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The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

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Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#141

Post by screye »

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…

I find it to be the other way around.

Revealing "intimate" things about yourself seems to be the easiest way for others to believe that you consider them trustworthy for almost zero cost.

"u/screye trusts me enough to tell something they are vulnerable about." Or on a more selfish note, "I now hold leverage on r/screye, so I shall continue engaging with them from a position of assumed power" or lastly, "I can share something intimate about myself with u/screye because I know something just as important seeming, so they would not use it against me"

It works surprisingly well to fast track the building of a relationship with any acquaintance.

Ofc, I put intimate in "quotes" because while the details sound intimate to the listener, they are often carefully chosen to be ones that do not cause value judgements for my current self nor are they the real insecurities (or at least not present ones) which I hold far closer to my heart. But, the person I'm talking to doesn't need to know that.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#142

Post by austincheney »

The greatest conversational challenges I encounter are not immediately due to sensitivity but indirectly so due to customs, assumptions, and culture. I find many people are deeply fearful of originality and criticality and group defiance when it comes to their operating habits, perceptions, and executing behaviors.

In short many people will take drastic steps to irrationally preserve their operating habits as cognitive decisions even in defiance of direct evidence and at risk of eminent failure. Conversations about this are supremely challenging.

In my experience the reason why this is so challenging is not due to sensitivity, though sensitivity is certainly present. Instead I find many people are challenged by objectivity as a deeply instilled personality trait. The degree of objectivity acceptance by person is variable and varies further in group dynamics. This is a measurable quality of some behavior analysis tests.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#143

Post by boomboomsubban »

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…

>But, the culture is "do not offend" dominate and almost void of "do not take offense".

Events where people get offended end up being reported online or in the media. Events where no one gets offended get no coverage, though that mind set is also very common. Additionally, extreme examples of "offensive behavior" are used by poth sides for political propaganda.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#145

Post by matwood »

kbenson wrote: post #96
Yessing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not offending others by asking sensitive questions/Avoiding awkward" is the polite thing to do. But a core part of being polite, is not hruting others through your actions directly or undirectly. ( or at least trying) In cases where not asking the question puts the other party in a disadvantage or at the risk thereof, I feel one shouldn't be allowed to claim that one was being polite or "doing the right thing". You…

> But a core part of being polite, is not hruting others through your actions directly or undirectly. ( or at least trying) The problem is that in some cultures it's perfectly fine to talk about things that in other cultures it's not. The solution to that is to give people a benefit of a doubt and not assume they are trying to be hurtful, even if your first response is to be hurt. We don't seem to be great at that wh…

> With the addition that we're currently in a zeitgeist of being very sensitive as a society

See the situation with the now previous Away CEO.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#146

Post by harimau777 »

kbenson wrote: post #96
Yessing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not offending others by asking sensitive questions/Avoiding awkward" is the polite thing to do. But a core part of being polite, is not hruting others through your actions directly or undirectly. ( or at least trying) In cases where not asking the question puts the other party in a disadvantage or at the risk thereof, I feel one shouldn't be allowed to claim that one was being polite or "doing the right thing". You…

> But a core part of being polite, is not hruting others through your actions directly or undirectly. ( or at least trying) The problem is that in some cultures it's perfectly fine to talk about things that in other cultures it's not. The solution to that is to give people a benefit of a doubt and not assume they are trying to be hurtful, even if your first response is to be hurt. We don't seem to be great at that wh…

That's a good point, but at the same time, at least in a work setting, there needs to be some sort of common ground.

It seems to me that a reasonable compromise would be to expect people to notify a coworker of things that their boss would judge the coworker for; even if it is contrary to the culture of the person doing the notification.

Does that make sense?

