Just to be clear: I’m fine with you pushing for a norm that’s optimal for you. Blatantly, if you want to; subtly if you’d rather.
But I don’t agree that the norm you’re pushing is optimal for me, and I consider either of us pushing for the establishment of norms that we’re most comfortable with to be a status-linked social maneuver.
I agree that pretty much all communication does this, yes. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
As to why… because I see the norm you’re pushing as something pretty close to the cultural baseline of the “friendly” pole of the American mainstream, which I see as willing to trade off precision and accuracy for getting along. You may even be pushing for something even more “get along” optimized than that.
I mostly don’t mind that the rest of my life more or less optimizes for getting along, though I often find it frustrating when it means that certain questions simply can’t ever be asked in the first place, and that certain answers can’t be believed when they’re given because alternative answers are deemed too impolite to say. Still, as I say, I accept it as a fact about my real-life environment. I probably even prefer it, as I acknowledge that optimizing for precision and accuracy at the expense of getting along would be problematic if I could never get away from it, however tired or upset I was.
That said, I value the fact that LW uses a different standard, one that optimizes for accuracy and precision, and therefore efforts to introduce the baseline “get along” standard to LW remove local value for me.
Again, let me stress that I’m not asserting that you ought not make those efforts. If that’s what you want, then by all means push for it. If you are successful, LW will become less valuable to me, but you’re not under any kind of moral obligation to preserve the value of the Internet to me.
But speaking personally, I’d prefer you didn’t insist as you did so that those efforts are actually in my best interests, with the added implication that I can’t recognize my interests as well as you can.
Just to be clear: I’m fine with you pushing for a norm that’s optimal for you. Blatantly, if you want to; subtly if you’d rather.
But I don’t agree that the norm you’re pushing is optimal for me, and I consider either of us pushing for the establishment of norms that we’re most comfortable with to be a status-linked social maneuver.
Why? (A sincere question, not a rhetorical one)
I’m not sure how every post doesn’t do this; many posts push to maintain a status-quo, but all posts implicitly favor some set of norms.
I agree that pretty much all communication does this, yes. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly.
As to why… because I see the norm you’re pushing as something pretty close to the cultural baseline of the “friendly” pole of the American mainstream, which I see as willing to trade off precision and accuracy for getting along. You may even be pushing for something even more “get along” optimized than that.
I mostly don’t mind that the rest of my life more or less optimizes for getting along, though I often find it frustrating when it means that certain questions simply can’t ever be asked in the first place, and that certain answers can’t be believed when they’re given because alternative answers are deemed too impolite to say. Still, as I say, I accept it as a fact about my real-life environment. I probably even prefer it, as I acknowledge that optimizing for precision and accuracy at the expense of getting along would be problematic if I could never get away from it, however tired or upset I was.
That said, I value the fact that LW uses a different standard, one that optimizes for accuracy and precision, and therefore efforts to introduce the baseline “get along” standard to LW remove local value for me.
Again, let me stress that I’m not asserting that you ought not make those efforts. If that’s what you want, then by all means push for it. If you are successful, LW will become less valuable to me, but you’re not under any kind of moral obligation to preserve the value of the Internet to me.
But speaking personally, I’d prefer you didn’t insist as you did so that those efforts are actually in my best interests, with the added implication that I can’t recognize my interests as well as you can.