Please pass along to Jacquelynn that she is phenomenal at her job" and "I was blown away by the evaluation I received."

You always hear about how depression (and anxiety) lies to you and distorts reality, but there is logically knowing that and then there is like, physical proof of it and you are suddenly Neo in the Matrix jumping out of the fucked up little tube machine.

Look, medication and therapy are essential, but I think we shouldn't underestimate this form of treatment

(Source)

new ask game send me a 🌻 and ill just tell you whatever the fuck i want

Nilgai Boselaphus tragocamelus

Observed by robert_thibault, CC BY-NC

Casually asks ‘who domesticated grain in your fantasy world?’ but while ripping her shirt off with a WWE stage and a roaring crowd just behind and slightly to the left. 

So the thing about this is that, the grain is a metaphor*. Like, the grain is very much a metaphor. I don’t need a fantasy author to look me in the eye and say it was a guy named Tim. But the everything around food usually forms an enormous part of a society’s structure and culture. What are your fantasy world/kingdom/culture’s food sources? What internal myths do they have around the production of food? Customs? How do people share meals? What’s the etiquette? What are the differences between regions, ethnic groups, or social classes? Who spends their time making meals, and how much time is it? How many people can the food sources you create support? If someone breaks bread with a stranger, is that stranger now their friend? Who disagrees? What does your protagonist think? Why does your protagonist think?

An author doesn’t have to info dump all of this in the first chapter. But there’s a helluva difference between a small agrarian village one bad harvest away from starvation, and Picard ordering ‘Earl Gray, Hot’. (Although the local blacksmith and the annoyed personnel in Engineering being asked to fix another replicator after an irate captain kicked it may share a certain common spirit lol.)

And again, the grain is a metaphor. Except for when you very much should figure out the design of your fictional country. I find designing societies from their food source up interesting. Others won’t. But there should be something that a writer finds interesting about their fantasy that they want to explore. Find your grain.

Terry Pratchett read an interesting fact about clowns and eggs once, and decided to make that everyone’s problem. He famously read constantly, always looking for interesting things to put in his books and in some cases build his plots around. Your writing would benefit from the same mentality. The reader doesn’t need an entire encyclopedia thrown at them. But you should put thought into your setting and how it interacts with your culture, history, and society. If you don’t, or even worse if you aren’t sure how all of these interact, then it doesn’t matter how interesting you make your characters or plot. Readers will identify situations in your story where the characters and plot are in conflict with the setting you didn’t pay attention to. 

It’s not that you need to fill out a hundred page questionnaire on your worldbuilding. It’s that your intellectual curiosity and eagerness to explore how things work will enrich your story for the reader. GRRM is absurdly good at the things he’s good at, a list that includes great character arcs, deftly controlling the reader’s sympathy, and intricate plots. His worldbuilding though is abysmal.** In contrast, elements of Anne Mccaffrey’s writing didn’t age well. Her first published book looks like a debut novel, her prose and characterization could have been improved on, and the pacing has issues. But she thought about how her world worked in ways that GRRM simply never bothered to. The effort she put into designing a society that would incorporate dragons into it’s structure, and the consideration she put into the needs of these dragons and their riders and how those would put stress on the social and political systems, is phenomenal. I do genuinely enjoy GRRM’s books lol. But if you wanted to read a novel that had dragons as a feature then Anne Mccaffrey’s Dragonflight is what I’ll recommend every time. Her characters actively use the clues given in how their society is designed to figure out their response to the overall plot, in a way that’s so much more rewarding then having GRRM pencil in years-long winter and then just ignore the implications. 

Absolutely get invested in your characters and your plot! The reader will enjoy them all the more for the passion you bring. But your writing will always benefit from your curiosity in how the world you design works, and in how the characters and plot are actively informed by the setting. That’s the larger point. Cultivate that curiosity and willingness to explore and experiment, because that’s what will keep your plot, characters and setting from coming into conflict with each other. 

*No it’s not, figure this out lol. Get Tim’s number. Has he figured out grain can be fermented yet. Is he free on Saturday. 

**For more, the blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is fantastic reading! 

Did you know the Inca never invented the wheel?

Okay, that’s not entirely true. They did have wheeled toys for their children, like tiny little oxen you could roll along the floor. But they never invented the wheel as a means of transport.

You might think this is odd. The Inca were a very advanced people with cities, elaborate art, temples, and a “writing” system that actually involved using knotted cords and has changed our entire definition of “recorded language.”

But now I’m gonna show you something, and ask…

Does it make a little more sense now why they never bothered with the wheel?

If you were writing a book about people who lived in steep, inhospitable mountains, would it have occurred to you that “a series of terraces, via which things can be manually lowered or raised” would make more sense than wheels?

Who invented your grain?

this post is a lot of pressure but also useful

Here’s another example.

The Romans, technically, had steam power, in the form of a little gadget called the aeliopile. It was basically a party trick to demonstrate the laws of physics, for them– as far as I know, no one made a serious effort to use it to power locomotion.

This was partly because The Tech Just Wasn’t There Yet ™– even in the early days of steam power, boilers tended to explode, because it takes a huge amount of metalworking knowhow to make a boiler that can hold enough steam for thousands of tons of metal.