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#147

Post by tsukurimashou »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #23

I'm a regular reader of Ask a Manager ( https://www.askamanager.org/ ), and one thing that comes up over and over is how both managers and employees will avoid awkward topics ranging from trivial ("your breath smells") to consequential ("you need to step up or you'll be fired!"), to the point of going to extremes like quitting the job, just to avoid having a genuine conversation with somebody. And I'm guilty of this…

I tend to ask myself "does something really disturbs YOU", if the answer is yes, then I will talk about it because:

1. You cannot expect someone to realize something, no matter how obvious it is to you, you don't know how to person was raised and what experiences that person went through, thus you should never expect something obvious for yourself to be obvious for others as well

2. If something bothers me but I don't talk about it, I will resent the problematic person one way or another, and the problem will resurface one day or another (probably not in the way you would expect too).

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#148

Post by harimau777 »

wildmusings wrote: post #73
Yessing wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not offending others by asking sensitive questions/Avoiding awkward" is the polite thing to do. But a core part of being polite, is not hruting others through your actions directly or undirectly. ( or at least trying) In cases where not asking the question puts the other party in a disadvantage or at the risk thereof, I feel one shouldn't be allowed to claim that one was being polite or "doing the right thing". You…

> But a core part of being polite, is not hurting others through your actions directly or indirectly. ( or at least trying) The problem is wanting the notion of politeness to do too much work. Being polite, being nice , is just a moment to moment strategy for avoiding conflict. Unfortunately, niceness has become the most important virtue in American culture. Being good is much more profound, and niceness is just one…

I think you are definitely correct. However, the other side of the coin is that:

In my experience, people who say that they are being harsh for someone's own good are generally just being jerks. On the other hand, people who are actually able to be harsh for someone's own good are generally people who try very hard to be nice.

It's sort of like the saying that luck favors those who don't expect luck.

To be clear: I don't mean to say that I think you are a jerk. I realize that you are just explaining the principle that good and nice are not necessarily the same thing; not saying how you would or wouldn't act in a given situation.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#149

Post by nkrisc »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #23

I'm a regular reader of Ask a Manager ( https://www.askamanager.org/ ), and one thing that comes up over and over is how both managers and employees will avoid awkward topics ranging from trivial ("your breath smells") to consequential ("you need to step up or you'll be fired!"), to the point of going to extremes like quitting the job, just to avoid having a genuine conversation with somebody. And I'm guilty of this…

> And I'm guilty of this too. I used to work with a dude who did not brush his teeth and used to wear the same clothes for a week in a row -- and I don't think anybody ever said a word to him, they just edged away quietly.

To be fair, I'd have done the same. That kind of behavior strikes me as a symptom of something else going on and I don't know if I'd want to put myself in their sights.

Re: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions

#150

Post by harimau777 »

StandardFuture wrote: post #90
wildmusings wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a core part of being polite, is not hurting others through your actions directly or indirectly. ( or at least trying) The problem is wanting the notion of politeness to do too much work. Being polite, being nice , is just a moment to moment strategy for avoiding conflict. Unfortunately, niceness has become the most important virtue in American culture. Being good is much more profound, and niceness is just one…

This hits at a fundamental point that has puzzled me about American culture for the longest time. A country that is so heavily steeped in protestant/purtanical Christian roots and yet does not even realize that one of the main components of that creed is NOT taking offense to things. In fact, taking offense to things is as sinful as actually offending someone. It's basically a philosophical method of being a little l…

One explanation that I read recently (https://aeon.co/essays/what-duelling-can-teach-us-about-taki...) is that taking offense may often be not so much the magnitude of the slight itself as it is about establishing that you are an equal and therefore have the right to take offense.

For example suppose that a trans person takes offense at someone refusing to use their preferred pronoun. The issue may not actually be about the importance of the pronoun so much as it is about whether they have the social right to define the pronoun that is associated with them.

I think that the failure to understand this dynamic could be one of the causes of polarization in America. For example:

- Conservatives often criticize "political correctness" by mocking what they perceive to be overreactions to minor slights. However, that may be missing the point if the issue is not the magnitude of the slight but whether someone has the right to take offense at all.

- Anger over removing the Confederate flag may not be about the flag itself so much as it is about asserting that Southerners have a right to be treated with respect.

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