9 ms·

Tact Filters (1996)

119 points by sturza 5y ago

klodolph 5y ago
I don't think that nerds have an inbound tact filter. I don't think this is a good explanation of going on. If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. That gives you a certain amount of immunity to tactless comments. It also gives you the confidence to make tactless comments. On the other hand, not all the people you want to work with grew up that way or have that kind of self-image. In order to avoid hurting people around you, you should learn to speak tactfully. I think what happened is just that nerds care about speaking directly. There are also a number of types of neurodiversity over-represented in nerds, such as autism, ADHD, and social anxiety disorders. Speaking tactfully naturally takes extra time. An autistic person would not pick up on the necessary social cues in order to speak tactfully. Someone with ADHD may be irritated by the interruption and want to get back to work. Someone with social anxiety may just want to leave the interaction. Yet, in spite of this, there are plenty of nerds who care about tact, and make an effort to consider other people's feelings when they talk. The effort is appreciated.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" [...] you may have a rock-solid self-image. This is, of course, why we programmers are famous for the delight we take in coding on a whiteboard in front of a large audience; the comfortable ease with which we talk to beautiful members of the opposite sex; and the fact none of us have ever been described as shy :)
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Like everything else, it's contextual.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Look at it this way: we're all convinced the problem is the whiteboard interview itself, it couldn't possibly be that we're not as smart as we think we are. That's some pretty strong self-image of the "I'm a smart kid" sort.
    - user1980 5y ago
      The problem is interruptions, not my ability to focus. The problem is Product demanding estimates, not my ability to estimate in the midst of uncertainty and ask questions to reduce it. The problem is Java, C, or whatever "legacy" technology is being used. Despite the fact that the whole world runs on it.
    - jozvolskyef 5y ago
      One can have social anxiety and a rock-solid self-image as a scientist at the same time. The latter requires no social or synchronous communication skills.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. Growing up as a smart kid interested in computers from 1976-1996 was a very different experience than the same from 2001-2021.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    Like everything else, it's contextual.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    I don't know what growing up in the 2000s was like, but my experience in your referenced time frame is like the person you replied to: it's not gonna make you popular, it's not gonna make you friends with the cheerleaders, it might be part of an overall miserable experience - but being interested in computers certainly wasn't going to make anyone stop telling you you're smart.
  - erdos4d 5y ago
    As someone who is closer to the 76-96 timeframe, could you give some insights into how you feel this has changed? I actually would like to know how the younger generation of nerds is faring these days, but I don't know any to ask.
    - anonfornoreason 5y ago
      From what I can see, it's much more acceptable to be nerdy. I have some younger cousins and nieces/nephews who have recently graduated high school or are currently about to start. It seems much easier to find a niche and not get bullied for being good in school or with technology. In other words, revenge of the nerds. Every toy out there is now STEM in some way (either in actuality or in branding), and everyone realizes that tech is more likely to make money.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > I don't think that nerds have an inbound tact filter. I don't think this is a good explanation of going on. Are you a nerd? I ask because it's extremely risky to speculate about how the minds of people of a type that you're not, work. That's precisely the problem we nerds have trying to understand non-nerds: their minds work differently and we don't understand how, at least not instinctively; we have to laboriously build up such understanding by hand, and we get reminded constantly of how limited our understanding is even after we've spent years building it up. > If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. That gives you a certain amount of immunity to tactless comments. It also gives you the confidence to make tactless comments. If you qualify all three of these sentences with "around other nerds", then they are true. But, at least in my own personal experience, they're not true without the qualifier. Food for thought: remember the studies that showed that kids who were told they were smart did less well on subsequent tests than kids who were told they had made a great effort? That's because "smart", at least the way we instinctively parse that word, is something not under our control. When someone tells me I'm "smart", I don't feel more confident, because "smart" is something I don't control; I can't command myself to be smart, the way I can command myself to make a concerted effort. So being told all the time that you're a smart kid doesn't actually improve your self-image. What does improve your self-image if you're a nerd is being told that some problem solution you came up with is right--provided it comes from someone whose opinion you expect to be right, such as another nerd or a teacher. Having that happen often as you're growing up does give you a lot of confidence when you're trying to solve the next problem. But that only works in an environment where correct solutions are the measure of value, i.e., around other nerds. > I think what happened is just that nerds care about speaking directly. That's true, but it's really just a side effect of the fact that nerds care about actually solving problems. Which implies that the best way to get a nerd to learn how to be tactful is to point out that doing so can help them to solve a problem: namely, how to cooperate effectively with non-nerds to get something useful accomplished. The inbound tact filter, in fact, is just the same sort of thing, but applied to interacting with other nerds. Nerds know that other nerds don't apply tact in the outbound direction, because they're too concerned with communicating accurate information to muddy it up with tact filters. But we nerds also know from experience that nobody, including us, likes to be told they're wrong, or that something they've worked hard on isn't done yet and needs more work. So we apply the inbound tact filter as a hack around our own emotions as much as anything else--to get us past the initial emotional reaction and on to actually solving the problem. At least, that's my experience.
