One of the ways this whole discussion feels frame controlled is that it implies an axis that ranges from “doesn’t frame control” to “frame controls a lot,” with roles of dominance and submission or victimization being most salient.

My experience of social life is a series of frame contests, frame improv, frame play, frame ignoring, frame neglect, frame fights, frame pandering, frame curiosity. Frames can establish a hierarchy, and that’s an important function, but I feel like the subtle implication here is that people are just going around being unwitting victims of the dominant frames of dominant people - an implication of a lot of inauthenticity, of some problematic psychology that needs to be resisted.

What I think is problematic is that some people are able to make genuine threats to get their way, enforcing compliance with their values and language and preferences and norms without the other person feeing as thought they’ve consented. They intimidate others, and if they are seen by the group to have succeeded, it becomes common knowledge that they call the shots. Frame control is the result, but it’s straightforward intimidation and threats that were the original sin in this case. We see that with the guru as well as the weak friend.

A thing that occurs to me, as I started engaging with some comments here as well as on a FB thread about this:

Coercion/Abuse/Manipulation/Gaslighting* often feel traumatic and triggering, which makes talking about them hard.

One of the particular problems with manipulation is that it's deliberately hard to take about or find words to explain what's wrong about it. (if you could easily point to the manipulation, it wouldn't be very successful manipulation). Successful manipulators tailor their manipulations towards precisely the areas where their marks don't have the ability to see clearly or explain clearly what happened. 

A particularly bad-feeling thing, that I've experienced when I've felt gaslit, and that other people have experienced from me when they felt gaslit, is: "try to explain what happened and why you're upset, and people respond in a way that's questioning everything you say, nitpicking your phrasing", in way that's sort of demanding you be fair when you're still confused about what exactly went wrong. And it feels really invalidating and alienating at a time when you're maybe doubting your own sanity because you were literally manipulated into doubting your own sanity.

(and sometimes when this happens you are the crazy one, but the point here is that it's still a pretty awful feeling experience, and from inside it's not clear whether you're the crazy one)

I've had a really hard time figuring out how to respond to this when I'm the one asking the questions – often the person-who-feels-gaslit is making some kinda overreactive, unfair claims. I struggle sometimes with how to validate their general sense of self and respect that there is something real they are trying to work through, without necessarily agreeing with all of their frame in the process.

...

So... recapping, relevant here because a) this post is about frame control, and trying to draw better distinctions around it. b) the reason frame control is an important concept is largely because of how it relates to coercion, manipulation, abuse, etc. c) people discussing object level versions of that are likely to be triggered...

...and one of the things I'm doing with this post is trying to taboo some words, and make some distinctions, and potentially say "okay, this thing that happened maybe doesn't make sense to call frame control, maybe it makes sense to call it X, maybe it makes sense to call it Y".

And to a person who is in the middle of discussing something that was maybe traumatic that they haven't quite worked through, having someone argue about what-exactly-to-call-the-experiences-they had may end up feeling like exactly the sort of pedantic invalidation that can be extra bad feeling.

(I don't know that this has happened yet, but it seemed like it might happen suddenly)

So, uh, for now, just warning people to keep an eye out for this dynamic.

Meanwhile, I do want to say "even if I'm trying to do some original seeing on 'what even is frame control' and trying to figure out precise language for it", I still want to reaffirm that if something happened to you that felt really bad, like, I agree that something bad happened, whatever words turn out to be right for describing it and whatever the exact causation turns out to be.

Meanwhile the guru might be supplementing this with non-frame-control techniques. When they argue with you, they imply (maybe in a kind but firm voice, maybe with an undertone of social threat) that you're kinda stupid for disagreeing for them

This exact implication isn't frame control, but the common thing I've seen gurus do that is more subtle is assert why you disagree with them in a way that reinforces their frame. 

"Kinda stupid" is overly crude, and might be spotted and feel off even among those who believe in them, but implying you just don't "get" what they're saying because you're unenlightened or not ready for it is very effective at quieting dissent and maintaining their control.

In general this is why I dislike any attempts to assert with confidence what someone thinks or feels, as well as why. I may be one of the only therapists who hates psychoanalysis, but I maintain that it's almost always a bad thing to to anyone who isn't inviting it, and sometimes even then.

