A few years ago, for example, when I went to see the play my girlfriend had done stage crew for, and she asked what I thought of it. She wasn’t satisfied with my initial noncommittal answers, so she pressed for more. Not in a “trying to start a fight” way; I just wasn’t doing a good job of being evasive. I eventually gave in and explained why I thought the acting had sucked, which did not make her happy. I think incidents like that must have contributed to our breaking up shortly thereafter. The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to date a person like this (your girlfriend-at-the-time). She asked for your opinion; pressed you to actually give it, thus communicating (by any reasonable measure) that she actually wanted your opinion; and then, when you gave it honestly, was unhappy about it? That’s horrible.
I don’t think I’d ever willingly choose to be close to someone to whom I’d ever regret not lying in response to being asked for my opinion. The thought of living like that, living with the knowledge that honest communication is basically impossible because any time the person asks me (and presses me) about my opinion, I have to consider the possibility that what they actually want is lies — that this person prefers lies both to truths and to no comment — repulses me.
Demand by rational men for rational women exceeds supply, even taking into account that some of the women have harems. If you’re one of the lucky men, or a woman, be aware of your privilege and don’t criticize men who lack it.
My experience is more like “real honesty, in or out of a relationship, only works with the upper echelon of CFAR style rationalists” though admittedly exposure to the naked, sharp gears of my own intellect may have more Lovecraftian results than it would in the population average.
I agree with the point in your first sentence, but I’m not sure I follow what your advice is in the second sentence.
Are you suggesting that my criticism comes from having rational women to date, whereas Chris (at the time of the anecdote) did not, and so was forced to date an irrational woman, for which I was criticising him?
Those are three wrong things, it seems to me:
I don’t find it to be the case that rational women occur in abundance in my dating pool;
No one (presumably) forced Chris to date the young lady in question;
I wasn’t criticising him for his dating choices; if I was criticising anything, it was his advice that we accept such behavior in our partners / friends, and expressing the view that I, personally, would not accept such behavior.
That surprises you? Do you think rational women wouldn’t want harems?
Scott tells us that polyamory seems like a suboptimal way to get sex, and I assume this holds true even for women—technically. But sex is not fungible.
...What?! You’re surprised that rational people who are in demand can get what they want?
Depending on what “what they want” is, yeah, I might be surprised.
I mean, clarify for me, what are we talking about here? “Polyamory is relatively common in rational circles, and poly relationships in said circles often/sometimes/commonly consist of (i.e., are circumscribed by) one woman who is dating several men”?
Harem is a bit misleading as it implies dominance and ease. Polyamory presumably requires work to keep the people around you and to prevent drama, and that situation doesn’t seem obviously preferable.
Perhaps (though I’m not sure*), but even if so, that’s no great loss, because getting a date isn’t good in itself, it’s only good if it’s with someone with whom you’re compatible, and rationality is critically important for that.
Also, this would have the effect of making rationality a more desirable trait, and irrationality a more costly one.
.*It’s definitely not true for everyone, as there are relationships in which both partners are rational.
As best I can tell, “people who sometimes ask questions they might not want to hear the answer to” are a large majority of the population. “Does this dress make me look fat” is a cliche put-you-on-the-spot question for a reason.
Sometimes is an important word here. Too often, and it might be an issue, but it’s not like this was a regular occurrence with her. (A big THANK YOU here to Pablo and hyporational for noticing they shouldn’t be making too many assumptions based on one anecdote.)
Now, another approach is to exclusively date people who value total honesty at all times. But (1) there are other qualities I value more in a mate and (2) I suspect such openness to “total honesty at all time” tends to correlate with being social inept and overly honest even with people who don’t want that, qualities I’d like to avoid.
Now, another approach is to exclusively date people who value total honesty at all times. But (1) there are other qualities I value more in a mate and (2) I suspect such openness to “total honesty at all time” tends to correlate with being social inept and overly honest even with people who don’t want that, qualities I’d like to avoid.
To reiterate a point I have made several times in this post’s comments:
“Valuing total honesty at all times” and “refraining from pressing someone for an honest answer when what you actually want is a lie” are two very different things.
Correspondingly, being totally honest at all times, unprompted, is not the same as being honest when specifically pressed for an honest answer.
“Does this dress make me look fat” is a cliche put-you-on-the-spot question for a reason.
I try to restrict my circle of friends to people who do not ask precisely such put-you-on-the-spot questions. That, among other policies and attitudes, makes my circle of friends small.
Or, to put it another way: people worth being friends with are rare. And those are the only people I want to be friends with.
As best I can tell, “people who sometimes ask questions they might not want to hear the answer to” are a large majority of the population. “Does this dress make me look fat” is a cliche put-you-on-the-spot question for a reason.
You’re misunderstanding the message.
“Does this dress make me look fat?” is not really a question. It’s a request for a compliment.
If I may engage in gender generalization for a moment, men usually understand words literally. This annoys women to no end as they often prefer to communicate on the implication level and the actual words uttered don’t matter much.
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to date a person like this [...]
Depends on the details. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily unreasonable about the following sequence of events: A wants some information from B, and presses for it despite B’s reluctance. When the truth actually comes out, A finds it upsetting. (“Do you love me?” “Yes, of course.” “It sometimes doesn’t seem that way. Seriously, and honestly, do you really love me?” “Well … no, not really. I just enjoy having sex with you.” “Oh, shit.”)
