I’d probably agree with it in some contexts, but not in general. E.g. this article has some nice examples of situations where “do the effortful thing or do nothing at all” is a bad rule:
Different people have different levels of social skills. In particular, different levels of fluency or dexterity at getting people to satisfy their wants. (And of course, your dexterity varies based on context.) I think of these in four stages.
Stage 1: Paralysis. You don’t dare make the request. Or you’ve gotten to the point where you need the thing so badly that you’re too overwhelmed to communicate clearly at all. You may not even be consciously aware that you need the thing, you’re just suffering for the lack of it.
Stage 2: Rude request. You make it clear that you want something, but you express it inappropriately. You come across as boorish, pushy, childish, or desperate.
Stage 3: Polite request. You express your desire calmly, pleasantly, and in an appropriate context. You come across as reasonable and respectful.
Stage 4: Automatic abundance. You don’t even have to ask. Either through luck, planning, subtly guiding the social situation, or very high status, you automatically get what you desire without ever having to make it explicitly known.
For example, let’s say you’re exhausted; you want to excuse yourself from the group and take a nap.
In stage 1, you don’t dare ask. Or you don’t understand why you feel shitty, you don’t recognize it as fatigue. You just get more and more upset until you collapse in a heap. In stage 2, you rudely interrupt people in the middle of something important and announce that you’re tired and you’re leaving. In stage 3, you find a convenient moment, apologize for cutting things short, but explain that you’ve got to get some rest. In stage 4, you manage to subtly wrap things up so you can get some rest, without making anyone feel rushed. [...]
Advice about social skills is always “Be Stage 3, not Stage 2.” Which is fine, as far as it goes. Stage 3 really is better than Stage 2. It’s more considerate, more empathetic. And it works better.
But sometimes Stage 2 is better than Stage 1. The person who can only ask rudely is often perceived as having worse social skills, worse manners, than the person who can’t ask at all. But the stage 1 person is paralyzed, not polite. Her ‘social skills’ only go as far as acquiescence. She can’t use them to steer. [...]
The second thing is that the stages relate quite directly to urgency of need. If you aren’t hungry, or you know you can get food any time, you’re in Stage 4. If you’re getting hungry, you may interrupt your friends to ask if you can stop for lunch, putting you in Stage 3. If you’re famished, you begin losing self-control and becoming pushy and demanding about food, which puts you in Stage 2. And if you’re literally ill with hunger, you may lose the ability to be coherent, which puts you in Stage 1. So people who are more prone to sudden urgent needs are more likely to drop into earlier stages. (Disability blogs talk a lot about the danger of falling into Stage 1, and how rudeness is better than paralysis if those are the only choices.)
It does feel to me like allowing people to be Stage 2 is a requirement for helping them get away from Stage 1 and up to the higher stages. And this bit in particular
if one genuinely does not have the energy required to e.g. put forth one’s thoughts while avoiding straightforwardly false statements, or while distinguishing inference from observation (etc.), then one should simply disengage
sounds to me like the kind of a norm that would push people down to Stage 1 from Stage 2.
I’d probably agree with it in some contexts, but not in general. E.g. this article has some nice examples of situations where “do the effortful thing or do nothing at all” is a bad rule:
It does feel to me like allowing people to be Stage 2 is a requirement for helping them get away from Stage 1 and up to the higher stages. And this bit in particular
sounds to me like the kind of a norm that would push people down to Stage 1 from Stage 2.