It’s Not Enough to Be Right – You Also Have to Be Kind

The nicer you state your messages the more people will listen to you.

The meaner messages you can stomach the more information is accessible to you.

So we'd expect those who demand others to be nice to be less well informed than those who can tolerate mean communication. For example, a person who thinks their math teacher is mean when the teacher corrects them will probably never become great at math. I believe that this is an aspect of communication we need to talk way more about, since large parts of the population are currently handicapped like this.

I'm not sure if it is genetic, but if it can be taught then we ought to tell our kids to listen to everyone and not just what feels comfortable. Fill your kids heads with statements like "It was a bit mean, but he is right, you should really try to do FOO". People often have good reasons for being mean, they could be tired, hungry, depressed or just spoke without thinking, those are really bad reasons for not listening if the actual message is sound.

Somehow as I grew older (starting in my mid-30s I suppose), I became more and more aware of how I was affecting other people with my choice of words, and I had less and less reasons to "defeat" people in conversation. When victory is no longer the objective in a discussion, you tend relax, and can choose your words more carefully.

Of course, sometimes it makes sense to impose a social cost for being wrong, but that's different from raising the stakes of every disagreement unintentionally.

It would feel so refreshing to get the truth straight sometimes, instead of the oh-so-subtle and gentle ways Canadians have of dealing with clashing cultural behaviours.

The end result is I don't know what I'm doing wrong until years later, because so many think the right thing to do is coddle me.

Many of us want to adapt, and if we don't have access to the ground truth, it's a painfully slow process that is simply holding us back from fully integrating into society.

Canadians: I love you guys, but please give it to us straight.

And yet, I once saw someone doing a community outreach road trip. Maybe from NSF, for Next Generation Science Standards. She was awesome. As in, I sat there in the audience, and was awed. Some of the questions asked were emotional, and angry, and too confused to even be wrong. Where I would boggle, and could think of little more than "okayyyyyy... moving on". And yet she fielded them with empathy, respect, and grace, extracting value for both the questioner and the audience. I've long wished I'd tagged the event, so I could find and ask her, how does one train to do that? I still don't know, but I was left with a new presumption, that no question is so broken, that a sufficiently skilled respondent cannot address it with productive kindness.

The angry person argued we shouldn't be so "submissive" and are perfectly in our right to be demanding etc

My response: "It took me less time and effort to type please than it took you to get angry and write all this about it."

There's a Venn diagram of free speech and respect. It's entirely possible to have both. Some people rightly criticize PC when it's about inhibiting free speech. But other people wrongly criticize PC when they just want to speak disrespectfully.

> If you can’t be kind, if you won’t empathize, then you’re not on the team. That team is Team Humanity, where we are all in this thing together. Where we are all flawed and imperfect. Where we treat other people’s point of view as charitably as we treat our own. Where we are civilized and respectful and, above all, kind to each other—particularly the less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid.

That bit at the end is the crux of the matter: Instead of having an honest, fact based (yet perhaps heated) discussion, it purports a "civilized and respectful" treatment because the other side is to be seen as "less fortunate, the mistaken, and the afraid". This is hiding an assumption of superiority towards the other side. They are flawed and imperfect due to their unfortunate circumstances so we have to nobly accept them as such and be tolerant about their points-of-view. This to me seems like a worse, more insidious form of bigotry: Instead of have a leveled argument, where you risk hurting the other side by calling them out for being wrong (or dumb) but also allow them to answer back (and perhaps discovering you are wrong or dumb), you deem them 2nd class, in need of special attention and care. Too fragile/delicate/uneducated to be able to handle a direct response one would give to someone they see as "on their level" or above.

Of course context matters and no sweeping generalizations can be made, but (as per the example in the article) making your grandma cry by articulating her self-inflicted harm due to smoking is, imo, much kinder and empathic than being "understanding" and keep quite maintaining her short-term good mood.

Unfortunately it seems that even compassionate arguments made in good faith are ineffective for most people. As the author states: "you can’t reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into", and most people don't reason themselves into the positions they believe.

In my experience, being kind has the advantage of reducing the probability of side-effects. There are typically no bonus points awarded for causing someone to get defensive, when your only goal was to correct their mistake.

Being right and nice is better than being right and mean.

Being right and mean is better than being wrong and nice.

Being wrong and nice is better than being wrong and mean.

Come to think, this is actually a pretty good example of the importance of framing your message properly if you want to be heard.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

https://www.cnet.com/features/amazon-fired-these-7-pregnant-...