Now, being upset because your boyfriend thinks the acting in a play wasn’t much good? Yeah, that seems less reasonable. So I agree that this probably wasn’t a great relationship to be in. But I really can’t endorse any general claim that it’s bad to press for someone’s opinion when one of the possible answers would upset you.
But there are times when both are appropriate. Example: “did you strangle my puppy?” It’s hardly unreasonable to expect an honest answer and then be angry at the person when the honest answer is “yes.”
More generally, it is not inherently contradictory to expect total honesty and to be occasionally angry at what that honesty reveals.
In that case, you’re not angry at the person for telling the truth, you’re angry at them for having strangled your puppy. Similarly, in the love example, the problem isn’t so much the fact that B told A the truth, the problem is that B had systematically lied to A in order to get sex before. In neither case are you actually angry at the person for telling you the truth, you’re angry at them for committing a separate moral wrong.
This seems different from “did you like my play”, since disliking a play isn’t a moral wrong by itself. In that case you really are angry at someone for telling the truth.
I personally am not so much of a saint as to only get mad at people for moral wrongs. I can absolutely see myself getting angry at a close person for not liking a book I wrote / play I directed / whatever. It still has nothing to do with truth—I want them to be honest, I just want them to honestly like my stuff! (Of course that isn’t entirely mature and fair, but people get their emotions all tied up in their artistic work).
That’s exactly my point. And I conjecture that what upset Chris’s girlfriend was the fact that her boyfriend wasn’t impressed by her friends’ acting. I could, of course, be wrong. If her problem was simply that he’d been tactless enough to tell her what she asked him to tell her, then indeed she was bring grossly unreasonable.
If that’s indeed what upset her, then she was also being unreasonable. Consider:
Chris could have been unimpressed because the acting was, in fact, bad. (Let’s not get into whether art can be objectively bad, or any such thing; that’s not the point of the discussion.)
If so, then his reaction is information that the acting is bad. Being angry at the messenger who is conveying this information to you is unreasonable.
On the other hand, Chris could have thought the acting sucked because of differing tastes, and not any objective badness of the acting.
If so, then what his girlfriend has just found out is that their tastes don’t entirely align in this arena. Being angry at Chris for this revelation is, also, unreasonable.
So, in either case, being angry at your boyfriend for not being impressed with your friends’ acting is unreasonable.
Unless, of course, you take the view (as did another poster elsewhere in the comments) that one may, and should, alter one’s opinions on the basis of what one thinks will please one’s close ones. I strongly reject such views.
It could be that she thought the most likely explanation for him not liking their acting was because he had unrealistic expectations or didn’t watch the show with an open mind.
“Their acting sucked. I expected it to be good!” “Well, that was unreasonable of you! Clearly, you should have expected it to suck!” “Oh, well, in that case… yep, it sucked.”
But unfortunately humans aren’t very good at telling them apart. (But on the other hand some humans are worse than others and you have no obligation to date one of the former.)
In that scenario lying may be better for both in the short term, but lying about being in love with someone to trick them into sleeping with you seems pretty likely to upset them more in the long term. And there are more gentle ways to put it which could make honestly explaining that it’s mostly a physical thing which would reduce the immediate negativity considerably, though the amount depends on the listener’s disposition.
I agree that it’s not necessarily unreasonable for a truth to be upsetting, but it is somewhat unreasonable to press someone for a truthful answer (especially something important), then be upset with them specifically for being honest, especially if they have indicated discomfort giving a direct answer and tried skirting around the subject (since this hints that it’s something which may be an uncomfortable truth they may want to avoid), even if it’s pretty common in many circles.
For the avoidance of doubt, in that situation I agree that one shouldn’t lie. I was commenting not on B’s behaviour and attitude but on A’s.
And, also for the avoidance of doubt, if Chris’s girlfriend was upset that he told her the truth rather than that he didn’t like her friends’ acting then she was being 100% unreasonable. (And, as I said, even if it was the latter, still pretty unreasonable. I was making a more general point.)
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to date a person like this (your girlfriend-at-the-time).
Human beings are complex creatures, and the decision to date a person involves weighing up the different elements that make up that complexity. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I’d say that in your current state of almost total ignorance about the physical and psychological traits of Chris’s ex girlfriend, you are simply not in a position to know whether or not you’d want to date her. (Perhaps a focusing illusion—”nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”—was involved in causing you to believe otherwise.)
ETA: After reading the replies below, I realize I had misinterpreted Said’s comment above as making an all-things-considered claim, when it fact the claim was supposed to be subject to a ceteris paribus clause.
I’d say that in your current state of almost total ignorance about the physical and psychological traits of Chris’s ex girlfriend, you are simply not in a position to know whether or not you’d want to date her.
It seems this objection could largely be ameliorated by the inclusion of a ceteris paribus clause. Or, given the way you phrased it, perhaps a measure of how just how many units on the Craziness/Hotness scale the behavioural pattern moves her.
EDIT to remove references to mythical three headed guardians of hades.
Yeah, it seems I misunderstood the original comment.
To be fair on your reply the original comment is worded rather strongly and without care for precision. As such your reply is valid even if slightly less charitable than it could have been.
So, essentially, this is: “yeah, sure, my boyfriend/girlfriend has this horrible aspect of their personality, but they were otherwise a good person / the sex was great / whatever”.
Ok. Sure. If your criticism would be obviated by the addition of a ceteris paribus clause to my comment, then consider it added.
You can say that about almost any undesirable personality trait, though. That doesn’t make said trait any more desirable. Many things can be very undesirable without being hard dealbreakers (especially if discovered after you’re already involved with the person). All else being equal, though, I would certainly prefer dating a person without the trait in question, than with.
