I appreciate your perspective, and I would agree there’s something to it. I would at first vaguely claim that it depends a lot on the individual situation whether it’s wise to be wary of people’s insecurities and go out of one’s way to not do any harm, or to challenge (or just ignore) these insecurities instead. One thing I’ve mentioned in the post is the situation of a community builder interacting with new people, e.g. during EA or lesswrong meetups. For such scenarios I would still defend the view that it’s a good choice to be very careful not to throw people into uncomfortable situations. Not only because that’s instrumentally suboptimal, but also because you’re in a position of authority and have some responsibility not to e.g. push people to do something against their will.
However, when you’re dealing with people you know well, or even with strangers but on eye level, then there’s much more wiggle room, and you can definitely make the case that it’s the better policy to not broadly avoid uncomfortable situations for others.
Our common agreement is that it’s imperative for anyone with the wherewithal to show up and pay attention when dealing with others. The rest is surely context dependent, but I felt the need to push back a bit against what I see as a pernicious framing where both the empowered and disempowered parties are encouraged to view certain vices as essential.
This worries me because I’m not sure how to escape what I see as a sort of semantic trap. The discussion tends to settle itself around the topic of responsibility for hurt feelings when there are clearly deeper issues and potential consequences for ignoring them. At the same time it’s tricky to argue against the sort of framing you, and others, have presented without seeming to advocate for simple ‘buck up, Chuck’ style tough love, which is not my position either.
I feel that there must be a good number of silent readers who share my trepidation, but recognize the topic as too thorny to seem worth getting into.
I appreciate your perspective, and I would agree there’s something to it. I would at first vaguely claim that it depends a lot on the individual situation whether it’s wise to be wary of people’s insecurities and go out of one’s way to not do any harm, or to challenge (or just ignore) these insecurities instead. One thing I’ve mentioned in the post is the situation of a community builder interacting with new people, e.g. during EA or lesswrong meetups. For such scenarios I would still defend the view that it’s a good choice to be very careful not to throw people into uncomfortable situations. Not only because that’s instrumentally suboptimal, but also because you’re in a position of authority and have some responsibility not to e.g. push people to do something against their will.
However, when you’re dealing with people you know well, or even with strangers but on eye level, then there’s much more wiggle room, and you can definitely make the case that it’s the better policy to not broadly avoid uncomfortable situations for others.
Our common agreement is that it’s imperative for anyone with the wherewithal to show up and pay attention when dealing with others. The rest is surely context dependent, but I felt the need to push back a bit against what I see as a pernicious framing where both the empowered and disempowered parties are encouraged to view certain vices as essential.
This worries me because I’m not sure how to escape what I see as a sort of semantic trap. The discussion tends to settle itself around the topic of responsibility for hurt feelings when there are clearly deeper issues and potential consequences for ignoring them. At the same time it’s tricky to argue against the sort of framing you, and others, have presented without seeming to advocate for simple ‘buck up, Chuck’ style tough love, which is not my position either.
I feel that there must be a good number of silent readers who share my trepidation, but recognize the topic as too thorny to seem worth getting into.