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TheOtherDave comments on Ask and Guess - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (64)
I was raised in a strong Guess culture, then went to a tech university where Askers predominated, and it took me some years to come to terms with the fact that these are simply incompatible conversational styles and the most effective thing for me to do is understand which style my interlocutor is expecting and use that.
This, amusingly, often leads me to ask people whether they are using Ask rules or Guess rules. Except, of course, in situations where I intuit that asking them would be inappropriate, and I have to guess instead.
Bringing college friends home for dinner was the most wearing version of this. On one occasion I had to explicitly explain to a friend that, for her purposes, it was best to assume that the last piece of chicken was simply unavailable to be eaten, ever, by anyone. (There actually was a method for getting it, but it was an Advanced Guess Culture technique, not readily taught in one session.)
Incidentally, my own experience is that Ask and Guess are sometimes misleading labels for the styles they refer to (though they are conventional).
For example, "Ask" culture is often OK with "So, I'm assuming here that A, B, and C are true; based on that yadda yadda" with the implicit expectation is that someone will correct me if I'm wrong. In "Guess" culture this sort of thing carries the equally implicit expectation that nobody will correct me. Here both groups are guessing, but they guess differently.
"Guess" culture also has an implicit expectation in some cases that you do ask, but that an honest answer is not actually permitted... the answer is constrained by the social rules. For example, growing up if a guest says "Well, we should get going." the host is obligated to reply "Oh, but we're having such a good time!" and none of that actually lets you know whether the guest is still welcome or not (or, indeed, whether the guest has any desire to stay or go). (On one occasion, when highly motivated to have a departing guest take leftovers home with her if and only if she actually wanted leftovers, but not knowing her default rules, I ended up saying "So, among your tribe, how many times do I have to repeat an offer to have it count as a genuine offer?")
And "Guess" culture has all kinds of rules for how you communicate to someone exactly what it is you want them to do without being asked.
(On one occasion, when highly motivated to have a departing guest take leftovers home with her if and only if she actually wanted leftovers, but not knowing her default rules, I ended up saying "So, among your tribe, how many times do I have to repeat an offer to have it count as a genuine offer?")
I once saw a friend ask our host, upon leaving a party, if he would like her to leave the rest of the cake she brought, which we'd eaten some of but hadn't finished. She's very asky, he's very guessy. However, she knows this, and immediately followed up with: "Please don't feel you need to take it--we'll happily eat it at home. I know I don't like it when people foist leftovers on me that I don't really want." He considered, and said since there was so much of it, he'd take a couple of pieces for himself and his roommate and let her take the rest home. Very asky question, very guessy answer, all parties satisfied.
What field do you go into if you want to study this stuff? Anthropology of some flavor? I find it fascinating.
Sociologists and sociolinguists study this sort of thing a lot. In particular, there's a lot of work in sociolinguistics on registers of politeness, and how different cultures construct and interpret questions.
My husband and I took over a decade to evolve a pattern where I can answer "What do you want to do for dinner?" with "Well, left to my own devices I would probably just heat up some soup, but if you want to go out that's OK with me too, but I don't feel like cooking anything."
I'd love an explanation of the technique.
Ferd's method works, assuming you can actually manage to help with the dishes (the trick to that is to just start doing it, rather than ask... if you ask, the host is obligated to say "no, of course not," since it is understood that you don't actually want to help with the dishes), but the one I had in mind is you take a serving implement, pick up the last piece of chicken, catch the eye of someone else at the table, and offer it to them. They, of course, are obligated to say "No, you take it" (as are you, if someone offers it to you). If you are a guest, or the youngest person at the table, it's OK to accept at that point. Otherwise, you can look around to the table -- with the chicken still on the serving implement in your hand -- and ask if anyone else wants it. They all say "no," of course. Then you can serve yourself.
Which was all way too complicated to explain to someone who was having trouble with the idea that "Oh, can I have the last piece?" was rude by local standards.
Volunteer to help with the dishes, then ask whether you can take away the plate the chicken is sitting on. If nobody else claims it, it's yours.
Clear another plate before you touch the one with the chicken on it. Clear something else after. Clear your plate when you're done eating.
Don't do more work than your hosts. You're being helpful, not trying to work off the price of dinner.
FWIW, among my friends--whom I might describe as "polite askers" or "assertive guessers"--it's common to ask "does anybody want to split this with me?" That way, you're both asking for what you want (more of the thing) and making an offer in a guess-culture-compatible way. It's easy for other people to accept, because now by taking it they're not preventing you from having it. If no one does, you can be reasonably confident no one else actually wanted it.
A variant on the same thing is: "Would anyone else like this?" which is a shorter version of the offering ritual that TheOtherDave described. Because it's skipping most of the ceremony, it's much askier, but it's still not polite to say "yes" and take the thing, because you'd be taking it out of the hands of someone who clearly wanted it. (An exception might be made if you hadn't actually had any of the thing yet, and said so.) But you can say "I'll split it with you," achieving the same result as the above.
Of course, this only works for plausibly divisible things. I've had a friend laugh at me--good-naturedly--for offering to split something bite-sized. Surprise, surprise: he's much askier, I'm much guessier.
In situations where I suspect multiple people want something but will also all politely say "no, you take it" if asked explicitly I've tried something like "how many ways should we split this piece of cake?" This makes it clear you expect multiple people to indicate they want some, releasing them of some of the politeness burden of hiding their preferences. Chicken, at least chicken on the bone, is indivisible, so this wouldn't work as well here.
That's interesting... what kind of results do you get? I think my Guess-culture roots would insist that the proper response to that question is "oh, I'm fine, no cake for me," much as it is to "would you like the last piece?" but I can see how others might react differently, even given the same upbringing.
I've only tried it maybe twice, but I remember it working. As in, I ended up splitting the last piece with multiple people. But maybe I just ended up splitting with the askier people while the guessier people stayed quiet and thought we were being pushy?
(nods) That makes sense. And sure, that's a possible failure mode.
From field experience as a Korean-American and thus someone closer in many situations to Ask, (or even TELL!) I have found a lot of success on just pretending to be endearingly forthright: making a big show of asking all the other people whether they want the last dumpling a couple of times, asking whether they're sure, etc. The fact that my uncle, my mother, and I are similar in this and that they will often take me up on this to split/outright take the dumpling, showing clearly that I am, indeed, serious about my ask, helps too.