I agree with the idea that civility norms as they are currently implemented are never neutral, but not that it is humanly impossible.
Incisive questioning of a locally unpopular view is called “being insightful”; the proponent of a locally unpopular view being triggered by it is called “letting your emotions run away with you in a rational discussion” and “blowing up at someone for no reason.” Incisive questioning of a locally popular view is called “uncharitable” and “incredibly rude”; the proponent of a locally popular view being triggered by it is called “a reasonable response to someone else being a jerk.” It all depends on whether the people doing the enforcement find it easier to put themselves in the shoes of the upset person or the person doing the questioning.
It does, if the enforcers see themselves as adjudicators of good taste rather than the people who execute the rules other people have agreed on. I suppose this is one of the few situations where not questioning authority would actually be beneficial.
It’s also worth stating that if you want more than just the pretense of civil discourse, a person who retaliates against a harsh but true critisism of their idea has to be reprimanded, not in spite of but because the audence is sympathetic to their emotional reaction.
Conversely, Great-Aunt Bertha skipped school in the fifties to go get drunk with sailors and was the first woman in the Hell’s Angels. Great-Aunt Bertha thinks it is very rude that Great-Aunt Gertrude keeps saying “a-HEM” five times a sentence just because she’s talking the way she normally talks. It’s not polite to interrupt what people are saying by getting offended and storming out. And that whole “sir” and “ma’am” business is actually offensive. Children are people and it is wrong to treat them as if they are subservient to adults.
Great-Aunt Bertha and Great-Aunt Gertrude will have some difficulty agreeing about what is polite behavior at the Thanksgiving table.
I’m not particularly sure if this is true of your tyical Aunt Bertha, but it is my experience that everyone, including the more Bertha-ish types such as myself, agree that politeness means something approximating Aunt Gertrude. The counterpoint is not that politeness is completely subjective but at what point along the continuum between blunt honesty and hyper-politeness is best in a given situation.
This isn’t the same for respect, as that is an internal reaction, rather than a consensus based social norm. Many hacker-types will only take the time out of their day to poke holes in an idea if it at least has some parts that are worth saving. This makes critisism a mark of respect in those subcultures, in opposition to almost everywhere else.
On the other hand, many aspects of etiquette have nothing to do with being nice to people but instead are ways of signalling that one is upper-class, or at least a middle-class person with pretensions of same. (Most obviously, anything about what forks one uses; more controversially, rules about greetings, introductions, when to bring gifts, etc.) You wind up excluding poor and less educated people, which people in many spaces don’t want.
I’d like to use this to register an informal complaint that the norms in the rationalist community, including the ones on discourse contain a large proportion of things that suit the aesthetic sensibilities of WASPy middle class intellectuals rather than what’s instrumentally rational for acheiving most of our stated goals.
I agree with the idea that civility norms as they are currently implemented are never neutral, but not that it is humanly impossible.
It does, if the enforcers see themselves as adjudicators of good taste rather than the people who execute the rules other people have agreed on. I suppose this is one of the few situations where not questioning authority would actually be beneficial.
It’s also worth stating that if you want more than just the pretense of civil discourse, a person who retaliates against a harsh but true critisism of their idea has to be reprimanded, not in spite of but because the audence is sympathetic to their emotional reaction.
I’m not particularly sure if this is true of your tyical Aunt Bertha, but it is my experience that everyone, including the more Bertha-ish types such as myself, agree that politeness means something approximating Aunt Gertrude. The counterpoint is not that politeness is completely subjective but at what point along the continuum between blunt honesty and hyper-politeness is best in a given situation.
This isn’t the same for respect, as that is an internal reaction, rather than a consensus based social norm. Many hacker-types will only take the time out of their day to poke holes in an idea if it at least has some parts that are worth saving. This makes critisism a mark of respect in those subcultures, in opposition to almost everywhere else.
I’d like to use this to register an informal complaint that the norms in the rationalist community, including the ones on discourse contain a large proportion of things that suit the aesthetic sensibilities of WASPy middle class intellectuals rather than what’s instrumentally rational for acheiving most of our stated goals.