the people who think there’s too much niceness-padding feel annoyed that they have to sift through it.
You’re making the wrong comparison; comparing the impact on one group (“hurt”) with the other group’s emotional reaction to the impact on them “annoyed”. What you want to compare is “hurt” to “have one’s time wasted”, which is a form of harm.
If you start reading something and feel like your time is being wasted, you can just stop reading the rest of it. (For example, the complaint about the crappy evopsych doesn’t bother me because I just don’t read it.) You can also get good at skimming over niceties.
If someone feels hurt they’re going to have to do extra work to get themselves back to their previous state, which is a slightly different form of harm. It’s harder to predict when the next thing you’re going to read has that kind of effect on you.
If you start reading something and feel like you’re going to be hurt, you can just stop reading the rest of it. You can also get good at being tolerant of the direct mode of communication.
If someone’s time is wasted, it’s literally impossible for them to get that time back. Also, whilst it’s easy to skip many potentially offensive topics (don’t read anything tagged gender), it’s much harder to know which random new commentators will have worthwhile contributions.
i.e. I don’t think you’ve identified a significant distinction here.
If you get hurt, you also have to take time (and other resources) to get unhurt so that you feel okay to participate in discussion again. And then your question might still be left unanswered. Pretty counter-productive, if you want to think of it in those terms.
You proposed a distinction between A and B, saying R(A), S(B). Supposedly these facts suffice to show that A and B are relevantly different.
I pointed out S(A) and R(B) were also true, so the properties R and S do not actually allow us to tell that A and B are relevantly different.
Re-iterating that S(B) doesn’t change anything, as even granting that for the sake of argument, S also applies to A, so doesn’t indicate a significant difference.
I agree that when you read top-level articles about touchy subjects, then you’re about as able to predict when you’re going to get hurt than when you’re going to get bored. I do not agree that it is easy to predict when someone you’re having a perfectly reasonable conversation with will suddenly (and often accidentally) say something hurtful—and this will do more harm and damage in terms of lost time and resources than if the person used a little bit of padding to avoid being accidentally hurtful in most cases.
You’re making the wrong comparison; comparing the impact on one group (“hurt”) with the other group’s emotional reaction to the impact on them “annoyed”. What you want to compare is “hurt” to “have one’s time wasted”, which is a form of harm.
If you start reading something and feel like your time is being wasted, you can just stop reading the rest of it. (For example, the complaint about the crappy evopsych doesn’t bother me because I just don’t read it.) You can also get good at skimming over niceties.
If someone feels hurt they’re going to have to do extra work to get themselves back to their previous state, which is a slightly different form of harm. It’s harder to predict when the next thing you’re going to read has that kind of effect on you.
If you start reading something and feel like you’re going to be hurt, you can just stop reading the rest of it. You can also get good at being tolerant of the direct mode of communication.
If someone’s time is wasted, it’s literally impossible for them to get that time back. Also, whilst it’s easy to skip many potentially offensive topics (don’t read anything tagged gender), it’s much harder to know which random new commentators will have worthwhile contributions.
i.e. I don’t think you’ve identified a significant distinction here.
If you get hurt, you also have to take time (and other resources) to get unhurt so that you feel okay to participate in discussion again. And then your question might still be left unanswered. Pretty counter-productive, if you want to think of it in those terms.
I don’t think you’ve answered my argument.
You proposed a distinction between A and B, saying R(A), S(B). Supposedly these facts suffice to show that A and B are relevantly different.
I pointed out S(A) and R(B) were also true, so the properties R and S do not actually allow us to tell that A and B are relevantly different.
Re-iterating that S(B) doesn’t change anything, as even granting that for the sake of argument, S also applies to A, so doesn’t indicate a significant difference.
I agree that when you read top-level articles about touchy subjects, then you’re about as able to predict when you’re going to get hurt than when you’re going to get bored. I do not agree that it is easy to predict when someone you’re having a perfectly reasonable conversation with will suddenly (and often accidentally) say something hurtful—and this will do more harm and damage in terms of lost time and resources than if the person used a little bit of padding to avoid being accidentally hurtful in most cases.