| Back in the days of slatestarcodex, the comment policy [1] was you can comment if your post is at least two of these three things: true, necessary, or kind. This post is all three: what they're describing is true (these dynamics in meetings do exist, very often), it is kind (in the sense they're giving you a skill to help both yourself and others), and I'll give it necessary in the sense it's used in the original definition (if you want to get ahead in an organization with a nontrivial amount of internal politics - which is most places - you need to have at least some of this skill). And yet, something about this post gives me "weird vibes". Basically, with a bit of sarcasm you could sum it up as "DON'T BE AUTISTIC", and if you are then at least get therapy until you can act normal. When the author says "We [humans] are wired to spidey sense this [vibes] stuff", it turns out some humans are above and some below the mean in this skill distribution. [2] And sometimes, in a meeting to decide about how you're going to set up your database sharding, it helps the business' bottom line if you pay more attention to the database specialist than the soft-eye-contact specialist. (Don't you want to hire people who are good at both? Yes, but unless you're really, really lucky, you're going to hit Berkson's paradox [3]. And then if you want your databases to run smoothly, you're going to have to compromise.) [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-...
[2] However, the latest research suggest that autistic people are perfectly wired to read the room and sense vibes if the room is full of other autistic people. It's just one autist in a room of neurotypicals, or vice versa, that doesn't go too well.
[3] https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-... |