Comment by username90

>For example, a person who thinks their math teacher is mean when the teacher corrects them will probably never become great at math

Not a math teacher, but I had a boss once when i was younger who constantly would tell me I only did a 99% job. I worked too fast and didn't finish the last little things. It pissed me off every time. He wasn't really that nice about it. He was a pretty blunt and straightforward kinda guy.

He was right though and it took a while but I eventually noticed that I did exactly what he said I was doing and it did impact things I did. Since I realized that, I hear is voice now telling me this before I think I've finished everything I'm doing and inevitably I find something I missed or didn't finish properly. In the end his blunt delivery of information and reasonable criticism did sink in and I feel like my attention to detail has improved because of it on anything I work on now.

It's entirely possible to be able to grasp the content in a mean message, and also demand that the source be kinder. In other words, just because I might demand someone treat me respectfully does not mean I am mentally incapable of grasping the content of a mean message.

I think your argument conflates "there exist" and "forall" - certainly, there exist people that simultaneously demand niceness and are incapable of processing mean messages. But that's definitely not true for everyone.

So you can believe that people should try to grasp any valid meaning behind a mean message, and also believe that people should be kind.

> I believe that this is an aspect of communication we need to talk way more about, since large parts of the population are currently handicapped like this.

> People often have good reasons for being mean, they could be tired, hungry, depressed or just spoke without thinking, those are really bad reasons for not listening if the actual message is sound.

How do you know if "the message is sound"? This actually has me thinking that it's an adaptive trait to pay more attention to people who have the energy to spare some kindness for others. Because clearly they're doing something well enough to either not feel tired/hungry/depressed or well enough to still have the energy to consider other people despite feeling any of those things.

The opposite fallacy seem to be quite common: People thinking some dubious message delivered in a sufficiently abrasive way must be a "harsh truth", and any counterargument just means "you can't handle the truth". This is why politicians and debaters use the harsh rhetoric: It works. People eat it up.

> The nicer you state your messages the more people will listen to you.

> The meaner messages you can stomach the more information is accessible to you.

• From the receiver's view:

Meanness implies conflict. It evokes threat, defense, flight.

Those are instinctive responses to an intent of attack. Suppressing those requires non-zero effort.

• On the other hand, from the mean person's view:

They are experiencing impatience or frustration with something they want to change.

Suppressing that requires non-zero effort.

It all comes down to who can put more effort into suppressing their instinctual responses at a given moment.

There's another dimension you can work on that I find seems to work much better.

Put your complaints in the form of a question. People will use whatever internal dialog they are comfortable with to unpack it in their own heads.

Doesn't work on everyone. There's a couple engineers at every job who will happily answer questions about their Rube Goldberg machines as if they were innocent questions instead of an invitation to be introspective.

Another aspect to this is that the meaner a message is, the less likely it is to be said by someone who can grasp a very basic point about human nature.

I have this conversation at work. Team leads are Pollyanna types. Nobody wants to complain to an over-confidently happy person.

Meanwhile, if a tool we use or code I wrote is frustrating to use, I call a spade a spade. So then people open up about other stuff that bugs them. I hear everyone's fears and frustrations. I hear how bits of the code make people feel stupid. On other jobs I've gone out of my way to fix these problems. Often this doesn't impress your bosses (especially the bad ones) but it gets you plenty of respect from your peers and subordinates.

This particular system is such a Gordeon Knot that it's taken me years to see daylight. It's almost time for a new job and the code has just gotten to a place I wish it had been in on day 1.

> since large parts of the population are currently handicapped like this.

That is called fragile. It isn't genetic, but it is socially reinforced. I suspect people who suffer from fragility are more prone to depression and anxiety.

That's an interesting application of Postel's law.

I've received many unkind messages that I needed to hear, and was made better off.

The problem is that mean speech correlates with more damaging behavior downstream, like violence or libel. So it's a conservative act of self protection to ghost/avoid individuals who use mean speech. I for one tend to avoid them. And I question how much I could actually learn from them if they have yet to develop a basic sense of social decency.

This is the base case. I understand that there are more extreme cases where you "win" in some specific ways if you keep stomaching mean speech.

There's a limit to the "meanness" one can stomach, however, without some aspect, such as mental health, going awry. In short bursts it may be useful, but in the long run, meanness is not sustainable.

> The nicer you state your messages the more people will listen to you.

Most of the evidence I see directly contradicts this. The most successful people I know are generally very nice, but can turn on the assholishness very tactically.

People don't remember Feynman's O-ring demonstration because it was nice, they remember it because it was a nasty takedown in spite of it not being strictly correct.

After 30+ years, my father could get most misbehaving high school students to stop with just a quip that embarrassed them in front of their peers. That may have pissed off the student, but it was less disruptive to both class and the student than having to stop class, send the student to the administration, and invoke overzealous cover-your-ass administration punishment.

In most successful projects I have been involved with, a single person dragged it's bleeding, broken corpse across the finish line. And, I assure you, they weren't always being very nice at the end--generally justifiably so to people in the way.

And, being nice in politics got us where we are today--a resurgent set of right-wing demagogues in multiple countries.

Sorry, just not seeing it. I"m not saying "You should always be a raging asshole," but I see precious little evidence that being the "nicer" person turns out better in the long run.

Game theory, in fact, prefers tit-for-tat, no? Be nice and forgive, but do punish those who deserve it.

Just because one receives more information doesn't mean it's beneficial for the listener. There are plenty of times where bad information (like false statements) can cause more damage than no information. Why listen to a mean speaker if the message can be just as negative as it is beneficial?

> So we'd expect those who demand others to be nice to be less well informed than those who can tolerate mean communication.

Only if you are demanding that others are nice to you. You should demand that others are nice to others.

Yep. That math teacher might reach more kids by adopting a different tone -- but the one who actually suffers is the kid who can't listen to harsh feedback.

Filtering out mean opinions might actually be a good heuristic though that more often leads you to the right answer