“Not asking users to directly manage other peoples feelings” was my original phrase, FWIW. (Emphases added.)
Two central examples of the kind of thing I have in mind (from elsewhere):
Person A says a thing, which upsets person B. Person A is expected to try to make B not-upset, kinda regardless of how this happened.
Participants in a large-group conversation are asked to “slow down” whenever at least one person in the conversation seems too triggered to process things well, even if this means [obviously interesting and relevant issue X] is never in fact talked about, or not at enough speed to get much throughput.
Part of my intuition here is that property rights and ~Hayekian natural law allow miracles of interactive productivity, and there’re a bunch of contexts in which this gets messed up when the {property rights and domains of allowed free choice and responsibility} get mangled.
Asking me to be (particular kinds of) polite is totally compatible with clear property rights of a sort that lets me choose freely what I’m gonna do, with an eye toward what I want to achieve, while leaving others a predictable domain in which they can do the same (without them needing to worry that I’ll mess up the rights they’re counting on). Asking me to not upset others (in generality) wouldn’t be.
Person A says a thing, which upsets person B. Person A is expected to try to make B not-upset, kinda regardless of how this happened.
But how is “not making a joke that would land well if not for the other interlocutor recently having experienced a tragic death that rhymes with that” not an example of this?
Or do you mean “there cannot be a norm that you are always responsible for someone else’s emotions, no matter how their emotions arise?”. In that case, sure, I agree with such a norm, but it also seems exceptionally weak. It doesn’t say much about there being some circumstances where we consider other people’s emotional reactions sympathetic, and worth modeling in the conversation, and the “recent tragic death” example is one such instance.
“Not asking users to directly manage other peoples feelings” was my original phrase, FWIW. (Emphases added.)
Two central examples of the kind of thing I have in mind (from elsewhere):
Person A says a thing, which upsets person B. Person A is expected to try to make B not-upset, kinda regardless of how this happened.
Participants in a large-group conversation are asked to “slow down” whenever at least one person in the conversation seems too triggered to process things well, even if this means [obviously interesting and relevant issue X] is never in fact talked about, or not at enough speed to get much throughput.
Part of my intuition here is that property rights and ~Hayekian natural law allow miracles of interactive productivity, and there’re a bunch of contexts in which this gets messed up when the {property rights and domains of allowed free choice and responsibility} get mangled.
Asking me to be (particular kinds of) polite is totally compatible with clear property rights of a sort that lets me choose freely what I’m gonna do, with an eye toward what I want to achieve, while leaving others a predictable domain in which they can do the same (without them needing to worry that I’ll mess up the rights they’re counting on). Asking me to not upset others (in generality) wouldn’t be.
But how is “not making a joke that would land well if not for the other interlocutor recently having experienced a tragic death that rhymes with that” not an example of this?
Or do you mean “there cannot be a norm that you are always responsible for someone else’s emotions, no matter how their emotions arise?”. In that case, sure, I agree with such a norm, but it also seems exceptionally weak. It doesn’t say much about there being some circumstances where we consider other people’s emotional reactions sympathetic, and worth modeling in the conversation, and the “recent tragic death” example is one such instance.