Thanks, I see it now. I think the insult has more to do with the relationship-terminating aspect (the part where Alice sets a lifetime birthday budget, or the moderator says he’s changing his stance towards allegedly low-interpretive-effort comments going forward) than the mere tracking of time costs. When my busy friend says she can only talk on the phone for twenty minutes (and that affects what I want to talk about with our limited time), it doesn’t feel insulting because the budget is just for that call, not our entire relationship.
Effort is a cost, not a benefit.
I’m not convinced Ben was making that mistake (which I expect him to also be attuned to noticing, because he wrote about it two years earlier): I read it as, given unusual but not praiseworthy-in-itself effort expenditure, it makes sense to flag it.
When my busy friend says she can only talk on the phone for twenty minutes (and that affects what I want to talk about with our limited time), it doesn’t feel insulting because the budget is just for that call, not our entire relationship.
Yes, but that is because phone conversations are a synchronous communication medium. That means both that it’s subject to scheduling constraints (being able to talk now is a requirement over and above being able to talk for some amount of time) and that the time invested in generating some output is equal to the size of the output. Neither is the case for writing discussion forum comments.
Now consider instead the scenario where your friend says that she’s only going to spend an hour baking you a birthday cake (for your upcoming birthday specifically, not necessarily for all birthdays to come). Insulting, right? For one thing, she’s not obligated to bake you a cake to start with; it’s cool if she does (and you baked a cake for her last birthday—not that she owes you a cake in response; but baking cakes for each other is a thing that the two of you do), but if not, well, it’s not the end of the world. But why decide to bake the cake but then impose this limit? And of effort spent, too! Not, “I’m going to bake you a small cake, but not a big one”, but “I’m going to spend an hour on your cake”.[1] Weird!
Well… weird if you still think that the two of you are friends, anyway. But actually it turns out that she considers you to be somehow beneath her. This is her way of informing you of this.
This is not a hypothetical example, either. I regularly bake desserts for my friends (for birthdays, for various holidays, just for ordinary get-togethers—such things happen infrequently enough that they’re worth investing a bit of effort in). And sometimes it so happens that I haven’t had the time or energy (due to unavoidable life circumstances) to invest in an elaborate cake; so I’ll make something simpler, and say “hey, sorry, I wasn’t able to do my usual fancy thing, but I’ve made you this”.
Thanks, I see it now. I think the insult has more to do with the relationship-terminating aspect (the part where Alice sets a lifetime birthday budget, or the moderator says he’s changing his stance towards allegedly low-interpretive-effort comments going forward) than the mere tracking of time costs. When my busy friend says she can only talk on the phone for twenty minutes (and that affects what I want to talk about with our limited time), it doesn’t feel insulting because the budget is just for that call, not our entire relationship.
I’m not convinced Ben was making that mistake (which I expect him to also be attuned to noticing, because he wrote about it two years earlier): I read it as, given unusual but not praiseworthy-in-itself effort expenditure, it makes sense to flag it.
Yes, but that is because phone conversations are a synchronous communication medium. That means both that it’s subject to scheduling constraints (being able to talk now is a requirement over and above being able to talk for some amount of time) and that the time invested in generating some output is equal to the size of the output. Neither is the case for writing discussion forum comments.
Now consider instead the scenario where your friend says that she’s only going to spend an hour baking you a birthday cake (for your upcoming birthday specifically, not necessarily for all birthdays to come). Insulting, right? For one thing, she’s not obligated to bake you a cake to start with; it’s cool if she does (and you baked a cake for her last birthday—not that she owes you a cake in response; but baking cakes for each other is a thing that the two of you do), but if not, well, it’s not the end of the world. But why decide to bake the cake but then impose this limit? And of effort spent, too! Not, “I’m going to bake you a small cake, but not a big one”, but “I’m going to spend an hour on your cake”.[1] Weird!
Well… weird if you still think that the two of you are friends, anyway. But actually it turns out that she considers you to be somehow beneath her. This is her way of informing you of this.
This is not a hypothetical example, either. I regularly bake desserts for my friends (for birthdays, for various holidays, just for ordinary get-togethers—such things happen infrequently enough that they’re worth investing a bit of effort in). And sometimes it so happens that I haven’t had the time or energy (due to unavoidable life circumstances) to invest in an elaborate cake; so I’ll make something simpler, and say “hey, sorry, I wasn’t able to do my usual fancy thing, but I’ve made you this”.