She asked for your opinion; pressed you to actually give it, thus communicating (by any reasonable measure) that she actually wanted your opinion; and then, when you gave it honestly, was unhappy about it? That’s horrible.
Looks pretty normal to me. One incident isn’t a strong indicator of personality, I think. There are situations where a significant fraction of people want to be lied to in a reassuring way, and these situations can be recognized reliably enough if one has the necessary skills to do so.
I don’t think I’d ever willingly choose to be close to someone to whom I’d ever regret not lying in response to being asked for my opinion. The thought of living like that, living with the knowledge that honest communication is basically impossible because any time the person asks me (and presses me) about my opinion, I have to consider the possibility that what they actually want is lies — that this person prefers lies both to truths and to no comment — repulses me.
There are skills that allow you to discern when people actually want your opinion and when they’re just asking for reassurance. Wouldn’t you rather have those?
My point is you mostly don’t get to choose what’s normal whether it’s good or bad, so might as well consider adapting to it*. If you come up with a less disagreeable expression of usuality that fits this case, I’ll make the switch.
*this obviously applies only if this fits your other goals
There are situations where a significant fraction of people want to be lied to in a reassuring ways, and these situations can be recognized reliably enough if one has the necessary skills to do so.
A significant fraction of people do all sorts of things. That doesn’t mean I want to associate with them, much less data them.
There are skills that allow you to discern when people actually want your opinion and when they’re just asking for reassurance. Wouldn’t you rather have those?
Yes, I would definitely want to have those skills — and I would just as definitely want to not have to use them on someone I was dating, or otherwise close to.
Those people you’re narrowing out might have other redeeming qualities that will be less available to you because of this restriction. Why is this one so horrible that they aren’t even worth considering?
As for “but if you rule out X, then you won’t get the chance to potentially get Y!”, I find such arguments unconvincing, because they generalize so easily. “If you rule out serial killers as potential friends, you might miss out on some people with whom you could hold such interesting after-dinner conversation, not to mention the many other redeeming qualities that a person might have in spite of a predilection for axe murder!” Sure, maybe, but I think I can manage to find interesting friends without a history of violent crime. I don’t have to settle.
Likewise with abhorrent personality traits: my choice isn’t “accept people who are terrible in some important way” or “be alone forever”. (And even if it were, I might strongly consider option b.) There’s always “find someone who isn’t terrible in any important way”. Such people exist, it seems to me. I don’t know, maybe I’m just an optimist?
If you rule out serial killers as potential friends, you might miss out on some people with whom you could hold such interesting after-dinner conversation, not to mention the many other redeeming qualities that a person might have in spite of a predilection for axe murder!
The obvious difference here is that serial killers are rare. White liars are extremely common and the kind of honesty you’re preferring is rare, so you’re ruling out a lot more people. (ETA: in those elaborated comments you seem more specific and reasonable than I thought.)
How probable do you think it is that you’re hanging out with people who are more dishonest than you think they are? Are you comfortable with your ability to discern these kinds of qualities in people? Do you acknowledge the prior?
That makes sense. The only problem it seems is recognizing the right individuals. The goth guy vs normal guy is much more obvious than the honesty guy vs pretending-to-be-honesty-guy. Everyone benefits from being seen as honest.
The kind of honesty where you’re willing to owning up to disliking the play your girlfriend did stage crew for doesn’t seem to me like something that many people successfully fake.
Some people seem to use honesty as an excuse for being deliberately obnoxious. Though I don’t know how often what they do would count as successfully faking anything.
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, the number of occasions where you get to display such honesty and thereby differenciate yourself from normal moderately-honest people isn’t that large. Combine this with the low base-rate of extremely honest people, and they may easily end up never finding each other.
There are skills that allow you to discern when people actually want your opinion and when they’re just asking for reassurance. Wouldn’t you rather have those?
The trouble is, you have to be really good with those skills and get things right almost all of the time before they’re worth much, since people weigh negatively-perceived interactions much more strongly than positively-perceived interactions in close relationships.
That actually reminded me of my parents. My dad is not allowed to say that he dislikes a dish prepared by my mom, even if asked for his opinion. Whenever I ask him if he liked one of my dishes, if I notice any hesitation I usually qualify it with “You can say no”.
Wow. Yeah, see, that’s exactly the kind of relationship dynamic of which the very thought horrifies me.
I, too, sometimes make similar comments to people to convey that yes, I really do want their feedback on my cooking/baking, because getting better is important to me. Empty praise is worthless to me.
Empty praise is actually useful, for absence of evidence reasons. Especially if the work you want feedback on is the type that that person should be able to effectively critique.
Once you start considering empty praise to be evidence of dislike, you may also want to fake people into thinking you think they like things, because they are probably modeling you using themselves when they decide that lying is best for you. They are not truth-obsessed rationalists, so they probably prefer to think their attempt to trick you was successful. Being asked for a critique of someone’s work can be uncomfortable, and thinking you’ve hurt their feelings is even more uncomfortable.
Ok, that’s beyond my ability to keep a chain of models-within-models straight in my head. Could you elaborate?
Actually, you know what — scratch that. The more salient point, I think, is that having to strategize basic conversation to that extent is a) much too hard for my preference, and more importantly, b) something I definitely do not want to be doing with close friends and loved ones. I mean, good god. That sounds exhausting. If someone forces me to go through such knots of reasoning when I talk to them, then I just don’t want to talk to them.
