This is what happens when children are raised in frictionless environments. The real world doesn't care about your feelings.
(Can't wait for the downvotes)
This is not the problem; while we can't measure emotional or psychic distress directly we can infer the severity of it by observing the instance of suicide, which is motivated by emotional rather than physical pain. Rather the problem is that reminders of emotional trauma are often carelessly equated with the initial imposition of trauma. It is of course absurd for students in a class about sexual assault and the law to object to the very existence of the subject matter; on the other hand, to dismiss emotional injuries as immaterial is equivalent to saying that it's OK to terrorize someone as long as you don't harm them physically. If someone broke into your bedroom tonight and hold a knife to your throat but them left without any further assault, you woouldn't have suffered any material injury but I am pretty sure you'd have trouble sleeping.
This is what happens when children are raised in frictionless environments. The real world doesn't care about your feelings.
I hear this sort of thing a lot from people who have been through a little bit of friction and now think they're immunized against it. Having grown up in a very high friction environment, I find your argument weak.
(Can't wait for the downvotes)
Don't do this, it's only a step away from trolling and debases the discussion by unilaterally putting it on a confrontational footing.
The problem is that assholes will use it to justify being a dick, just as they used office politics and Ayn Rand.
Well, it's not like Ayn Rand can be used any other way.
Speaking with candor != being a dick. People can supply direct and honest feedback without making it personal. Someone can criticize someone else's code until the cows come home, while also being excellent friends with them outside the workplace.
The idea that people will use trend de jure to justify whatever bad behaviors they already exhibit while not putting any actual effort into self-improvement is, I feel, fairly uncontroversial.
It's a fascinating read
http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...
The other interesting aspect is that Dalio is an adherent of Transcendental Meditation and IIRC the principles really sprang his study of TM and Buddhism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/12/meditation-creativi...
Meditation has also transformed the corporate culture at Bridgewater. Dalio pays for half of the fees for any employee who's interested in learning TM, and the office features meditation rooms and group sessions. The company is also known for its "brutally honest" meetings, and Dalio says meditation helps his employees to adopt an attitude of calm equanimity that helps them to engage in a productive dialogue without reacting emotionally.
By the way I say this fully aware that I am privileged to not suffer from, well, whatever triggers actually do to people... ("Feel bad" is all I can figure)
In practice they're used far too often and at unsuitable times, and are used to avoid all discussion of difficult topics, so yes, they've now become a bit daft.
That's a shame, because it means that people who need them don't get them (and are mocked for asking for them); people who don't need them ask for them all the time on anything; and a bunch of vile hateful idiots spew their ignorant bile any time trigger warnings are mentioned.
I don't think so. I don't think people are asking for all possible triggering scenarios to be covered. They're asking for people to take some time and consider how others (less privilege || victims of abuse ||etc.) might be affected. A trigger warning is essentially a heads up.
I've watched my Dad do it and it also tends to shock the recipient when they expect some anger, etc.
----
Gene Consbruck:
You had better not front-stab your boss.
Mike Tian:
"niceness", "politeness", or "etiquette" were invented to allow strangers to co-exist with less friction. They are a code of conduct to prevent violence when people lived in clans and tribes. It was a good invention.
Within a trusted circle, you can strip away some of these things and be "brutally honest", and not rupture your relationship.
But in a larger organization, where people are not necessarily your most trusted confidants, such a strategy is likely to massively backfire.
You cannot have "brutal honesty" (e.g. strip away all the social lubricants of politeness) without a deep and abiding trust. Doing so will result in warfare, either open or subtle.
Something my current employer does, which with hindsight is incredibly obvious, is to separate the roles of leader and manager. Leaders guide the day-to-day work, managers guide the careers of employees. I'm the leader of a development team, and while i do spend a lot of time guiding my team as to what to do and how to do it, i don't carry the can for their happiness, professional development, etc. Rather, that's in the hands of various other people in the company [1], who have monthly one-to-ones, collect feedback, give performance reviews, etc.
As a result, one of the people on my team could absolutely front-stab me without fear of the consequences. They could simply say to their manager that i was a shitty team lead. It would then be up to the manager to act on that information, by giving me or my manager that feedback. That's not hypothetical; it's happened (i actually am a shitty team lead).
[1] That's not to say i don't contribute towards that; if the manager of one of the people on my team comes and tells me that that person is keen to learn more about some topic, i'll try to carve out work related to that topic and let that person work on it. But i'm not the prime mover.
A key point in the article, radical candor feedback may be blunt but should also be well intentioned, not merely derogatory.
It's that many people lack the skills necessary to deal with assholes.
I don't think trying to create conflict-free workplaces (as opposed to personal environments) is a good answer.
[1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/referer-control/hn...
Also consider paying for high quality journalism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Absolutely! However in the case of the WSJ it is cancelled out by my desire not to give Rupert Murdoch any money.
