No feigning surprise
jvns.ca
jvns.ca
I think you mean "show surprise" rather than "feigning surprise". "Feign" means "to pretend", while people who express genuine surprise are still "showing" surprise.
If anything, if one feigns surprise, they are acting in bad faith. I agree with the title of the article -- don't feign surprise, e.g. if somebody gives you a gift you knew was coming and pretend you're baffled by its appearance -- but do show surprise when someone you know who is intelligent is missing a small puzzle piece in their knowledge space.
Not in a belligerent way, of course, as the author points out: use it as an opportunity to educate. I ain't about to berate a friend of mine for not knowing something, but it would be quite disingenuous to hide my surprise; in my eyes, that's comparable to talking down to them.
I never know what to do when somebody goes through a lot of trouble to surprise me, but I figure it out anyway. Usually I play along and act surprised because it makes the other person feel good.
Imagine your girlfriend was planning a surprise birthday present for six months and somehow the secret leaked. You saw an open tab, or one of your common friends spilled the beans, or whatever. Are you going to ruin her excitement about surprising you just because "feigning surprise is bad"?
The closest term to describe what the author meant is I believe a litote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes
If a newcomer expresses genuine surprise, are they breaking the "No feigning surprise" rule or not?
edit: typo
Julia talks about it in your quote above, but she says not to "act surprised", but she doesn't mean act as in fake, or feign, she means the action of expressing surprise. Another good reference is xkcd[0]. The point is not whether you're surprised, but the chilling effect that the judgment that someone should have already known this thing can have on their confidence, willingness to admit to not knowing things, and to the social dynamic of interacting with you.
The reason I mentioned it is that misusing a common term can be confusing and unnecessarily time consuming. As evidence, look at the response of bglusman above:
> It's not mentioned here, but when Recurse Center explains this rule to recursers, it's explicitly discussed that despite the name, it doesn't actually matter if you're actually surprised, it's still a "violation" of the rule to express that surprise in the particular terms of "I can't beleive you don't know about x!".
So in this case you have an explicitly written rule about feigning surprise, supplemented by an oral tradition that expands the rule to cover genuine surprise.
edit: soften, fix grammar
It makes perfect sense. If you suppress the urge to show surprise in these situation even when you are genuinely surprised, you won't feign surprise either. She's saying 'avoid showing surprise in that context altogether'. I don't see anything in there that suggests the writer didn't know what 'feign' meant.
Usually in the form of "You don't know what X is?!" When someone asks an honest question.
It's pretty toxic behavior and I've found it typically comes from people less secure in their own understanding.
It's a shame because admitting ignorance and asking questions is hard for most people and one of the best ways to learn.
When people feign surprise it can scare someone into not asking.
Something I wrote about this a while back: http://zalberico.com/essay/2017/02/21/asking-questions.html
You should not be surprised to often be surprised about others' understanding -- the typical mind bias means our models of others track far more closely to our own internal state than reality.
It can make sense to confirm the observation -- "you don't know about X?" -- but you don't have to do it condescendingly. You can do it in an excited manner, both in tone and in words: "You don't know about X? Awesome, I didn't know I was going to get to tell someone about X today!"
This is easier done once you train yourself to notice surprise as being a signal about your own ignorance rather than being about the other person, and once you know to expect such surprises.
First: Feigned surprise is rare. I've never done it. I doubt the author has ever done it. What is far more common is genuine surprise. I've definitely been surprised by others' knowledge gaps. Heck, I've been surprised to discover my own ignorance in some areas. (eg: thinking, "How did I get this far in my career without knowing Python's defaultdict!?")
Second: Without access to someone's internal mind-state, you cannot reliably tell the difference between a feigned response and a genuine one. You may think you're able to, but the main factors in such judgements are your own biases.
This inaccuracy combined with the rarity of feigned responses means that people are far more likely to judge genuine surprise as feigned, and condemn someone who is acting in good faith (albeit impulsively).
More useful advice would be: Don't get upset if someone is surprised you don't know something. If anything, take it as a compliment. It means they have high expectations of your level of technical knowledge. eg: I wouldn't be surprised to discover that my mother doesn't know to use git, but I would be surprised to discover that about a coworker.
But it really is quite common in my experience.