Another example:

You are taking a university course on classical mechanics. The lecturer talks about how objects move, without reference to the emotions of people around them or what spirits think. The answers to the questions are always "it's this simple equation", and the methods are always differential equations. The relevant systems studied are always of a small number of objects of known mass and size, with a small number of interactions. It is strongly implied that this is relevant to how the things around you move, even though you have not studied friction or non-rigid objects or air resistance. There are assignments and tests, and it is implied that you should be trying to get good scores on these.

I think this is an interesting example of deliberate / consensual frame impartation as well as implicitly smuggling in some frame. I also think it's worth noting that this is basically good and wholesome (altho one should be on the look-out for ways this frame can fail).

There's also some kind of thing about "when is it okay to just have a frame and not particularly try to make space for other frames, and when isn't it". I think "in your own blog post" is probably a place where it's basically fine to just have/present your own frame (ditto for, like, a song); in contrast to a conversation with another person where it's supposed to be a collaborative thing and instead one person kinda sets the frame. Though I guess there are sometimes blog posts that strike me as excessively stuck in one frame and/or exert pressure to fall in line with that frame - just, the threshold for that is maybe higher than for behavior in conversations.

A frame is a colloquial term for "what someone sees as important, what sort of questions they ask or what they're trying to get out of a conversation."

I'm not very active on LW and don't really know how people here use the term "frame", but this is not at all how I'd define it, personally. To me, an important part about a frame (as I understand and use the term) is that much of a frame is implicit and needs to be inferred. It's a set of assumptions baked into communication, either/both about the content of the conversation as well as about the terms of the conversation itself. These assumptions may include statements about what roles each person is to take, what certain words mean, what the purpose of the conversation is, what is to be taken for granted, what should be paid attention to, what should be ignored, and so on. Some of these assumptions may of course be made explicit in the conversation.

A lot of the time, people pick up on each others frames and do some sort of implict/explicit navigating to figure out what to do: negotiate, compromise, agree to disagree, ignore differences, fight about it, etc. Sometimes one person consciously or unconsciously submits completely to the other person's frame. Sometimes no negotiation seems to happen at all and people end up talking past each other.

Off the cuff, I'd define "frame control" as deceptive manipulation of another person's frame (or, some agreed-upon "shared frame") to some selfish end. Often this will include subtly introducing assumptions, deflecting attention, verbally saying one thing while nonverbally saying another, etc.

The “manipulative guru” example seems bad/confused. It seems like the culpably bad things about that scenario are only and precisely all of the things that aren’t “frame control”, i.e. all of this is clearly bad:

Meanwhile the guru might be supplementing this with non-frame-control techniques. When they argue with you, they imply (maybe in a kind but firm voice, maybe with an undertone of social threat) that you’re kinda stupid for disagreeing for them. It’s clear they might stop inviting you to their social scene, which had been providing a lot of meaning in your life. Maybe you’ve let other friendships atrophy, such that if you stopped getting invited you’d feel very alone.

The guru can be a literal cult leader, who systematically cut off your social ties.

But all of this is clearly neutral:

Whenever you notice something off about the guru’s arguments, they immediately have an answer.

This is exactly what you’d expect if someone has been seriously thinking about a topic (and discussing it with other intelligent people) for some time.

The answer doesn’t always quite feel right to you, but they speak confidently and reassuringly.

Should this “guru” pretend to be less confident than they are?

At first maybe you try to argue with them about it. But over time, a) you find yourself not bothering to argue with them

Whose fault is that, exactly…?

b) even when you do argue with them, they’re the ones choosing the terms of the argument.

Ditto.

If they think X is important, you find yourself focused on argue whether-or-not X is true, and ignoring all the different Ys and Zs that maybe you should have been thinking about.

Ditto.

And thus:

The guru presents their frame strongly, persistently, and manipulatively.

The adjective “manipulatively” here seems like it is not justified by the preceding description.

My objections to this example are similar to my objections to Aella’s post [LW(p) · GW(p)]—namely, that it “lumps together obviously outright abusive behaviors with normal, unproblematic things that normal people do every day, and then declares this heterogeneous lump to be A Bad Thing”.

I maintain my overall objections to the entire concept of “frame control”.

I would describe "frames" like this: Reality has a huge amount of detail. In order to communicate about reality, we need to choose some abstractions, which means that we focus on some things, and ignore other things. Frame is the choice of what to see and what not to see.

