My take on “Hard on purpose” is that it’s plausible deniability. It’s not for showing off, it’s to make the situation polite in a way that you can’t rationally attribute malice.

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vidarh 4 hours ago | parent [-]

More generally, perhaps, leaving an out for either party to avoid losing face in the case one side wants to contest a statement or pull back from a stance.

Norwegian culture is big on compromise - we see that even in politics, where it's not uncommon for a party that often has 12-15 parties represented to negotiate settelements that gets the support of 10+ parties even if only half of them are needed for a majority, for example, because it's often seen as preferable to pushing through a bigger change with narrower support.

And compromises feel like they are easier to reach when positions are couched in "maybe"'s that leaves plenty of rooms to adjust or pull back without losing face.

In a sense that of course is plausible deniability for the harder position, but not because they necessarily object to people thinking that is what you want, but ensure not to give the impression you're unconditionally committed to it.

I don't know if this is always good - sometimes it is, but it also does mean that it's easy for things to end up being endlessly debated in cases where people latch on to language that leaves the door open for "polite disagreement" more than it perhaps ought to.

	▲	wildzzz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Politics is the absolute peak of this kind of culture. You never know when you might need a favor down the road so it's best to be friends with anyone even just marginally aligned with your platform. Going beyond the minimum compromise keeps everyone happy enough to remember it. Politics is like dealing with a dozen different prisoners dilemmas every day. You could act in self-interest but you still need a majority vote or the consensus of your underlings to actually get the work done. In the US, we've kinda swung back on the prisoner's dilemma. GOP finally figured out that they don't need to worry about bipartisanship or even having the consensus of their entire party. Turns out, if you've got the all three branches of government under control, you can just do whatever you'd like.