But it was also partly because… it wasn’t necessary. During the Pax Romana, when communication between different parts of the empire was easiest and collaboration between scientists would be most possible, the best way to send things from point A to point B was by ship. Sailing was, by the standard of the day, easy, fast, and safe. Sure, sometimes you’d sail into a storm– but there were no pirates, because the Roman navy took care of them.

Steam power only made sense as a technology you’d even want in an age where the ocean was too dangerous to travel. No one ships goods overland, pre-steam, if they can avoid it– it’s a lot of danger and effort for not much benefit. But in the early 1800s, when the steam engine was invented? The oceans weren’t safe to travel anymore, and hadn’t been for centuries. Piracy was rampant, both from independent bandits and agents of various European countries. Wars were constantly breaking out between great naval powers. It would be easier, and safer, to transport goods overland, if there was a good way to do it.

So, who didn’t invent your wheel? Who didn’t invent your steam engine? Why didn’t they do it?

The other reason that the Romans didn’t turn steam engines to practical uses is that the other major early use for steam engines is in mining: engines to power pumps to get water out of mines, engines to power the lifts to lift ore (and miners) out of the mines, engines to haul ore from the mine to the nearest port. And the Romans didn’t need that because they were a slave state, that is, a civilization where a very high percentage of the population is enslaved and it is the foundation of the economy. Labor was cheap. The kind of metallurgical work needed to take the proto-engines and turn them into something reliable was expensive. Much cheaper to simply throw a lot of slaves at the problem and work them to death. This is generally the case: when labor is cheap (either through mass enslavement or strict caste/class barriers that keeps low-caste people desperately poor), technology stagnates. The people who would most benefit from labor-saving devices have neither the time nor the resources to develop them, and the people with the time and resources have no motivation because exploiting other humans is cheaper and easier. How does your economy and your class relations affect the technology?

The other reason the Romans didn’t invent steam powered technology is a steam engine is literally not useful for any practical purpose on any fuel they were sourcing at the time. The input/output ratio does not work out in favor. You’re just expending more slave labor to keep the water boiling than you gain as force from the engine.

When the English got into steam power they had already developed a coal mining industry. And like beatrice says, one of the first things they did with the steam engine was pump water out of mines.

One of the subsequent was steam boats. Boat that goes regardless of the wind, without needing to be in range of an unobstructed mule-path with mules to drag it along like the old canal barges, and so forth.

Game-changer, but still following the existing concept of ‘boat’ and using mostly the existing navigational matrix of waterways and ports.

Trains are pretty far down the line! No one is going to jump directly from steam technology to a train system unless someone else did it first and laid out the conceptual track. Trains are very much something that are only obvious in retrospect.

No matter how Great and Powerful, things aren’t convenient unless the underlying conditions to make them useful exist before they’re adopted. Otherwise there is no extant need they can realistically fill.

A lot of states trying to modernize in the 20th century fucked themselves up real bad (or were fucked up by their colonizers but the number of self-owns is tragically high) by either trying to forcibly apply Great Modern Solutions to entirely the wrong problems, or to apply them without having done the underlying infrastructure development that would make them of any material use to anybody.

This kind of thing applies less to grain domestication as such because we a writers mostly have a decent intuitive grasp of what grain crops need and what they’re good for, but otoh it is as has been demonstrated very easy to create a ‘medieval’ city with no apparent access to the grain markets necessary to not instantly starve.

So, as with the wheel: what infrastructure does this worldbuilding element need to actually work the way you want it to, and why was that available?

It DOES apply to grain domestication! White people tend to assume grain production is necessary in a lot of contexts it REALLY isn’t.

-

When colonizing the Americas, many colonizers forced the indigenous peoples to adopt farming. Or, if they HAD farming, to switch to European style farming. And it turns out that European farming requires infrastructure that the cultures involved did NOT have!

In Canada, people were forced to settle and farm. They lost access to histories and stories that were tied to physical locations. They lost access to the variety of goods they were formerly able to access through migration. They were no longer self-reliant when it came to clothing or housing, because those resources were intertwined with food gathering.

In Paraguay, people were forced to switch from low-effort crops to high effort ones. The Guaraní had periods of rest and relaxation, balanced with periods of incredibly high group effort. But, when rest periods were lost, people stopped being willing to work together in the same ways. People got HUNGRIER, because the food they grew before was more nutritious. And dietary diversity was lost, because they had designed their society around moving every 5 years, and gathering changing resources from the former settlements as the jungle recovered.

-

Is your setting actually a good fit for grain?

If they live in a jungle, it might be better to have limited agriculture. Food is LITERALLY growing on trees, all around them, so they probably only want to grow (at most) a few staple crops that don’t take up a lot of space.

If they live in an area with a short growing season and low population density, grains are probably too much work for not enough reward. Herding or hunting is much more efficient.

In both these cases, they may still MANAGE the areas they are in. Planting berries on the sides of rivers. Pulling up competing plants so the fruit trees flourish. Dropping nuts in spots with the right light level to maximize their chance of growth.

Respones to this post:

aghhhhhhh. okay I will persist

I may be aroace but even I can admit when someone is hot.

Some of ya’ll straight people really refusing to admit someone of the same gender is hot. If an aroace person can say it so can you buddy.

Poetry? More like CROWETRY!

Read Crow Time // Read Namesake // Patreon // Store

Crow Time Plush is now up for sale!

anyone order this thing?

@serialunaliver which IKEA department can you get one of these from, please advise

OH MY GOD??? THANK YOU FHIS IS SO CUTE