jklm 5y ago
Great write-up. As a natural nerd, took me 5+ years of unintentionally offending people at work to figure out the same lesson. Turns out nerds are somewhat overrepresented in early startups, but the trend doesn’t hold as companies grow! Another general takeaway from this is “tailor your communication to your audience”. If they’re in marketing, you could talk about a project in terms of the potential conversion lift. If they’re engineers, maybe emphasizing how the same project improves dev speed is more valuable.
rgoulter 5y ago
I liked the model in this blogpost. https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/ https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/ It discusses making corrections. Some people interpret a correction as demonstrating superiority. Others interpret it as providing information. Compared to OP: For those who prefer tactful statements: using 'tact' and avoiding speaking directly avoids 'demonstrating superiority'; but tact-less statements would appear to be 'demonstrating superiority'. But for those who prefer information, adding tact just dilutes and slows things down.
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  IMHO tact is more about how than what. You can make a correction as a statement which cannot be disputed and not supported (by facts, arguments) or you can make a correction and be ready to explain why you think so and be open to being mistaken.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    I think this is saying the same thing. It would be more efficient to say it bluntly, then if necessary ask for additional info, rather than front-loading all the extra that just slow things down. I know I get frustrated when people take so long to get to their point.
- jvvw 5y ago
  This reminds me of Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand. She's a professor of linguistics and the book talks a great deal about using language to demonstrate superiority vs using language to connect.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jozvolskyef 5y ago
  Brilliant article. Explains why I find myself frustrated with people who take my well-intentioned feedback and try to retaliate against it as if it were some kind of a game.
eklavya 5y ago
So basically emotional intelligence and social skills needed by /lacking in any person.
- ben_w 5y ago
  No, two different and mutually incompatible solutions to the same problem. If it was an outright lack of emotional intelligence or social skills, either nerds wouldn’t get on with each other, or only nerds would, depending on which group you think is lacking.
  - tinktank 5y ago
    Agreed, but OP is not saying nerds lack EI/SS outright, just that they're lacking.
    - papandada 5y ago
      This thread is amusingly self-referential regarding tact.
jarfil 5y ago
It used to be that people using the Internet would realize, or were made to realize, that text communication lacks many of the non-verbal cues, so one should always try to avoid offending others, while when in doubt pick the least offending interpretation of what someone else has written. Unfortunately, decades of eternal September seem to have washed many of those lessons away. With the rise of professional trolls, and the inherent instinct to make a scene of some, now we have people trying to offend on one side, and people trying to get offended on the other... while they're both trying to be the loudest and drown out everyone else.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
permo-w 5y ago
I feel like this article is using tact by referring to people on the autistic spectrum as “nerds”
- meej 5y ago
  I think there was less awareness around ASD at the time and people didn’t really talk about it the way they do now. That said, it links to the classic “Fanspeak” at the bottom, which does mention Aspergers.
- nullc 5y ago
  Because autism spectrum disorders are created by how parents frame the world for their children? :)
PaulAJ 5y ago
I think its more a matter of spending all your school years being "remedial" for inter-personal skills (IPS). Think of IPS like it was a school subject. If you are learning maths slower than everyone else then when it is time to move on to multiplication you are still trying to get the hang of carrying the tens in addition. To catch up you have to go faster than everyone else, but that isn't possible. Now you have to leave addition and start doing multiplication, and you still haven't got the hang of addition, without which multiplication doesn't make sense. Pretty soon you are floundering in a mess of abstractions built on other abstractions that you don't understand, and it all goes downhill from there. Of course there are remedial classes for maths, reading etc. They help a lot; sometimes some dedicated tuition can pin down the specific issue and deal with it. But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. If you fail to get the hang of IPS when you start school the process is very similar to failing elementary arithmetic. You can't understand why everyone else is doing the things they are doing, or what they mean when they say things. So you get excluded by classmates during break, which means that you don't learn new IPS. And when you do catch on to something you do it wrong, or you don't realise that it's what everyone was doing last year, so now its considered childish. So you stay excluded, always wondering what the magic words are that will let you break into the social circle. Eventually you reach adulthood, and you still don't know this stuff. You are like someone who managed to get through school without learning to read (still happens, sadly), and now finds themselves being shouted at by the boss for not bothering to read the instructions.