[wintermutestwin]

Very true and well said.

Ask yourself these two questions:

1. What do I hope to gain from this interaction?

2. Given #1, what course of action is most likely to achieve your desired result?

Confrontation is almost never the best answer for #2.

[robomc]

Taken too far, the "what do I hope to gain" thing can be kind of life-shrinking (because it's not always clear what you'll gain from interactions up front, and that lack of clarity tracks with the quality of what you'll gain too, in some situations) BUT it's definitely a higher-order consideration that way too few people employ.

[CornCobs]

Yeah. IMO reducing everything to cost-benefit analysis feels like one of those "Silicon Valley" endeavours the feature article talks about - sounds attractive, but ultimately we ought to grow out of the good/bad one-dimensional thinking