I’ve been thinking about how to promote good relations in households. This post is an exploration of one way to do this. 

Consider households with multiple people: each member of the household has preferences, i.e. what they like and what they don’t. Most people have numerous preferences across many domains: dishes, noise, activities, cleanliness, etc. 

Typically, we only know a fraction of our housemates’ preferences. But consider a hypothetical: suppose we had complete knowledge of our housemates’ preferences, would that be better or worse? 

I think it would be better, here’s why: 

1. A complete knowledge of everyone’s preferences would reduce unintentional annoyances. If I know my roommate hates shoes in the living room, I will try not to leave mine there. (Assuming I don’t have overriding, competing ends)

2. Knowledge of each other’s preferences would help us love each other. If I know my roommate likes being asked how his day was, that knowledge will incline me to do that more often.  

There are two potential downsides to this complete knowledge:  

1. A complete knowledge of each other’s preferences would make it easier to annoy housemates. If I want to bug my roommate passive-aggressively, knowing he hates shoes in the living room gives me an easy opportunity.

2. More knowledge might be offensive. I can imagine someone saying the following after learning his housemate hates it when he plays a certain song on the piano: “You hate that song I play on the piano? Well it’s my favorite song and I’ve spent dozens of hours practicing it. It’s insulting you don’t appreciate my efforts.”  That isn’t a rational response, but it could happen.   

I don’t think those two would occur frequently and so I don’t give them much weight. 

So if I’m right about all this, what’s the practical application? 

Well, if it’s better to have complete knowledge of your housemates’ preferences, maybe we can approach that ideal. Perhaps it takes the form of group discussions where people share their preferences or something like that. It’s unlikely we’ll ever get to the point of being fully informed about each other’s desires, but as far as I’m concerned, the more the better.