I wouldn’t want to be in that kind of relationship long-term either. But I still have to interact with normal people too, and enjoyment is often not the goal there.
Edit: also family, whose company you don’t want to discard entirely because of a few flaws like playing social games like this.
Sorry if I said it unclearly, but all I meant was, “make them think they tricked you.”
No, empty praise is still worthless, because Said’s cooking and baking not perfect, and there is with near certainty some small flaw, some awkward stylistic choice that could use improvement. Best is the gentle nitpicking of these flaws with a prepended (This is amazing, but) and with the consequent inference that the bread/food/what have you is actually already REALLY GOOD.
I agree with your point but I think you may have misunderstood Mestroyer’s comment (totally understandable, as I found his comment difficult to parse, myself).
I take from your response that you interpret Mestroyer as referring to a scenario where there’s nothing in my work to criticize, and I ask for feedback and receive praise, and correctly interpret the absence of criticism as evidence for there being nothing to criticize.
I don’t actually think that’s the scenario Mestroyer had in mind, based on his second paragraph. (Or was it? If so, then he ought to adjust his terminology, because the term “empty praise” is not appropriate in that context.)
I didn’t really have the particular situation of pianoforte611 in mind. I am sure there are many families where the communication between spouses is ritualized, lacks meaningful content, no one can actually say what they really feel, and is a mess in general.
My point was—and I should have phrased it better—is that, for example, a prohibition of criticizing cooking, may be a symptom of such a dysfunctional relationship, but does not necessarily have to be. Relationships tend to have many implicit rules about what means what. I can easily imagine a good, healthy, intimate relationship where you just can’t tell your girlfriend “Oh, today you look terrible” in the morning even if she, in fact, does look terrible. And that doesn’t sound horrible to me.
To make this point yet again[1], there’s a difference between not wanting (or outright forbidding) spontaneous criticism, to forbidding criticism that is provided when asked. In pianoforte611′s example, his dad is forbidden from saying the cooking’s bad even if he’s asked for his opinion.
Telling your girlfriend “Oh, today you look terrible”, apropos of nothing, seems like a reasonable thing for said girlfriend to object to. If she asks you “How do I look today? Please be honest”, and then you’re not allowed to answer honestly, lest you break the Rules Of The Relationship — that seems obviously dysfunctional to me.
[1] Sorry if I sound frustrated, but people seem to keep ignoring this distinction.
Edit: Upon a bit more consideration, pianoforte611′s example seems even more dysfunctional than at first glance. I mean, if you forbid someone from criticizing you even in response to a request for an opinion, and both parties are aware of this prohibition, what does it signify when you go ahead and ask them for their opinion anyway? It seems like a really ugly power dynamic: one person says “Well, what do you think of my cooking, honey? Hm? Be honest, now...”; all the while knowing full well that the other person can’t answer honestly, lest they break The Rules; holding this over the other person; and fully expecting, correctly, that the other person will dutifully lie, while dutifully pretending that they’re telling the truth — in other words, will submit to the first person’s display of dominance in the relationship.
Of course that could be an exaggeration in the particular case of pianoforte611′s family. But I’ve actually seen this exact dynamic play out in real life, and it’s a common enough cultural script, as offered up regularly by e.g. Hollywood.
If she asks you “How do I look today? Please be honest”, and then you’re not allowed to answer honestly, lest you break the Rules Of The Relationship — that seems obviously dysfunctional to me.
That depends. Words are only one of many levels of communication between a couple. You should understand your girlfriend enough to know when she actually means “Please be honest” and when she doesn’t even if she says the same words and their literal meaning is “be honest”. Again—it may well be a symptom of a dysfunctional relationship but it does not automatically have to be.
A lot of communication is non-verbal. A lot of meaning flies across regardless of which words are being said. I feel it is a mistake to focus solely on the literal meaning of the words pronounced.
Well, ok. I suppose if people are ok with having relationship where communication is that complicated, and it works for them, then far be it from me to speak against that. (Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here; I generally genuinely don’t care how other people conduct their relationships so long as it doesn’t affect me.)
But I certainly am not interested in being with someone who would say “Please be honest”, but then expect me not to be honest, but only sometimes, and then expect me to know when is which. Nooo sir, I surely am not.
I understand the sentiment, but I’d caution that the desire to be able to express yourself freely can be seen as cover for having license to say whatever you want without regard to how it effects the other person. This is bad even if you don’t intend to use it that way: you should be spending some cycles thinking about how the other person will feel about what you say. I speak from experience: saying what’s on my mind has at times been hurtful to people I care about and I should have censored it or redirected the impulse.
Perhaps part of what you’re objecting to is not that the person prefers you to lie, but that they prefer a world that can’t exist to exist. If this were really what’s going on, that would be a severe lapse of rationality. But that world can exist: our opinions are mutable and it’s quite possible to decide to like the play. The conversation is actually about something completely different: whether you’re willing and able to emphasize the positive over the negative aspects of something for her sake, which is an essential skill in any relationship.
The conversation is also about asking for acknowledgement and approval for something she’s worked hard on and probably partially identifies with.
Please note that I’m not saying this is easy or obvious. Empathy is a difficult skill and requires training (or socialization), followed by practice and attention even for those to whom it comes easily.
(and now, the other part of my reply to your comment, with a quite intentional difference in tone)
I understand the sentiment, but I’d caution that the desire to be able to express yourself freely can be seen as cover for having license to say whatever you want without regard to how it effects the other person.
