“Do you want to vent or to problem solve?” was useful tech when it was invented but I hate it now. Here’s why:
The meme enforces the idea that there are exactly two things one might want, which makes it hard for people to even notice they want something different.
The thing I most want while complaining is help understanding the problem and myself. Actual solving is often trivial if you understand well enough. This could be viewed as coming under either vent or solve, but in practice if you answer either way people stop information gathering.
Yes, I do tell people I want the secret third thing, and it does improve things.
Even if I do just want to vent, people asking that question are rarely good listeners. They treat it like a pressure cooker emitting steam- something they need to observe, but not apply any brain power to.
You might hope “understand the problem” would fall under problem solving, but in my experience the people who ask this question will immediately start trying to make the problem go away, instead of understanding it well enough to solve it. They apply more brain power than if you say venting, but not enough to actually be helpful.
I want the other person to Just Know what I want, without asking. This is often looked down on as unreasonable, but people give lots of clues about what they want, and there are ways to solicit more of them without killing the momentum of the conversation. This makes asking, especially very abruptly and early, a sign the person is approaching the conversation with either low skill or low effort.
For example, one clue is “how much expertise do you have in this problem, relative to the complainer?”
these issues have also arisen for me. iirc I’ve said before things vaguely like (probably shorter than) “I want to share some things that happened and my emotional ratings about them, and hear you restate it back so I know it got across well enough that I know there are two minds that know about the consequences for me, so if there’s a solution, which I doubt there is, it will become easier for us to find later”
On several of these I think you might be confounding the positively correlated variables “has heard of this question” and “is on the autism spectrum”, the latter of which is anticorrelated with the kind of behavior you want (intuitive, empathetic listening without needing to ask a bunch of explicit questions). I find it unlikely that asking the question makes people worse at the behavior you want.
1: “vent or problem solve” is itself an improvement from the standard typical mind falacy of there is exactly one thing people want when they complain, typically male: problem solve, female : vent, and they have trouble imagining other people may want to do things differently. so yeah if you want a 3rd thing or 4th thing, I assume you should specify
2. as you stated below I am under the impression “understanding the problem and myself” is under problem solve, and if people’s “problem solve” did not help you then it’s is a people problem, not a tech problem. I am assuming: venter base assumption: “problem does not exist or unsolvable” problem solver base assumption: “problem exist and solvable” everything else follow from that premise, if I understand you correctly you believe there are incantations that you can make to make people problem solve even harder/better?
3. if the book “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” is to be believed, there are people [implied to be female] who want to be treated as pressure cooker emitting steam. e.g. of good communication from the book:
Female: I am sad about work. Male: uh huh Female: I am also upset about my coleagues. Male: I hear you. Female: my wage is too low. Male: yeah it’s tough. Female: I am so glad that you sat here and listen to me like this.
Yeah, this is appalling to me as well, but apparently some people like it that way. [extremely weak evidence] So I actually went out and did an informal poll of my accquantainces [n<20] and reading between the line [beware subjective interpretation] this seems to be what the majority of my female friends/colleagues want [4:1 ratio], and they have been docking me points for not doing it [I don’t have many female friends, this seems to explain it]. My male friends are overwhelmingly problem solver as expected. since you are a lesswrong member, I assume you should just flag your self as asking for problem solve at least 80% of the time you complain as prior?
5. Yeah I also want people to just be telepathic and know what I want. But we do not live in utopia so we better accomodate others, I think. Especially people like me who is autistic and have trouble understanding people’s messages/signals. It is just much more kind to people like me to flag what you want. I believe you are implying that the skill to determine what peple want in this case is trivial to accquire? that is to pull a number from thin air: 90% of people can accquire it with less than 10 hours of practice? I found this to be unlikely because you seem unaware that people could like being treated like a pressure cooker letting off steam so you may not be good at judging intention either.
Example from my life: Recently, I mentioned to a group of friends that I was feeling bad.
My female friend immediately assumed I wanted reassurance.
My male friends immediately went into problem-solving mode.
Neither group could imagine that I might have wanted something different in that moment.