On one hand frames are inevitable -- you can never describe the full details of reality. On the other hand, sometimes they are abused, and sometimes they are not.

Abuse is when you choose the abstractions in such way that your goals become clearly visible, and the other person's goals become impossible to communicate. Like when you create a dilemma where the only options are "the other person does what I want" or "bad things happen", and you describe the world as if these are the only possible options; and you refuse to consider the option "the other person does what they want, and I calm down". Not just rejecting this option, but describing the world in a way where this option does not even exist.

Like the game of chicken, when the only options are "the other person swerves" or "we crash and both die". But instead of removing your steering wheel physically, you do it on the conversational level, by refusing to admit that there is such thing as your steering wheel. There is only the other person's steering wheel, and their choice between life and death.

Non-abusive use of frames is collaborative, where both partners can introduce abstractions, and see how they intersect. Where one player says "well, either you swerve, or not", but the other player say "but also, either you swerve, or not", and suddenly there are four options to explore.

*

Comparing with what you wrote, the option 3 is openly denying other person's frame; option 2 sounds like kinda accepting but quickly conveniently forgetting the other person's frame (hoping that the other person forgets it too), and option 4 is replacing the other person's frame with a strawman version. Three different strategies of refusing the other person's perspective; the same goal.

Aella wrote a post on frame control that was focused on a particular abusive version of it, where someone is systematically manipulating what you can think about on the order of days/months/years, in a way that has really harmful longterm effects. That's a very bad thing that can happen. But I think many aspects of frame control are subtler and basically fine in small doses. For comparison: lightly tapping someone on the shoulder is fine, and for many people some rough-and-tumble backslaps or roughhousing can be healthy and good, but violently assaulting someone is generally quite bad.

Related: In Defense of Punch Bug.

A heuristic I have is that identifying your frame and spelling it out as such, with cruxes, is epistemically cooperative and reduces frame control (although like everything else it can be misused). I think a lot of what happens with frame control is that Alice sets the terms of a conversation in ways that stifle Bob's ability to notice or negotiate on terms. 

Sometimes^[1] we find ourselves in the situation of wanting to prevent some bad thing X, which, however, is difficult to reliably identify/track in any given case, or hard to specify precisely, or impossible to detect until it happens (and so bad that we would like to prevent it and not merely punish it after the fact), or otherwise not amenable to simply making, and effectively enforcing, a clear rule against X. So, we instead ban/punish/discourage Y, which is a correlate of X, and is much easier to specify/identify/track; Y is not directly bad, but preventing Y (which we can do much more easily) lets us in effect prevent X.^[2]

The possibility of such a solution relies on the existence of a suitable Y, which is (a) sufficiently well correlated with X that the costs we incur to enforce the rule against Y are justified by the preventative effect on X, and (b) not itself so good or desirable that the cure (banning Y) is not worse than the disease (allowing X to exist/continue).

In this case we have, ostensibly, some manipulative, deceptive, and generally nefarious persons, who, if left unchecked, engage in various manipulations and deceptions and so on, causing harm to individuals and the whole community and its goals etc.

We wish to thwart these malefactors. But X (the harmful behaviors and their effects) is very hard to specify precisely or identify reliably. We naturally seek for some correlate Y, which is easier to specify and identify, and which we can ban, punish, and otherwise discourage, thus effectively preventing X.

But by construction, we are dealing with people who have every incentive not to be thwarted; and in particular, they have the incentive to adapt and modulate their behaviors so as to de-correlate them from any suitable (i.e., harmless-to-ban) Y. Indeed the ideal scenario (for the malefactors!) is one where the only features Y of observable behavior which are highly correlated with the bad behaviors X are those which cannot be banned without doing more harm than letting X continue—because they are inherently desirable, and/or exhibited by those upon whom the community bestows, and wishes to bestow, high status.

This, finally, is how we come to learn that, e.g., having answers to questions people ask about your ideas [LW(p) · GW(p)] is bad (or a bad sign or “red flag”); likewise being independent-minded and not seeking the approval of others [LW(p) · GW(p)]; etc.

Yet this outcome also happens to be beneficial to those who wish to make “status plays” by attacking deservedly^[3] high-status members of the community, resulting in a sort of “baptists and bootleggers coalition” between those who want to prevent X (and thus are inconvenienced by the desirability of Y) and those who want to reduce the desirability of Y (and thus its status-bestowing power).