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's called Therapy. Unfortunately they will try to teach it covertly because "normal" people can't take direct constructive criticism of their behavior.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I imagine it would be more like a class where every project is a group project but you're required to not either slack off or do it all yourself, and your grades depend on how much the rest of team enjoyed working with you, maybe. That's still limited to "work social skills" vs "personal life social skills," though.
golergka 5y ago
Isn't that just robusntess principle[0] applied to human interaction? > Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
- loa_in_ 5y ago
  First thing that came to mind: This device may not cause harmful interference, and · This device must accept any interference received
spoonjim 5y ago
“Tact” isn’t something you really need to study for years to get good at. Basically, you need to have a difficult conversation in about 0.1% of the interactions you’ll ever have. So, avoid anything tough in the other 99.9%.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
A few past submissions but only one past comment: Tact Filters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789364 - July 2011 (1 comment)
afarrell 5y ago
It is also possible to apply a heavy tact filter both to what you hear and to what you say. This can however provoke impatience in others as you spend time doing extra cognitive/emotional processing.
udev 5y ago
There is a much stronger argument for tactless communication. In tactless mode there is little space for manipulation, misrepresentation, and other kinds of bullshit. In tactless mode coercion cannot be sugarcoated, becomes overt, imposing a much higher social cost on the one attempting it. All in all, tactless communication is much more efficient and clear, this is why it is used, e.g., in the military.
- mcguire 5y ago
  False. Although there are differences between military and civilian communication styles, tactlessness ain't it.
  - udev 5y ago
    I tactlessly order you to elaborate.
- afarrell 5y ago
  If you want to encourage people to be less tactful with you, there is a wrong way to do so and there is a right way to do so. The wrong way is to get impatient with their attempts at tact and act as if they would given additional time and patience, be more manipulative. This assumes that manipulation requires more space & time because it is highly intentional. In my experience, most manipulative speech is a fast emotional (perhaps system 1) reaction to a situation where a fearful speaker is desperately trying to establish control of the outcome of an interaction. It often strives to protect the speaker’s own ego. Tact is exerting the mental effort to be clear about what one is not trying to say about someone else's ego while being clear about what one is trying to say about the facts of a situation. If you try to get others to be tactless by impatience, their fact-clarity will drop alongside their ego-preservation. So if you wish another to speak with less tact, the right way to do that is to set them at ease by saying things that indicate you have a low ego attachment to the topic and that you are willing to re-think your own beliefs. Then, they can redirect their mental RAM to creating increased fact-clarity. In short: Send signals that you are in "scout mindset" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8.
mcguire 5y ago
This presumes a difference between "normal people" and "nerds" that is not necessarily relevant anymore, if it ever was.
_def 5y ago
This seems like a pretty bad explanation to me. How people form their messages and how they interpret incoming ones is way more complex.
nullc 5y ago
This would predict that being tactless and accepting tactlessness from others are strongly correlated. I don't think they're that strongly correlated, and the correlation that exists may just come from the fact that people with both no-tact filter and high intolerance of tactlessness are so undesirable to work with that you won't find them in many populations due to selection. People of reasonable emotional intelligence can work with tactless people and they can work with fragile people, but being asked to work with a tactless fragile person is asking for quite a bit more. :)
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  I'd say there are basically too ways in which "inconsiderate" statements appear. One way is in people who genuinely are not that good at anticipating how others will view a given statement. The other way is in people who by reflex assert dominance and so don't care what effect their statements are going to have. A given boss lashes out at subordinates both because they can and to continue to show them "who's boss". An emotionally incompetent employee may lash out at a boss and get fired because they don't aren't being emotionally aware. Even more, you can get a person who's always asserting dominance and they either rise to the very top or fall to the very bottom. Which is to say, there's a certain porousness between emotionally incompetent and "just being dick". "but being asked to work with a tactless fragile person is asking for quite a bit more. :)" No one can work with a tactless, fragile person. But plenty of people for tactless, fragile people.
- hzhou321 5y ago
  > This would predict that being tactless and accepting tactlessness from others are strongly correlated. This is because most of us will try to understand other people from their own perspectives. This is the case even when one tries to put themselves in other's shoes -- it often fall short because one simply doesn't have other's shoes.
saxonww 5y ago
Postel's Law, but for people.

