> Ask advice, ask permission, whatever. It'll be okay. Let's take that at face value for the moment. The person making the request cannot know ahead of time t

> Ask advice, ask permission, whatever. It'll be okay. Let's take that at face value for the moment. The person making the request cannot know ahead of time that the person they are asking treats advice/permission interchangeably. Their interlocutor could instead be what the author calls a gatekeeper, in which case permission-seeking will trigger the gate but advice-seeking will not. On the flip side, someone fielding a question cannot know ahead of time that their interlocutor essentially randomly chooses between advice/permission-seeking, and that their interlocutor would treat the response the same either way. The person asking the question could be a narcissist looking for a place to lay blame if things go wrong. Where such a choice is possible, standardizing on advice-giving therefore minimizes gatekeeping and ass-covering. Permission-seeking invites one or the other, with no apparent gain. The results are even more in favor of advice-seeking when you take into account the number of people who have an easy time claiming what you've written-- be direct, we're all adults here-- but end up being gate-keepers/ass-coverers in practice. That discrepancy between words and deeds characterizes the vast majority of narcissists I've ever met. There are a lot of narcissists out there, so I don't see any reason not to take the author's advice. At worst the standard has no effect at all, and realistically it will probably do what the author says it will.