Communicating clearly and respectfully is really important to me—both on an emotional level (I feel strongly about it) and a practical one (people need to do it all the time and you’re kidding yourself if you think it won’t help you to be good at it). Someone who acts like it’s beneath them to communicate respectfully to a given person is signalling high status, but demonstrating being some combination of “jerk” and “dumb about people,” and the latter impression wins out.
Labeling people with different values “dumb” seems to me to be simply a factual error. Yes, people make a lot of mistakes in this trade-off, but it often is a trade-off.
Passing on the ambiguous label “jerk” to someone with different values is not communicating clearly. It is probably within socially accepted bounds, but you aspire to greater clarity. (Not that you said that you pass on the label, but that’s the implication I got.)
I have a lot of trouble not characterizing people as either malicious or ignorant when they eschew something which seems to me like its importance is self-evident … but that’s exactly the same error as someone who looks down on people for not being formally educated, or religious, or not knowing much about computers or sports or whatever else. It’s an error I know I make but I have trouble catching when I do; thanks for calling me on it.
That said, I do think there are a lot of people who genuinely do not think ever about how they communicate (including but not limited to status), because it’s not part of their natural mechanism for doing so. I also think that being aware of status and choosing to subvert it when its goals don’t match yours (e.g. learning) is more practical and effective than prioritizing it, especially when you don’t even know you’re doing it and thus haven’t consciously made any tradeoff.
In both of those cases, unlike in those of academic or religious snobbery, it’s quite possible for someone to not know there’s something they don’t know. Because of that, it seems more acceptable to me to challenge their balance of priorities, if only enough to give them the tools to make an informed decision. If someone makes a reasoned choice to value status over communication, and I don’t see logical flaws in their reasoning, I’m happy to respect that. I’ll just also probably choose not to socialize with them.
Yes, people who signal status by being jerks probably haven’t thought about their options; but neither has your friend who pursues information at the expense of status (although I still suspect the different behavior is the result of values). A common compromise is to have separate venues for pursuing information and status; if you only see one venue, you can’t tell what’s going on. It would be better to tune each interaction, but that is difficult (ie, I may disagree with “practical”). If you find it easy, you’re probably weird. Maybe it’s a result of having invested in this skill, but that has an opportunity cost that I don’t think you’re accounting for. It may be worth the cost, but it’s pretty expensive and there are fairly cheap options, like the compromise I mention above.
Going back to the phrase “dumb about people,” I expect high-status people to be smart about people. They may fail to apply it to this particular setting, but failing to explore options I would file under “dumb about strategy.” But that’s my prior—I expect most people to be dumb about strategy, so I don’t learn much from the observation.
Labeling people with different values “dumb” seems to me to be simply a factual error. Yes, people make a lot of mistakes in this trade-off, but it often is a trade-off.
Passing on the ambiguous label “jerk” to someone with different values is not communicating clearly. It is probably within socially accepted bounds, but you aspire to greater clarity. (Not that you said that you pass on the label, but that’s the implication I got.)
You’re right, of course.
I have a lot of trouble not characterizing people as either malicious or ignorant when they eschew something which seems to me like its importance is self-evident … but that’s exactly the same error as someone who looks down on people for not being formally educated, or religious, or not knowing much about computers or sports or whatever else. It’s an error I know I make but I have trouble catching when I do; thanks for calling me on it.
That said, I do think there are a lot of people who genuinely do not think ever about how they communicate (including but not limited to status), because it’s not part of their natural mechanism for doing so. I also think that being aware of status and choosing to subvert it when its goals don’t match yours (e.g. learning) is more practical and effective than prioritizing it, especially when you don’t even know you’re doing it and thus haven’t consciously made any tradeoff.
In both of those cases, unlike in those of academic or religious snobbery, it’s quite possible for someone to not know there’s something they don’t know. Because of that, it seems more acceptable to me to challenge their balance of priorities, if only enough to give them the tools to make an informed decision. If someone makes a reasoned choice to value status over communication, and I don’t see logical flaws in their reasoning, I’m happy to respect that. I’ll just also probably choose not to socialize with them.
I agree with pretty much all of that.
Yes, people who signal status by being jerks probably haven’t thought about their options; but neither has your friend who pursues information at the expense of status (although I still suspect the different behavior is the result of values). A common compromise is to have separate venues for pursuing information and status; if you only see one venue, you can’t tell what’s going on. It would be better to tune each interaction, but that is difficult (ie, I may disagree with “practical”). If you find it easy, you’re probably weird. Maybe it’s a result of having invested in this skill, but that has an opportunity cost that I don’t think you’re accounting for. It may be worth the cost, but it’s pretty expensive and there are fairly cheap options, like the compromise I mention above.
Going back to the phrase “dumb about people,” I expect high-status people to be smart about people. They may fail to apply it to this particular setting, but failing to explore options I would file under “dumb about strategy.” But that’s my prior—I expect most people to be dumb about strategy, so I don’t learn much from the observation.