Tact Filters (1996)

119 points by sturza 5y ago

I don't think that nerds have an inbound tact filter. I don't think this is a good explanation of going on. If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. That gives you a certain amount of immunity to tactless comments. It also gives you the confidence to make tactless comments. On the other hand, not all the people you want to work with grew up that way or have that kind of self-image. In order to avoid hurting people around you, you should learn to speak tactfully. I think what happened is just that nerds care about speaking directly. There are also a number of types of neurodiversity over-represented in nerds, such as autism, ADHD, and social anxiety disorders. Speaking tactfully naturally takes extra time. An autistic person would not pick up on the necessary social cues in order to speak tactfully. Someone with ADHD may be irritated by the interruption and want to get back to work. Someone with social anxiety may just want to leave the interaction. Yet, in spite of this, there are plenty of nerds who care about tact, and make an effort to consider other people's feelings when they talk. The effort is appreciated.

michaelt 5y ago
> If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" [...] you may have a rock-solid self-image. This is, of course, why we programmers are famous for the delight we take in coding on a whiteboard in front of a large audience; the comfortable ease with which we talk to beautiful members of the opposite sex; and the fact none of us have ever been described as shy :)
- klodolph 5y ago
  Like everything else, it's contextual.
- majormajor 5y ago
  Look at it this way: we're all convinced the problem is the whiteboard interview itself, it couldn't possibly be that we're not as smart as we think we are. That's some pretty strong self-image of the "I'm a smart kid" sort.
  - user1980 5y ago
    The problem is interruptions, not my ability to focus. The problem is Product demanding estimates, not my ability to estimate in the midst of uncertainty and ask questions to reduce it. The problem is Java, C, or whatever "legacy" technology is being used. Despite the fact that the whole world runs on it.
  - jozvolskyef 5y ago
    One can have social anxiety and a rock-solid self-image as a scientist at the same time. The latter requires no social or synchronous communication skills.
bradleyjg 5y ago
If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. Growing up as a smart kid interested in computers from 1976-1996 was a very different experience than the same from 2001-2021.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Like everything else, it's contextual.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I don't know what growing up in the 2000s was like, but my experience in your referenced time frame is like the person you replied to: it's not gonna make you popular, it's not gonna make you friends with the cheerleaders, it might be part of an overall miserable experience - but being interested in computers certainly wasn't going to make anyone stop telling you you're smart.
- erdos4d 5y ago
  As someone who is closer to the 76-96 timeframe, could you give some insights into how you feel this has changed? I actually would like to know how the younger generation of nerds is faring these days, but I don't know any to ask.
  - anonfornoreason 5y ago
    From what I can see, it's much more acceptable to be nerdy. I have some younger cousins and nieces/nephews who have recently graduated high school or are currently about to start. It seems much easier to find a niche and not get bullied for being good in school or with technology. In other words, revenge of the nerds. Every toy out there is now STEM in some way (either in actuality or in branding), and everyone realizes that tech is more likely to make money.
pdonis 5y ago
