I solve this problem by telling jokes and expressing opinions so far outside the Overton Window they’d get me stoned to death by the general public. After setting the honesty baseline that high, it would be bizarre for my friends to fudge their food preferences.
On the contrary, there would be nothing at all bizarre about that; it would be perfectly normal and totally commonplace.
What you are doing by expressing opinions outside the Overton window is not, in fact, “setting the honesty baseline”—because there is no such thing as “the honesty baseline”. There is “telling politically incorrect jokes is tolerated in this social context”, and there is “telling my vegan friend that I hate vegan food and I tolerate his vegan dinner parties with gritted teeth and a forced smile would hurt his feelings to no purpose whatsoever”, and there is not all that much in common between those things.
Here’s a question, if I may: the last time one of your friends told you that they disliked something you’d cooked, how did the resulting conversation go?
(Of course you are under no obligation to answer, and demurring on privacy grounds is perfectly reasonable. Please feel free to treat the question as a rhetorical one.)
Also, maybe you have an honesty baseline for telling people you dislike their cooking, and maybe your friend understands that, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to match your norms.
My experience is that however painstakingly you make it clear that you want people to be honest with you or act a certain way, sometimes they just won’t. You just have to accept that people have different personalities and things they’re comfortable with, and try to love the ways they differ from you rather than resenting it.
I solve this problem by telling jokes and expressing opinions so far outside the Overton Window they’d get me stoned to death by the general public. After setting the honesty baseline that high, it would be bizarre for my friends to fudge their food preferences.
On the contrary, there would be nothing at all bizarre about that; it would be perfectly normal and totally commonplace.
What you are doing by expressing opinions outside the Overton window is not, in fact, “setting the honesty baseline”—because there is no such thing as “the honesty baseline”. There is “telling politically incorrect jokes is tolerated in this social context”, and there is “telling my vegan friend that I hate vegan food and I tolerate his vegan dinner parties with gritted teeth and a forced smile would hurt his feelings to no purpose whatsoever”, and there is not all that much in common between those things.
Here’s a question, if I may: the last time one of your friends told you that they disliked something you’d cooked, how did the resulting conversation go?
(Of course you are under no obligation to answer, and demurring on privacy grounds is perfectly reasonable. Please feel free to treat the question as a rhetorical one.)
Also, maybe you have an honesty baseline for telling people you dislike their cooking, and maybe your friend understands that, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to match your norms.
My experience is that however painstakingly you make it clear that you want people to be honest with you or act a certain way, sometimes they just won’t. You just have to accept that people have different personalities and things they’re comfortable with, and try to love the ways they differ from you rather than resenting it.