Comment by second_brekkie

Being from the UK, I feel its a generalisation to say the west is an ask culture. I really feel like there's more of a guess culture outside of close friendship in the UK, especially the higher up the social strata you go.

Also the further south you go the more guess culture it will get. The more north you go people will be more friendly but also tell you what they think. As a general rule of thumb.

In the workplace too, becuase asking is too direct sometimes commands are phrased as soft questions.

"Should this be here?" means "I have figured out what is wrong and this clearly shouldn't be here, I will not approve your PR until you change this"

This irritates me, but I've only found on extreme ends of the guessing spectrum.

Generally I find guessing culture more preferable. It places the burden of "is it OK to ask this?" on the asker which is as it should be. Otherwise you're putting the burden of saying no on the requestee, and also gives the requestee the task of saying no nicely.

However if your at the table around a strangers house and you feel that you have to wait for the host to offer you ketchup. Well that's just manners gone stupid, thats obviously an OK thing to ask, it's on the flipping table!