Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/filter-on-the-way-in-filter-on-the-way-out/
I'd like to quote tact filters by Jeff Bigler:
All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!"
"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it."
When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.
So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can't do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn't be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.
Later edit for clarification: I don't like the Nerd|Normal dichotomy because those words have various histories and baggage associated with them, so I renamed them (Stater, listener, Launch filter, Landing filter). "Normal" is pretty unhelpful when trying to convey a clear decision about what's good or bad.
Okay; so Tact filters. But what should we really do? What's better? Jeff's Nerd or Normal? And more importantly - In future ambiguous cases - what should we do?
Moving parts to this system
There are a few moving parts to tact, I am going to lay them out:
- Stater - the person stating something
- Statement - the thing being said
- Listener - the person hearing it, or the person who it is intended to be directed to.
- Tact filter - the filter that turns the Statement into a clean one.
- Launch responsibility - the Stater's responsibility to launch the statement in certain ways. (Jeff's normal)
- Landing responsibility - The listener's responsibility to receive the statement in certain ways. (Jeff's nerd)
In a chart it looks like this:
Who is responsible?
In Landing responsible culture, you are responsible for the incoming tact.
But this isn't great because it labels anyone you are talking to as "potential jerks".
In Launch responsible culture:
The responsibility to be tactful prepares the statement for a sensitive person. Which isn't great either. Tact takes time, takes energy and effort, what if no one ever needed to be tactful? Everything would also be fast.
The wild
So this is real life now. You don't really know if the other person is tactful or sensitive or a jerk or just normal... The best possible plan for unknowns:
It's not rocket science. Said again:
- actively be less offensive when you say things that might be taken offensively
- actively be less offended when you hear things that sound offensive
Q: But it's not my responsibility because I live in (Launch | Listener) responsibility land.
A: yes it is! No you don't! You live on earth. In the real world, where you sometimes encounter people living in the other land. Which is a fact. You can choose to piss them off when you meet them but you should know that's a choice and up to you. And now that you know this; the responsibility is on you to make the better choice.
Compounding factors
Even this model leaves out all the further compounding factors.
- What if the Stater thinks a statement is tactful but that same statement is taken as non-tactful by the listener?
- What if the stater is used to their statements being taken as tactful on every day except today?
- What if the particular pair of stater-listener has an existing negative relationship?
I don't know. Err on the side of caution.
Questions:
- What other communication habits have a filter? Does it pay to err on the side of caution?
- Aside from the fallacy of the middle, can this become a rule?
Another solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Meta: this post was inspired by Sam's post on a similar topic.
Meta: this took 2 hours to think about, write and draw out what I meant.
The point is that most people that you tell "actively be less offended when you hear things that sound offensive" will likely put up emotional walls to reduce the feeling of offense instead of simply not being offended if they actively try to follow the prompt.
From CBT there's the acceptance paradox. There's a good likelihood that the person at whom you address the prompt won't accept that he feels offended afterwards. They won't accept the offence and suppress it.
The fact that the social interaction produced a bunch of supressed emotions makes them feel drained afterwards.
Elo's idea that the nerd way of doing social interaction is so great that it's worth telling other people to adopt it, is flawed. It's not flawed in an obvious way whereby Elo makes obvious reasoning errors but where there are effects that matter like the acceptance paradox that aren't in his mind when he thinks through the issue.
The solution isn't to add a filter that blocks some emotions of feeling offended. It's a solution that seems "not rocket science". Compared to that Grinberg, Radical Honesty, Nonviolent Communication or a host of other frameworks that give approaches to dealing with the situation are more complex and more like rocket science.
I remember a month ago a discussion about King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (MWKL) where Elo's approach was to look for conclusions of the book that are simply enough to list them in a bulletpoint list and judge KWML by it. Recently he wrote a post about taking advice that also looking at simple one sentence maxims and an effective way to dealing with them.
The MWKL approach in this situation would be to be conscious of what archtype you are playing out when you get offended and maybe think about what archtype you would want to play out. That's again a bit rocket science. Conceptually it's complex to adopt the habit of thinking in those archtypes and developing the conscious of sometimes being in an archtype that you don't want to be in.
To get back to the topic, I want to communicate with people around me with more authenticity and not with more filters. Putting down filters is hard but it's more what I want to live.
Nerd is a word that's not very precise. I care more for the actual heuritics than the label.
Thank you for this very helpful explanation.
While I think that your critique is valid (I think your comment shows a deep understanding of the topic) I think it could be a bit more cheritable. On the other hand Elo might want to add one of these fashionable "epistemic status" headers that make clear the level of detail. I think the basic idea (filters) is explained well and useful. At least if you do not have thought much about in/extroversion or nerd culture.
For me the idea that I might hurt people with honest communication is quite recent. I ... (read more)