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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

One aspect of that which is interesting is that what the article calls "Guess culture" is fundamentally exclusionary. If you aren't initiated into how the signalling system works by an insider or in a position of sufficient stability to fail socially many times there isn't a good way to break in. That gives the culture a lot of interesting properties that promote its ability to identify and coordinate against out-groups (which to the people involved would manifest as a "these barbarians just don't know how to be polite and we can't work with them"). One of those adaptions that is a bit crazy in the micro (could just ask for what they want, geeze) but makes a lot of sense in the macro.

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It's a matter of different protocols, not exclusivity. An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients.

The way to deal with it is having some kind of handshake that indicates what protocol is being used.

> An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients.

The metaphor might be a bit strained, because a congestion protocol is fundamentally determining the system state by testing it with an optimistic request for what the client wants then responding based on the server answer or lack thereof. Which is to say, the typical asker strategy.

Having a protocol at all might be more of a guesser thing though - good luck getting to index.html by sending "Hey my server friend can I have a copy of index.html pls?" to port 80 in with netcat. Very clear request, unlikely to get much consideration by nginx even if it is willing to hand over the page.

Now, hear me out, what if we hooked an LLM up to some TCP sockets…

Only on HN do we explain social interactions using network protocol analogies, and not the other way around!

And, importantly, there isn't one single "guess culture"; there are a myriad of different micro-cultures with their own local signals and codes for subtly communicating the information that isn't spelled out in speech.

So even if you are a consummate Guesser, and have been one all your life, if you move across the country (or even just across town!) and find yourself in a group with a different set of Guessers, you may be nearly as badly off as if you were an Asker in that subculture.

Any type of culture is "fundamentally" exclusionary if you don't know how it works. Let me guess which culture you're from :)

As usual, if both sides exist, it's because they both provide benefits. The guessers' benefits are just not obvious at first glance.

Taleb has a nice bit on that, explaining that if something exists for long, it must have enduring beneficial properties, and if you think it's stupid, you are the one having a blind spot.

Dawkins led to the same conclusion: stuff that works stays and multiplies. You may not like it, but nature doesn't care what you think.

It's true for entities, systems, traits, concepts...

Everyone mocks Karens, until your flight is delayed and that insufferable lady tires up the staff so much that everyone gets compensation.

I dislike lying but it works, and our entire society is based on it (but we call it advertising).

Don't like mysandry? Don't understand why nature didn't select out ugly people? Think circumcision is dumb?

All those things give some advantages in some context, to such an extend it still prospers today.

In fact, several things can be true. Something can be alienating, and yet give enough benefits that it stays around.

A huge number of things are immoral, create suffering, confusion, destruction, even to the practitioner themselves, and yet are still here because they bring something to the table that is just sufficient to justify their existence.

See your friend making yet again a terrible love choice, getting pregnant, and stuck with a baby and no father? From a natural selection standpoint, it could very well be a super successful strategy for both parties. The universe doesn't optimize for our happiness or morality.

Enduring survival properties aren't the same as enduring beneficial properties. Feudalism and slavery stuck around for quite a long time and were mostly forced out against their will.

Slavery has existed for all human history and still exists today.

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