Certainly. I’m not suggesting that you ought to just run your mouth about any opinion that pops into your head, especially without giving any thought to whether expressing that opinion would be tactful, how the other person will feel about it (especially if it’s a person you care about), etc. Often the best policy is just to shut up.
The problem comes when someone asks you for an opinion, and communicates that they really want it. If they then take offense at honesty, then I am strongly tempted to despise them immediately and without reservation. (Tempted, note; there may be mitigating factors; we all act unreasonably on occasion; but patterns of behavior are another thing.)
One of the issues with behaving like this is: so what happens when you really do want the person’s opinion? How do you communicate that? You’ve already taught your partner that they should lie, tell you the pleasing falsehood, rather than be honest; how do you put that on hold? “No, honey, I know that I usually prefer falsehood to truth despite my protestations to the contrary, but this time I really do want the truth! Honest!” It erodes communication and trust — and I can think of few more important things in a relationship.
Behavior like this also makes your partner not trust your rationality, your honesty with yourself; I don’t think I could be with a person whom I could not trust, on such a basic level, to reason honestly. I couldn’t respect them.
This is bad even if you don’t intend to use it that way: you should be spending some cycles thinking about how the other person will feel about what you say. I speak from experience: saying what’s on my mind has at times been hurtful to people I care about and I should have censored it or redirected the impulse.
Yes. Certainly. Heck, I sometimes don’t want to hear the truth, or someone’s honest opinion of me. Not because I am necessarily in denial, or any such thing, but because I don’t want to think about it at the moment; or any number of reasons.
But you know what I don’t do in that case? I don’t ask them for their honest opinion! I don’t do what the girlfriend in the anecdote did, which is essentially demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink to support your own irrationality… I really have a hard time finding words strong enough to express how much the very idea revolts me.
But then, this might be one of those “different people have different values/preferences” things.
demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink
One scary thought I had a while back is that this is essentially what friendship and especially love is, i.e., sabotaging one’s rationality, specifically one’s ability to honestly asses one’s friend’s/lover’s usefulness as an ally as a costly way to signal one’s precommitment not to defect against the friend/lover even when it would be in one’s interest to do so.
On the other hand, it’s just as easy to make up a story in the opposite direction: friendship and love are what we call having a true judgement of a person’s fundamental virtue that is unswayed by transient, day to day circumstances.
But that world can exist: our opinions are mutable and it’s quite possible to decide to like the play.
Possible, but utterly abhorrent.
whether you’re willing and able to emphasize the positive over the negative aspects of something for her sake
Doublespeak for “doublethink, self-deception, and lies”.
The conversation is also about asking for acknowledgement and approval for something she’s worked hard on
One can acknowledge hard work without lying about outcomes. Approval given regardless of worth is meaningless and devalues itself (because if I approve of what you made, even if it’s crap, then my approval is worthless, because it does not distinguish good work from bad, good results from dreck).
and probably partially identifies with.
Perhaps, then, she should heed Paul Graham’s advice to keep her identity small; and apply the Litany of Tarski to whether the thing she worked on was good.
Please note that I’m not saying this is easy or obvious.
Sure, but something can be difficult, non-obvious, and undesirable.
Empathy is a difficult skill and requires training (or socialization), followed by practice and attention even for those to whom it comes easily.
I strongly disapprove of equating empathy with deception and tacit support for irrationality and emotional manipulation. They are not the same.
The conversation is actually about something completely different: whether you’re willing and able to emphasize the positive over the negative aspects of something for her sake, which is an essential skill in any relationship.
That is something the people do have actual conversations about, something that is, indeed, important to consider and a good reason to adopt the practice of emphasising positive things. However, it is not the kind of conversation that SaidAchmiz was talking about unless you read it extremely uncharitably.
There is a rather distinct and obvious difference between emphasizing the positive aspects of something and emphasizing something that does not exist. In fact, choosing to emphasize something to exists entails outright failing to emphasize a positive aspect of the the thing in question. Sometimes that is necessary to do, but doing so does not constitute a converstation of the type you describe.
You’re right, I made some assumptions that probably don’t apply to SaidAchmiz, and I realize my comment comes off poorly. I apologize. I was trying to refer to the situation from the OP, but found it difficult to write about without using a hypothetical “you” and I’m not entirely satisfied with the result.
What I was trying to get across is that this kind of situation can be complex and that the girlfriend in the scenario can have legitimate emotional justification for behaving this way. I agree that wishing you’d lied is a bad situation to be in. I agree that the OP’s story is not a very good mode of interaction even if handled the way Sam Harris would. I agree that people should be able to have explicit conversations about emphasizing positives rather than veiled ones (which I was trying to get at when I said the conversation was “actually” about that).
I don’t mean to imply that SaidAchmiz wants to feel completely free to say anything regardless of consequences. I’m trying to say that I have felt that tendency myself and have unintentionally taken advantage of a “we should be able to say anything to each other” policy as an excuse not to think about the effects of my speech.
Hopefully this is clearer. I’m only trying to relay what I’ve learned from my experiences, but maybe I’ve failed at that.
She asked for your opinion; pressed you to actually give it, thus communicating (by any reasonable measure) that she actually wanted your opinion; and then, when you gave it honestly, was unhappy about it? That’s horrible.
Particularly given the replies you have prompted it is worth emphasising the ‘pressed you’ phrase. The combination of pressing for honest feedback and handling it poorly is a very different thing to handling honesty poorly without attempting to force ‘honest’ feedback be given.
