I had generally loved polite and nice in the same category which is like you're not necessarily ready to lose social capital for your actions and I still think that like politeness would do that. Hi I'm Tavya. Hi I'm Kahran and this is Thinking on Thinking. So you were saying you had a story. I mean it's less of a story and more of a fun fact but so do you know that police, polite, policy, political, they all come from the same root word
and they come from polis like which means city like metropolis. Huh do you know about the civilizing process? No what's that? This thing so there yeah there's this thing called the civilizing process and it was this this notion that like as societies modernized and we started to behave in a more civilized way towards each other that there were certain things that started to come into effect so the part that I'm remembering and that I think stuck with me
the most strongly is that one of the things they found is that in certain areas there would be a regression so like in the American West when it was the gold vash and all these men went out and there was these really men like heavy towns like murder was very common like theft right like all of these things that were marks of a you know less civilized society increased in scope right and then what they found was that in the thing that brought the civilizing process or in their case
in that was the women and religion and when women and religion came that then you know the again uh little murders would come down larceny would come down etc um so it's just interesting to me how those words are all connected right because in a lot of ways those are the words of yes in polite society you know we are we do police ourselves of course we also have police and you know those are all the things that lead to society right to yeah I feel like this is a great leading
because we were trying to think we were thinking about talking about right like like this notions of like niceness and kindness versus politeness or really kind of all three of those together I kind of had when I'd written it down I'd been saying that that breaking up is the is the kind thing to is the nice thing to do and then you were correcting me and being like no no breaking up is not the nice thing to do sometimes it's the kind thing to do it kind of just gave me pause
because I was like yeah I mean yes all right well but I think to associate like what is whether the right thing is the kind thing in your mind or the right thing is the nice thing in your mind I think the right thing is the kind thing in my mind yes the connection between kindness or I don't know if it is right or wrong because like those in many of these cases would be in the gray zone but I would say that like kindness is more long term it's probably gonna be more beneficial
for all parties involved like so for example and this is a very touchy topic but when people opt for euthanasia or when people opt for like putting their pets down when they are in end of life stages they're doing it out of kindness it definitely does not make them feel like a good person like niceness makes them make someone feel like a good person kindness can often feel like you're not the best you're not the nicest person around but it's kind because in the long run it's avoiding
pain for the other person that's really interesting I wonder if there's a distinction there between sometimes the kind thing to do it's the thing that is taking a cost out of the system or it's like taking like the payment that has to be paid what I was thinking about was and I'm not sure I think because you were talking about euthanasia that yeah there's notions of if you are in a farm setting or whatever that an injured animal that you would I don't know I would think I was
watching some stuff about the American Lester's and I guess we were just talking about it that you would like kill an animal rather than like leave it to starve right if it injured itself in a way that couldn't be saved I don't know like that note like the term was doing a kindness right yeah and I guess it is because like there it is kind of like I mean I don't know it depends on whether you feel like killing something is a burden I guess I think we talked about in previous
episode that maybe most but for most people right like yeah like I think we were talking about the context of firing actually but yeah for most people like firing no matter whether it's you're doing the right thing or not it's still a burden right it's still you like I think I shared a memory I still carry of like the first time I fired someone right and so I don't know yeah it's interesting but but yeah sometimes you need do need to be able to help people to be able to let go or
move on and I guess that kind of is a kindness of course when it's like you know euthanasia that's a very final way of moving on but um but I was just thinking about like it's very at least in my life it has been always fairly gray when I'm I've tried to be kind whether it is to myself or to another person so for example a lot of times you'll hear things like oh be kind to yourself and that generally comes in picture when you are doing something like oh
I messed up somewhere in life or I made a big mistake and be kind to yourself don't beat yourself up right like I don't know how that is related but as you were speaking about it I was just thinking like sometimes it's taking an emotional cost like to a part of yourself or on a person that would just if I believe you okay it's saying I don't want to take this cost and you still do an act of generosity and take up that cost that feels a little bit like kindness like the example that
you were giving of people putting you know animals who are basically fatally injured out of their misery it's like I don't need to have some animals blood on my hands but if I could relieve them of their misery then maybe that is worth it yeah I mean you know it becomes more dicey like so all of my family before my dad was in the Indian army and one of my uncles is visiting us right now and like he's told us stories about you know like like fighting in the war and in the 1971 war
