Giving unsolicited advice and criticism is a very good credible signal of respect

If I tell you I think you're doing something bad it means I respect you more than most people

Crosspost from LW shortform…

I have often heard it claimed that giving advice is a bad idea because most people don't take it well and won't actually learn from it.

Giving unsolicited advice/criticism risks:

• The recipient liking you less

• The recipient thinking you are stupid because "obviously they have heard this advice before"

• The recipient thinking you are stupid because they disagree with the advice

• The recipient being needlessly offended without any benefit

People benefit from others liking them and not thinking they are stupid, so these are real costs. Some people also don't like offending others.

So clearly it's only worth giving someone advice or criticism if you think at least some of the following are true:

• Their wellbeing/impact/improvement is important enough that the small chance your advice has a positive impact is worth the cost

• They are rational enough to not take offense in a way that would damage your relationship

• They are particularly good at using advice/criticism, i.e. they are more likely to update than the average person

• They value honest opinions and feedback even when they disagree, i.e. they prefer to know what others think about them because it's interesting and potentially useful information even if not immediately actionable

The above points all reflect a superior attitude compared to the average person. And so, if you choose to give someone advice or criticism despite all the associated risks, you are credibly signaling that you think they have these positive traits.

Not giving unsolicited advice and criticism is selfish

The "giving advice is bad" meme is just a version of "being sycophantic is good"—you personally benefit when others like you and so often it's useful to suck up to people.

Even the risk that your interlocutor is offended is not a real risk to their wellbeing—people dislike offending others because it feels uncomfortable to them. Being offended is not actually meaningfully harmful to the offended party.

Good counterpoints from people on the Internet

There’s tension between signaling that you think someone has a good mindset (a form of intellectual respect) and signaling that you are scared of someone’s power over you or that you care a lot about their opinion of you.

In my opinion, this misses the crucial dynamic that the costs of giving advice significantly go up if you care about what the other person thinks of you, which is correlated with respect, status and power. I personally think that giving advice is good, that if given tactfully many people take it well, and also often enjoy giving it, so will generally try to do this wherever possible unless there's a clear reason not to, especially in the context of EG interpretability research. But I'm much more cautious if I'm talking to someone who seems important, consider themselves high status, has power over me, etc. I think this is a large part of why people can feel offended by receiving advice. There can be some implicit sense of "you are too stupid to have thought of this", especially if the advice is bad or obvious.

—Neel Nanda, on LessWrong

It might be annoying.

I do think it can be annoying for the hearer, as opposed to offensive.

—Guive Assadi, on X.com

What does being a good signal of respect mean?

Generally a “good signal” is one that others will reliably interpret correctly. Clearly this is not true here. If you go around criticizing people, most of them will not infer that you respect them. This is partly because we’re in an unfortunate equilibrium—society has decided that unsolicited advice is rude, and so by giving it, you can’t help but also demonstrate that you don’t care about being rude to your interlocutor. Given the current high bar for advice-giving, it’s also reasonable for your interlocutor to assume you think it’s very unlikely they already know what you’re telling them, meaning you think they are ignorant. This is very unfortunate—in a better society we would freely share information without being scared that repeating information someone already knows has so many implications. After all, they can just interrupt you by saying “I already know this”.

Personally, I think intellectual respect trumps other forms of respect. In other words, if I respect you intellectually but am not scared of your power/what you think of me, you have more virtue than the alternative person whom I am scared of in this way. If you join the “unsolicited advice and criticism club” you’re also signaling that you deal mostly in intellectual respect and not this other, more brutish, form of respect. Sadly, too many people like having their status reinforced by sycophants to make this a club with universal membership. But worry not—you can build it among your friends and family. Your key takeaway from this post should be: have your friends and family join the club, throw away rotten societal norms, and criticize them freely because they are worth it.