(Note that the information given does not lead me to conclude that the girlfriend must have been executing that pattern but hypothetical people who do so do thereby lose some measure of want-to-date-them-ness.)
Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to date a person like this (your girlfriend-at-the-time). She asked for your opinion; pressed you to actually give it, thus communicating (by any reasonable measure) that she actually wanted your opinion; and then, when you gave it honestly, was unhappy about it? That’s horrible.
I don’t think I’d ever willingly choose to be close to someone to whom I’d ever regret not lying in response to being asked for my opinion. The thought of living like that, living with the knowledge that honest communication is basically impossible because any time the person asks me (and presses me) about my opinion, I have to consider the possibility that what they actually want is lies — that this person prefers lies both to truths and to no comment — repulses me.
Demand by rational men for rational women exceeds supply, even taking into account that some of the women have harems. If you’re one of the lucky men, or a woman, be aware of your privilege and don’t criticize men who lack it.
I think the set of women you can be honest with in a relationship is much larger than the set of women who are full on CFAR style rationalists.
My experience is more like “real honesty, in or out of a relationship, only works with the upper echelon of CFAR style rationalists” though admittedly exposure to the naked, sharp gears of my own intellect may have more Lovecraftian results than it would in the population average.
Honest about carefully selected safe topics? Or about the weird ones?
I agree with the point in your first sentence, but I’m not sure I follow what your advice is in the second sentence.
Are you suggesting that my criticism comes from having rational women to date, whereas Chris (at the time of the anecdote) did not, and so was forced to date an irrational woman, for which I was criticising him?
Those are three wrong things, it seems to me:
I don’t find it to be the case that rational women occur in abundance in my dating pool;
No one (presumably) forced Chris to date the young lady in question;
I wasn’t criticising him for his dating choices; if I was criticising anything, it was his advice that we accept such behavior in our partners / friends, and expressing the view that I, personally, would not accept such behavior.
P.S.
Really?
That surprises you? Do you think rational women wouldn’t want harems?
Scott tells us that polyamory seems like a suboptimal way to get sex, and I assume this holds true even for women—technically. But sex is not fungible.
Um… sure, that surprises me a bit. Also that they have the harems, even given wanting them.
I don’t really know what you are saying in your second paragraph. Please explain?
...What?! You’re surprised that rational people who are in demand can get what they want?
I may try to explain the second part later, but in my current condition I don’t get your confusion.
Depending on what “what they want” is, yeah, I might be surprised.
I mean, clarify for me, what are we talking about here? “Polyamory is relatively common in rational circles, and poly relationships in said circles often/sometimes/commonly consist of (i.e., are circumscribed by) one woman who is dating several men”?
Harem is a bit misleading as it implies dominance and ease. Polyamory presumably requires work to keep the people around you and to prevent drama, and that situation doesn’t seem obviously preferable.
That doesn’t entitle any irrational woman to date any rational man. Men are allowed to stay single, you know.
It’s better to be single than to date someone irrational.
If everyone thought like that, I’d never get a date (and neither would anyone else, of course).
Perhaps (though I’m not sure*), but even if so, that’s no great loss, because getting a date isn’t good in itself, it’s only good if it’s with someone with whom you’re compatible, and rationality is critically important for that.
Also, this would have the effect of making rationality a more desirable trait, and irrationality a more costly one.
.*It’s definitely not true for everyone, as there are relationships in which both partners are rational.
As best I can tell, “people who sometimes ask questions they might not want to hear the answer to” are a large majority of the population. “Does this dress make me look fat” is a cliche put-you-on-the-spot question for a reason.
Sometimes is an important word here. Too often, and it might be an issue, but it’s not like this was a regular occurrence with her. (A big THANK YOU here to Pablo and hyporational for noticing they shouldn’t be making too many assumptions based on one anecdote.)
Now, another approach is to exclusively date people who value total honesty at all times. But (1) there are other qualities I value more in a mate and (2) I suspect such openness to “total honesty at all time” tends to correlate with being social inept and overly honest even with people who don’t want that, qualities I’d like to avoid.
To reiterate a point I have made several times in this post’s comments:
“Valuing total honesty at all times” and “refraining from pressing someone for an honest answer when what you actually want is a lie” are two very different things.
Correspondingly, being totally honest at all times, unprompted, is not the same as being honest when specifically pressed for an honest answer.
I try to restrict my circle of friends to people who do not ask precisely such put-you-on-the-spot questions. That, among other policies and attitudes, makes my circle of friends small.
Or, to put it another way: people worth being friends with are rare. And those are the only people I want to be friends with.
(BTW, I usually answer that with “you looked better in that other one”, so I don’t offend her but I still help her choose flattering clothes.)
You’re misunderstanding the message.
“Does this dress make me look fat?” is not really a question. It’s a request for a compliment.
If I may engage in gender generalization for a moment, men usually understand words literally. This annoys women to no end as they often prefer to communicate on the implication level and the actual words uttered don’t matter much.
In a sense, yes. But less-cliche questions sometimes get used the same way, and you have to be on guard with that.
(You can argue that giving the expected responses to such questions isn’t technically lying, but that seems like semantic hair-splitting to me.)
Depends on the details. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily unreasonable about the following sequence of events: A wants some information from B, and presses for it despite B’s reluctance. When the truth actually comes out, A finds it upsetting. (“Do you love me?” “Yes, of course.” “It sometimes doesn’t seem that way. Seriously, and honestly, do you really love me?” “Well … no, not really. I just enjoy having sex with you.” “Oh, shit.”)
