this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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Technology
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Why do you conflate politeness and trustworthiness? Seems like a weird connection to make.
Is it really that weird? Imagine someone going to a store and the owner starts swearing at them because they asked a question. Would said visitor be more or less likely to trust the owner? I agree that being impolite doesn't necessarily equate to being ignorant in one's subject, but I wouldn't be surprised that on average the most knowledgeable and wise tend to be more polite.
Because the inverse of that is how people get conned. Someone blowing absolute smoke with a confident tone and a sweet word. Tone is about the worst indicator of trustworthiness
Sure, skilled sociopaths con their way up that way, or that's how soulless marketers manipulate the populace. However, that does not mean that most people who are kind are sociopaths or soulless. On average kind people are just being kind.
And that is great, it is good to be optimistic. My point is being kind has nothing to do with trustworthiness. Hell, someone that is kind can also just be plain wrong. They might think they know something when they do not. The kindness just does not factor in to knowledge. Plenty of experts are not what people would describe as kind, and plenty of misinformation peddlers are kind. It just has nothing to do with expertise
It seems like trusting the nicest voice in the room on a topic like security, rather than experts, could be a mistake
Right? What a strange and dangerous metric