> Such behaviours have strong roots in childhood and often a rational adult who has it brought to their attention will easily be able to never do it again
lol! no.
I do agree that this rule is encouraging people to be ever-self-conscious and overrule their social reflexes and would be more accurately called "repress surprise".
feign |fān| verb [with object] — pretend to be affected by (a feeling, state, or injury): she feigned nervousness.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'that's not what the word means'. You said 'reflexive feigned surprise' is 'sociopathic'. Reflexively representing some emotional state other than the one you exactly feel is a basic aspect of the way we behave and communicate. When someone's ability to do that is impaired, it's considered a handicap.
> you can feign surprise at someone's ignorance not because you're really surprised but to berate them
On point! The rule should then be "don't berate others", or the more positive "empower others". This is just one example of this rule, one that I have not personally seen come up often, but perhaps that's because I have exactly 0 interest in being around anyone who berates others.
This isn't about insincerity, it's simply a basic aspect of social behaviour. You don't sit on the bus crying or singing a happy song if you're sad or happy. We manage the emotions we project as second nature, just as we read and interpret the projected emotions of others. It's the opposite of sociopathic.
The rule should then be "don't berate others"
No, because the rule is about a specific (potentially) reflexive behaviour that can be destructive in the context they're talking about. They are trying to help people address it. "Don't berate others" is a fine sentiment but a little vague.
This would make sense if we were making an exhaustive list of "potentially reflexive behavior which people may engage in but should not in this community", but keeping such a list in your mind is one hell of a downer. The best rule to encompass this, I think, is "epower those around you". Noisebridge has an even broader social rule / ethos which has served them well: "be awesome to each other".
Love the community at Recurse, but having social rules be a list of shitty things someone once did is the least awesome part of Recurse :-)
Why would that make sense? It makes sense to point out common ones. Especially if you are, presumably like the people at Recurse are, informed by the experience of running that type of learning environment. They aren't trying to be exhaustive or all-encompassing or even a downer. They're trying to deal with problems they've encountered, not writing a formal system of acceptable behaviour.
I love Recurse, but the social rules are like padded corners for folks who need help that Recurse isn't equipped to provide, not something to take life lessons from. Every good team has junior folks who, by comparison, really simply just don't know jack shit about technology. Every single person came into this world without knowing anything and they need to feel like they belong as much as folks with 40 years of experience fiddling bits.
The root issue here is folks coming out of psychologically traumatizing competitive conditioning. You don't see any montessori kids complaining about anyone being surprised they're doing something without knowing a prerequisite.
The best argument you have, from your experience, is that you often feign surprise, which I find a bit damning, if you then ascribe that behavior to others. I can't remember feigning surprise, but I definitely remember being horrified at being forced to argue about something rather elementary. If it doesn't affect me directly, I'm more likely to simply ignore the person's argument and go my way.
edit: to be clear I get no satisfaction in seeing other people make obvious mistakes... it's almost physically painful.
I don't confess to feigning surprise in my comment. I believe it is very common, purely from observation of others - especially children and young adults.
It changed after I saw the XKCD "Ten thousand" comic, which changed my worldview for the better.
1. How can it be feigning/pretend? Perhaps it's not a habit one wishes to cultivate, but it's not fake.
2. How can we hold people morally responsible for it? It seems ill-advised to judge people for behaviors outside of their conscious control.
After more reflection, I find my disagreement with the original post has increased. As I said originally, I think it's wrong to feign a reaction when others expect sincerity. If anything, the post pushes people to conceal their genuine reaction and consciously feign lack-of-surprise. I would much rather help people avoid misinterpreting a sincere response than compel people to conceal their sincere beliefs.
Just because a person has said "uh" to fill pauses in speech so often that it feels like it comes without thought doesn't mean it's a behavior outside of their concious control...it just means it's going to take some practice to stop doing it. And that's probably a good analogy because you seem to be reading some persecuting motives here. "Here's an easy viewpoint shift that, with practice, can help you be less alienating/condescending to some people" is not at all equivalent to "you're a bad person for this thing you have no control over".
I don't think this works, because a lot of noobs leave before the skin-thickening process finishes or even before they learn that they're supposed to grow a thicker skin.