which India had with Pakistan and yeah I don't know it's just interesting right because I do think it's like it does I've never like killed anything other than a fish or I guess many fish over the years but one really big fish that I remember I had to like hit with a bat which is kind of a crazy thing to imagine I'll come back to my my story about the fish because it's crazy but my dad and I were fishing together on like a small boat maybe like a 15 foot boat a
zodiac I think as they're called maybe like 10 feet and we brought on a fish that is was probably maybe four feet right so it's like a big fish and the thing is is with a fish that big you actually and you keep a metal baseball bat on the boat because you have to hit it on the head because if it's like right it can just knock stuff off it could knock one of you off if you're you know kind of catches you with a wave so yeah so that was I mean there's I think there was two
fish but one of them I think maybe the first one that I really hit like because it is kind of a thing like you hit it like blood comes out of its mouth right like and you kind of yeah so you know as I think doing that for for more and more kind of like like just like life forms that you know I think that like the more humanoid they are right the more we connect with them or more they have a face I think I read there's some interesting research there right yeah so I think going up
towards like actual humans that that you might be doing that with is just yeah you know I think kindness is it's an interesting word for it um haunting words in some ways yeah I also think that like a lot of times people switch to politeness and niceness to in some weird ways like save face it's a little bit like when somebody says oh how's your day which is a much more gentle example than you know killing someone which is what we have been talking about but yeah
you think about someone saying oh how's your day and you reply oh my day was great how was your day and internally 50% of the days if someone is asking you that question you did not feel like your day was great you had probably a mediocre day or you had probably a shitty day right like it's not in the oh it was all right or I'm doing well like those are not the right answers but those are the polite answers in most cases because if you ask someone how was your day and someone says oh I
just found out that my pet is really sick and I might be fired from my job and you you would be like hey man I'm just sitting behind you in the big restaurant I'm just like the idea is a gross realign I don't want to know this please don't tell me this would you say that it's not a nice thing to do I don't honestly don't know how to have the distinction between niceness and politeness I do know that like in my own life I've had to unlearn niceness and politeness to learn to be kind
I don't know I think when when we originally or at least how I remembered at them us talking about this previously it was more of like a dichotomy between nice and kind and I feel like politeness is a like you can be polite while being kind like politeness feels to me like a how you do something and not so much a what you're doing say more so well I was just thinking that like there's a like like to unfortunately now are like killing examples are really stuck in my head
or but maybe okay well I'll do I'll do a quick animal one and then come back to what you were saying about a nice day so I think great like let's say that that you know something did happen to like maybe a horse and you're on a long journey and like it would be the polite thing to do would be like like just do it respectfully right so I don't know what that would mean in that context but maybe it would mean like if the horse was close to someone giving that person a time to like
be with their animal before they came time for them to pass and right like there's ways you can do things or to like give your example to of your your kind of example of like you know in a in a casual setting if someone's kind of asking how you are I think unloading all of your burdens is not a very nice thing to do right but again you can do it in a polite way ask for even if you're not willing to ask for permission you can kind of like
like give foreshadowing right like you can be like oh I really have had something need to rant for a second or something right like you can give them a moment like you can basically give the person maybe a moment to escape and then I think if I was to say how could you do it in a kind way that was polite for that kind of scenario I think a kind thing to do would be to uh like maybe it's not really you don't need to be talking right right like there's not really you don't have to feel
like you make conversation just because like it depends on what the circumstance would be right but maybe like maybe I dropped an orange and you're handing me my orange and you hand me the orange it's like okay that's it you know like you know we don't have to create an interaction out of every interaction and so maybe if that was like the message you felt like communicating you can again do it in a polite way in a less polite way right I was just in New York City where people
do that in a less polite way all the time like there was a street that was closed 58th Street and we were supposed to be going to a restaurant on the street right literally like maybe not even 50 meters away but apparently it was climate week in New York and so these like dignitaries were arriving they were going to something else further down the street and people were just there was a large crowd of people and there's barricades on the sidewalk and barricades in the
street and I like kind of thought like I was like well if just knew we were going to this restaurant like everybody so I like went to go talk to the police over the front the guy one of these guys I kind of said excuse me too was like you know just like kind of like it's like what the hell do you think man like like we're just standing here like fucking fools like they're not like this look at this guy like this guy's like apartment is close right there right like they're not letting him
