[tc7]

> Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.)

Is calling someone a moron the best (most information-optimized) way to tell someone they're wrong?

I'm in favor of truth being more valued in this culture, but I don't think being too polite is the root of the problem.

[_dps]

> Is calling someone a moron the [most information optimized] ...

Think of it not as "please be rude to me, that's optimal".

Think of it as "I'd rather have the truth delivered rudely than a polite falsehood or slience."

You may say that's a false dichotomy — surely everyone should just tell the most informative truth and be polite. But this is often just too taxing, or not even possible depending on language and social skills. This is especially true on contentious topics.

[cornyNetHandle]

It isn't about calling someone a moron, it is about being able to respond, "Thanks, I can be fucking stupid at times, can you show me where I am being moronic here?".

It is also about being able top unguard your own language should you know that the other person is operating by the rules, not to be insulting, but so to not worry about it for that conversation and so not having to run that whole level of extra processing.

I tend to swear a lot, as do most of the people I both work and socialise with. If I were to work with people of a more delicate sensibility, conversations would take a lot longer.

[kbutler]

But you could further optimize your communication by dropping the profanity.

A listener declaring Crocker's rules says they will not be offended, but at best, profanity communicates your emotional reaction to a situation. In seeking optimal communication of information, profanity is largely wasted bandwidth.

[_dps]

> But you could further optimize your communication by dropping the profanity.

I have certainly been in stressful situations with people where I was confident they were struggling to say what they really meant because they were angry and trying to remain civil.

Giving someone permission to vent at you, in the interest of also giving you a truth they've struggled to present politely, is one of the functions of this practice.

I think you may be taking "optimally" to mean something like "ideally"; in this context I take it to be "the best available". It would be ideal for the angry person with the important truth to find a polite way to present that truth — but with emotion involved the best available option may be to accept some profanity along with the truth, in preference to the truth being hidden behind an attempt to stay civil.

[kbutler]

I understand "optimally" to emphasize concision and clarity.

Profanity is either seeking to evoke an emotional response, or basically just "very" as DoreenMichelle says.

As such, profanity is semantically a really poor intensifier.

While a listener declares Crocker's rules in order to optimize communication by saying "I won't take offense," a speaker can optimize communication by clearly stating what is wrong, rather than just "This is !#$%&, you !$_&!"

[DoreenMichele]

It isn't that simple.

I work really hard at editing out profanity when I write online. The reality is that I swear like a sailor and the running joke in the family is to quote that movie line "you go into a bar and sailors come running out." I basically use the eff word like other people use very.

So when I write something full of profanity, it doesn't suggest I have really strong feelings about it or am trying to attack or insult people. It usually means I was writing while tired, distracted or a bit under the weather and failing to put in the extra effort to mind my Ps and Qs.

I am aware that it causes problems at times for me to use so much profanity when I post things online. It isn't uncommon for me to go back and try to edit out the worst of it after I post it.

But the converse of that is this: it takes extra effort for me to come up with alternate phrasing and this takes bandwidth away from me focusing on more substantive elements. If someone actually thinks I have good ideas and they want to know what I think about something, they will get more useful info from me more frequently if they don't give me shit constantly about how my foul mouth is an excuse to just not listen to the substance of my points.

There are plenty of people who punctuate their speech with colorful language. Colorful language can be a rich way to express some concepts and trying to clean it up can actually lose something.

So given that I am hardly the only person on the planet who just habitually peppers their speech with profanity, I think one use of this standard is to agree to ignore that element as a minor style detail in order to focus on the substance of their ideas.

People from bad neighborhoods often have foul mouths. Expecting them to politely and articulately elucidate their points without profanity can be a form of classist and racist gatekeeping that excludes them from serious discourse.

I don't have an easy answer for you. I do try to clean up my language when speaking "in public" whether online or off. I just wanted to note that the issue is more complicated than that.

[cornyNetHandle]

The emotional reaction isn't wasted bandwidth.

Consider; "Get some water now, please.", when compared to; "Get some fucking water now!". One of these will usually elicit a much quicker reaction.

[platz]

The root of the problem is more embedded in 'emotivism' in which ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes.