I retract my “to be socially successful, you must X” point—it’s obviously false, plenty of people are socially successful without understanding much of anything.
I think there was a different point I was trying to make, which was more like: “I see people actively dismissing some of these conversational styles and the accompanying skills required for them, and I see that having explicit impacts on how the rationality community is perceived, (which ends up painting all of us with a “overconfident, unfriendly and bad at social grace” brush) which is making it harder for our good ideas to be accepted.”
So I think my argument is something like a) I think this specific cluster of people (who are Ravenclaws) are dismissing something because they don’t understand it and this is having bad effects, and b) in addition to the bad effects, it’s just irritating to me to see people preoccupied with truth to dismiss something that they don’t understand. (this latter point should NOT be universally compelling but may happen to be compelling to the people I’m complaining about)
My argument has nothing to do with NVC working for me
The specific point I was responding to was “All this talk about cultures doesn’t change whether social interaction feels draining or feels like it is giving you energy. If you however, do nonviolent communication decently that experience usually won’t feel draining.” This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me (it hasn’t been my experience—I’ve gotten good things out of NVC but ‘communication that wasn’t draining’ wasn’t one of them).
without addressing the substance of my argument.
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
I think you provided evidence those frameworks are useful. (I agree, I’ve personally used two of them, and do think the cluster they are a part of is an important piece of the overall puzzle). I don’t think those frameworks accomplish the same set of things as the things I was mostly talking about it in this post, and if that was an important piece of your point I don’t think you provided much evidence for it.
This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction. It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
Then there’s the hypothesis that well done NVC resolves the emotion. That’s again a hypothesis build on some experience and a bunch of theory about emotions.
You do reveal your needs by saying “I like being clever. I like pursuing ambitious goals.” That’s nice but I imagine that it’s mean to say that you run project Hufflepuff simply because you like being clever and you like to pursue ambitious projects.
I imagine that you do feel a desire to have a community that’s nicer to each other and that feels more connected to each other, however you don’t explicitly express that desire in your post.
This suggests to me that the NVC rhetorical moves aren’t deeply ingrained in your communication habits. Given that they aren’t deeply ingrained I would expect that it frequently happens in communications that you feel something and don’t express the feeling or the needs and afterwards feel drained.
If you actually spent a decent amount of time in NVC workshops, that would be interesting to know and might cause me to update in the direction of NVC being a framework that’s harder to use in practice.
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
The point was frameworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post. Even when the blog post has been written by an respected community member and the framework with years of refining through practice is created by an outsider, the framework with longer history is still preferable.
This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction.
It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
If I
My argument
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
The point was metaframeworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post.
I retract my “to be socially successful, you must X” point—it’s obviously false, plenty of people are socially successful without understanding much of anything.
I think there was a different point I was trying to make, which was more like: “I see people actively dismissing some of these conversational styles and the accompanying skills required for them, and I see that having explicit impacts on how the rationality community is perceived, (which ends up painting all of us with a “overconfident, unfriendly and bad at social grace” brush) which is making it harder for our good ideas to be accepted.”
So I think my argument is something like a) I think this specific cluster of people (who are Ravenclaws) are dismissing something because they don’t understand it and this is having bad effects, and b) in addition to the bad effects, it’s just irritating to me to see people preoccupied with truth to dismiss something that they don’t understand. (this latter point should NOT be universally compelling but may happen to be compelling to the people I’m complaining about)
The specific point I was responding to was “All this talk about cultures doesn’t change whether social interaction feels draining or feels like it is giving you energy. If you however, do nonviolent communication decently that experience usually won’t feel draining.” This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me (it hasn’t been my experience—I’ve gotten good things out of NVC but ‘communication that wasn’t draining’ wasn’t one of them).
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
I think you provided evidence those frameworks are useful. (I agree, I’ve personally used two of them, and do think the cluster they are a part of is an important piece of the overall puzzle). I don’t think those frameworks accomplish the same set of things as the things I was mostly talking about it in this post, and if that was an important piece of your point I don’t think you provided much evidence for it.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction.
It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
Then there’s the hypothesis that well done NVC resolves the emotion. That’s again a hypothesis build on some experience and a bunch of theory about emotions.
To assess whether you practice NVC I might look at a post where you wrote your motivation for this series of blog posts ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/ouc/project_hufflepuff_planting_the_flag/ ) . A person from whom NVC is deeply integrated is likely going to make NVC rhetorical moves.
You do reveal your needs by saying “I like being clever. I like pursuing ambitious goals.” That’s nice but I imagine that it’s mean to say that you run project Hufflepuff simply because you like being clever and you like to pursue ambitious projects. I imagine that you do feel a desire to have a community that’s nicer to each other and that feels more connected to each other, however you don’t explicitly express that desire in your post.
This suggests to me that the NVC rhetorical moves aren’t deeply ingrained in your communication habits. Given that they aren’t deeply ingrained I would expect that it frequently happens in communications that you feel something and don’t express the feeling or the needs and afterwards feel drained.
If you actually spent a decent amount of time in NVC workshops, that would be interesting to know and might cause me to update in the direction of NVC being a framework that’s harder to use in practice.
The point was frameworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post. Even when the blog post has been written by an respected community member and the framework with years of refining through practice is created by an outsider, the framework with longer history is still preferable.
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction. It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
If I
My argument
The point was metaframeworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post.