I noticed feeling a little unsatisfied and worried about this advice. I think it pattern matches with people who are savvy with status games or subtle bullying that allows for plausible deniability ("I'm just trying to help! You're being too sensitive."). I think people's heuristic of perceiving criticisms as threatening seems somewhat justified most of the time.

To be clear, I tentatively define respect as the act of (a) evaluating a person as having an amount of value and welfare that is just as important as yours, (b) believing that this person's value and welfare is worth caring about, and (c) treating them as such. You don't have to admire or like a person to respect them. Here are some actions that connote disrespect (or indignity): torture, murder, confinement, physical abuse, verbal abuse, causing a person's social standing to drop unnecessarily, etc. Having said that, I'm still not satisfied with this definition, but it's the best I can come up so far. 

Maybe you've thought about this already or I've missed some implicit assumptions, but let me try to explain by first using Buck's experience as an example:

A lot of the helpful criticism I’ve gotten over the last few years was from people who were being kind of unreasonable and unfair.

One simple example of this is that one time someone (who I’d engaged with for many hours) told me he didn’t take my ideas seriously because I had blue hair. On the one hand, fuck that guy; on the other hand, it’s pretty helpful that he told me that, and I'm grateful to him for telling me.

I interpret this as Buck (a) being appreciative of a criticism that seems unreasonable and unfair, yet (b) his need for respect wasn't fulfilled--I would probably say "fuck that guy" too if they thought my opinions don't matter in any situation due to the color of my hair. 

I could imagine Buck's interlocutor passing your above conditions:

1. They might believe that Buck can be more impactful when other people see him with normal looking hair colour and takes him more seriously.
2. They might believe Buck is rational enough (but it turns out Buck was offended anyway).
3. They might believe Buck is good at using advice/criticism.
4. They might believe Buck values opinions and feedback even when they disagree (this is true).

I could also imagine Buck's interlocutor doing a cost-benefit analysis and believing the associated costs you mentioned above are worth it. And yet, Buck was still at least a bit offended, and I think it would be reasonable to believe that this person's criticism was actually not a good credible signal of respect. 

One may argue that Buck isn't being rational. If he did, he wouldn't be offended. "Huh, this guy believed that the benefits of giving that criticism outweighs the cost of me liking them less, thinking that they are stupid, and me being offended outweigh. Seems like a credible signal of respect." 

I mean Buck was appreciative of that advice, but an advice being valuable is not necessarily a credible signal of respect. I could imagine an boss giving valuable advice that still checks all your conditions, but does it in a abusive manner. 

My tentative version of what an unsolicited advice that's also a good credible signal of respect would have more of the following conditions met:

1. The interlocutor actually communicating their criticism in a respectful way (as I've defined above). This seems like a necessary condition to pass.
2. The interlocutor made at least some effort to craft a good criticism/advice. One way this could work is for the interlocutor to ask questions and learn more about their advisee, which is probably a standard in many problem solving frameworks used by management consultants. But a mistake can sometimes be straightforwardly obvious that a low effort criticism works, so this condition is not sufficient on its own.
3. The interlocutor noticing that their advice could be wrong and very costly to heed. Again, not sufficient on its own.
4. The interlocutor showing care and authenticity, and showing that their advice isn't some status-seeking one-upmanship, or a way to "create common knowledge of their status difference" (as a friend pointed out to me as another possibility).
5. And probably something else written here.

I might be misunderstanding you though, so happy to update!

And thanks for writing this! I do think you are on to something--I do want to get better at feedback giving and receiving, and if done well and at a higher frequency (this might be what you're pointing to), could make me more impactful.

Nice, thanks for pointing out this potential way out!

I find the image, of this character watching their customer suffer through their mapo tofu and finding a lot of joy from it, extremely hilarious.  

EDIT: typo and making my sentence clearer

Thanks for the response! Coincidentally, I did reach out to a nearby NVC community after receiving the same suggestion from a coach. Let's see how it goes. :)

because I find it that during a conflict, I need empathy so my capacity for empathy towards others is limited, so the first step is to give yourself empathy.

Yeah this is still very tough for me too. I remembered ruminating quite a lot when my need for respect wasn't fulfilled in some online forums. After writing this down, I immediately went to reread some parts of the book. I don't think I've internalised this yet, but small steps... :)

Hi Velizar, I've just finished reading the book, but I'm hoping to do more practice. However, the workshops on cnvc.org are pretty pricey and the timings aren't great for my time zone. Do you have any suggestions? I might miss other practice opportunities.

Hey David, thanks for the feedback! 

1. I did look at Openphil’s grant database back in May and found nothing. Could you point where we could find more information about this?

2. Hmm are you saying an AI-engineered pandemic would likely be similar to natural pandemics we’re already defending against? If so, I would probably disagree here. I’m also unsure how AI-engineered pandemics might create highly novel strains, but I think the risk of this happening seems non-trivial.

And wouldn’t AI accelerate such developments as well?

3. Thanks for the info! I don’t think we have access to a lot of personal views of researchers besides what we’ve seen in literature.

4. Ah did you mean AI x Cybersecurity x Non-LOC risks? That sounds right. I don't think we've actually thought about this. 

Reflecting on this, it feels like we could have done better if we spoke to at least a few researchers instead of depending so much on lit reviews. 

Hi wunan, yes we run the programs monthly. Unfortunately, we don't have any reviews/testimonies written up for the public, but here's a broad feel of our program.

So far, we’ve had a total of 959 participants from the first half of 2021. We also have 289 participants in the July-to-August round which we are currently running with Stanford EA. Our post-program survey response rates are generally quite low at 30%, but feedback for two prior rounds has been positive: the average likelihood of recommending the program to a friend was 9.15 out of 10.