[[Personal Examples of The Strategy of Politeness being Counter-Productive to Valuable Critique of a Concept: When I would dress-up, and say only polite things, going to the Innovation Oakland meet-ups to hob-nob with the Mayor and all the local techies, I quickly learned something—dress down. When you dress-up, every money-hunting idiot flocks to you, and believes any crazy idea you make-up on the spot, because they are gullible and uninformed. They will never provide you with valuable insight into your work. They suck-up your time and attention, and you end-up NOT talking to the scruffy engineer who would tell you why, specifically, your design sucks. You need to hear that engineer’s critique—and the only way to get it is by dressing down . Now, you scare-away all the folks who can only read a book by its cover! ONLY the scruffy engineer will talk to you, because she doesn’t care about appearances—she wants to hear your details, and tear you apart. :)
Similarly, if there are two people in an audience, Alice and Bob, and Alice will focus on the reasoning and evidence, while Bob focuses on tone. In 25 years of experience, I have never heard valuable critique of the concept from any of the Bobs—tell me if you’ve heard one! They complain about tone and presentation, without insights into the design; I have to meet their standards, or I should be ignored, regardless of the merits of my arguments. Alice is actually the only person I WANT to talk to. So, when you claim that “Being extra polite will win Bob to your side...” well, I don’t want Bob on my side; those guys clutter things up and get in the way, without providing valuable insight into the problem itself. I ONLY want to appeal to Alice, who as stated originally is not focused on tone.]]
[[Personal Examples of The Strategy of Politeness being Counter-Productive to Valuable Critique of a Concept: When I would dress-up, and say only polite things, going to the Innovation Oakland meet-ups to hob-nob with the Mayor and all the local techies, I quickly learned something—dress down. When you dress-up, every money-hunting idiot flocks to you, and believes any crazy idea you make-up on the spot, because they are gullible and uninformed. They will never provide you with valuable insight into your work. They suck-up your time and attention, and you end-up NOT talking to the scruffy engineer who would tell you why, specifically, your design sucks. You need to hear that engineer’s critique—and the only way to get it is by dressing down . Now, you scare-away all the folks who can only read a book by its cover! ONLY the scruffy engineer will talk to you, because she doesn’t care about appearances—she wants to hear your details, and tear you apart. :)
Similarly, if there are two people in an audience, Alice and Bob, and Alice will focus on the reasoning and evidence, while Bob focuses on tone. In 25 years of experience, I have never heard valuable critique of the concept from any of the Bobs—tell me if you’ve heard one! They complain about tone and presentation, without insights into the design; I have to meet their standards, or I should be ignored, regardless of the merits of my arguments. Alice is actually the only person I WANT to talk to. So, when you claim that “Being extra polite will win Bob to your side...” well, I don’t want Bob on my side; those guys clutter things up and get in the way, without providing valuable insight into the problem itself. I ONLY want to appeal to Alice, who as stated originally is not focused on tone.]]