Re: rhetorical style (was: Wisdom of Crowds vs Kenneth Arrow)

Posted by Marcus G. Daniels on Sep 15, 2016; 4:52pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Wisdom-of-Crowds-vs-Kenneth-Arrow-tp7587842p7587907.html

"Too often, I find myself at wit's end, trying to _pry_ someone out of what I [mis]interpret as a limiting scope.  My angst and arrogance prevent me from using the soft styles."

"Leaders" of various sorts have been known to create situations in which soft styles are required from their people.   This is typically sold as a driver toward civilized behavior, "team productivity" or whatever.  It has a darker side though, in that it Bad Ideas can't be taken down directly in any way that might embarrass anyone, especially those in power (individuals prone to seeing things that way).   It means that communication involves large, clumsy, transactions, and the transactions are often a stinky mix of repetition, turf-taking, non-sequiturs and so on.  Thus, the tendency to refuse to use a soft style is a cognitive defense mechanism to not spend ones' time navigating "appearances" for those that have other objectives than to get to the bottom of things.   How much time do I want to spend in filter operations & ambiguous signal detection, as opposed to analysis?  How much time to spend modeling the goals of other people, staging "soft" responses as a part of a "long game
 " .   If these players (or the whole strategy) can be sabotaged, is it not good to do so?   Is the game worth it?  It pretty quickly degenerates into a distinction between agents that have inherent intellectual value, and the very different concept of using agents because of their social standing.   The area in between must be populated somehow, but it often seems to be a wasteland.  
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