The Universe just doesn't care about how you feel. It is what it is. Letting people's personality traits and/or flaws get in the way of objective truths is just dumb. One exists regardless of the other.

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

Words I am always reminded of whenever I try to be too clever on the internet.

Anyway, this is what I thought of about halfway through the article when it veered off into contemporary politics.

People do believe the above, but if one thinks rationally (Vulcan style) about it, it's a bizarro idea.

What would be the logical necessity be that makes it OK "not to care about other people’s feelings if the facts are on your side"?

What matters to people is what people decide that matters. Whether that's the facts or the delivery of the facts or your tone etc, is a subjective decision.

So why would a 100% logical person assume that being correct should trump everything else? It's an illogical conclusion to arrive at. By what logical reasoning / axiomatic induction etc did they conclude that being correct is enough?

I say there's none. Instead it's their prejudice towards accuracy and correctness that makes them consider so. In other words, those people think they're logical in that assumption (that being right trumps your tone/delivery/etc), but they're just all too human...

I've always been told to always "address the ideas, not the person" (never attack someone's character) and to adopt a pose of "curiosity".

In discourse, it's perfectly fine to dispute ideas (it's the foundation of Western civilization and of analytical thought, and is a means to knowledge and wisdom).

If we cannot argue in a marketplace of ideas, we are prevented from having hard but necessary conversations. We need to adhere to parameters of civility of course, but to me, a necessary freedom is the freedom to disagree/dispute. Some ideas are truly wrong and they need to be put through the crucible.

Flawed conclusion. I really dislike when people think of empathy as this strange, bland, chore-like sort of service. In reality, it seems artistic to me. You are putting yourself into a completely different world. Have some fun with it! Engage in some creativity!

Plenty of people are horrific to others and yet kind to those within their tribe. Plenty more people hurt members of their own tribe - clumsily, by mistake. Kindness won't get you out of your own head, or out of your own way. It's not enough to just respect the things that exist outside of your head that you don't agree with. You have to want to do the hard work of going through the thought process of someone foreign to your world, in good faith until you can render their world in a reasonably lifelike fashion as they would.

All the kindness in the world without that mental exercise, or research, or attempt to speak someone else's language -- it's better than nothing, but not by much. We should focus on the larger task at hand: getting to know one another's way of lives better and strengthening community.

It seems to me that many try to smooth things up to the point of actively avoiding anything remotely resembling even "I don't agree" (there is no better excipient than no excipient), and this is dangerous.

Granted, every principle/method becomes counter-productive when pushed to its max, however on this one many inadvertently go over this limit.

But the result is a channel that is a very effective means of support when the documentation or wiki doesnt have what you need.

Communication is a game of compromise. Sometimes it makes sense to compromise on clarity or brevity to be nice. But when your goal is to solve difficult, material problems- it can be beneficial to prioritize clarity over all else.

The author mentioned Bezos' grandmother being hurt when he mentioned she smoked away 9 years of her life. Is it really Bezos' manners that hurt her feelings? I would imagine that that realization hits hard and does damage on it's own. I think it would be very hard to get that message hard without it hurting. You can attempt to veil the message and lessen the impact, or distract from it somehow- but now you've impacted the integrity of the message.

Criticism is good and useful and should be delivered in the most direct way possible. People should just toughen up. It's unbelievable to think that 80 years ago, people were killing each other with guns and bombs but today's people get offended if someone doesn't press the 'like' button on their Facebook photos. We are too weak; that's the real problem.

Being weak is bad. Political correctness poses a threat to our freedom of speech.

I can't stand this dystopian corporate rhetoric that 'being nice' and 'feeling safe' are important. They are not. Both of these things make us weaker.

Ideal: objective wrt self, subjective wrt others.

If one cannot stomach the truth, they are in for a nasty surprise when reality kicks their door.

We all shall learn how to argue by ignoring emotions and use logic. Logic is the only way forward.

The former type can be expressed very politely, and still hurt infinitely worse than the latter expressed most harshly.

There are also individuals who act on the opposite principle: "If you can claim hurt feelings, you've automatically won the debate." This goes so far, that arguments often get to a point where one person dares another to hurt their feelings so that they can have an easy win. Like "A: Vaccines are safe, and not vaccinating your children exposes them to health risks. B: Well, I don't vaccinate MY children. Are you saying I'm a bad mother? [A: Well yes, kind of.]"

Also, I think that this opposite principle is exactly the principle that has lead to where we are as a society regarding the ridiculousness of political correctness.