Now, being upset because your boyfriend thinks the acting in a play wasn’t much good? Yeah, that seems less reasonable. So I agree that this probably wasn’t a great relationship to be in. But I really can’t endorse any general claim that it’s bad to press for someone’s opinion when one of the possible answers would upset you.
Having the truth upset you, and being angry at a person for telling you the unpleasant truth, are two very different things.
But there are times when both are appropriate. Example: “did you strangle my puppy?” It’s hardly unreasonable to expect an honest answer and then be angry at the person when the honest answer is “yes.”
More generally, it is not inherently contradictory to expect total honesty and to be occasionally angry at what that honesty reveals.
In that case, you’re not angry at the person for telling the truth, you’re angry at them for having strangled your puppy. Similarly, in the love example, the problem isn’t so much the fact that B told A the truth, the problem is that B had systematically lied to A in order to get sex before. In neither case are you actually angry at the person for telling you the truth, you’re angry at them for committing a separate moral wrong.
This seems different from “did you like my play”, since disliking a play isn’t a moral wrong by itself. In that case you really are angry at someone for telling the truth.
I personally am not so much of a saint as to only get mad at people for moral wrongs. I can absolutely see myself getting angry at a close person for not liking a book I wrote / play I directed / whatever. It still has nothing to do with truth—I want them to be honest, I just want them to honestly like my stuff! (Of course that isn’t entirely mature and fair, but people get their emotions all tied up in their artistic work).
That’s exactly my point. And I conjecture that what upset Chris’s girlfriend was the fact that her boyfriend wasn’t impressed by her friends’ acting. I could, of course, be wrong. If her problem was simply that he’d been tactless enough to tell her what she asked him to tell her, then indeed she was bring grossly unreasonable.
If that’s indeed what upset her, then she was also being unreasonable. Consider:
Chris could have been unimpressed because the acting was, in fact, bad. (Let’s not get into whether art can be objectively bad, or any such thing; that’s not the point of the discussion.)
If so, then his reaction is information that the acting is bad. Being angry at the messenger who is conveying this information to you is unreasonable.
On the other hand, Chris could have thought the acting sucked because of differing tastes, and not any objective badness of the acting.
If so, then what his girlfriend has just found out is that their tastes don’t entirely align in this arena. Being angry at Chris for this revelation is, also, unreasonable.
So, in either case, being angry at your boyfriend for not being impressed with your friends’ acting is unreasonable.
Unless, of course, you take the view (as did another poster elsewhere in the comments) that one may, and should, alter one’s opinions on the basis of what one thinks will please one’s close ones. I strongly reject such views.
It could be that she thought the most likely explanation for him not liking their acting was because he had unrealistic expectations or didn’t watch the show with an open mind.
Both of those suggestions confuse me.
“Their acting sucked. I expected it to be good!” “Well, that was unreasonable of you! Clearly, you should have expected it to suck!” “Oh, well, in that case… yep, it sucked.”
???
What on earth does that mean...?
More like:
“That show was not in the top 30% of all entertainment I have ever consumed.”
″...How was it as amateur theater goes?”
“Oh, easily top fifteen percent there.”
The open-mindedness criterion is a little harder to explain.
But unfortunately humans aren’t very good at telling them apart. (But on the other hand some humans are worse than others and you have no obligation to date one of the former.)
In that scenario lying may be better for both in the short term, but lying about being in love with someone to trick them into sleeping with you seems pretty likely to upset them more in the long term. And there are more gentle ways to put it which could make honestly explaining that it’s mostly a physical thing which would reduce the immediate negativity considerably, though the amount depends on the listener’s disposition.
I agree that it’s not necessarily unreasonable for a truth to be upsetting, but it is somewhat unreasonable to press someone for a truthful answer (especially something important), then be upset with them specifically for being honest, especially if they have indicated discomfort giving a direct answer and tried skirting around the subject (since this hints that it’s something which may be an uncomfortable truth they may want to avoid), even if it’s pretty common in many circles.
For the avoidance of doubt, in that situation I agree that one shouldn’t lie. I was commenting not on B’s behaviour and attitude but on A’s.
And, also for the avoidance of doubt, if Chris’s girlfriend was upset that he told her the truth rather than that he didn’t like her friends’ acting then she was being 100% unreasonable. (And, as I said, even if it was the latter, still pretty unreasonable. I was making a more general point.)
Human beings are complex creatures, and the decision to date a person involves weighing up the different elements that make up that complexity. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I’d say that in your current state of almost total ignorance about the physical and psychological traits of Chris’s ex girlfriend, you are simply not in a position to know whether or not you’d want to date her. (Perhaps a focusing illusion—”nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it”—was involved in causing you to believe otherwise.)
ETA: After reading the replies below, I realize I had misinterpreted Said’s comment above as making an all-things-considered claim, when it fact the claim was supposed to be subject to a ceteris paribus clause.
It seems this objection could largely be ameliorated by the inclusion of a ceteris paribus clause. Or, given the way you phrased it, perhaps a measure of how just how many units on the Craziness/Hotness scale the behavioural pattern moves her.
EDIT to remove references to mythical three headed guardians of hades.
Yeah, it seems I misunderstood the original comment.
To be fair on your reply the original comment is worded rather strongly and without care for precision. As such your reply is valid even if slightly less charitable than it could have been.
I’m pretty sure I got it wrong too.
