I didn't know what this referred to but reading some of the examples in the paper.. oh man I hate this thing with a passion. It's not just Persians but Arabs in the gulf culture too that apply this to every scenario, it's the definition of being insincere as I know they don't really mean it but pretend to.
An example from last month, I had a haircut at a new place and the guy refused to tell me how much I should pay him and insisted its on him this time, I know he's bluffing but he kept doing it. So I just guessed and gave him the money which he pretended he didn't want for the last 5 minutes, he immediately realized it was less than he wanted and asked for more!
This confusing and conflicting behavior should stay far away from any attempt to develop a standard linguistic approach to communication which I hope LLMs are aiming to achieve.
If I was chaotic neutral, I'd totally play along with their bluffing and watch them get really confused.
This shit gets pulled anywhere in east asia with a "face" culture (i.e. China).
I've watched two Chinese grandmas play a game that my born in china friend explained to me: 1 offered the other money but you "lose face" to accept it, so the 2nd one was repeatedly declining. This went on for a solid 3-4 minutes before the 2nd one left.
I 1000% agree. Get this shit away from LLM training datasets and I'll even go further. Sometimes west-is-best in culture, and avoiding "face" culture is one of those situations where I'm down to be a "cultural objectivist". Similarly, we westerners are objectively nasty with our toilet habits compared to east asians.
It boggles my mind why you (and others) think that Westerners are straightforward. Have you ever interviewed for a job, asked someone for a date, or asked for a raise? Let alone fields like commerce or money trading where the whole point is to be as dishonest as possible to reap the most gains.
I think people simply forget their everyday behaviour like fish forget the water they swim in.
ChatGPT has to work with its customers. It's not on a mission to improve their culture by making it more like yours.