> I don't think that nerds have an inbound tact filter. I don't think this is a good explanation of going on. Are you a nerd? I ask because it's extremely risky to speculate about how the minds of people of a type that you're not, work. That's precisely the problem we nerds have trying to understand non-nerds: their minds work differently and we don't understand how, at least not instinctively; we have to laboriously build up such understanding by hand, and we get reminded constantly of how limited our understanding is even after we've spent years building it up. > If you spent twenty years being called a "smart kid" and then went to a job where all the smart kids end up, then you may have a rock-solid self-image. That gives you a certain amount of immunity to tactless comments. It also gives you the confidence to make tactless comments. If you qualify all three of these sentences with "around other nerds", then they are true. But, at least in my own personal experience, they're not true without the qualifier. Food for thought: remember the studies that showed that kids who were told they were smart did less well on subsequent tests than kids who were told they had made a great effort? That's because "smart", at least the way we instinctively parse that word, is something not under our control. When someone tells me I'm "smart", I don't feel more confident, because "smart" is something I don't control; I can't command myself to be smart, the way I can command myself to make a concerted effort. So being told all the time that you're a smart kid doesn't actually improve your self-image. What does improve your self-image if you're a nerd is being told that some problem solution you came up with is right--provided it comes from someone whose opinion you expect to be right, such as another nerd or a teacher. Having that happen often as you're growing up does give you a lot of confidence when you're trying to solve the next problem. But that only works in an environment where correct solutions are the measure of value, i.e., around other nerds. > I think what happened is just that nerds care about speaking directly. That's true, but it's really just a side effect of the fact that nerds care about actually solving problems. Which implies that the best way to get a nerd to learn how to be tactful is to point out that doing so can help them to solve a problem: namely, how to cooperate effectively with non-nerds to get something useful accomplished. The inbound tact filter, in fact, is just the same sort of thing, but applied to interacting with other nerds. Nerds know that other nerds don't apply tact in the outbound direction, because they're too concerned with communicating accurate information to muddy it up with tact filters. But we nerds also know from experience that nobody, including us, likes to be told they're wrong, or that something they've worked hard on isn't done yet and needs more work. So we apply the inbound tact filter as a hack around our own emotions as much as anything else--to get us past the initial emotional reaction and on to actually solving the problem. At least, that's my experience.

jklm 5y ago

Great write-up. As a natural nerd, took me 5+ years of unintentionally offending people at work to figure out the same lesson. Turns out nerds are somewhat overrepresented in early startups, but the trend doesn’t hold as companies grow! Another general takeaway from this is “tailor your communication to your audience”. If they’re in marketing, you could talk about a project in terms of the potential conversion lift. If they’re engineers, maybe emphasizing how the same project improves dev speed is more valuable.

rgoulter 5y ago

I liked the model in this blogpost. https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/ https://status451.com/2016/01/06/splain-it-to-me/ It discusses making corrections. Some people interpret a correction as demonstrating superiority. Others interpret it as providing information. Compared to OP: For those who prefer tactful statements: using 'tact' and avoiding speaking directly avoids 'demonstrating superiority'; but tact-less statements would appear to be 'demonstrating superiority'. But for those who prefer information, adding tact just dilutes and slows things down.

