Ok. I could quibble with “to a large extent” (actually, I took that to mean at least a majority, but now I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by that). But I think I agree that a lot of politeness norms are about obfuscating.
...But there’s also plenty of politeness that’s not about that. For example:
keeping out of personal space
coughing without covering your mouth
not being too loud
ignoring what someone is saying when you’re talking to them
interrupting
hijacking attentional spaces
not doing some amount of interpretive labor
dismissing ideas / possibilities without due explanation or consideration
Some of these shouldn’t be universally enforced; e.g. in many cases I can quite enjoy a perfectly friendly conversation with lots of kinda-heated-sounding interruptions. Some of these are vague (e.g. what is “dismissing” and “due consideration”). Some of these are clear aggression (e.g. personal space) but some of them aren’t.
I don’t know exactly what “rudeness” is as a category, or know how to perfectly delineate each type of rudeness so that it’s already explicitly never in conflict with truth-seeking, but I don’t think I should have to know in order for us to agree that rudeness in general is bad, and to enforce rudeness norms.
Ok. I could quibble with “to a large extent” (actually, I took that to mean at least a majority, but now I’m not sure if that’s what you mean by that). But I think I agree that a lot of politeness norms are about obfuscating.
...But there’s also plenty of politeness that’s not about that. For example:
keeping out of personal space
coughing without covering your mouth
not being too loud
ignoring what someone is saying when you’re talking to them
interrupting
hijacking attentional spaces
not doing some amount of interpretive labor
dismissing ideas / possibilities without due explanation or consideration
Some of these shouldn’t be universally enforced; e.g. in many cases I can quite enjoy a perfectly friendly conversation with lots of kinda-heated-sounding interruptions. Some of these are vague (e.g. what is “dismissing” and “due consideration”). Some of these are clear aggression (e.g. personal space) but some of them aren’t.
I don’t know exactly what “rudeness” is as a category, or know how to perfectly delineate each type of rudeness so that it’s already explicitly never in conflict with truth-seeking, but I don’t think I should have to know in order for us to agree that rudeness in general is bad, and to enforce rudeness norms.