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wedrifid comments on Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - Less Wrong
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I remember reading 'and' too (English translation).
It's the general response format:
This works shockingly well IME.
I also recall reading 'and', if not in that book then in one on a similar topic.
I believe the basic format for using 'and' is: "I believe X is good, and it could be even better if you did Y".
Contrast:
(Note: The one with 'yet' sounds a bit awkward to me, I'm not sure I know how to use it in this situation).
Sure the use of the word 'and' is neither neccessary nor sufficient to make the sentence more positive, but I think that (given a bit of practice) it naturally causes you to do so. Much the same as the word 'yet', but (I think) more strongly.
I could theoretically say "Your speech was good, but I think you could increase the impact even further if you also included more specific examples.", but using the word 'but' doesn't really force me to do so the way that using 'and' would, and doesn't come across as quite as supportive. The word 'but' actually sounds slightly wrong to me in this sentence.
That's a useful template and in some cases the advice goes as far as to explicitly advocate just replacing 'but' with 'and' even when it is barely grammatical. This may vary somewhat with the audience and I believe the claim that most typical humans will either not notice or care about the improved tone than the impaired syntax. Mind you the particularly logically minded will also not mind the arbitrary change since 'and' does technically fit correctly in every case that 'but' fits, albeit with rather different connotations.
Note, that I did notice the change. I do think that to facilitate proper understanding of a sentence, 'but' should be used slightly differently from 'and', even if both are technically correct.