Crocker's rules
"Never is etiquette and 'good form' observed more carefully than by experienced travellers when they find themselves in a tight place."
-Sir Ernest Shackleton
I recently stumbled across Crocker's Rules. You can find many versions of them on the net: this particular rendition is from DoWire.org:
To declare oneself as operating by Crocker's Rules is to declare that one authorizes others to optimize their communications directed to oneself for information, not for preservation of feelings. Such rules assume that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective communication, if only to signal patience lacking or the limits or tolerances of the speaker - if you are angering someone, that is important knowledge.
By invoking these Rules, the recipient declares that s/he does not care about, and some hold that s/he gives up all right to complain about and must require others not to complain about, any level of emotional provocation, flames, abuse of any kind.
It's important to note that Crocker's Rules are non-reciprocal: declaring that you operate by Crocker's Rules means that other people are free to insult you, not that you are free to insult them.
My first reaction was "Cool! I believe in high-bandwidth communication! I believe in raw truth! I believe in taking responsibility for my own emotions! I'm a Crocker's Rules kinda guy." On further consideration, though, I've decided that I'm not. It seems to me that Crocker's Rules are based on two fundamental beliefs: the correct belief that it's desirable to optimize your communications with others for maximum efficiency of information transfer, and the incorrect belief that disregarding etiquette is an effective means to that end.
It's obviously the case that an important part of being a high-functioning human being is a determination to seek out the unvarnished truth, coupled with the ability to handle even unpleasant truths when you encounter them. Letting people know that you want and can handle the truth is a fine thing, although I tend to think that in the long run, actions speak louder than words in that regard.
My objection, though, is to the implicit claim that etiquette is immaterial to efficient information transfer. Obviously, etiquette can go too far. If you strongly disagree with something, pretending otherwise necessarily involves withholding relevant information from others. However, etiquette exists for a reason, and conveys real and relevant information.
An obvious example of this is the smiley symbol, whose original purpose was to flag text that was intended to be humorous or ironic, but which might be incorrectly interpreted as sarcastic or insulting. The smiley (used as intended) didn't exist merely to soothe the feelings of the weak and imperfect; rather it served to convey important information about the meaning of the text that it accompanied. Text with a smiley isn't merely more "polite" than text without: it conveys more information.
Similarly, etiquette (or, conversely, "emotional provocation, flames, abuse of any kind") is not information-neutral. Politeness conveys important information about the core text that it accompanies. A polite, carefully worded rebuttal signifies something different than the same core information presented as a flame. People who are consistently polite and coherent are, as a rule, considerably more productive to talk to than people who consistently flame. Disregarding that difference necessarily means discarding valuable information, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the stated goals of Crocker's Rules.
In any case, I think we've had about enough touchy-feely posts for a while. Next up: rotational invariance in vision recognition, or multi-core architectures, or something equally concrete.