I’m worried I’m unintentionally creating a motte-and-bailey in the comments, so I’m going to try and split a few things out. Here’s four things all of which I believe are true, but which people could reasonably agree or disagree with separately.
It’s possible to make strictly better statements in the Graceful / Honest spectrum. “You gotta tie your shoes idiot” is less graceful than “Do you know your shoe’s untied?” without communicating more information about the shoe. It’s even more syllables. More grace doesn’t actually always mean less honest.
Communicating gracefully takes effort to learn, but once learned, can be close to free on most per-statement cases. It’s like learning a language; it would take me a long time to learn German, but a bilingual English and German speaker wouldn’t find most conversation hard in one language.[1]
Communicating gracefully is worth effort to learn. It is better to have this skill than to not have this skill.
There are instrumental circumstances where giving up some honesty is worth getting some grace, especially if the rate of exchange is favourable. (Please don’t take this line as advocating for outright lies in the name of momentary preservation of social harmony. I think I’m more honest than the average person even when I’m making these trades.)
I think 4 is true, but I’m on board with LessWrong in particular being a place where we don’t give up units of honesty in order to get units of grace no matter the exchange rate. I’m less cheerful about existing in spaces where we give up 1.
Note: I’m not trying to say every single sentence is close to free to say in the other language, or gracefully- there’s detailed German words like Schadenfreude that are harder to communicate in English, and there’s it takes effort to gracefully fire someone for non-performance.
I’m worried I’m unintentionally creating a motte-and-bailey in the comments, so I’m going to try and split a few things out. Here’s four things all of which I believe are true, but which people could reasonably agree or disagree with separately.
It’s possible to make strictly better statements in the Graceful / Honest spectrum. “You gotta tie your shoes idiot” is less graceful than “Do you know your shoe’s untied?” without communicating more information about the shoe. It’s even more syllables. More grace doesn’t actually always mean less honest.
Communicating gracefully takes effort to learn, but once learned, can be close to free on most per-statement cases. It’s like learning a language; it would take me a long time to learn German, but a bilingual English and German speaker wouldn’t find most conversation hard in one language.[1]
Communicating gracefully is worth effort to learn. It is better to have this skill than to not have this skill.
There are instrumental circumstances where giving up some honesty is worth getting some grace, especially if the rate of exchange is favourable. (Please don’t take this line as advocating for outright lies in the name of momentary preservation of social harmony. I think I’m more honest than the average person even when I’m making these trades.)
I think 4 is true, but I’m on board with LessWrong in particular being a place where we don’t give up units of honesty in order to get units of grace no matter the exchange rate. I’m less cheerful about existing in spaces where we give up 1.
Note: I’m not trying to say every single sentence is close to free to say in the other language, or gracefully- there’s detailed German words like Schadenfreude that are harder to communicate in English, and there’s it takes effort to gracefully fire someone for non-performance.