“I’ll let you in on a secret” makes you come off significantly worse
That seems bizarre, unless you interpreted it as sarcasm.
A data point: doesn’t seem bizarre to me. Whether I interpret it as (a specific type of) sarcasm I’m not sure. Sarcasm needn’t hinge only on the contradiction between the literal and factual meaning of “secret”, but also on the contradiction between a relatively familiar / seemingly friendly phrase and the general expression of disagreement.
Data point: It didn’t come off that way to me either, I found it sounded condescending.
I agree that “at Singularity Institute” sounds weird, but I also know that judgement on what sounds weird or what connotations come up—including things like “I’ll let you in on a secret”—vary a lot from person to person, even among people from the same language and country and background.
A data point: doesn’t seem bizarre to me. Whether I interpret it as (a specific type of) sarcasm I’m not sure. Sarcasm needn’t hinge only on the contradiction between the literal and factual meaning of “secret”, but also on the contradiction between a relatively familiar / seemingly friendly phrase and the general expression of disagreement.
The phrase was intended to be friendly, precisely in order to mitigate the general expression of disagreement!
Data point: It didn’t come off that way to me either, I found it sounded condescending.
I agree that “at Singularity Institute” sounds weird, but I also know that judgement on what sounds weird or what connotations come up—including things like “I’ll let you in on a secret”—vary a lot from person to person, even among people from the same language and country and background.