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The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

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Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#101

Post by pjc50 »

asveikau wrote: post #12
zrkrlc wrote: post #3

Hmm, in my head, I model conversation as a game of who can get the mine the most "intimacy", if you will, while revealing the least about oneself. So risque topics are, as the adjective suggests, high risk, but also high reward. Correspondingly, small talk is a lot of low risk, low reward back-and-forth. You don't have to be intimate with a stranger, but you need to stick your neck out if you want to progress beyond…

Some personal advice: stop viewing your interactions in this transactional way and just be yourself. Stop giving a shit who reveals what and the perceived balance or imbalance of the same. Be kind and be generous.

"Just be yourself" is terrible advice to people to whom this stuff does not come naturally. Especially at work, hardly anyone brings their "true self" to work and it was very apparent in the threads on Google that a lot of people thought that those bringing their whole selves to work were idiots who should be fired.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#103

Post by isoskeles »

tony wrote: post #13

I wonder what would be a more personal (and interesting) question than: - Describe your relationship with your mother - Describe your relationship with your father Completely open-ended, yet, is universal to everyone. Being candid in that area can provide a lot of foundational underpinning to understand someone. But - would people find it awkward? Would they take offense? Feel pain thinking about the answer? As for s…

Yes, sharing anything about my relationship with my parents would cause a certain amount of pain. I wouldn't feel like going through that for just anyone who decides to ask about it.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#104

Post by scarejunba »

asveikau wrote: post #12
zrkrlc wrote: post #3

Hmm, in my head, I model conversation as a game of who can get the mine the most "intimacy", if you will, while revealing the least about oneself. So risque topics are, as the adjective suggests, high risk, but also high reward. Correspondingly, small talk is a lot of low risk, low reward back-and-forth. You don't have to be intimate with a stranger, but you need to stick your neck out if you want to progress beyond…

Some personal advice: stop viewing your interactions in this transactional way and just be yourself. Stop giving a shit who reveals what and the perceived balance or imbalance of the same. Be kind and be generous.

This advice is, in my experience, a low quality action item. I saw incredible progress in my life when I modeled the interactions. You can model interactions as information exchange, etc. and you can also model out the increased value of maintaining repeated interactions. It’s just another way of learning a skill: good human interactions.

Be yourself / don’t model / etc. works for those who are able to take this analogy to children learning language (in a natural way) vs. learning language by studying grammar and vocabulary systematically. The former is desirable because it’s speedy, you grow the skills you use most (so it reinforces the right things) but sometimes it’s just not available. That can happen just because you suck at it.

There are very limited ways other people’s lives are better than mine (as an existence proof) and I used to model interactions. I stopped when my skill reached unconscious competence.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#105

Post by clarry »

StandardFuture wrote: post #100
thaumasiotes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is one of my favorite principles from a religion that most who practice said religion almost entirely ignore. Puzzling. There's nothing puzzling about this. Most people who practice any religion with written principles almost entirely ignore almost all of those principles. The official principles of a religion don't really have anything to do with why people affiliate to one or another.

But, particularly in American culture it is the imbalance in "enforcement" of principles that is the problem. It is perfectly fine to be super-nice as often as possible. But, the culture is "do not offend" dominate and almost void of "do not take offense". This imbalance of cultural enforcement is likely a driving factor behind the younger generations view on enforcing standards of political correctness, social justi…

http://thebeje.blogspot.com/2006/01/take-no-offence-unscript...

Take that with a grain of salt, there's plenty of stuff in the Bible that suggests overlooking offenses (things like Proverbs 19:11) and obviously forgiveness is part of it. But I'm not sure "take no offense" is quite the main component of that creed.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#106

Post by collyw »

OceanSunfish wrote: post #55
_y5hn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are sheep and it is unfortunate.

Sheep are rational agents when they are surrounded by wolves.

Having driven in country roads with lots of sheep around, their behaviour doesn't seem rational. Run in front of the car right as you are about to pass them.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#107

Post by ts0000 »

ronilan wrote: post #8

What is a sensitive question? Not the examples provided. Here’s an alternative. Former Secretary of Defense for two presidents Donald Rumsfeld once framed (brilliantly actually) the possible things we know. ... there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we d…

> A while after someone (which I can’t trace back) made an interesting (and equally brilliant) observation - there is a fourth option - unknown knowns

Gary Bernhardt uses this in his "Ideology"[1] talk.

[1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#108

Post by collyw »

verst wrote: post #82
fouc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first spurts of urine aren't actually sterile, nevermind the area around the urinal (where there's probably a non-zero chance of transfer). Ultimately washing hands is for the benefit of other people. It just shows conscientiousness.

Doesn't seem that "mid stream" is sterile either. Urine simply isn't sterile. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urotoday.com/conference-hig...

Maybe not completely, but they told us that it was when i studied biology 25 years ago. And on outdoor first aid courses where water wasn't available to clean wounds it was also suggested that urine could be used.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#109

Post by gambiting »

Supermancho wrote: post #69
OceanSunfish wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sheep are rational agents when they are surrounded by wolves.

Being a wolf is preferable nonetheless.

wolves are actively hunted by far more dangerous predators though, especially if they are killing sheep.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#110

Post by tapland »

fouc wrote: post #41
acidburnNSA wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said stall so I am onboard with your disgust. This always reminds me about a Richard Feynman story where he'd stand in the bathroom and ridicule people who washed their hands after using the urinal, saying the urine was sterile anyway. I find that kind of hilarious. Colleagues complained all the time, like "well I was headed to lunch anyway and always wash my hands before lunch"

The first spurts of urine aren't actually sterile, nevermind the area around the urinal (where there's probably a non-zero chance of transfer). Ultimately washing hands is for the benefit of other people. It just shows conscientiousness.

Though after showering in the morning and putting those parts in cotton clothes it might be the cleanest area you've been close to touching the last few hours when going to the bathroom.
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