citrin_ru 5y ago
IMHO tact is more about how than what. You can make a correction as a statement which cannot be disputed and not supported (by facts, arguments) or you can make a correction and be ready to explain why you think so and be open to being mistaken.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  I think this is saying the same thing. It would be more efficient to say it bluntly, then if necessary ask for additional info, rather than front-loading all the extra that just slow things down. I know I get frustrated when people take so long to get to their point.
jvvw 5y ago
This reminds me of Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand. She's a professor of linguistics and the book talks a great deal about using language to demonstrate superiority vs using language to connect.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jozvolskyef 5y ago
Brilliant article. Explains why I find myself frustrated with people who take my well-intentioned feedback and try to retaliate against it as if it were some kind of a game.

eklavya 5y ago

So basically emotional intelligence and social skills needed by /lacking in any person.

ben_w 5y ago
No, two different and mutually incompatible solutions to the same problem. If it was an outright lack of emotional intelligence or social skills, either nerds wouldn’t get on with each other, or only nerds would, depending on which group you think is lacking.
- tinktank 5y ago
  Agreed, but OP is not saying nerds lack EI/SS outright, just that they're lacking.
  - papandada 5y ago
    This thread is amusingly self-referential regarding tact.

jarfil 5y ago

It used to be that people using the Internet would realize, or were made to realize, that text communication lacks many of the non-verbal cues, so one should always try to avoid offending others, while when in doubt pick the least offending interpretation of what someone else has written. Unfortunately, decades of eternal September seem to have washed many of those lessons away. With the rise of professional trolls, and the inherent instinct to make a scene of some, now we have people trying to offend on one side, and people trying to get offended on the other... while they're both trying to be the loudest and drown out everyone else.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

permo-w 5y ago

I feel like this article is using tact by referring to people on the autistic spectrum as “nerds”

meej 5y ago
I think there was less awareness around ASD at the time and people didn’t really talk about it the way they do now. That said, it links to the classic “Fanspeak” at the bottom, which does mention Aspergers.
nullc 5y ago
Because autism spectrum disorders are created by how parents frame the world for their children? :)

PaulAJ 5y ago

I think its more a matter of spending all your school years being "remedial" for inter-personal skills (IPS). Think of IPS like it was a school subject. If you are learning maths slower than everyone else then when it is time to move on to multiplication you are still trying to get the hang of carrying the tens in addition. To catch up you have to go faster than everyone else, but that isn't possible. Now you have to leave addition and start doing multiplication, and you still haven't got the hang of addition, without which multiplication doesn't make sense. Pretty soon you are floundering in a mess of abstractions built on other abstractions that you don't understand, and it all goes downhill from there. Of course there are remedial classes for maths, reading etc. They help a lot; sometimes some dedicated tuition can pin down the specific issue and deal with it. But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. If you fail to get the hang of IPS when you start school the process is very similar to failing elementary arithmetic. You can't understand why everyone else is doing the things they are doing, or what they mean when they say things. So you get excluded by classmates during break, which means that you don't learn new IPS. And when you do catch on to something you do it wrong, or you don't realise that it's what everyone was doing last year, so now its considered childish. So you stay excluded, always wondering what the magic words are that will let you break into the social circle. Eventually you reach adulthood, and you still don't know this stuff. You are like someone who managed to get through school without learning to read (still happens, sadly), and now finds themselves being shouted at by the boss for not bothering to read the instructions.

phkahler 5y ago
>> But there are no remedial classes for IPS; the slow learner is left to sink or swim on their own. It's called Therapy. Unfortunately they will try to teach it covertly because "normal" people can't take direct constructive criticism of their behavior.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I've gone to a few types of therapy and none have them have really been anything like "practice building social skills" at all. I imagine it would be more like a class where every project is a group project but you're required to not either slack off or do it all yourself, and your grades depend on how much the rest of team enjoyed working with you, maybe. That's still limited to "work social skills" vs "personal life social skills," though.