I see three problems with trigger warnings. One is that some people have developed a habit of writing 'trigger warning for blah' at the beginning of something and then just going on to vent or throw the literary equivalent of a pity party, which readers are implicitly forbidden to criticize in any way. Another is that the worthy purpose of warning others about the potential for offence can easily degenerate into social engineering in the hands of an unscrupulous person. One form of this is to demand special treatment, while another form is to deliberately trigger anxiety in others while evading responsibility for it by pointing to existence of the trigger warning.
The biggest problem by far though is that anything could be triggering to someone - like a perverse version of rule 34, if it exists there is a traumatic version of it. This is the entire basis of the horror movie genre: you take something that looks innocuous and make it into something scary by juxtaposing it with something awful, in order to create suspenseful dread the next time you see the innocuous thing. This is why creature features aren't really horror movies; while it's horrific to depict someone eaten by a shark or a giant bear or whatever, you already know those things are dangerous and if they show up you are in trouble. So while you might feel scared watching Jaws, you knew from the outset that you were (vicariously) going into a hazardous situation, and conversely that you can avoid scary encounters with hungry sharks by not swimming in the ocean or visiting aquariums. But if I show you a movie where, I dunno, playing certain chords on an old piano can summon an evil spirit* and the movie is convincingly scary, then you'll get a little shudder every time you see a piano lurking in the corner of the room.
* this seems like a pretty stupid premise, but in medieval times certain dissonant note combinations were avoided in western church music because the harmonic instability was considered too evil-sounding. A modern parallel is to sing a well-known children's song in a minor key, which invariably sounds creepy.
This is, of course, a vocal minority speaking--a group of people who attach their entire self-worth to the idea that they're fighting evil. They can't bear to think that the fight is over, because then their life becomes devoid of meaning, so they insist that the fight must be taken even further.
The issue is further complicated by what I call the Villain Effect. Because the other side is opposed to you, they are evil; therefore, any compromise is immoral. This happens on both sides, leading to a destructive stalemate in which everyone fights for an increasingly extreme version of their original vision, with no end in sight.
Michael Jensen has been doing some research on the benefits of honesty-- you should check out his controversial research on integrity [0]. I think he'd support the idea of calling out managers who hide their opinions from you. Further, Google has done some HR research[1] that has called "psychological safety" the #1 driver of team effectiveness.
[0] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1511274 [1] https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful...
I suspect even the managers would support that... until it's their turn in the barrel.
One of the problems with "treat others how you wish to be treated" is that a lot of people have very funny notions of both how they are treating people and how they would wish to be treated.
Now, personalized trigger warnings in a context where particular individuals are known to be sensitive to particular things as triggers make a lot of sense, but AFAICT generalized trigger warnings have no valid basis in anything that has to do with actual triggering, and those pushing them trivialize real trauma-related conditions.
It's all the other things she said, wrote, and even more so, practiced -- in other word her ethics and ideology -- that make her appalling as an author and as someone people aspire to be like.
From what I've seen of AS, she believes that the creation of value is good, and that trying to create a system where effort isn't rewarded will lead to people not putting in effort.
There's also all the discussion of sex in AS, which, assuming it's actually relevant to the story, leads me to believe that Rand thought of emotional and physical pleasure as being two sides of the same coin--that is, there's no shame in either. However, sometimes sex is just sex, to paraphrase Freud.
Well, that's a very normal idea, and quite widespread. Rand goes far beyond that (and in other directions), praising selfishness and ruthlessness, allowing individuals to trump others, viewing the masses as subhumans who exist solely for the pleasure of the few ubermen, etc.
Here's a quite accurate description:
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/10_insane_things_i_learned_a...
But her life story and that of the group of "disciples" she controlled is also enlightening.
That having been said:
She represents two "selfish" heroes as good; one (Rearden) buys up the supply chain tonreduce costs and deliver his new alloy at lower prices, and the other (Galt) is an extremist-capitalist who refuses to give anything away because he believes that it leads to the kind of thing the villains of the book have done. Speaking of, Rearden actually offers to give ten thousand dollars to his brother's charity...and is chastised for it by his brother, who complains that Rearden isn't a true believer, and then demands that the money be delivered in cash so as to not besmirch the charity with a greedy capitalist's name. While Rearden was not giving for the charity's sake so much as he was giving for his brother's sake, it's hard to argue that giving ten thousand dollars to make your brother happy is a "selfish" thing to do.
Allowing people to trump others is presented as good only in the sense that competition encourages improvement. It's not that you've beaten someone, it's that you did so by creating a better metal, or engine, or or or. By letting one man's (better) design become more successful, even at the expense of another man's design, you encourage better design overall. Recall the bright young engineer who made an exceptionally efficient diesel engine, and was worked to the bone for 12 hours a day in response. Were he given a raise instead, others would have found that innovation is rewarded. If the ones who do not make new, better engines are given the same money for less value, then why should anyone make new engines?
As for the problem of the great minds versus the small ones, that's where Rand falls flat. She is right on the money re: value and rewarding it, but she fails to consider that the people who have great ideas are a fairly small group, and that the people on the assembly line are still worth rewarding for other kinds of hard work.
I only know that Rand came to the USA in the midst of the cold war, which explains why she'a so upset over commies.