I’d be interested to know what other people think about this; I’d like to be a polite contributor to Less Wrong. Most of the stuff in that list is physical and can’t be done in a comment; here’s what can AFAICT:
Speaking in complete sentences.
Talking matter-of-factly about things that the other person finds displeasing or offensive.
Speaking authoritatively, with certainty.
Making decisions for a group; taking responsibility.
Giving or withholding permission.
Evaluating other people’s work.
Speaking cryptically, not adjusting your speech to be easily understood by the other person (except that mumbling does not count). E.g. saying, “Chomper not right” with no explanation of what you mean or what you want the other person to do.
I’d be interested to know what other people think about this; I’d like to be a polite contributor to Less Wrong.
The troubling underlying message here and particularly in the earlier comment is that the behaviors that improv actors would describe as ‘high status’ are intrinsically rude or that avoiding them is polite. On those lists politeness serves both as a high status move and as a low status move—so does rudeness. An improv actor tasked with roleplaying “I manage to come across as confident about myself without doing other people down” would execute behaviors predominantly from the high status list while avoiding rudeness.
Most of the stuff in that list is physical and can’t be done in a comment; here’s what can AFAICT:
That seems about right. Of those the only one that doesn’t apply to your comment (to some degree) is the last point—you were not cryptic. The reasoning to apply here isn’t “ciphergoth is using high status moves therefore ciphergoth is bad” but rather “ciphergoth is using high status moves from that list without being objectionable therefore executing behaviors from that list is not inherently objectionable.”
I suggest that rather than judge and avoid actions from the “high status behaviors” list you apply your wariness to the “Lowering another person’s status” list, somewhat lower on the page. That list is somewhat more representative of the kind of thing that “sounds pretty rude”.
I’d be interested to know what other people think about this; I’d like to be a polite contributor to Less Wrong. Most of the stuff in that list is physical and can’t be done in a comment; here’s what can AFAICT:
Speaking in complete sentences.
Talking matter-of-factly about things that the other person finds displeasing or offensive.
Speaking authoritatively, with certainty.
Making decisions for a group; taking responsibility.
Giving or withholding permission.
Evaluating other people’s work.
Speaking cryptically, not adjusting your speech to be easily understood by the other person (except that mumbling does not count). E.g. saying, “Chomper not right” with no explanation of what you mean or what you want the other person to do.
The troubling underlying message here and particularly in the earlier comment is that the behaviors that improv actors would describe as ‘high status’ are intrinsically rude or that avoiding them is polite. On those lists politeness serves both as a high status move and as a low status move—so does rudeness. An improv actor tasked with roleplaying “I manage to come across as confident about myself without doing other people down” would execute behaviors predominantly from the high status list while avoiding rudeness.
That seems about right. Of those the only one that doesn’t apply to your comment (to some degree) is the last point—you were not cryptic. The reasoning to apply here isn’t “ciphergoth is using high status moves therefore ciphergoth is bad” but rather “ciphergoth is using high status moves from that list without being objectionable therefore executing behaviors from that list is not inherently objectionable.”
I suggest that rather than judge and avoid actions from the “high status behaviors” list you apply your wariness to the “Lowering another person’s status” list, somewhat lower on the page. That list is somewhat more representative of the kind of thing that “sounds pretty rude”.
I don’t believe that all of those behaviours are always rude.
The discussion of my comment I’ll leave aside unless someone else is interested.