Comment by chasing
2 years ago
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.