I very much agree that politiking is a way to be more effective in any situation involving another person, and I think this post is a pretty nice defence of “Why should I bother to be polite?”. I’ve several suggestions, and I’ve decided to try to explicitly bear in mind your bulleted advice rather than rely on my—usually pretty good—sense of what is polite.
I think you could extend the class of people of who could use this advice to be not just those who aren’t interested in politeness, but those who are and aren’t good at it but assume that they are. I’ve certainly met a few nice people who simply aren’t aware that they’re rude—for example, the young man who accidentally pushed in line at a bar whilst making a sarcastic comment relevant to the previous conversation, and had no idea until we told him how close he’d been to getting punched by a man that he never even looked at. They are unlikely to read this post in its current form, since they will assume they already know how to be polite. How would you feel about restating this advice in a “humorous angry rant” or something similar?
I think I disagree with some of your examples, but in such a way that it doesn’t affect the main point of your post. The first example—“wizened”—I had just skipped over when I first saw it, since it wasn’t really relevant to the post. I further assumed that the poster wouldn’t particularly mind this, and hadn’t intended eir post to have a high signal/noise ratio. I get the sense that this website favours a very high signal/noise ratio even at the expense of niceties—for example, the very first line of this comment. This might make some people resistant to adding what they might view as “noise”—things like saying “Thanks” when they might consider “Thanks” to be implicit, given that they’re bothering to comment at all.
The second post I think they already had applied something of what you’re saying. If I take this
“FWIW, I think posts like this are more valuable the more they include real-world examples; it’s kind of odd to read a post which says I had theory A of the world but now I hold theory B, without reading about the actual observations.”
and rephrase it as a knee-jerk thought
“Why has this been posted without observations? It’s idiotic to put up your beliefs without giving us a good reason to go along with them.”
then we can ask if this knee-jerk example is a realistic example of something one might say. I think it is; I think that Poster #2 was genuinely being polite. Perhaps there’s some different cultural context in the background? I read “odd” as being quite a gentle word to use to criticise someone.
(I’ve now thought of some examples for your previous post re threats; I’ll post them soon. Thanks for reminding me to do so!)
“It’s kind of odd to read a post without ” is more polite (in the standard mode) than “You should add !”
That’s an interesting evaluation, actually. In many (non-LW!) contexts, I might interpret the first as being a sort of passive-aggressive sniping, a criticism that is intended to make the author feel foolish about his obvious omission, whereas at least the second lays it all on the table.
In my opinion, for maximum politeness, you could say the same thing (“please add examples of observations”) without forming it as a criticism of anything except your own lack of imagination:
“I’m interested in your description of how you moved from theory A to theory B, but I found myself curious about what specific observations helped change your mind. Were there any individually compelling things that prompted your conversion?”
I agree with you (as I said initially) that the first is far from optimal, and in particular I agree with you that it has insulting overtones.
My intention was not to offer a maximally polite rephrasing (which depends on one’s audience anyway), but to offer some points that suggest an improvement slope. Clearly, though, I failed to do that unambiguously.
Your version is, I agree, a further improvement. In particular, it stops being a criticism of the original post at all, and becomes instead an invitation to continued conversation.
Unrelatedly: the only context I can think of where I’d interpret the bare imperative as more polite is one among friends close enough to play the “we’re close enough friends that I can be rude to you” metagame.
Or maybe one in which I’m not sure the speaker is from my culture at all (I have Chinese coworkers who often make bare imperative comments like this, for example, and I’ve learned to assume that they are being polite by their own social norms).
Strong agree and upvote, with some caveats.
I very much agree that politiking is a way to be more effective in any situation involving another person, and I think this post is a pretty nice defence of “Why should I bother to be polite?”. I’ve several suggestions, and I’ve decided to try to explicitly bear in mind your bulleted advice rather than rely on my—usually pretty good—sense of what is polite.
I think you could extend the class of people of who could use this advice to be not just those who aren’t interested in politeness, but those who are and aren’t good at it but assume that they are. I’ve certainly met a few nice people who simply aren’t aware that they’re rude—for example, the young man who accidentally pushed in line at a bar whilst making a sarcastic comment relevant to the previous conversation, and had no idea until we told him how close he’d been to getting punched by a man that he never even looked at. They are unlikely to read this post in its current form, since they will assume they already know how to be polite. How would you feel about restating this advice in a “humorous angry rant” or something similar?
I think I disagree with some of your examples, but in such a way that it doesn’t affect the main point of your post. The first example—“wizened”—I had just skipped over when I first saw it, since it wasn’t really relevant to the post. I further assumed that the poster wouldn’t particularly mind this, and hadn’t intended eir post to have a high signal/noise ratio. I get the sense that this website favours a very high signal/noise ratio even at the expense of niceties—for example, the very first line of this comment. This might make some people resistant to adding what they might view as “noise”—things like saying “Thanks” when they might consider “Thanks” to be implicit, given that they’re bothering to comment at all.
The second post I think they already had applied something of what you’re saying. If I take this
“FWIW, I think posts like this are more valuable the more they include real-world examples; it’s kind of odd to read a post which says I had theory A of the world but now I hold theory B, without reading about the actual observations.”
and rephrase it as a knee-jerk thought
“Why has this been posted without observations? It’s idiotic to put up your beliefs without giving us a good reason to go along with them.”
then we can ask if this knee-jerk example is a realistic example of something one might say. I think it is; I think that Poster #2 was genuinely being polite. Perhaps there’s some different cultural context in the background? I read “odd” as being quite a gentle word to use to criticise someone.
(I’ve now thought of some examples for your previous post re threats; I’ll post them soon. Thanks for reminding me to do so!)
You make an excellent point here: polite isn’t a on/off kind of property.
As you say, “it’s kind of odd to read a post without ” is more polite (in the standard mode) than “You should add !”
It’s also less polite than “Great post! I’d love to see , though.”
And there are many still-better (along that axis) formulations.
In the long run, where I am on that axis matters less than whether I am improving.
That’s an interesting evaluation, actually. In many (non-LW!) contexts, I might interpret the first as being a sort of passive-aggressive sniping, a criticism that is intended to make the author feel foolish about his obvious omission, whereas at least the second lays it all on the table.
In my opinion, for maximum politeness, you could say the same thing (“please add examples of observations”) without forming it as a criticism of anything except your own lack of imagination:
“I’m interested in your description of how you moved from theory A to theory B, but I found myself curious about what specific observations helped change your mind. Were there any individually compelling things that prompted your conversion?”
I agree with you (as I said initially) that the first is far from optimal, and in particular I agree with you that it has insulting overtones.
My intention was not to offer a maximally polite rephrasing (which depends on one’s audience anyway), but to offer some points that suggest an improvement slope. Clearly, though, I failed to do that unambiguously.
Your version is, I agree, a further improvement. In particular, it stops being a criticism of the original post at all, and becomes instead an invitation to continued conversation.
Unrelatedly: the only context I can think of where I’d interpret the bare imperative as more polite is one among friends close enough to play the “we’re close enough friends that I can be rude to you” metagame.
Or maybe one in which I’m not sure the speaker is from my culture at all (I have Chinese coworkers who often make bare imperative comments like this, for example, and I’ve learned to assume that they are being polite by their own social norms).