The Compliment Sandwich 🥪 aka: How to criticize a normie without making them upset.
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The problem with that technique is that it comes off as unbearably patronizing to a pretty large fraction of the people who actually notice that you're doing it. It's a thing that every first-line corporate manager learns, and it gets really obnoxious after a while. So you have to judge your audience well.
I think you're in peril of misjudging the audience if you routinely divide the world into "normies" and "rationalists".
Once I had several positive things to say to a very good CEO. When I was done, he just waited. He was so used to receiving compliment sandwiches that he just assumed my compliment would be followed by a criticism.
1Now we need to develop an opposite art, how to say positive things about people who are too used to the sandwich method. My proposal:
- say shortly something unimportant but positive (they are not listening carefully anyway, just waiting for the other shoe to drop)
- say something unimportant but negative
- proceed to the compliment you wanted to give
You can just say the actual criticism in a constructive way. Or if you don't know how to, just ask - "hey I have some feedback to give that I think would help, but I don't know how to say it without it potentially sounding bad - can I tell you and you know I don't dislike you and I don't mean to be disrespectful?" and respect it if they say no, they're not interested.
I think the complement sandwich can be useful as a stepping stone to good communication. That said, I think of it as a narrow formulation of a more general (and less precisely defined) approach to conversation that I might point to with phrases like "work with people where they are at" and "be aware of the emotions that your words induce in other people". There was an article on LessWrong that I can't find, arguing that clear communication is worded to pre-emptively avoid likely misunderstandings and misconceptions. The idea I'm pointing to is like that, but concerning the emotional interpretation of your words rather than the literal meaning. I think this can apply just as much to the rationalist community as to any other community (although I haven't had any conversations with rationalists so I don't know for sure).
Like literary and conversational techniques in general, if they are followed as a hard rule then they risk coming across as formulaic and hence inauthentic. However I can imagine that it might be useful to adopt the complement sandwich as a rule until you gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanics.
Does this still work? I've often heard it referred to as the "shit sandwich method" (by STEMish non-rationalists), so I wonder if people are sufficiently inoculated to it for it to no longer work
regardless of if it works, I think it's disrespectful for being manipulative at worst and wasting the persons time at best.
- Some people in the comments don't like this idea, but I think it's reasonable. Lots of people believe that they can easily take criticism with no need for politeness, but the truth is it affects them and they still feel a little bit sour inside. We're all human.
I do think the tone of you post could be a little better. These somewhat dishonest politenesses are at best a necessary evil, not a clever formula to be proud of! If you do them, you should be very meek and humble about it, and definitely not feeling like you're smarter (or superior). jbash is right that it can seem unbearably patronizing.
The Final Thoughts make it sound like this is a technique which smart people should use on those lower than them, and somehow gives me a "playing with people is fun" vibe. This may irritate people who already dislike corporate speak.
- Then again, one good thing about this idea is that it reminds you to talk about and think about good things (regarding a person and their efforts). Sometimes it's all too easy to take for granted the good intentions of people, when you're preoccupied by the disagreements. You've got my upvote.
When I was in high school I was drum major of the marching band, they sent us to a week long "leadership camp" training, and this was how they recommended giving criticism. Praise-correction-praise. It can be done well, but is much more often done poorly. Basically, it's level-1 advice that needs to be executed very well or used on an audience that isn't really free to complain much about it, and by the time you are able to do so skill-wise, there are better methods available.
I'd say it's level-1 advice that is better than the level-0 move of just criticizing and never praising, which is indeed a failure case people can fall into. When people notice you're doing it or if you execute it poorly it can come off badly, though I think still better than the level-0 failure it's meant to fix.
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