Does this also apply to your own personal culture (whether aspiring or as-is), or “just” the broader context culture?
We’re talking about a tool for communicating with many different people with many different cultures, and with people whose cultures you don’t necessarily know very much about. So the bit you quoted isn’t just making claims about my culture, or even one of the (many) broader context cultures, it’s making claims about the correct prior over all such cultures.
But what claims exactly? I intended these two:
When you say, “In my culture X”, you’re also saying “In your culture plausibly not X”.
For some values of X, this will start fights (or hurt feelings, or sow mistrust, or have other effects you likely don’t want).
It seems like you came to agree with point #1, so I won’t belabor it further—let me know if I misread you and we can circle back. For point #2, I definitely agree that, the more charity the listener extends to you, the smaller the set of hurtful Xs is. But if you rely on that, you’re limiting the scope of this method to people who’ll apply that charity and whom you know will apply that charity. I picked “punishing the innocent” for my example value of X because I expect it to be broadly cross-cultural: if you go find 100 random people and ask them whether they punish the innocent, I expect that most of them will take offense. If you also expect that, you should build that expectation into your communication strategy, regardless of what your own culture would have you do in those kinds of situations.
Now, the better your know the person you’re talking to, the less important these warnings are. Then again, the better you know the person you’re talking to, the less you need the safety of the diplomatic/sociological frame, you can just discuss your values directly. That’s why I feel comfortable using all that highly absolutist “always/never” language above; it’s the same impulse that says “it’s always better to bet that a die will roll odd than that it’ll roll a 1, all else held equal”.
Thinking about it more, I suspect the real rule is that this method shouldn’t be used to talk about cultural values at all, just cultural practices—things that have little or no moral valence. That phrasing doesn’t quite capture the distinction I want—the Thai businessman who won’t shake hands with you doesn’t think his choice is arbitrary, after all—but it’s close. Another rule might be “don’t use these statements to pass moral judgement”, but that’s hard to apply; as you saw it can be difficult to notice that you’re doing it until after the fact.
We’re talking about a tool for communicating with many different people with many different cultures, and with people whose cultures you don’t necessarily know very much about. So the bit you quoted isn’t just making claims about my culture, or even one of the (many) broader context cultures, it’s making claims about the correct prior over all such cultures.
But what claims exactly? I intended these two:
When you say, “In my culture X”, you’re also saying “In your culture plausibly not X”.
For some values of X, this will start fights (or hurt feelings, or sow mistrust, or have other effects you likely don’t want).
It seems like you came to agree with point #1, so I won’t belabor it further—let me know if I misread you and we can circle back. For point #2, I definitely agree that, the more charity the listener extends to you, the smaller the set of hurtful Xs is. But if you rely on that, you’re limiting the scope of this method to people who’ll apply that charity and whom you know will apply that charity. I picked “punishing the innocent” for my example value of X because I expect it to be broadly cross-cultural: if you go find 100 random people and ask them whether they punish the innocent, I expect that most of them will take offense. If you also expect that, you should build that expectation into your communication strategy, regardless of what your own culture would have you do in those kinds of situations.
Now, the better your know the person you’re talking to, the less important these warnings are. Then again, the better you know the person you’re talking to, the less you need the safety of the diplomatic/sociological frame, you can just discuss your values directly. That’s why I feel comfortable using all that highly absolutist “always/never” language above; it’s the same impulse that says “it’s always better to bet that a die will roll odd than that it’ll roll a 1, all else held equal”.
Thinking about it more, I suspect the real rule is that this method shouldn’t be used to talk about cultural values at all, just cultural practices—things that have little or no moral valence. That phrasing doesn’t quite capture the distinction I want—the Thai businessman who won’t shake hands with you doesn’t think his choice is arbitrary, after all—but it’s close. Another rule might be “don’t use these statements to pass moral judgement”, but that’s hard to apply; as you saw it can be difficult to notice that you’re doing it until after the fact.