through and it the thing is is like until everyone had arrived so eventually I did go talk to a different police officer he was like yeah we got told to close the street it was 40 minutes ago we're hoping it's 20 more minutes but who knows and it's like it's really interesting to see because like some people in their motorcades we were speculating who like they'll have like six cars up to like black cars like two police cars and then an ambulance it's like who gets to travel
with an ambulance so we observed this for a few minutes and then Gaurav and I were like listen it's time we just go somewhere else for a minute and that man was not he was a little bit impolite but he was not unkind you could just cut to the heart of matter and then when he realized that I wasn't being a dick about it he explained more like yeah he became a little bit more polite anyway it's the long way of saying that I feel like politeness is an orthogonal axis
interesting like I had not thought of like polite versus rude I had generally clubbed polite and nice in the same category which is like you're not necessarily ready to lose social capital for your actions and I still think that like politeness would do that like politeness helps you build a social capital niceness helps you build social capital kindness doesn't always help you build social capital but yeah in the way that you are describing it there
would be a rude and a not rude way of doing everything well I don't think it's at odds actually right I think it's just how there's certain things that we're supposed to talk about right and I think those are the nice things to talk about right so right so but I think you're right because they're they're engaging in the in the game society plays there are ways of building social capital just one of them is a way of building social capital and the what and the other one is a way of building
social capital and the how huh so I have been reading Ray Dario's book principles yes I remember and he talks a lot about basically being fully honest with the other party so like if something is going wrong you're not supposed to hide it at all oh something went wrong you bring it to the table and then the rest of the team tries to also figure out how can we do this right so like mistakes are not punished but hiding information is punished I yeah I think I actually read this
part I got the app on your recommendation it's entertaining because it gives you a nice little like whatever you feel like you're gonna take bite sized amounts and wait so how do you feel you feel like so in that case the polite go on so I would say that like at least for me it feels like on the kindness side of things where this is for anywhere everyone on the team's long term benefit and it's for the culture's long term benefit but it might not seem like the nice or
the polite thing to do like often it would raise people's defense mechanisms I would say when you somebody is coming and telling you oh this thing isn't wrong but then I also think that I mean this slightly orthogonal from like just this topic but it's more sort of larger scale where I feel like we have a temptation to look at things and interpret them in a certain way and we forget that like our interpretation is based on our context and our ideas and like how we have lived
through world um so for example very recently I was talking to my sister and I just asked her this question like would you think I'm like a little bit too much in terms of emotionality and she was like because I've always had that thought not so much anymore but like that lingering sense of that's how I see myself is still there and then she just looked at me she was like you know I don't process people that way wherever they are emotionally is how they are I don't conceptualize them as too
much or too little I don't think like that like she said I'm paraphrasing her which she basically said something along those lines and what was interesting to me was she has a completely different model of processing this information than I do like it's me who is thinking is this too much or too little and I'm not saying there aren't going to be other people in the world who process it as too much or too little but like there are also going to be a lot of people like her
who are going to be I don't think like that who you are is a circumstance and not a problem right so I also feel like when I think about like Ray Dalio and how he sort of helps his team build things it's almost like that looking at people's actions in a different light oh someone is telling you your fault not because that's a bad thing or like you know because they want to put you down but it's because they want to improve together with you I feel like niceness is something
which like socially we all agreed upon okay this is the quote-unquote nice thing to do but like there could be other ways of arriving at similar outcomes or arriving at harmony in the system let me put it more that way well I think it's not nice to tell someone something they can't change and then I think it kind of depends on how big you draw the box of like what is possible to change I mean okay you see someone and you tell them you should lose some weight they can change it
it'll probably be good for them also is it nice is it kind is it polite I don't think it's any of those things probably not I mean again you know with the data we have yes it seems like it is not a first day okay so like like if a baby has food on itself right it's not it's considered nice to like help you know clean it or like you know help like make someone aware that it has food on it right now if someone who is like older especially like you know someone who's like
kind of a senior person has like some food on themselves like it would be it would be less polite or less nice also to like draw attention to it right like you would like either maybe discreetly do it or just like kind of let it be ignored right they have like a stain it's fine so now I think what what happens is that we draw a box differently right so like with a child it's like oh they can change their clothes like like in you know there's extra clothes available to it so
