I have been basically erring on the side of caution by treating all public spaces as the former when I don’t have good reason otherwise.
If, as it sounds, you would learn from any mistakes, and if you’re somewhere populous enough that a randomly selected person’s opinion of you doesn’t matter, I doubt that imposing this restriction on yourself is right, or benefits others more than it costs you. You’re allowed to briefly creep people out by mistake in order to learn useful things and reap the mutual benefits of non-creepy interactions.
what I guess is some sort of version of Postel’s Law
Where do you think the “be conservative in what you do” is coming from in your case?
Hm, this sounds like good way of thinking about it. I already use this principle, but I had not thought it to apply it to such cases.
To clarify, I think I may have been thinking about it in the form of “I’m not likely to interact with these people”, rather than “I’m not likely to interact with these people again.” (Which raises the question of what if you are likely to encounter them again because you often encounter them in the same place. I suppose this still falls under “one random person, their opinion doesn’t matter”; it’s just going to take a bit of training to make myself think of someone I can already identify as a random.)
If, as it sounds, you would learn from any mistakes, and if you’re somewhere populous enough that a randomly selected person’s opinion of you doesn’t matter, I doubt that imposing this restriction on yourself is right
Agree, and with added emphasis! An excellent general social policy.
If, as it sounds, you would learn from any mistakes, and if you’re somewhere populous enough that a randomly selected person’s opinion of you doesn’t matter, I doubt that imposing this restriction on yourself is right, or benefits others more than it costs you. You’re allowed to briefly creep people out by mistake in order to learn useful things and reap the mutual benefits of non-creepy interactions.
Where do you think the “be conservative in what you do” is coming from in your case?
Hm, this sounds like good way of thinking about it. I already use this principle, but I had not thought it to apply it to such cases.
I’m not clear on how I could possibly answer that.
To clarify, I think I may have been thinking about it in the form of “I’m not likely to interact with these people”, rather than “I’m not likely to interact with these people again.” (Which raises the question of what if you are likely to encounter them again because you often encounter them in the same place. I suppose this still falls under “one random person, their opinion doesn’t matter”; it’s just going to take a bit of training to make myself think of someone I can already identify as a random.)
Agree, and with added emphasis! An excellent general social policy.