[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.