[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.

Podcasts Thread

Completed!

Any data? Yes. In my personal experience that kind of question were able to kill flirty and touchy behaviour 100% of the time.

Double-blinded, debiased, large sampled data? I don't think, but it might be a fun project for some social scientist out there.

I don't really care much about the it

My friends do though, so I often wish I cared more

I'm unsure whether I want to be moved by that consideration though

I really wish I had stronger opinions about things like that

But I don't really know how much good that wish is doing me

At least I give self reflection a shot though, people always say it has good effects

Though I'm unsure whether I should believe the hype

I dislike always being uncertain

Though I admit that dislike has both unpleasant and motivating aspects

And I love just what this drive to dispel uncertainty can do

...

Bonus points to whoever manages to make one recurse on itself and actually get the infinite series

But are they sure that the men aren't similarly punished, even when expected to be aggressive?

For example, people may expect men to be aggressive. But other men are expected to be aggressive back. So you can be punished, while still doing what's expected. Basically, it's called losing in a competitive environment.

But there is a problem with our discussion. We're talking an undefined categorical situation. Everyone reading it can insert their own scenario as a prototype, leaving no one talking about the same thing.

This thread on "hostile unfriendly tone" is suffering from a severe lack of concrete details. Without concretes, we're just projecting the situations we find problematic onto the schema.

I tend to sign my email with an actual signature.
- Dan

Does that make me a horrible person?

Agonizing over a period versus an ellipsis? I recoil in horror at the thought of having such feelings routinely intrude into my consciousness.

It's always interesting to see how the other half lives, even when it's appalling.

Were they saying that women learned they shouldn't be abrupt in the work place?

Who are they supposed to have learned that from? They sure as hell didn't learn that from me. And every man I know wishes women were more to the point. The stereotype criticism is "blah blah blah", not abruptness. If you're in charge, make decisions, and give orders. I'll salute, and we'll get something done.

EDIT: On further thought, for business purposes, most men prefer than women be more abrupt and bossy. On a personal/romantic level, men don't like women to be abrupt and bossy. Personal is probably more motivating than business.

Here is why your comment strikes me as unfriendly and not particularly rational:

I wonder

You wonder? If you really wanted to know you would either ask me or you could just read through my comment history and determine that, no, I am pretty direct and people still misunderstand me. Or you could identify specific examples where this did happen and let me know in a helpful way where I messed up my argument. Instead, you just sort of demonstratively express your hypothesis so people who already agree with you can see it and pat you on the back. Pretty mind-killery, in my opinion.

But it's okay! I understand! These things happen. =]

Haha, because words like "sorry" and "thank you" and occasional exclamation marks make my writing completely incomprehensible. =P

Personally, I find the niceness-padding to be perfectly well-calibrated for dealing with disagreements because people are thoughtful and respectful. I find it to be insufficient when dealing with people talking past each other. It's really frustrating! This is a community full of interesting, intelligent people whose opinion I want to know ... that sometimes aren't bothering to carefully read what I wrote. And then not bothering to read carefully when I politely tell them that they misread what I wrote and clarify. So then I start thinking that this isn't a coincidence, so maybe they don't want to read what I write... ? So then I feel like they don't like me even though I like them. Nooooo, sadness.

Currently, the community has a low-niceness-padding standard, which is great for people who prefer that style of interaction, but which sucks for people who would prefer more niceness-padding, and those people are either driven away from the community or spend much of their time here feeling alienated and upset.

Here is how I see the difference: the people who think there's too much niceness-padding feel annoyed that they have to sift through it. The people who think there is insufficient niceness-padding are getting hurt.

This makes me personally err on the side of niceness. And while I understand that excessive niceness turns into clutter, I think that even the lowest of the four levels that you demonstrated doesn't happen as often as it should in some discussions.