Anyone opposing such measures^[4] finds himself in a bind: agreeing that any of the given Y is bad (or at least not all that great, perhaps not so valuable that it can’t be sacrificed) seems both intrinsically terrible (and likely to result in bad consequences for the community and its goals) and also (if he himself exhibits behaviors/qualities Y) likely to reduce his own status. But arguing for the desirability of Y can be tarred as obstruction of the efforts to prevent X—which in fact it is (see the last paragraph of the previous section!), though of course that’s hardly the intent…

I had a discussion with on Facebook about this post, where someone felt my examples seemed pointed a different definition of frame control than them. After some back-and-forth and some confusion on my part, it seemed like their conception of frame control was something more like 'someone is trying to control you, and they happen to be using frames to do it', whereas my conception here was more like 'someone is trying to control your frame.'

I'm not actually sure how different these turn out to be in practice. If someone is controlling your frame, they're also controlling what thoughts you can most easily think, which is also controlling your actions. But I think there's something of a difference between "someone's goal is to change you" vs "someone's goal is to have a comfortable frame for them". It's plausible to me that people can viscerally feel the difference, and the variants of frame control that feel particularly unsettling are the ones where it's palpable that they're optimizing to control you.

If it turns out we may need to talk separately about "controlling someone (with frames)" and "controlling someone's frame"... man, we sure do have a language collision problem ripe for subtle misunderstandings.

Frames are a great frame for Scott's flavor of charity. The basic difficulty in understanding strange points of view is adopting their natural frames, the rest is object level study performed from within those frames. The basic danger of being locked into a strange point of view is holding a frame strongly and not practicing other frames, which would otherwise reframe your usual object level study.

Fluency in reframing and in spinning up new frames seems to be a basic skill that can take on most of the heavy lifting from taking ideas seriously [LW · GW] and changing your mind [? · GW]. Just practice an idea inside its natural frame, as seriously as it affords, but at the end of the day adopt other frames, and occasionally look into the same idea from those other frames. Let new frames grow with object level study, and keep an eye out for their adoption where previously in your experience different frames used to reign, or still do. And so you don't get locked in, have a productive outlet for curiosity, and can change your worldview at the drop of a hat.

This person has a strong frame, and is somewhat insistent about it, but is not manipulative.

Can you explain what makes this a frame and not a belief? Is there a difference between beliefs and frames in your ontology?

Compare the two: 

(1) The difference between "bad frame control" and "good frame control" is that, in the latter, the frame matches physical reality and social reality.

Here, I use "social reality" in the sense of "insights about what types of actions or norms help people flourish."

(2) The difference between lying and telling the truth is that, when someone doesn't lie, what they say matches physical reality and social reality.

I feel like there's a sense in which (1) is true, but it's missing the point if someone thinks that this is the only difference. If you lie a lot around some subject matter, or if you manipulate someone with what aella calls frame control, there's always an amount of friction around the subject matter or around the frame that you introduce. This friction wouldn't be there if you're going with the truth. The original post points out how frame controllers try to hide that sort of friction or bring down your defenses against it. Those subtleties are what's bad about the bad kind of frame control. Noticing these subtleties is what it's all about.

Someone might object as follows: 

"Friction" can mean many things. If you try to push people to accomplish extraordinary feats with your weird-seeming startup, you have to motivate them and push against various types of "friction" – motivate your co-workers, make them okay with being seen as weird as long as your idea hasn't succeeded, etc.

I agree with all that. Good leaders have to craft motivating frames and inspire others with their vision. But I still feel like that's not the same thing as what happens in (the bad kind of) frame control. The word "control" is a clue about where the difference lies. It's hard to pin down the exact difference. Maybe it's something like this: 

Good leadership is about offering frames to your followers that create win-win situations (for them and for the world!) by appealing to virtues that they already endorse, deliberately drawing attention to all the places where there's friction from social conventions or inertia/laziness, but presenting a convincing vision about why it's worth it to push against that friction. 

By contrast, frame control (the bad, sneaky/coercive kind) is about guilting people into thinking it's their fault if they struggle because of the friction, or trying to not have them notice that there are alternative frames for them. 

I like the idea of tabooing "frame". Thanks for that.

