In the case of the lawyers, this is actually not an example of non-niceness being good for society. The defense attorney who defends a guilty party, their job is not to be a jerk to the prosecutor or to the judge. It is to, as you say, provide the judge with information (including counter-arguments to the other side’s arguments). While his job involves working in an opposite direction from his counterpart, it does not involve being non-nice to his counterpart (and it is indeed most pro-society if the two sides treat eachother well / nicely outside of their equal-and-opposite professional duties), and it does not involve being non-nice to the judge, whose job the attorney (as you point is) is actually assisting with. Again, society expects maximum niceness from both attorneys towards the judge outside of ⌞their professional duty to imperfectly represent the truth⌝.
Society expects niceness to be provided from each of these parties to each of the others: {the judge, the defense attorney, the prosecution attorney}
Using that mental framework, I take Gabriels main point to be that sometimes factual disagreement is vital and in that case communicating it as clearly as possible is important and should take precedence over optimizing for niceness in form.
@Gabriel: does that match what you wanted to communicate?
In the case of the lawyers, this is actually not an example of non-niceness being good for society. The defense attorney who defends a guilty party, their job is not to be a jerk to the prosecutor or to the judge. It is to, as you say, provide the judge with information (including counter-arguments to the other side’s arguments). While his job involves working in an opposite direction from his counterpart, it does not involve being non-nice to his counterpart (and it is indeed most pro-society if the two sides treat eachother well / nicely outside of their equal-and-opposite professional duties), and it does not involve being non-nice to the judge, whose job the attorney (as you point is) is actually assisting with. Again, society expects maximum niceness from both attorneys towards the judge outside of ⌞their professional duty to imperfectly represent the truth⌝.
Society expects niceness to be provided from each of these parties to each of the others: {the judge, the defense attorney, the prosecution attorney}
Seems to me that “being nice” has multiple possible scopes and this is the generator of the disagreement.
I can be both nice in the form and/or content of my speech, as aphyer points out.
Gabriel seems to include “not inconveniencing others through factual disagreement” in “bing nice”, while you (and I think Scott, too) exclude it.
Using that mental framework, I take Gabriels main point to be that sometimes factual disagreement is vital and in that case communicating it as clearly as possible is important and should take precedence over optimizing for niceness in form.
@Gabriel: does that match what you wanted to communicate?
Here that’s what is referred to as “being civil”. The post argues against niceness as being overly concerned with hurting the others’ feelings.