golergka 5y ago

Isn't that just robusntess principle[0] applied to human interaction? > Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

loa_in_ 5y ago
First thing that came to mind: This device may not cause harmful interference, and · This device must accept any interference received

spoonjim 5y ago

“Tact” isn’t something you really need to study for years to get good at. Basically, you need to have a difficult conversation in about 0.1% of the interactions you’ll ever have. So, avoid anything tough in the other 99.9%.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

A few past submissions but only one past comment: Tact Filters - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789364 - July 2011 (1 comment)

afarrell 5y ago

It is also possible to apply a heavy tact filter both to what you hear and to what you say. This can however provoke impatience in others as you spend time doing extra cognitive/emotional processing.

udev 5y ago

There is a much stronger argument for tactless communication. In tactless mode there is little space for manipulation, misrepresentation, and other kinds of bullshit. In tactless mode coercion cannot be sugarcoated, becomes overt, imposing a much higher social cost on the one attempting it. All in all, tactless communication is much more efficient and clear, this is why it is used, e.g., in the military.

mcguire 5y ago
False. Although there are differences between military and civilian communication styles, tactlessness ain't it.
- udev 5y ago
  I tactlessly order you to elaborate.
afarrell 5y ago
If you want to encourage people to be less tactful with you, there is a wrong way to do so and there is a right way to do so. The wrong way is to get impatient with their attempts at tact and act as if they would given additional time and patience, be more manipulative. This assumes that manipulation requires more space & time because it is highly intentional. In my experience, most manipulative speech is a fast emotional (perhaps system 1) reaction to a situation where a fearful speaker is desperately trying to establish control of the outcome of an interaction. It often strives to protect the speaker’s own ego. Tact is exerting the mental effort to be clear about what one is not trying to say about someone else's ego while being clear about what one is trying to say about the facts of a situation. If you try to get others to be tactless by impatience, their fact-clarity will drop alongside their ego-preservation. So if you wish another to speak with less tact, the right way to do that is to set them at ease by saying things that indicate you have a low ego attachment to the topic and that you are willing to re-think your own beliefs. Then, they can redirect their mental RAM to creating increased fact-clarity. In short: Send signals that you are in "scout mindset" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MYEtQ5Zdn8.

mcguire 5y ago

This presumes a difference between "normal people" and "nerds" that is not necessarily relevant anymore, if it ever was.

_def 5y ago

This seems like a pretty bad explanation to me. How people form their messages and how they interpret incoming ones is way more complex.

nullc 5y ago

This would predict that being tactless and accepting tactlessness from others are strongly correlated. I don't think they're that strongly correlated, and the correlation that exists may just come from the fact that people with both no-tact filter and high intolerance of tactlessness are so undesirable to work with that you won't find them in many populations due to selection. People of reasonable emotional intelligence can work with tactless people and they can work with fragile people, but being asked to work with a tactless fragile person is asking for quite a bit more. :)

joe_the_user 5y ago
I'd say there are basically too ways in which "inconsiderate" statements appear. One way is in people who genuinely are not that good at anticipating how others will view a given statement. The other way is in people who by reflex assert dominance and so don't care what effect their statements are going to have. A given boss lashes out at subordinates both because they can and to continue to show them "who's boss". An emotionally incompetent employee may lash out at a boss and get fired because they don't aren't being emotionally aware. Even more, you can get a person who's always asserting dominance and they either rise to the very top or fall to the very bottom. Which is to say, there's a certain porousness between emotionally incompetent and "just being dick". "but being asked to work with a tactless fragile person is asking for quite a bit more. :)" No one can work with a tactless, fragile person. But plenty of people for tactless, fragile people.
hzhou321 5y ago
> This would predict that being tactless and accepting tactlessness from others are strongly correlated. This is because most of us will try to understand other people from their own perspectives. This is the case even when one tries to put themselves in other's shoes -- it often fall short because one simply doesn't have other's shoes.

saxonww 5y ago

Postel's Law, but for people.