[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The first time I ran into this was working at Meta, where that was one of the core values (it's since been replaced by "Be direct and respect your colleagues").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.