so the potential actions are are very accessible right there's like you're drawing attention to something that could be rectified so it's not like an unkind it's I'm using the words too too loosely there for considering having a conversation about them so it's not it's not a nice thing to do it's not mean yeah it doesn't make you feel like a bad person yes right whereas I think right again because of like culturally thing it's just just to do that to an older person is not as nice
because they don't have that like there's the way we would at least just at first glance think about the set of actions available to them it's like well are they gonna have extra clothes in their hand bag probably not like if there's someone to help them change immediately probably not um so I think that's what I was saying where I think whether it's nice or not depends on how we have and like perceived that the the potential set of possible actions available in the situation and
therefore whether we're prescribing something that is like possible or not possible I don't hmm I'm not we're trying to chase some Chris meeting I'm gonna be able to put some clear definition at the time we're done today so like of course there are maybe like other variables as well um maybe there are other words that we could be using I am not particularly sure but uh this is a side story but in college like amongst a group of friends we had these like two friends and recently not
these two guys but like another friend from the group was talking about how one of the guys you always knew where you stood with him he wasn't a particularly nice person but like you know he would be rude he would be sometimes mean but you always knew that where you stood with him if he liked you you will know it if he didn't like you you will know it and there was this other person who always felt so inauthentic in some ways like he was very very nice like it was extremely nice but you
could just never tell what he is actually thinking or feeling and I'm not saying that you have to be always wearing your heart on the sleeve or never wear it outside but at the same time I feel like there is something like especially as I've grown older there is something that I've been appreciating more about people showing authenticity and kindness rather than just being nice to not hurt my feelings or whatever that's interesting because I feel like that starts to go into what I think we talked about
really early on right but like like when someone feels like an S versus the them and then like also where like where signaling huh it was I think our first episode where signaling can start to make you feel like like if it feels like they're part of too many groups or like they're like right then it starts to feel like kind of shifty I don't know when you were talking about your second friend there I kind of was feel like wondering if that was some of the the feeling
yeah right but then I don't know if that's I feel like that maybe is a different axis right like that's I mean a lot of times we take niceness as a proxy for how people should feel about me oh that's interesting what do you say more for example this is also true for both of us we know what is the right thing to say in a situation what is going to lead to like you know a favorable reaction from the other side or even how to mold the words that we are trying to say
in a way that would lead a favorable reaction I'm not saying we are the best in the world at it but we are like on the right side of the mean in this situation right um like both of us have due to whatever um confluence of our life effects have been like when you are part of multiple minorities you learn to navigate life through a lot of niceness um yeah and so I would say niceness is also adapted that way but I also think that it prevents you
from like being able to authentically like see yourself or see the other person you want to have a constructed image and you want to maintain that constructed image in front of other people and that's why you're being nice like you as a generic you here not always not fully but there is always that underlying current of it I think sometimes the nice thing to do is the less scary thing to do right I think I mentioned this in one of a document that I was working on a few
weeks ago and you wrote a comment where you were like what is like I think I can't remember what I said maybe pack uh follow the pack or something right and I think like I think that's it's the same kind of thing right where when you know that culturally this is what people do which is what the nice thing to do is then it doesn't take as much you don't need as much like um to be able to to get yourself to do it very true okay no do you know the book less no oh I so I just finished
reading it um well okay the example I was going to give you and maybe I shouldn't ruin for our podcast listeners as well is uh well I guess I can tell it in a way that's a pretty small scene but the title character Arthur less uh has been stuck somewhere and um and it is an old Japanese establishment and the door is 400 years old and will not open however the the walls are made out of paper and they're a painted paper and the people are telling him just punch your way
through the wall um and you will be able to bake a hole and this paper is very easy to replace like you shouldn't don't feel bad about it and um it's just really interesting because he's like he's really goes into uh emotional trauma because he's just like I you know I can't destroy this thing like like it's really really beautiful and you don't have to like you don't smash it with his face um and I was just thinking about how like you kind of understand because of everything that's
happened why he's in that point and why it's so hard for him to destroy it but I think it's kind of related to what we're saying right like like to do sometimes the right like the kind thing to do in that situation is that right he has all these people on the other side who are worried they're trying to like is he gonna be able to get out like he's supposed to be having this intimate dinner they can't even serve the next course um and uh but right to do the not nice thing to like to
