This is a horrible thing to do to a Guesser. When you Ask out of turn, you’re forcing them to either comply or be rude, and they resent you. When you Tell, you’re imposing intimacy on them—making yourself vulnerable and demanding they do the same, and underlining exactly how a refusal would hurt you. That causes terrible guilt.
This is a horrible thing to do to a Guesser.
(I agree denotatively, but...)
It took me almost six months from meeting a particular Guess person to realise this: the times I offended them clustered according to whether I was a soldier in their war, not by my actual actions.[0]
Lots of things, maybe most things you can do in a conversation are horrible things to do to a Guesser. I’m well above average for social skills plus a few points above LW average IQ and even I find it hard to navigate conversations with a Guesser (I swear I have better social skills than that previous arrogant statement implies). The way I have found to not constantly insult and offend them is to take a lot of time to learn their particular ‘dialect’ of Guess.
I didn’t grow up in a Guess culture, so at my first exposure to it I was already a mind that could think for itself—and my thought was “Guess culture is manipulative.” It stacks up complicated laws, some of which are enforced ridiculously strictly[1] and others that are loosely enforced, if at all[2], so a skilled Guesser has both a minefield of rules, and an arsenal of selectively enforced rules, to use in conversation.
This is scary. If I walk into a conversation with a Guesser and I have something at stake, I am likely to lose that stake. Dealing with them feels like dealing with a negativeutility monster; I must sacrifice too much to avoid offending.
(Please don’t vote this post up because it bashes the hateful Guess enemy; evaluate it on its merits.)
0: I could use ableist slurs (insane; crazy) freely to deride people, institutions, papers etc that argued for no gendered pay gap, for biological difference between race, etc. But it was a serious transgression to use the same slurs to describe people, institutions, or papers that argued for parapsychology, telepathy, etc. Once I noticed this, I tested it experimentally—even when you know you’re doing it for science, it hurts to offend a Guesser.
1: “Giving a negative response when someone asks for evaluations on their appearance / idea / whatever” is banned. (The only way you can provide that information is to guess at their personal evaluation, and then give the least warm approval you think has a plausible interpretation that agrees with their actual personal evaluation, which will be revealed only after you’ve made your social move. Yech.)
2: Gossip is frowned on. You can gossip all you like until you say something they don’t like hearing, at which point you’ve offended them by gossiping.
0: I could use ableist slurs (insane; crazy) freely to deride people, institutions, papers etc that argued for no gendered pay gap, for biological difference between race, etc. But it was a serious transgression to use the same slurs to describe people, institutions, or papers that argued for parapsychology, telepathy, etc.
“You’re free to insult the things that I don’t have much respect for, but not the things that I do respect” sounds like the standard policy of most humans, Guesser or not.
The offence centered on the ableism of the slurs in particular; “You’re free to use an insult I can’t stand on things I don’t respect, but I won’t stand for use of it on things I do respect” doesn’t sound like a standard policy; otherwise you’d feel comfortable using profanity in front of your parents, but only when talking about a group they don’t respect.
What’s your policy for interacting with Patrick? Do you get along? I have some of the same problems you describe about walking on eggshells around Guessers.
There’s not really a better way to interact with Guessers, though. You either Guess yourself and spend a lot of effort in low-bandwidth discussion with lots of misunderstanding and weirdness, or you be mean to them in order to communicate and get your needs met.
I grew up in a strong Guess culture, and really one of the best things you can do for your mental health is to get out of that kind of place. It’s a way to passive-aggressively get concessions from those around you while making yourself miserable. Guessing is a terrible, terrible way to “win”.
The one I love and hope to spend my life with is a Guesser. This is how I learnt the previous comment. So I have quite a stake in learning Guess dialects. It helps not to mind weirdness, and to develop systems to catch misunderstandings. I’d be grateful for any advice.
My usual approach for dealing with culture-clashes in ongoing relationships is to work on the issues primarily in low-stakes contexts at first.
Beyond that, it helps to get some explicit agreement, first, that this culture-clash exists and what properties it has, and second, about what you collectively want to do about it.
If they are willing to meet you halfway, for example, they can practice explicitly verbalizing requests and expectations, and commit explicitly to not treating your silence as a refusal of a request even if it seems like one to them, and commit explicitly to not treating your explicit requests as demands even if they feel that way. You can make that easier by asking them whether they have a preference and if so what it is, framing questions open-endedly (e.g. “what would you like to do for dinner?” rather than “wanna do chinese?”), and vocalizing any uncertainty you may have (“wait… this feels weird. did I just miss an implicitly expressed preference?”)
If you are willing to meet them halfway, for example, you can study their pattern of cues and learn to recognize their implicit requests and responses. They can make that easier by telegraphing those cues, no matter how rude and insulting it feels to them like they’re being.
If they have any family members or childhood friends or whatever who have some insight into their own variant of Guess culture, they might be able to provide “translation,” but it’s important to understand that mostly people aren’t aware of the cultural cues they rely on, any more than we’re typically able to describe the phonetic rules of our native language. Certain things just sound right, that’s all.
This. Asking people to abandon their culture and adopt yours is likely to provoke hostility just on pattern matching. Meeting halfway is much more likely to succeed; even if you completely fail at guessing, it’ll show that you actually need an ask paradigm and aren’t being unfair in demanding it.
I have unusually low social anxiety, so I don’t experience Askers this way, but it is my impression that most Guessers would experience it in roughly that way, and yeah — that’s kind of a mean thing to do to someone.
imposing intimacy on them—making yourself vulnerable and demanding they do the same
Yeah, this is pretty terrible. I (being on the autism spectrum) am definitely in favor of Ask culture over Guess culture — and I still find the quoted practice… somewhat repellent.
