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Desrtopa comments on Teachable Rationality Skills - Less Wrong
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I used to do this, but it got on people's nerves.
I actually got in something of an argument with my aunt several years back, because she felt that it was rude of me to make slight changes to trivial social interactions, because it made people uncomfortable to be forced to think about what they'd just said.
Huh. It seems to me that reactions like that are precisely the reason why you should do something like that. If someone is sufficiently accustomed to acting on autopilot that they feel discomfort and annoyance at a stimulus that requires some thought, then they deserve to be provoked thus.
That's more or less what I argued (not that they deserve it, but that they'd be better off occasionally thinking about activities they usually put on autopilot,) but eventually I decided that it wasn't worth the trouble their discomfort caused me when dealing with them. It wasn't a high utility use of social capital.
I think that most people view these social interactions as an attempt to make the other person feel comfortable (ie that you care about their well-being).
Thus if you change them, you're messing with their heads by making them uncomfortable on exactly the very thing that should be making them more comfortable... thus why it's seen as rude.
yes, you can force them to change on this - but a) you're teaching a pig to sing and b) I think there are more important battles.