do the the yeah it just like it takes something from you you know you have to have the little bit more strength of will in that moment to like muster to do do you like my example no that is actually a very good example that's also like a very good articulation of like it requires more hutzpah and it requires more emotional labor like one of those two things is gonna be required you basically almost need to give away a part of what you have thought of
yourself as right like I'm not the kind of person who says these kind of things to people because I don't want to be seen as x y z yeah it's actually niceness is sometimes an excuse right you're like saying oh I don't want to do it because it's not nice but it's actually like it's because I don't have the energy hmm or you don't want to take out the cost that it would require because for example like you don't want to spend the energy maybe yeah for example the initial example
that we started from um which is like breaking up is a kind thing to do but not a nice thing to do not only is it not nice to the other person you will also suffer a lot of consequences you might lose a part of your social network you might lose like you will have to tell everyone about it everyone is gonna have some thoughts they will all alter their image of you and sometimes in favorable ways and sometimes in unfavorable ways but almost always in uncontrollable ways
I was in a relationship for a long time and then we when we broke up um my my ex ended up like leaving me for someone else and then it took me a long time to realize that most of our mutual friends just don't know that part of the story and they're like but then I'm like guys actually not put it together that he was like dating someone within a few months but like obviously because I moved to India right away and so a lot of people were in the US and it's just like
yeah you know like like obviously that that was not the part of the story that and people don't want to be like rude about oh and I think that like you were saying they don't want to like take on that emotional burden um of kind of investigating further so they're kind of people just made their own assumptions yeah have you had like have you ever been in a professional context on crossroads of niceness and kindness where you had to choose one or the other?
Yeah for me in a professional context actually it's not as difficult I'm not sure why but I I think that's why I had that distinction about politeness so readily available to hand because I think I find that like it's there's a lot of times that you can I guess I think like two examples kind of come to mind I don't think we've like discussed in detail on the podcast before but I did choose to to shut down for the next time that we still had about you know I think
six and a half months of runway and I kind of took that choice because I looked at just at the at the culture of the company that we had built at the I mean obviously there's also issues around the straight sort of like customer customer acquisition and the amount of actual revenue we were getting per customer but I think those a lot of times those can be surmountable but but I think what we had built was unfortunately something which was it was a
weird ethos the company was about 14 15 years old and every year it had been able to get money from the same investors to kind of stay in business but it wasn't able to generate revenue and what had done every year was pivoted not every year maybe some cases every two to three years and at that moment what I when I announced the company shutting down I called in all hands and I had previously formed a team that was going to be running the the application that we had built
that we were going to be spinning out into being its own company and so as a part where I was announcing that the company was being shutting down was going to shut down I also was announcing that this was that this team was spinning out and that they would be in a company but they had already been functioning as a team for for some time and I think in a lot of ways it was like it was a it was a kindness I think too because there are people who were stuck there and kind of had
been there right and that some of them have been there since the beginning and you know I think it's hard for some people to I don't know you know you've put a lot of to have to acknowledge this on cost fallacy basically right and I think in doing that I feel like a lot of people are at better outcomes than they would be if we were you know still kind of like fighting along because I don't think the data would support that that we I don't know you know it's hard to predict what
could have happened the other example I was thinking about though it's kind of an interesting one I had hired someone to be my chief operating officer and also to be my head of pedagogy and I ended up letting him go in a moment when I realized that I had like had lost trust in the way that he was operating and I think that was an interesting thing because I think I think actually it was the nice thing to do and it wasn't the kind thing to do right I think
the the it was the nice thing to do because it was what was like culturally kind of expected right like in a corporate environment right when people see that you have lost trust you know the rest of the leadership team is kind of right it's the it's but I think that in some ways the kind thing to do would have been to have pushed on it harder a lot harder right which would have been like to really push on like you know where was it where were our expectations what are the outcomes
that we have achieved where why are we in this place right and I don't know I mean I think in that case it's interesting because one of those events actually like those events are about six months apart so I ended up letting my COO go and then about six months later it was when I initiated the process that would shut down the company and about six months after that we ended up shutting down and I think I was a lot more exhausted at the time that I let my COO go right like I just I
