Good point. Probably there is a one-paragraph version of this that would be sufficient. I think escalating can be fine, though I think it is always better to be explicit about it, and at least at some point go “Let’s do Crocker’s rules and its opt-out.” That makes it clear that opting out is an acceptable action. I think it’s also good to raise the awareness of optimizing the communication for usefulness. Sometimes I talk to people and then start out just saying nice nices of how good everything is that I am doing at a very superficial level. And that is not useful at all.
Many people do not think opting out is an acceptable action. That’s the problem here. There isn’t a perfect signal or secret code to smooth discourse at the right level.
You can say “Ouch that hurt me emotionally, I would like this to not happen again.” Then you can both think about how to prevent this in the future and change your behavior accordingly, such that you incrementally converge onto a good conversation norm. I think something like this is the right approach.
Good point. Probably there is a one-paragraph version of this that would be sufficient. I think escalating can be fine, though I think it is always better to be explicit about it, and at least at some point go “Let’s do Crocker’s rules and its opt-out.” That makes it clear that opting out is an acceptable action. I think it’s also good to raise the awareness of optimizing the communication for usefulness. Sometimes I talk to people and then start out just saying nice nices of how good everything is that I am doing at a very superficial level. And that is not useful at all.
Many people do not think opting out is an acceptable action. That’s the problem here. There isn’t a perfect signal or secret code to smooth discourse at the right level.
You can say “Ouch that hurt me emotionally, I would like this to not happen again.” Then you can both think about how to prevent this in the future and change your behavior accordingly, such that you incrementally converge onto a good conversation norm. I think something like this is the right approach.