Open Thread April 4 - April 10, 2016

Elo

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Am I misunderstanding what you mean by "insisting"?

Yes. You're also ignoring the issue of cultural mores in favor of a perspective in which niceness and functionality are non-subjective qualities, the subjectivity of which was my point which you claim not to have missed.

The thing about mores is that to some extent they're trying to solve coordination problems, and they do that better when people are more willing to adopt common mores -- and if you have a large majority on one side then, annoying though it may be for the other guys, it probably works best overall for them to do most of the adapting.

"Rudeness" isn't a coordination problem, except insofar as it's a coordination problem of taste.

Yes.

Is there a reason why you didn't follow that up by explaining what you did mean by it?

3gjm10y

I doubt it, since that is not in fact my perspective. [...] You said above that you find it rude when people don't make (what you think is enough) eye contact. Some other people find it rude when people do make (what they think is excessive) eye contact. In a population where people don't make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and making eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, intimacy. In a population where people do make eye contact by default, everyone is reasonably comfortable and avoiding eye contact can be used as a signifier for, say, mistrust. Discomfort and miscommunication are liable to follow (as you found in New England) when there is a mismatch. Surely this is precisely a coordination problem. Similarly for, e.g., a norm of always pointing out any mistakes or infelicities when you see them versus a norm of letting things slide. LW is in fact quite a lot further toward the first of those than most communities, of course; Lumifer's preference is further still in that direction, and that's roughly what this discussion is about. Again, this is a coordination problem; a community can sit pretty much anywhere along that line and manage OK, but if there's a big mismatch then again you get discomfort and miscommunication.