“Do you want to vent or to problem solve?” was useful tech when it was invented but I hate it now. Here’s why:
The meme enforces the idea that there are exactly two things one might want, which makes it hard for people to even notice they want something different.
The thing I most want while complaining is help understanding the problem and myself. Actual solving is often trivial if you understand well enough. This could be viewed as coming under either vent or solve, but in practice if you answer either way people stop information gathering.
Yes, I do tell people I want the secret third thing, and it does improve things.
Even if I do just want to vent, people asking that question are rarely good listeners. They treat it like a pressure cooker emitting steam- something they need to observe, but not apply any brain power to.
You might hope “understand the problem” would fall under problem solving, but in my experience the people who ask this question will immediately start trying to make the problem go away, instead of understanding it well enough to solve it. They apply more brain power than if you say venting, but not enough to actually be helpful.
I want the other person to Just Know what I want, without asking. This is often looked down on as unreasonable, but people give lots of clues about what they want, and there are ways to solicit more of them without killing the momentum of the conversation. This makes asking, especially very abruptly and early, a sign the person is approaching the conversation with either low skill or low effort.
For example, one clue is “how much expertise do you have in this problem, relative to the complainer?”
these issues have also arisen for me. iirc I’ve said before things vaguely like (probably shorter than) “I want to share some things that happened and my emotional ratings about them, and hear you restate it back so I know it got across well enough that I know there are two minds that know about the consequences for me, so if there’s a solution, which I doubt there is, it will become easier for us to find later”
On several of these I think you might be confounding the positively correlated variables “has heard of this question” and “is on the autism spectrum”, the latter of which is anticorrelated with the kind of behavior you want (intuitive, empathetic listening without needing to ask a bunch of explicit questions). I find it unlikely that asking the question makes people worse at the behavior you want.
In my opinion:
1: “vent or problem solve” is itself an improvement from the standard typical mind falacy of there is exactly one thing people want when they complain, typically male: problem solve, female : vent, and they have trouble imagining other people may want to do things differently. so yeah if you want a 3rd thing or 4th thing, I assume you should specify
2. as you stated below I am under the impression “understanding the problem and myself” is under problem solve, and if people’s “problem solve” did not help you then it’s is a people problem, not a tech problem. I am assuming:
venter base assumption: “problem does not exist or unsolvable”
problem solver base assumption: “problem exist and solvable”
everything else follow from that premise, if I understand you correctly you believe there are incantations that you can make to make people problem solve even harder/better?
3. if the book “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” is to be believed, there are people [implied to be female] who want to be treated as pressure cooker emitting steam. e.g. of good communication from the book:
Female: I am sad about work.
Male: uh huh
Female: I am also upset about my coleagues.
Male: I hear you.
Female: my wage is too low.
Male: yeah it’s tough.
Female: I am so glad that you sat here and listen to me like this.
Yeah, this is appalling to me as well, but apparently some people like it that way. [extremely weak evidence] So I actually went out and did an informal poll of my accquantainces [n<20] and reading between the line [beware subjective interpretation] this seems to be what the majority of my female friends/colleagues want [4:1 ratio], and they have been docking me points for not doing it [I don’t have many female friends, this seems to explain it]. My male friends are overwhelmingly problem solver as expected.
since you are a lesswrong member, I assume you should just flag your self as asking for problem solve at least 80% of the time you complain as prior?
5. Yeah I also want people to just be telepathic and know what I want. But we do not live in utopia so we better accomodate others, I think. Especially people like me who is autistic and have trouble understanding people’s messages/signals. It is just much more kind to people like me to flag what you want. I believe you are implying that the skill to determine what peple want in this case is trivial to accquire? that is to pull a number from thin air: 90% of people can accquire it with less than 10 hours of practice? I found this to be unlikely because you seem unaware that people could like being treated like a pressure cooker letting off steam so you may not be good at judging intention either.
Example from my life:
Recently, I mentioned to a group of friends that I was feeling bad.
My female friend immediately assumed I wanted reassurance.
My male friends immediately went into problem-solving mode.
Neither group could imagine that I might have wanted something different in that moment.