Scott wrote a post: Why Is It Hard To Acknowledge Preferences?. He is musing about people who ignore others' preferences, e.g. his family:
Growing up with my family, it was weird how often I would express a preference, and they would - compassionately, and as far as I know without a trace of malice - say "No it isn't," and keep doing the opposite.
And about people who talk to introverts even when asked not to talk to them:
A little later, my [introverted friend] arrived [to our B&B]. From my room, I could hear [the hosts] start welcoming her, ask her how her flight had been, start trying to get to know her - until I ran out and rescued her, for which she reports gratitude. For the rest of our stay, they continued to talk both of our ears off, with my friend growing increasingly annoyed and uncomfortable.
Then he gives an example of himself ignoring others' preferences, specifically — trying to talk a patient out of an abusive relationship:
I had a patient who dated an extremely unstable and abusive partner. Every time he described what was going on, I asked him whether he was sure he wanted to stay in the relationship. He always said yes. I did a lot of therapy with him that might be uncharitably described as "help him understand himself well enough to realize that he actually hates her and wants to leave the relationship after all". He did not. [...] If I somehow had the power to make him break up with her, would I use it? Maybe.
He explains it by saying "well, 'guy is happy in an abusive relationship' feels more questionable than 'friend is an introvert'".
The second half of the post is a search for explanations. Maybe it's "pressure for social conformity". Maybe it's "about cognitive flexibility". Priors. Calibrating updates. Etc.
I have a different explanation.
My explanation is: dude, you wouldn't have any idea how to interact with that therapy patient any other way. You know how to feel when somebody is in an abusive relationship. You know how to play the role of a therapist who sees something that the patient doesn't, so you play this role.
This state is great. It's like a chess opening that you know how to play. Don't think, just do the moves. You only have to think when the opponent does something unexpected, and in many cases this unexpected thing will actually be a blunder and you'll be like "ha, I know what to do now".
I already talked about this in Solving puzzles and making decisions. Whatever lets you make decisions is good, even if they are wrong decisions. Anything that lets me know how I will spend my next hour. If I am a B&B host and I have a routine around greeting guests and talking to them and going to sleep afterwards, there's no way I am going to respect your introversion preference unless I also know what to do (and how to feel!) if you refuse the interaction.
I want to talk about the "how to feel" part some more.
Let's say somebody cuts in a queue in front of me. The opening begins with a bold move. There are two options for a response: say something, or say nothing.
What happens if I say something? I don't know. I never said anything in a situation like this. I literally don't know what would happen. On the other hand, if I say nothing, that's an opening I know how to play. Keep standing in the queue ⟶ go home afterwards ⟶ recount the incident a few times ⟶ pity myself ⟶ get annoyed at myself for pitying myself ⟶ think about complaining to a friend ⟶ finally feel distaste at the imaginary scene of complaining to the friend ⟶ BOOM, the incident is resolved. It's a long opening, but I know how to play it. Every emotional move has a countermove.
Why do these scripts ever change? Maybe somebody says "I am tired of your complaints". Maybe you start noticing that you always do the same thing, and now there's an extra emotional move (feeling bad about repetition) that you have to find a countermove for. Maybe the stakes are suddenly higher than usual. Maybe you've seen somebody else handle the same situation differently, and now you have a new script that you can follow.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy has two main objectives here:
I will never get tired of quoting Apfelbaum (just kidding, I am already tired of quoting him):
[...] what the [cognitive therapist] is doing is strengthening our arguments against negative thoughts—arguing against them better than patients can.
You have the automatic or negative thought, “I’m inadequate,” and then you have the equally automatic refuting thought, “But look how adequate I was about parking the car, or getting all my books lined up in a row, or getting this item on sale, or look at this license on my wall.” Those refutations only work momentarily; we do a kind of broken-field running.
This is the value of CBT. "I feel inadequate" — duh, you are inadequate. You don't have experience in social situations, or you aren't particularly good at your job, or maybe you don't have any friends, or any family, or any land. If you feel powerless all the time, maybe that's because you are actually powerless. CBT helps with that only insofar as making your scripts more efficient will free up some time and emotional resources to actually improve your life. More efficient scripts are a 5% improvement, and every 5% improvement counts.
This leads to a general program of changing your/others' behavior: steal others' scripts, and provide scripts for others to follow. I already talked about this a bit in the prophet thread.
And for the people who are baffled by others' behavior: in general, the phrase "he/she doesn't know any better" should be taken literally. It's not that somebody isn't aware that what they do is stupid, it's that they don't have any other moves that they could successfully execute. Example: "people die from drugs", blah blah. Well, what's harder — refusing drugs, or being dead? Refusing drugs, of course. Being dead is ridiculously easy, you don't even have to do anything. It's a no-brainer.