The thing is: Cognitive dissonance reduction always trumps rationality as a mechanism whereby people form beliefs. So, the theoretical ideal would be to make a rational persuasive argument that somehow steers clear of creating cognitive dissonance in anybody (neither people on the same side, nor people on the other side of the debate).

But I also think that the article is right in asserting that, in today's world, there is just no room for lengthy and nuanced argument. They just don't get any airtime when all the media that matter, like social media and word-of-mouth are based on resonance, and attention spans of average people are fast approaching infinitesimal dimensions.

...so I really don't know where that leaves us as a society. I don't really see a way out to be honest.

This advice is correct.

I don't think this is true. I think politeness and civility have degraded over time and this is a symptom of a deeper decay of cultural mores.

It's normal behavior among human beings for the strong to exert dominance over the weak, and not all cultures reject this. Western culture is one that does, and civility is one way we've traditionally done so.

> Anti-intellectualism is also a real problem. We should be worried about the death of expertise.

This is also a symptom. Imagine if large numbers of people were getting food poisoning, you'd see "anti-agriculturalism" because people would fear that the institution of farming was in crisis.

Elitism isn't simply a belief, it's a process whereby an institution maintains its elite status by enforcing high standards. Populism is what you get when people percieve that the elite aren't maintaining their standards, and in the modern context, it's often the perception that objectivity is sacrificed to a narrow political agenda.

> Yet, no amount of yelling or condescension or trolling is going to fix any of this. It never has and never will.

My reading of history is that politics has been far worse in the past and then people have behaved better. I don't know what mechanism causes this. Perhaps nastiness does level out like some kind of repeated prisoners' dilemma[1]. It could be because human beings can't maintain a high level of arousal indefinitely. It could be that the most incendiary individuals have to burn their bridges so that the more reasonable people are the only ones left standing.

But I think that generally the voices calling for civility and moderation can only establish a civil norm after a certain amount of incivility has run its course, so I'd argue that's how yelling / condescension / etc does, in fact, fix it.

> There is a great clip of Joe Rogan talking during the immigration crisis last year. ... The clip has been seen millions of times now and undoubtedly has changed more minds than a government shutdown, than the squabbles and fights on CNN, than the endless op-eds and think-tank reports.

I think this gets at the heart of my problem with the kindness mantra.

When you're speaking on a subject persuasively, you absolutely need empathy to be effective. You need to recognize how you might cause a person to lose face or feel shame. You want to figure out how to make that human connection.

None of this is inherently morally good, and I think labelling it as "kind" is falsely suggesting that. After all, a conman does the exact same thing, "con" stands for "confidence", gaining the mark's trust.

Yes, if I'm going to push your buttons, I'd like to be nice about it, but I'm ultimately pushing your buttons. My problem with claiming this is about "kindness" is that I'm still pushing my agenda.

That agenda still needs to be justified.

> Some say there’s no reason to care about other people’s feelings if the facts are on your side.

Ben Shapiro specifically says "facts don't care about your feelings," and this neatly demonstrates casual defamation is presented with language about kindness and empathy.

Shapiro's point is that for an agenda to align with "team humanity" it has to work in practice, that good intentions are not enough. He's generally responding to the charge that he's only against welfare / minimum wage / etc because he doesn't care about poor people / sick people / is racist / etc.

And vile accusations dressed up as heart-warming platitudes are so common that he's made his counter to them a slogan. I know I've heard them consistently my entire adult life.

And that's why if you're a liberal who wants to empathize with conservatives, you need to understand that when you start talking about empathy and kindness, it comes across as utterly insincere. Is it fair to you individually? Sorry, your peers have been poisoning the well for decades.

So my advice: if you think it's the right thing to do or that it's more persuasive, spare us the sermon and just do it.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iterated-prisoners-dile...

Delivering critical feedback or trying to lobby to convince others of a course of action very often requires dispensing with pleasantries and bullshit and just get it out in the open.

It can cost you big time if you try to spare feelings or water down the case you’re making for kindness.

I mean, it can be the difference between having to fire someone or not, or getting resources so people don’t burn out. Or getting someone to stop wasting your team’s time while you’re on a critical project.

Kindness is overrated. Not being a sadistic manipulative bully? Now that is a great thing to advocate for.

And there are people like that out there, too, making decisions that affect us all. How do you treat people who demand you see their humanity, but refuse to see yours? Who, when they see our government hurting people, react with “they’re not hurting the people I wanted them to hurt!”?