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Dagon comments on Open Thread - Aug 24 - Aug 30 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Elo 24 August 2015 08:14AM

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Comment author: Dagon 26 August 2015 03:24:19PM 5 points [-]

This happens to my spouse and me very often. We've gotten pretty good at noticing after the second "I dunno, what do you want to do" round that we need to switch from ask mode to tell mode. Don't give options, just propose something, and say "any objection must take the form of a counterproposal" (yes, we say literally this sentence to each other a few times a week).

Especially when one partner is more tired than the other, we can instead just have the more engaged partner pick something and the tired one get one or two vetos before being forced to step up and actually accept something. This isn't always comfortable, especially when it's unclear that there exists a good solution.

Comment author: GuySrinivasan 27 August 2015 05:53:15PM 0 points [-]

"any objection must take the form of a counterproposal"

Most of my social circle says "dinner semantics" to mean exactly this. So far we've skirted but basically avoided the trap of gaming it by bluffing - proposing an option you know is unacceptable to force someone else to propose.