All of piguy314's Comments + Replies

I think politeness can be a range of possible values rather than a discrete quality. Being polite but also direct is fine, it's just when you start to edge down the spectrum of politeness towards being politic that it might detract from the quality of the dialogue. I do believe that one should still adhere to the rule of thumb: "Don't be a dick" even if one is being direct though.

One of the editing guidelines for Wikipedia is "Assume good faith" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith). It strikes me that is precisely what "normal" people do not do when criticized but what analytical people tend to do, especially when communicating with one another (assume that criticism is not a personal attack or status seeking, but rather is taken at face value). In that vein I think your suggestions are useful and valuable for dealing with regular people in real life or people on the more vanilla internet c... (read more)

9patrissimo
I don't think this is true. I know people who "assume good faith", and they are amazing a a pleasure to debate with - it never becomes argument. But I have not found this to be correlated with analytical thinking - if anything, the opposite. Rather, my experience with analytical people (incl. myself) is that they just don't see the emotional subtext. They see the argument, the logical points, and they don't even think about the status implications, who challenged whose authority, and so forth. It's not as pleasant to think of we non-neurotypicals as oblivious rather than charitable, but it seems more accurate to me. For example, the idea that all that matters is whether my argument is good is so natural to me and core to my family upbringing that it's taken me many years to unlearn it. To learn that people care how an argument is phrased, how openly you suggest they are wrong, and who the authority figure is (ie whether the challenger is of low status in that context). In some ways, my obliviousness was very powerful for me, because ignoring status cues is a mark of status, as are confidence and being at ease with high-status people - all of which flow from my focus on ideas over people or their status. Yet as I've moved from more academic/intellectual circles to business/wealth circles, it's become crucial to learn that extra social subtext, because most of those people get driven away if you don't have those extra layers of social sense and display it in your conversational maneuvering.
5David_Gerard
"Assume good faith" is really hard work in an environment of massive collaboration. (It's as hard work as "neutral point of view.") I believe I am the first person to have noticed that "assume good faith" translates as "never assume malice when stupidity will suffice." Although calling the stupid stupid violates the "no personal attacks" rule. You know how Wikipedia can't keep idiots out of experts' faces? Wikipedia can't keep idiots out of anyone else's faces either. This is a special case of "people are a problem."

As someone who is often (as the article describes) willfully indifferent to the finer arts of conversation, I personally appreciate the directness and sharpness of discussion here. I feel like I can take people's comments at face value, and that I can usually assess a fair consensus about something by reading people's reactions to it, rather than having to figure out what social factors are influencing the posts. So I'm anti-politeness!

I do know, though, that a lack of grace in these areas can totally drive away some personalities, which is probably a mu... (read more)

7pjeby
How do you see politeness of this sort as hurting discussion here?