had a lot less ability to push on things outside of where I could kind of push right there was a certain set of things I was being able to like kind of put energy into and I had for those and there were some other things that I needed to kind of push on but outside of those I just like there wasn't that much space whereas later it's about six months later I had a lot more space I think part of it was that that just I was able to kind of like consolidate and just reduce how much like
chaos was going on once I had a little bit more of control over the situation and then was able to have more space to be like oh you know now I can make decisions in a less reactive way and at least for me I feel like a lot of the times I'm making decisions that are you know the status quo or you know not or what we might be you know you're saying nice in this conversation are coming from a more reactive place they're coming from the time periods where I haven't had the mental space to be able to
sit down and unpack and say what is what is driving me to feel this way what is driving me to want to do this yeah no I hear you it's it's very interesting because like in many cases one would think that firing someone cannot be like it's all the same so there was this one team that I had sporadically worked with over a long duration in bits and pieces and I had always taken their behavior as being very kind and it took me a long time to sort of realize that they were just being nice
because they didn't want to face the difficult conversations like when they decided to sort of say that oh we won't work together anymore instead of saying that we won't work together anymore they were like oh right now we don't want to work together but in a couple of months we're definitely gonna come back and then we would talk and we were really friendly friends with each other like however one wants to call it we would talk about it and the reaction would be like oh my god
I'm so sorry things have been so busy but I definitely definitely want to do something together and then they just wouldn't they would say that oh I'm gonna come to this meeting but then they would flake or stuff like that and it's very it's slowly sort of was heartbreaking in some ways because it was like oh we have had a years-long relationship you could like you could just do me the kindness of saying bye yeah we can't work together anymore and I think that like
there is another team that I was consulting with till last year end and after I told them that I don't think that I want to like you know I don't think that I want to do this anymore guys but like I was feeling particularly burnt out and they were like oh okay so why don't you take some time and like as we are growing the team why don't you like you know maybe consult with us on the product on the design and it was really so lovely that even after these guys decided to pivot
we still are in touch like I concentrated with them for like you know three four months and then we are still in touch we still talk to each other and there's just this like because they never after they said oh we don't have money anymore to pay you for consulting services I don't think we can continue on from the next month it just feels like so clean and almost like because they owned up to it it just felt so kind yeah I mean I wonder if a lot of times the kind thing to do
is the honest thing yeah and I wonder if because it's the honest thing sometimes it's also about acknowledging our own faults and maybe we are being nice just so that we can also protect our own image in our home I do like this I don't know if you if you know you had to like an hour or whatever to think about it but um if you like if you also kind of like this notion of that like like the what right so like what you do is can be like nice or kind but how you do it is polite or
or I don't know I feel like rude is too strong um it's I mean impolite is a word but I feel like impolite does not communicate the emotion very properly it's like it's like are you going to take that put the extra energy in to meet the person emotionally where they are you know so maybe a better word could be considerate or inconsiderate so like you could be kind and considerate and you could be sometimes nice and inconsiderate I don't have to punch someone down
just because I'm saying something negative to them interesting in that book actually there's another example of that the title character again is a is a writer and he's you know dated another a very famous poet and so he is like in these circles of and so he's talking to this other writer and the gentleman's like you know why you never win any rewards he's like it's because you're a bad gay and then the title character is like very taken aback by the asset right and it's
interesting because it's like it's he's kind of being nice right because like he and Arthur Les even like his is because you are privy to his mental dialogue he he's like he feels compelled to say thank you for it for being told that he's a bad gay because of the way it's like told him but it's not very considerate right like it's it's it's kind of like it's a nice right because he's like oh you know this is why you don't win a reward shows yeah yeah and that does the same
like kindness even though it could like sort of almost mask is that yeah it's a good book you should check it out okay I'll check it out but I feel like a lot of these notions of like interplay between kindness honesty authenticity niceness politeness considerateness are I think that a lot of conversations that we have been having have been about how we navigate world and the conceptual models that are inside us and this feels like exploring a new dimension that we haven't explored before
hey it's really interesting like and related to the to the one you mentioned a few weeks ago and we should come back to but but like how our ability to have words to describe things shapes are way to think about them so maybe in our next episode we can talk about that yes awesome I'll see you next time bye bye bye thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on thinking our theme music is by Steve Gomes and you can find a link to it in the show notes