The problem here is that, as far as I can tell, a “Tell” culture would immediately become a “Lie Ineptly” culture.
Most of the time, in my experience anyway, when you don’t want to help someone it’s usually for a reason you couldn’t say without nuking or at least damaging the relationship. Even worse, the level of detail / emotion in the “Tell” is much higher than the straightforward “Ask” which makes the usual evasions seem hollow and requires more elaborate excuses. And most people suck at spontaneous deception, since usually the only ones of us who get any practice tend to get weeded out of normal society pretty quickly as is.
“Telling” sounds great if your goal is to quickly burn up your social capital for favors, which can be a smart move if you’re not planning on seeing someone again anyway. But you can’t really build a useful relationship that way; blunt honesty and bad lies aren’t going to get you trust / comfort and without that you’re fighting uphill for every little thing.
I’m not sure. If someone Tells you some things that end with a request, that doesn’t mean you need to be as detailed with your response.
Like with the example given in the OP, “It would be awfully convenient networking for me to stick around for a bit after our meeting to talk with you and [the next person you’re meeting with]. But on a scale of one to ten, it’s only about 3 useful to me. If you’d rate the loss of utility for you as two or higher, then I have a strong preference for not sticking around.”
Perfectly valid response: “Yeah, it’s over 2. Thanks for preferring not to inconvenience me!”
The problem here is that, as far as I can tell, a “Tell” culture would immediately become a “Lie Ineptly” culture.
Most of the time, in my experience anyway, when you don’t want to help someone it’s usually for a reason you couldn’t say without nuking or at least damaging the relationship. Even worse, the level of detail / emotion in the “Tell” is much higher than the straightforward “Ask” which makes the usual evasions seem hollow and requires more elaborate excuses. And most people suck at spontaneous deception, since usually the only ones of us who get any practice tend to get weeded out of normal society pretty quickly as is.
“Telling” sounds great if your goal is to quickly burn up your social capital for favors, which can be a smart move if you’re not planning on seeing someone again anyway. But you can’t really build a useful relationship that way; blunt honesty and bad lies aren’t going to get you trust / comfort and without that you’re fighting uphill for every little thing.
I’m not sure. If someone Tells you some things that end with a request, that doesn’t mean you need to be as detailed with your response.
Like with the example given in the OP, “It would be awfully convenient networking for me to stick around for a bit after our meeting to talk with you and [the next person you’re meeting with]. But on a scale of one to ten, it’s only about 3 useful to me. If you’d rate the loss of utility for you as two or higher, then I have a strong preference for not sticking around.”
Perfectly valid response: “Yeah, it’s over 2. Thanks for preferring not to inconvenience me!”
Upvoted for making me experience hindsight bias. I feel surprised that nobody seems to have brought up this kind of problem until now.