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shokwave comments on Tell Culture - Less Wrong
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This is a horrible thing to do to a Guesser. When you Ask out of turn, you're forcing them to either comply or be rude, and they resent you. When you Tell, you're imposing intimacy on them - making yourself vulnerable and demanding they do the same, and underlining exactly how a refusal would hurt you. That causes terrible guilt.
It took me almost six months from meeting a particular Guess person to realise this: the times I offended them clustered according to whether I was a soldier in their war, not by my actual actions.[0]
Lots of things, maybe most things you can do in a conversation are horrible things to do to a Guesser. I'm well above average for social skills plus a few points above LW average IQ and even I find it hard to navigate conversations with a Guesser (I swear I have better social skills than that previous arrogant statement implies). The way I have found to not constantly insult and offend them is to take a lot of time to learn their particular 'dialect' of Guess.
I didn't grow up in a Guess culture, so at my first exposure to it I was already a mind that could think for itself - and my thought was "Guess culture is manipulative." It stacks up complicated laws, some of which are enforced ridiculously strictly[1] and others that are loosely enforced, if at all[2], so a skilled Guesser has both a minefield of rules, and an arsenal of selectively enforced rules, to use in conversation.
This is scary. If I walk into a conversation with a Guesser and I have something at stake, I am likely to lose that stake. Dealing with them feels like dealing with a negative utility monster; I must sacrifice too much to avoid offending.
(Please don't vote this post up because it bashes the hateful Guess enemy; evaluate it on its merits.)
0: I could use ableist slurs (insane; crazy) freely to deride people, institutions, papers etc that argued for no gendered pay gap, for biological difference between race, etc. But it was a serious transgression to use the same slurs to describe people, institutions, or papers that argued for parapsychology, telepathy, etc. Once I noticed this, I tested it experimentally - even when you know you're doing it for science, it hurts to offend a Guesser.
1: "Giving a negative response when someone asks for evaluations on their appearance / idea / whatever" is banned. (The only way you can provide that information is to guess at their personal evaluation, and then give the least warm approval you think has a plausible interpretation that agrees with their actual personal evaluation, which will be revealed only after you've made your social move. Yech.)
2: Gossip is frowned on. You can gossip all you like until you say something they don't like hearing, at which point you've offended them by gossiping.
"You're free to insult the things that I don't have much respect for, but not the things that I do respect" sounds like the standard policy of most humans, Guesser or not.
The offence centered on the ableism of the slurs in particular; "You're free to use an insult I can't stand on things I don't respect, but I won't stand for use of it on things I do respect" doesn't sound like a standard policy; otherwise you'd feel comfortable using profanity in front of your parents, but only when talking about a group they don't respect.
What's your policy for interacting with Patrick? Do you get along? I have some of the same problems you describe about walking on eggshells around Guessers.