✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Tact Filters

mit.edu · 563 words · saved by 1 readers

I came up with this idea several years ago in a conversation with a friend at MIT, who was regularly finding herself upset by other people who worked in her lab. The analogy worked so well in helping her to understand her co-workers that I decided to write it up and put it on the web. I've gotten quite a few email messages since then from other people who have also found it helpful. All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!" "Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them

Tact Filters Tact Filters I came up with this idea several years ago in a conversation with a friend at MIT, who was regularly finding herself upset by other people who worked in her lab. The analogy worked so well in helping her to understand her co-workers that I decided to write it up and put it on the web. I've gotten quite a few email messages since then from other people who have also found it helpful. All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoin

Explore this link on the map →

related reading