[LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it

My default assumption for figures of that sort is that the author made them up, based on a general impression and a desire to tell a good story with concrete details.

"Filtering out" hostile people?

"Excluding" hostile people?

Yes, I think definitions (and understandings) need to be made more explicit.

People who break eggs for the fun of breaking eggs are usually called something along the lines of sadists and psychopaths.

In the context I would assume an "asshole" is someone who just wants X done and does not care at all about your feelings, opinions, convenience, etc. Example one: a recruit training sergeant. Example two: Steve Jobs.

An alternative definition would be "someone who wants to play power and status games" and that's a different case.

An yet another alternative definition is "someone who's more ambitious/aggressive than me".

I was specifically thinking of the worst group of all, the atheists of r/atheism who are both very vocal and very hostile. For an issue like this, there's hostile people on either end of the spectrum and being vocal helps makes them more so. A quiet and hostile person isn't particularly threatening and neither is a vocal and nonhostile person. I was not trying to suggest that being vocal alone makes someone hostile.

So, all I have to do to get you excluded from the group, is to report feeling oppressed and de-energized every time I interact with you? Awesome!

I better start now, because I suppose this game has a strong first-mover advantage.

(Note: The example is fictional; I actually like you. Also, I understand that there are people who really make other people feel bad, and it would be great to remove them. I just predict that if this is made an official rule, some people will abuse it. Will there be a meta-defense of saying: "I am really scared of Joe, because I noticed that when he does not like someone, he reports them making him feel bad, and then the group punishes the person, and I'm already afraid to speak my mind about something I know Joe would disagree with."? And of course at the same moment Joe says: "Viliam, this was really cruel, you made me cry. Don't ever say anything like this again.")

So that X is an asshole, if Y feels a certain way.

I just don't agree with the general trend to automatically privilege the offended. Sometimes I find them justified, sometimes I don't.

There is no "verbal aggression" meter that I am aware of, and I doubt that your study used one. There are people interacting, and people doing studies and characterizing their interactions as "aggression". Aggressiveness itself is not even necessarily a problem. It's likely that what I'd call aggression causes the biggest problem events, but the every day problematic work interactions I'm familiar with are more driven by emotional and economic insecurity than by what I'd call "aggression". People are defensive and fearful, and lash out or feel hurt when they perceive a threat.

What I noticed from reading the slides is that the cost is born out in the decreased productivity of the "targets", not the "assholes". That doesn't really make the case that the "assholes" are the problem.

That's a really bad definition because it is entirely based on target's feelings. It promotes victimhood, can get in the way of getting things done, and makes it look like the goal of organizations is to make their members/employees feel good about themselves.