oh hey, someone else was posting about the same thing recently it turns out https://mas.to/@vrandecic/116607696355063502

My perhaps-unkind pet hypothesis on this is that a lot of people evaluate the world *primarily* through the lens of social judgement: the actual information content is irrelevant, the question is automatically and silently mentally restated as "did Maria do Wrong®?"/"should Maria be Judged® for saying this?"