Eliezer Yudkowsky expresses that aspect of expression well:
"The principle extends beyond physics. Have you ever caught yourself saying something like, "I just don't understand how a PhD physicist can believe in astrology?" Well, if you literally don't understand, this indicates a problem with your model of human psychology. Perhaps you are indignant - you wish to express strong moral disapproval. But if you literally don't understand, then your indignation is stopping you from coming to terms with reality. It shouldn't be hard to imagine how a PhD physicist ends up believing in astrology. People compartmentalize, enough said."
http://lesswrong.com/lw/hs/think_like_reality/
My mom doesn't express indignation so much as she expresses surprise. She is hyper intelligent, but prefers to use surprise to talk about things in a certain way.
Me: "A majority of college educated people in the Red States voted for Trump."
My mom, surprised: "But how could they vote for Trump when they have such good educations?"
Me: "From 1860 to 2008 the majority of all college educated people voted for the Republican candidate. It is normal for college educated people to vote for the Republican candidate. 2008 was the first year the pattern was broken."
We've had exactly this same conversation many times before, so she's not really surprised by the information. But she feigns surprise as a stylistic choice. It's the personal manner in which she is most comfortable expressing herself.
Likewise: Southerns who grew up watching televsion no longer speak with Southern accents. I introduce a friend to my mom and mom says "She doesn't sound Southern at all!" My mom is aware that the South has changed since the 1950s, but my mom prefers to feign surprise over this issue, every single time.
He seems not to understand that people don't always speak literally.
I mean, I bet he does understand that, but he is feigning the misunderstanding because it is convenient to the point he is making.
Orbicularis oculi.
I believe that considered reflection of all of your expressions of emotion in a day is highly likely to come up with many which are for purposes other than desire to express that emotion. Many of them are culturally ingrained, much like (for some folks) feigned disguise is culturally ingrained or for other folks feigned distaste when a tribal enemy is mentioned is culturally ingrained.
A common emotional response you almost certainly fake without every thinking you're faking: how would you answer someone who asked "How are you doing today?" Virtually no one who is socially well-adjusted has a wide range of responses to that question despite there being a wide range of emotional states in life.
(I have fairly developed thoughts on the question of modulating emotional response to fit into a particular culture because of deep necessity to get better at it, including taking formal classes, at different points in my life.)
Good call. I'm certainly not an authority on being well-adjusted, but for me personally, those sound like seeds planted in insincerity leading to a varied bouquet of suffering. In the context of creating a sense of community around us, we are better off if we learn to strive to act thoughtfully and sincerely from a young age, and encourage others who do likewise. I'd much prefer this rule to be a minor counter-example beneath "empower others".
Answering sincerely-yet-appropriately to "How are you?" isn't trivial, but it's worth it. In the past week, I've responded with a wide variety of sighs (to friends), "ok. I'm ok." (to a doctor who I was seeing after being kept awake by excruciating pain), "right now? good, happy to see you!" (to a less frequently seen acquaintance), "oy, don't ask, there's a line. but I'm looking forward to this porkbelly!" (to a grocer).
I imagine I might come off as a brash American if I were to try what I perceive as sincerity in more reserved cultures, but in middle class America it seems to work at-least-OK :-)
I express emotions. It's honest. It lets people know what I really think, and what I really care about. If I lose my shit when you say you never saw Fight Club, that's my way of telling you how much I loved it.
If I were CEO I would be surprised if a manager at my company didn't even know who was working under him. If I were a math professor I would be surprised if the TA I just hired didn't know two quarters is the same as one half. If I were the president of the United States I would be surprised if my vice president thought he was president. etc.
Why? Because all of these cases involve someone's lack of knowledge almost certainly resulting in someone else getting completely screwed over. It doesn't matter what the ranks of the people involved are, it just matters if there are serious potential damages at stake.
I just said you should be surprised if you get an antibiotic prescribed for a viral infection. Yes, you really should be surprised. That doesn't mean you have to declare the doctor incompetent. It just means you should be surprised and act accordingly. Which means you have to confirm that it's correct, to make sure the doctor is not totally screwing up. Because chances are decent the antibiotics are useless. The chances don't need to be 100% for you to be surprised and to show it too.
I feel like it should be pretty easy to understand the core lesson she is trying to teach if you read the entire post even without her using the exact proper words. The xkcd comic at the end drives it home.
I just don't see why organizations feel like anything is helped by attempting to police social behaviour.