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Ask vs. Guess Culture

jeanhsu.substack.com

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Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#251

Post by Cthulhu_ »

detourdog wrote: post #59
quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

Baltic state heritage and you sound like my kind of guest/host. To quote Jerad/Donald at Silicon Valley: “I like when people yell at me, at least I know where I stand”.

To misquote quote a meme, I like dominant women not because I want to be humiliated, but because they say what they want.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#252

Post by Cthulhu_ »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #149
burlesona wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture" and my wife is from the northwest and strongly aligns to "guess" culture. I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?

yeah im from the south and there is definitely a level of up-front-ness that i'm not sure the parent comment is talking about. like a level of exuberance and get-it-out-ness that often borders on belligerence "yall doin okay?"

Questions like that really... confuse me, because is it just a generic 'hello' or a serious question?

In my own experience, I once had an obnoxious colleague who asked "How was your weekend?". I didn't like the question because one, I don't like to talk about what I do / did in my spare time, and two, it was leading because the guy was really really eager to talk about HIS weekend, but... I didn't care, or else I would've asked.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#253

Post by boppo1 »

munificent wrote: post #241
boppo1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>addressed your childhood trauma This is pretty frustrating as 90s-kid who had a Good Childhood™ and struggles with interpersonal issues. I have a close friend from childhood who also had quite a Good Childhood™ and he can't shut up about "trauma" and it seems like every two years he has this big epiphany about how he addressed some "trauma" he was previously repressing and how now that he's done so he's All Better N…

> I have had people (including the friend from the first paragraph) suggest I need to "work on my childhood trauma" but really and honestly I can't think of a single thing that was legitimately traumatic. Let me just copy/paste an older comment of mine: --- Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really l…

I understood the concept already, thanks.

But thank you for providing readers an example of the kind of condescension I was describing.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#254

Post by quacked »

ketzo wrote: post #188
red-iron-pine wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah im from the south and there is definitely a level of up-front-ness that i'm not sure the parent comment is talking about. like a level of exuberance and get-it-out-ness that often borders on belligerence "yall doin okay?"

This is counterintuitive, but in the framing of the article, I think that "y'all doin okay?" would actually be part of Guess culture, not Ask culture. It's just a very up-front manifestation of dealing with Guess culture, I think..? It's not Ask culture because the person who needs something is not doing the asking. This is abstract, but stay with me here I'm also Southern, and I think that the inclination towards th…

I'm the original commenter, and I agree with you. The person you're responding to is accurate about that "friendly belligerence", but whenever I go down there I get all the "y'all doin' all right?" questions by hosts who are trying to see if I need anything.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#255

Post by Cthulhu_ »

boppo1 wrote: post #104
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’ve learned anything in my 20 year mental health journey, it’s that until you’ve addressed your childhood trauma, nothing you do will be a lasting fix for any interpersonal issues you may have.

>addressed your childhood trauma This is pretty frustrating as 90s-kid who had a Good Childhood™ and struggles with interpersonal issues. I have a close friend from childhood who also had quite a Good Childhood™ and he can't shut up about "trauma" and it seems like every two years he has this big epiphany about how he addressed some "trauma" he was previously repressing and how now that he's done so he's All Better N…

It doesn't have to be a Big Thing though; the problem is that the word "trauma" sounds / feels very serious, but it can be trivial things, or things you shrugged off like "well those things just happen".

Personal example, I had a good (girl) friend when I was like six, I was very lonely / isolated before she came around and we played together and the like. But then her parents moved and I never saw her again.

And for many years, that was it, it happened, couldn't do anything about it, nothing abnormal about it. But then because of Reasons I ended up going to therapy, and that event (plus others) are probably linked to a fear of abandonment / commitment, of a pessimism when it comes to relationships (as in, don't get too close, it'll end and there's nothing you can do about it).

But also there's a factor of "My 'trauma' isn't that bad because others have had it worse". Doesn't mean you aren't valid either.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#256

Post by detourdog »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #251
detourdog wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baltic state heritage and you sound like my kind of guest/host. To quote Jerad/Donald at Silicon Valley: “I like when people yell at me, at least I know where I stand”.

To misquote quote a meme, I like dominant women not because I want to be humiliated, but because they say what they want.

I told her she had control problems... she said we can talk about it in 2 weeks.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#257

Post by echelon »

burlesona wrote: post #137
quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture" and my wife is from the northwest and strongly aligns to "guess" culture. I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?

> This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture"

As a southerner, I don't agree. It's split by the directionality of the request. And I think that's what makes southern culture distinct.

We'd never "ask" when we're the guest, only when we're the host. "Ask"-y guests are considered rude. "Guess"-y hosts are considered unwelcoming and inhospitable.

You can "ask" a stranger how they're doing or if they need anything, but you don't impose upon them. It's often common to strike up conversations this way.

It's a directionality. "Ask" when you're the giver, "guess" when you're the receiver.

You always hold the door. You don't ask for someone to do it for you, but you probably feel miffed if they don't, because it's expected that everyone extends each other courtesy.

"Southern hospitality".

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#258

Post by EdgeExplorer »

I think awareness is the main point here.

At some level, it doesn't actually matter if these labels are correct or generalize a culture or anything else. It does matter if people genuinely feel the things described and if other people are genuinely unaware of those feelings.

We are each inherently limited in our perspective by being an individual. It's helpful to be exposed to other ways of thinking, and it's helpful to have ways of conceptualizing differences in thinking for future reference.

"Ask/guess" doesn't have to be *true*, it just has to be useful as a heuristic.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#259

Post by quacked »

lillecarl wrote: post #238
quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

> I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) You're American, your wife is American.

Outside America, this is true. Inside America, if you are unaware of pronounced regional cultural differences arising from the settler groups that form your ancestry and local culture, you're either ignorant, or not American.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#260

Post by caminante »

harrisi wrote: post #232
caminante wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are always fun "pop-sci" discussions, but the wiki says this whole dichotomy has been debunked [0]. I can't think of any company that doesn't have some low-context interfaces. It can be expensive for top executives to constantly address every question with "clear and effective communication." Some people make it look easy, but it's hard! [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...

Your link doesn't say "this whole dichotomy has been debunked." From one of the sources: But the fact that contexting has not been empirically validated should not necessarily be construed as a failure of the theory. ... Nonetheless, the contexting model simply cannot be described as an empirically validated model. Which explicitly does not debunk it, but states that it's not empirically validated. That doesn't mean…

Good point on nuance on a technical level, i.e., debunked != failure to support relationship.

However, on a practical level, people throw this around as if it were empirically supported (which doesn't seem to be the case). If there have been hundreds of studies failing to make the connection, I won't take the bet that it will eventually get validated.

On a meta-level, that's also a weird quote.

> But the fact that contexting has not been empirically validated should not necessarily be construed as a failure of the theory

Pick any theory. If you can't validate it, and plenty of people have tried to validate it, then that's a failure of the theory, right?

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