danlowlite comments on On Expressing Your Concerns - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 December 2007 04:04AM

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Comment author: danlowlite 29 October 2010 02:18:53PM *  4 points [-]

I've been in a meeting where this was done and an openly designated "contrarian" was appointed. The specific instance where this was performed was a "diversity" training, so YMMV.

He didn't do anything. He was too new and high in the organization to be effective. His position, when he did speak up, made it unlikely that someone would contradict his contradictions. While eventually he became effective at his job (replacing a much-loved person, no easy task), it was still simply not like him to do this; we all saw it and he didn't work out in this contrarian role.

See also: Good Cop/Bad Cop.