Most importantly, this framing is always about drawing contrasts: you’re describing ways that your culture _differs_ from that of the person you’re talking to. Keep this point in the forefront of your mind every time you use this method: you are describing _their_ culture, not just yours. [...] So, do not ever say something like “In my culture we do not punish the innocent” unless you also intend to say “Your culture punishes the innocent”—that is, unless you intend to start a fight.
Does this also apply to your own personal culture (whether aspiring or as-is), or “just” the broader context culture?
Because in my (aspiring) culture simple statements of fact are generally interpreted at face value and further evidence is required to make less charitable interpretations. This is especially true for interpretations that assume the speaker has made some kind of judgement.
So, let’s go meta here and see whether I intended to say “Your culture generally makes less charitable interpretations of statements than mine.” I guess the answer is yes, though I would like to point out the distinction here between personal culture and broader context culture, hence my question at the beginning. [Writing this I’m also realizing it’s really difficult to disentangle statements about culture from judgments. I’m noticing cognitive dissonance because I actually do think my culture is better, but I don’t like myself being judgmental.]
Now why did I write the comment above? Because in my culture-as-is the language used in the OP (“always”, “do not ever”) is too strong given my epistemic status.
Again, we can analyze the intent of this “In my culture”-statement. Here my intent is to say “your culture uses language differently from mine” OR “My epistemic status is different from yours.”
Not a direct response to your comment, but related and gives background to my initial question: In my aspiring culture a straightforward question (whatever that means) is by default meant and interpreted (primarily) as an expression of genuine curiosity about the answer.
Thinking about and writing this comment, I’ve realized that my own culture may be a lot more idiosyncratic than I thought. I also found it really interesting to see my initial prompt to write this post (an immediate gut reaction of “I don’t agree with that”) dissolve into an understanding of how the disagreement can be due to either cultural or epistemic differences.
NB: There is some entanglement here between intentions, interpretations and responses. In describing a “perfect” culture intentions and interpretations can be freely interchanged to a large extent because if everyone has the same culture they will make the correct assumptions about other people’s intents and states of mind. So saying “In my culture people say X because they want Y” is equivalent to saying “In my culture when someone says X people know that that person wants Y”. And then there is to an extent a disconnect between the epistemic status of your interpretation of the other person’s state of mind and your own reaction, because different reactions entail different costs. Even if an uncharitable interpretation has the highest probability of being correct it often makes sense to act under the assumption that a more charitable interpretation is correct.
Oooooh, I like this a lot. In particular, this resolves for me a bit of tension about why I liked the above comment and also disagreed with it—you’ve helped me split those reactions out into two different buckets. Seems relevant to common-knowledge-type stacks as well.
Strong appreciation for this comment/strong endorsement of the warnings it provides. However, I do nevertheless continue to think it’s well-suited to important topics, having seen it productively used on important topics in my own experience.
I want to think further and also want to answer you now, so: knee-jerk response without too much thought is something like “there’s a class of cultural values that this framing is insufficient to help you talk about, but it feels to me like a piece of the puzzle that lets you bridge the gap.”
i.e. I agree there are ways this can be counterproductive for whole categories of important communication. But I’d probably route through this thing anyway, given my current state of knowledge?
Would not be surprised to find myself talked out of this viewpoint.
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Does this also apply to your own personal culture (whether aspiring or as-is), or “just” the broader context culture?
Because in my (aspiring) culture simple statements of fact are generally interpreted at face value and further evidence is required to make less charitable interpretations. This is especially true for interpretations that assume the speaker has made some kind of judgement.
So, let’s go meta here and see whether I intended to say “Your culture generally makes less charitable interpretations of statements than mine.” I guess the answer is yes, though I would like to point out the distinction here between personal culture and broader context culture, hence my question at the beginning. [Writing this I’m also realizing it’s really difficult to disentangle statements about culture from judgments. I’m noticing cognitive dissonance because I actually do think my culture is better, but I don’t like myself being judgmental.]
Now why did I write the comment above? Because in my culture-as-is the language used in the OP (“always”, “do not ever”) is too strong given my epistemic status.
Again, we can analyze the intent of this “In my culture”-statement. Here my intent is to say “your culture uses language differently from mine” OR “My epistemic status is different from yours.”
Not a direct response to your comment, but related and gives background to my initial question: In my aspiring culture a straightforward question (whatever that means) is by default meant and interpreted (primarily) as an expression of genuine curiosity about the answer.
Thinking about and writing this comment, I’ve realized that my own culture may be a lot more idiosyncratic than I thought. I also found it really interesting to see my initial prompt to write this post (an immediate gut reaction of “I don’t agree with that”) dissolve into an understanding of how the disagreement can be due to either cultural or epistemic differences.
NB: There is some entanglement here between intentions, interpretations and responses. In describing a “perfect” culture intentions and interpretations can be freely interchanged to a large extent because if everyone has the same culture they will make the correct assumptions about other people’s intents and states of mind. So saying “In my culture people say X because they want Y” is equivalent to saying “In my culture when someone says X people know that that person wants Y”. And then there is to an extent a disconnect between the epistemic status of your interpretation of the other person’s state of mind and your own reaction, because different reactions entail different costs. Even if an uncharitable interpretation has the highest probability of being correct it often makes sense to act under the assumption that a more charitable interpretation is correct.
Oooooh, I like this a lot. In particular, this resolves for me a bit of tension about why I liked the above comment and also disagreed with it—you’ve helped me split those reactions out into two different buckets. Seems relevant to common-knowledge-type stacks as well.
Strong appreciation for this comment/strong endorsement of the warnings it provides. However, I do nevertheless continue to think it’s well-suited to important topics, having seen it productively used on important topics in my own experience.
I want to think further and also want to answer you now, so: knee-jerk response without too much thought is something like “there’s a class of cultural values that this framing is insufficient to help you talk about, but it feels to me like a piece of the puzzle that lets you bridge the gap.”
i.e. I agree there are ways this can be counterproductive for whole categories of important communication. But I’d probably route through this thing anyway, given my current state of knowledge?
Would not be surprised to find myself talked out of this viewpoint.
I like this comment.