You're so worried about not offending someone or not hurting someone's feelings that you fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run. And that is what I call ruinous empathy. And if there's one big reason why I wrote Radical Candor, it's to help us all be less ruinously empathetic, because it's not a good thing.

It feels nice, but it's actually mean in the long run. Nice usually isn't so nice in the long run. But kind is what we're, what we're really shooting for. And I want people to be kind, but kind is radically candid. I grew up in the South, and there's this anecdote about someone went to finishing school, and they were taught to say, "How nice," instead of "F you." And that's really, you know, what's, what's going on often when people are being too nice.

Not intentionally, but sort of unintentionally, you hurt people with that kind of ruinous