It's been quite illuminating for people in multicultural teams...
Original comment below for posterity and because there are answers.
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I'm not sure this stuff is really that helpful. You might be tempted to put people into these categories, but you might have a somewhat caricatural and also wrong image of both which could worsen interactions.
By the way, that article doesn't cite any studies!
It's probably helpful to know people are more or less at ease asking direct questions or saying no or receiving a no, but it's all scales and subtleties. It could also depend on the mood, or even who one interacts with or on the specific topic).
The article touches this a bit (the "not black and white" paragraph).
We human beings love categories but categories of people are often traps. It's even more tempting when it's easy to identity to one of the depicted groups!
I wonder if this asker-guesser thing is in the same pseudoscience territory as the MBTI.
In the end, I suppose there's no good way around getting to know someone and paying attention for good interactions.
That's fine. I think we need to get away a little bit from the implication that any thought not connected to studies or statistics makes it borderline worthless. We need to lean a little bit more toward humanism ("we" as in ostensibly thoughtful people - the average person definitely needs to lean a little bit more toward studies/statistics).
Wrong social models can have bad human implications. It seems to me that being careful with these models and requiring rigor is the humanist thing to do.
Go ahead and present hypotheses, that can be very interesting, just don't present them as facts.
(Now maybe this asker-guesser thing is indeed studied, I don't know)
The article called it a provocative opinion described in a comment which became a meme.
At least the article is honest with its source.
Thanks for emphasizing this.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here by suggesting an elite class of people above the "average person" who do not require objective evidence. That's not really aligned with the core tenets of humanism.
But it also runs the risk of building palaces of elaborate BS with no relation to reality and pure garbage filler content, like article presenting three different non-evidence-based ideas of how a dichotomy itself not grounded in evidence supposedly plays out in reality, with no effort to do look at any evidence or do any analysis as to whether any of them or the underlying dichotomy is connected to reality.
Yes, it is not a black or white thing, more a spectrum. But for many people, including me, just naming the categories is very clarifying, even eye opening, akin to beginning to know an alien civilization. It allows you to consider a different point of view, a way of interacting, taking decisions and actions very different to what you are used to.
Damnit, that seemed interesting! Thanks for sharing though, I'll still read about this.
I don't pay for the Atlantic and thus am limited by paywall, but this ignores power dynamics.
Seriously though, it depends on the boss and the relationship you have with them. It can really fall into either camp and it might even be situational with the same person!
I would say that, generally, I would prefer to be direct in these relationships unless you both know each other really well. It does make things easier for all involved.
Those are the power dynamics the GP is referring to.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250831074424/https://www.theat...
IMO it is totally fair and fine to just respond to the part of the discussion that the publication decided to make publicly available.
This wastes the time of people who read the article.
No.
> it isn’t the reader’s fault that the publisher decided to only make a little bit of it accessible to us.
It is a commenter's fault if they comment on an article they did not read.
I also realized how frustrating, as a Guesser, I could be to Askers, and shifted more toward being clear about what I want or need.
"No" is always a perfectly fine and polite answer from my perspective
Usually it takes one or ideally several studies, with large groups of people, with a solid hypothesis and some strong, rigorous protocol.
Until then, it's not worthless, but it's at best an inspiration.
Social stuff is rarely that easy, seducing, cute, with two clear, beautiful categories of people.
I agree it's better to label behaviors or situations than people.
But I agree with you, it should switch to align from the perspective of the person wanting something.
I've encountered a few people that just won't stop asking for unreasonable things, and it destroys the relationship very quickly, because they just won't take no for an answer. I also have one child that I used to have to firmly say "stop asking for things" once it would get out of hand.
But those are extremes in ask vs guess.
dang•1h ago
Askers vs. Guessers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1956778 - Dec 2010 (1 comment)
Edit: plus this!
Ask vs. Guess Culture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176703 - Aug 2023 (479 comments)
pseudalopex•1h ago
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37176703
dang•1h ago