//

First of all, in my life I mostly encounter:

• (1) -- "trying to push the lens of seeing everything as coordination problems or whatever" -- mostly I'm the person doing it. Eg. one of my preferred lenses right now is "society problems are determined by available level of technology and solved by inventing better technology". Think Scott's post https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biology-is-mutable/.
• (3) -- "friend who tells you about her frames and who isn't very good at listening" -- this is also me to an extent, I think.
• (7) -- "a pervasive standard of XYZ" -- I don't know but.. I guess? Probably?

I don't have experience with other bits of your list, so I won't comment on them.

//

Secondly, so far I haven't found "noticing frames" to be particularly useful for myself. I wrote Smuggled frames because at the time I wanted to be writing takes / insight porn / I don't know how to call it. I don't claim here that frames are important or unimportant in general; I just haven't noticed much of an impact on myself or others.

For what it's worth, I can come up with scenarios where noticing frames might be useful for somebody — but I don't want to be coming up with imaginary scenarios.

//

What I have found useful, on the other hand, is "knowing which frames I like".

I'll give two examples:

1. When I ask my dad a question and he goes in the "national mentality" direction (we Slavic people are XYZ, etc), I just explicitly say "alright, but I'm not interested in this line of thinking though, I'm looking for other possible explanations" and then we don't end up having an argument. It's really good for me because I feel like shit after arguments. Previously we would've ended up having a long argument and we very often actually did.
2. When I'm looking for books or posts to read, I ignore ones that use frames that I'm not interested in at the moment. For example, I don't want to read about contemporary art from the artists' point of view. I want to read about "contemporary art is an investment vehicle" (see my note on Art Incorporated, which you’ll need to Ctrl+F because I broke it) or maybe lucid reflection about "how it feels to be a contemporary artist", but none of the weird stuff that I can't relate to.

It's like.. you have the topic, you have the frame, and you have the style. Topic: art. Frame: incentives. Style: history+examples.

It turns out that I don't actually care about the topic (I think?), and care about the frame and the style. I'm happy with this approach.

We should also consider the proportions. Your examples of I, V and VII, make the vast, vast majority of cases, and in a way, VII exists due to the joint effort of I and V. 

I think this is non-trivial, and if we somehow managed to put numbers on it, it would turn out that the Is and the Vs collectively do much more harm to society and each other than all the Manipulative Cult Leader Masterminds combined. In fact, I doubt the Supervillain Frame Controllers would even exist if not for the fertile ground of Option Is as their lackeys and Option Vs as their prey.

(I apologize for being, or skirting too close to the edges of being, too political. I accept downvotes as the fair price and promise no begrudgement for it.)

I have an observation that I want more widely appreciated by low-contextualizers (who may be high or low in decoupling as well; they are independent axes): insisting that conversations happen purely in terms of the bet-resolvable portion of reality, without an omniscient being to help out as bet arbiter, can be frame control. 

Status quos contain self-validating reductions, and people looking to score Pragmatic Paternalist status points can frame predictable bet outcomes as vindication of complacence with arbitrary, unreasonably and bullyishly exercised, often violent, vastly intrinsic-value-sacrificial power, on the basis of the weirdness and demonstrably inconvenient political ambitiousness of fixing the situation.

They seem to think, out of entitlement to epistemic propriety [LW · GW], that there must be some amount of non-[philosophical-arguments]-based [LW · GW] evidence that should discourage a person from trying to resolve vastly objectively evil situations that neither the laws of physics, nor any other [human-will]-independent laws of nature, require or forbid. They are mistaken.

If that sounds too much like an argument for communism, get over it; I love free markets and making Warren Buffett the Chairman of America is no priority of mine.

If it sounds too much like an argument for denying biological realities, get over it; I'm not asking for total equality, I'm just asking for moral competence on behalf of institutions and individuals with respect to biological realities, and I detest censorship of all the typical victims, though I make exception for genuine infohazards.

If you think my standards are too high for humanity, were Benjamin Lay's also too high? I think his efforts paid off even if our world is still not perfect; I would like to have a comparable effect, were I not occupied with learning statistics so that I can help align AI for this guilty species.

If you think factory farmed animals have things worse than children... Yes. But I am alienated by EA's relative quietude; you may not see it this way, but so-called lip service is an invitation for privately conducted accountability negotiation, and I value that immensely as a foundation for change.