This is a horrible thing to do to a Guesser. When you Ask out of turn, you’re forcing them to either comply or be rude, and they resent you. When you Tell, you’re imposing intimacy on them—making yourself vulnerable and demanding they do the same, and underlining exactly how a refusal would hurt you. That causes terrible guilt.
It took me almost six months from meeting a particular Guess person to realise this: the times I offended them clustered according to whether I was a soldier in their war, not by my actual actions.[0]
Lots of things, maybe most things you can do in a conversation are horrible things to do to a Guesser. I’m well above average for social skills plus a few points above LW average IQ and even I find it hard to navigate conversations with a Guesser (I swear I have better social skills than that previous arrogant statement implies). The way I have found to not constantly insult and offend them is to take a lot of time to learn their particular ‘dialect’ of Guess.
I didn’t grow up in a Guess culture, so at my first exposure to it I was already a mind that could think for itself—and my thought was “Guess culture is manipulative.” It stacks up complicated laws, some of which are enforced ridiculously strictly[1] and others that are loosely enforced, if at all[2], so a skilled Guesser has both a minefield of rules, and an arsenal of selectively enforced rules, to use in conversation.
This is scary. If I walk into a conversation with a Guesser and I have something at stake, I am likely to lose that stake. Dealing with them feels like dealing with a negative utility monster; I must sacrifice too much to avoid offending.
(Please don’t vote this post up because it bashes the hateful Guess enemy; evaluate it on its merits.)
0: I could use ableist slurs (insane; crazy) freely to deride people, institutions, papers etc that argued for no gendered pay gap, for biological difference between race, etc. But it was a serious transgression to use the same slurs to describe people, institutions, or papers that argued for parapsychology, telepathy, etc. Once I noticed this, I tested it experimentally—even when you know you’re doing it for science, it hurts to offend a Guesser.
1: “Giving a negative response when someone asks for evaluations on their appearance / idea / whatever” is banned. (The only way you can provide that information is to guess at their personal evaluation, and then give the least warm approval you think has a plausible interpretation that agrees with their actual personal evaluation, which will be revealed only after you’ve made your social move. Yech.)
2: Gossip is frowned on. You can gossip all you like until you say something they don’t like hearing, at which point you’ve offended them by gossiping.
“You’re free to insult the things that I don’t have much respect for, but not the things that I do respect” sounds like the standard policy of most humans, Guesser or not.
The offence centered on the ableism of the slurs in particular; “You’re free to use an insult I can’t stand on things I don’t respect, but I won’t stand for use of it on things I do respect” doesn’t sound like a standard policy; otherwise you’d feel comfortable using profanity in front of your parents, but only when talking about a group they don’t respect.
What’s your policy for interacting with Patrick? Do you get along? I have some of the same problems you describe about walking on eggshells around Guessers.
There’s not really a better way to interact with Guessers, though. You either Guess yourself and spend a lot of effort in low-bandwidth discussion with lots of misunderstanding and weirdness, or you be mean to them in order to communicate and get your needs met.
I grew up in a strong Guess culture, and really one of the best things you can do for your mental health is to get out of that kind of place. It’s a way to passive-aggressively get concessions from those around you while making yourself miserable. Guessing is a terrible, terrible way to “win”.
The one I love and hope to spend my life with is a Guesser. This is how I learnt the previous comment. So I have quite a stake in learning Guess dialects. It helps not to mind weirdness, and to develop systems to catch misunderstandings. I’d be grateful for any advice.
My usual approach for dealing with culture-clashes in ongoing relationships is to work on the issues primarily in low-stakes contexts at first.
Beyond that, it helps to get some explicit agreement, first, that this culture-clash exists and what properties it has, and second, about what you collectively want to do about it.
If they are willing to meet you halfway, for example, they can practice explicitly verbalizing requests and expectations, and commit explicitly to not treating your silence as a refusal of a request even if it seems like one to them, and commit explicitly to not treating your explicit requests as demands even if they feel that way. You can make that easier by asking them whether they have a preference and if so what it is, framing questions open-endedly (e.g. “what would you like to do for dinner?” rather than “wanna do chinese?”), and vocalizing any uncertainty you may have (“wait… this feels weird. did I just miss an implicitly expressed preference?”)
If you are willing to meet them halfway, for example, you can study their pattern of cues and learn to recognize their implicit requests and responses. They can make that easier by telegraphing those cues, no matter how rude and insulting it feels to them like they’re being.
If they have any family members or childhood friends or whatever who have some insight into their own variant of Guess culture, they might be able to provide “translation,” but it’s important to understand that mostly people aren’t aware of the cultural cues they rely on, any more than we’re typically able to describe the phonetic rules of our native language. Certain things just sound right, that’s all.
This. Asking people to abandon their culture and adopt yours is likely to provoke hostility just on pattern matching. Meeting halfway is much more likely to succeed; even if you completely fail at guessing, it’ll show that you actually need an ask paradigm and aren’t being unfair in demanding it.
I have unusually low social anxiety, so I don’t experience Askers this way, but it is my impression that most Guessers would experience it in roughly that way, and yeah — that’s kind of a mean thing to do to someone.
Yeah, this is pretty terrible. I (being on the autism spectrum) am definitely in favor of Ask culture over Guess culture — and I still find the quoted practice… somewhat repellent.
I’m on the autism spectrum (PDD-NOS), and Tell culture sounds like a good idea to me.
[pollid:807]
If you hit the “show help” button to the bottom right, there’s a link to polls help.
Thanks, edited.
Karma sink.
If you’re on the autism spectrum and think Tell culture is a bad idea, upvote this comment.
If you’re on the autism spectrum and think Tell culture is a good idea, upvote this comment.