Comment by chasing
2 years ago
I don't really care for the "Ask vs. Guess" framing.
More like "make demands without considering the other person at all vs. think for a second about not imposing yourself on other people unnecessarily."
But mostly this article is about the virtues of being a clear communicator and having decent interpersonal skills, which is neither an "ask" nor a "guess" thing.
I disagree with that framing even more. "Asking" is not "making demands." Guess culture people only think that asking is a demand, because that's Guess culture.
It's telling to me that I can't tell from your reframing which side is which.
From my experience, I would assume the one not considering the other person is the one in guess culture, assuming the other person can and ought to read their mind, and the one trying not to impose is the one who actually asks the other person for their opinion or consent, but I can equally see it the other way around, and think the opposite might actually be how you meant it.
You're clearly a Guess :)
I consider myself a staunch centrist on the "ask" vs. "guess" scale. :-)
I ask all the time! And I'm totally comfortable with "no." But I try to consider the other person first because I think making unreasonable requests repeatedly, which is the subtext of their description of an "asker," blows social capital and just bugs people.
Making unreasonable requests repeatedly is a form of harassment not "Ask culture."
It's not like people in ask cultures just go around asking random strangers to hand over all their money...
But that's ask culture in the end. Guess people can only guess, whereas ask can always guess, but then fallback to asking.
Guess also assumes a very similar shared context and understanding. This leads to xenophobia, because "those foreigners" seem so rude simply because they "guess" with a different contexts. Again, asking is superior.
I think that's a given that needn't be mentioned in the article. The author isn't stupid, and clearly wouldn't advocate for making outlandish or completely unreasonable requests even for the "askers" mindset.
And a lot of "Ask" are simply "Grab"
No I'm a purple personality with IRWNVDEIS+ tendencies.
It may be that both are thinking in terms of considering the other person. People use their self as a reference point. When you try to model in your head how someone will take your request, you may be thinking in terms of how another asker would take being asked a request. In that case, you would think that the other person would be fine with it, since they're just as comfortable with asking for things that have a low chance of being granted.