[swiftcoder]

The reason we call it "feigning surprise", is that the surprise is pretty rarely genuine. It's an interaction people have more-or-less-unthinkingly practiced throughout their lives to keep the out-group separated from the in-group

[johnfn]

This is a sharply negative interpretation of behavior of people who may be acting genuinely, if without social grace. I think few people shocked that you don't know bash are displaying that surprise as a way to keep you in the out-group - I think they are surprised.

I would argue that the real in-group/out-group behavior is excluding people who aren't naturally adept at being social.

[JohnMakin]

Wow, you didn't know this kind of behavior is insulting? Crazy!

[johnfn]

You seem to be misinterpreting my comment, which can be summarized as "be kind to others and assume best intent".

[JohnMakin]

I know it was tongue in cheek, but to respond directly, intent doesn’t matter when the result is universally harmful. The recipient shouldn’t have to ignore the harm just because you didn’t mean anything by it. I can have the best possible intent when telling someone they are fat out of concern, but it doesn’t mean the result isn’t harmful.

FYI i’m slightly on the spectrum and it took me a very long time and destroyed a lot of relationships before I understood this. I used to believe similar, and even assumed good intentions most of the time. The problem is many people do not have good intentions a large percent of the time, and there were situations where I went years without realizing people were being extraordinarily mean to me who I thought were friends. either side of it, I just don’t think it’s a great philosophy.

[swiftcoder]

> "be kind to others and assume best intent"

The first time I ran into this was working at Meta, where that was one of the core values (it's since been replaced by "Be direct and respect your colleagues"). It was one of those slogans that sounded fine on paper, but in practice, it was almost exclusively weaponised by powerful folks to excuse their transgressions.

Think someone is sexually harassing you? You are clearly not assuming good intentions on their part. Think they are being racist towards you? Same thing. Think someone is sandbagging your promo for personal reasons? Ditto...

[akerl_]

Your examples sort of underscore why “assume positive intent” matters a lot for how you engage but not a lot about what you engage on.

Working against the feigning surprise thing, if somebody says “oh I don’t know what DNS is”, the problem isn’t with offering to help them understand DNS, it’s leading in without projecting shock/alarm.

If somebody is blocking your promo, assuming positive intent doesn’t mean you just let them do it, it means you escalate by focusing on the root issue (“this person is affecting my promo and they’re not giving me any actionable signal as to why”), not speculating on their intent.

[akerl_]

The whole point of making it a rule is so those people can learn it and avoid accidentally putting other people down.

[jtbayly]

Is being surprised somebody doesn't know something putting them down, or is being unsurprised they are ignorant putting them down?

[akerl_]

> Is being surprised somebody doesn't know something putting them down

Yes.

> is being unsurprised they are ignorant putting them down

Again, the whole reason to just declare this as a rule is so that you’re not put in a position to try to decide if somebody is ignorant or not. You set a social guideline, and if people break it, you point it out, and it doesn’t matter why they did it.

[jtbayly]

By demonstrating an assumption that everybody knows nothing? I fail to see how that is beneficial. It is rude to everybody.

[akerl_]

You're the one who's extrapolated that the rule asks you to assume ignorance. The post, and the Recurse Center guidelines it's built on top of, don't make that claim.

If I say it's a social guideline to not tell somebody about something wrong with their outfit unless they can fix it in under 5 minutes, I'm not suggesting you go around assuming that everybody knows they have a stain on their shirt. I'm telling you it's net-negative to point it out to them.

[jtbayly]

People doing that are doing it intentionally, and they aren't going to follow your rule.

People who are open to listening are not pretending to be surprised in order to put somebody down. They are actually surprised and (perhaps) unintentionally hurting somebody. If that somebody is hurt, they need to ask themselves which hurts more, having somebody surprised you didn't know something (aka they think you are smart), or being unsurprised you are ignorant of something (aka they think you don't know stuff).

[swiftcoder]

> People doing that are doing it intentionally

Not usually, no. They haven't (for the most part) adopted gatekeeping behaviour just to be dicks, they've adopted it as a method of signalling to other members of the in-group that they too belong to the in-group.

From their perspective, the effect on the person in the out-group is merely collateral damage.

[akerl_]

If somebody says something rude to me, why would my reaction be to try to decide if I’m glad they were rude unintentionally?

[jtbayly]

Reread what I wrote. The point is it is more rude to assume somebody is ignorant than it is to assume they are knowledgeable.

This is telling people to assume people are ignorant or at least pretend you think they are ignorant.

[danaris]

As akerl_ says, it's not telling you to assume anything. It's talking about behavior, not thoughts.

You can be thinking they're the most ignorant fool on the planet, or you can be thinking that a minute ago you believed them to be so smart, and now that image of them is shattered and you're disappointed...but all this is asking you to do is not to perform that surprise to them, regardless of whether or how much you feel it.

[akerl_]

It's not telling people to assume anything at all.