So, essentially, this is: “yeah, sure, my boyfriend/girlfriend has this horrible aspect of their personality, but they were otherwise a good person / the sex was great / whatever”.
Ok. Sure. If your criticism would be obviated by the addition of a ceteris paribus clause to my comment, then consider it added.
You can say that about almost any undesirable personality trait, though. That doesn’t make said trait any more desirable. Many things can be very undesirable without being hard dealbreakers (especially if discovered after you’re already involved with the person). All else being equal, though, I would certainly prefer dating a person without the trait in question, than with.
Looks pretty normal to me. One incident isn’t a strong indicator of personality, I think. There are situations where a significant fraction of people want to be lied to in a reassuring way, and these situations can be recognized reliably enough if one has the necessary skills to do so.
There are skills that allow you to discern when people actually want your opinion and when they’re just asking for reassurance. Wouldn’t you rather have those?
That word always¹ sounds to me like its only point is to sneak in the connotation that what’s usual must therefore also be desirable.
“Normal is a cycle on a washing machine.”
Not literally.
My point is you mostly don’t get to choose what’s normal whether it’s good or bad, so might as well consider adapting to it*. If you come up with a less disagreeable expression of usuality that fits this case, I’ll make the switch.
*this obviously applies only if this fits your other goals
I’m torn between upvoting this comment for the footnote and upvoting this comment for the insight. Decisions, decisions.
A significant fraction of people do all sorts of things. That doesn’t mean I want to associate with them, much less data them.
Yes, I would definitely want to have those skills — and I would just as definitely want to not have to use them on someone I was dating, or otherwise close to.
Those people you’re narrowing out might have other redeeming qualities that will be less available to you because of this restriction. Why is this one so horrible that they aren’t even worth considering?
Well, I didn’t exactly say such people wouldn’t be worth considering. (See my reply to Pablo_Stafforini.)
I do think this one’s pretty bad, though. (Elaboration here.)
As for “but if you rule out X, then you won’t get the chance to potentially get Y!”, I find such arguments unconvincing, because they generalize so easily. “If you rule out serial killers as potential friends, you might miss out on some people with whom you could hold such interesting after-dinner conversation, not to mention the many other redeeming qualities that a person might have in spite of a predilection for axe murder!” Sure, maybe, but I think I can manage to find interesting friends without a history of violent crime. I don’t have to settle.
Likewise with abhorrent personality traits: my choice isn’t “accept people who are terrible in some important way” or “be alone forever”. (And even if it were, I might strongly consider option b.) There’s always “find someone who isn’t terrible in any important way”. Such people exist, it seems to me. I don’t know, maybe I’m just an optimist?
The obvious difference here is that serial killers are rare. White liars are extremely common and the kind of honesty you’re preferring is rare, so you’re ruling out a lot more people. (ETA: in those elaborated comments you seem more specific and reasonable than I thought.)
How probable do you think it is that you’re hanging out with people who are more dishonest than you think they are? Are you comfortable with your ability to discern these kinds of qualities in people? Do you acknowledge the prior?
But each of the people you’re ruling out is in turn ruling out lots of people other than you and therefore is more likely to be available.
In other words, honesty is a high-variance strategy.
That makes sense. The only problem it seems is recognizing the right individuals. The goth guy vs normal guy is much more obvious than the honesty guy vs pretending-to-be-honesty-guy. Everyone benefits from being seen as honest.
The kind of honesty where you’re willing to owning up to disliking the play your girlfriend did stage crew for doesn’t seem to me like something that many people successfully fake.
Some people seem to use honesty as an excuse for being deliberately obnoxious. Though I don’t know how often what they do would count as successfully faking anything.
Well, the OP did not specify which words he used to tell his then-girlfriend that.
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, the number of occasions where you get to display such honesty and thereby differenciate yourself from normal moderately-honest people isn’t that large. Combine this with the low base-rate of extremely honest people, and they may easily end up never finding each other.
Whoa whoa. Who said the category of people I was referring to is as broad as white liars?
I don’t hang out with all that many people, and those I do hang out with, I’ve know for some time, so I would say: not very probable.
Comfortable enough to spot honesty after knowing someone for ten years or more, yeah.
Yeah sorry about the misunderstanding, I edited the gp accordingly.
The trouble is, you have to be really good with those skills and get things right almost all of the time before they’re worth much, since people weigh negatively-perceived interactions much more strongly than positively-perceived interactions in close relationships.
That actually reminded me of my parents. My dad is not allowed to say that he dislikes a dish prepared by my mom, even if asked for his opinion. Whenever I ask him if he liked one of my dishes, if I notice any hesitation I usually qualify it with “You can say no”.
Wow. Yeah, see, that’s exactly the kind of relationship dynamic of which the very thought horrifies me.
I, too, sometimes make similar comments to people to convey that yes, I really do want their feedback on my cooking/baking, because getting better is important to me. Empty praise is worthless to me.
Empty praise is actually useful, for absence of evidence reasons. Especially if the work you want feedback on is the type that that person should be able to effectively critique.
Once you start considering empty praise to be evidence of dislike, you may also want to fake people into thinking you think they like things, because they are probably modeling you using themselves when they decide that lying is best for you. They are not truth-obsessed rationalists, so they probably prefer to think their attempt to trick you was successful. Being asked for a critique of someone’s work can be uncomfortable, and thinking you’ve hurt their feelings is even more uncomfortable.
Ok, that’s beyond my ability to keep a chain of models-within-models straight in my head. Could you elaborate?
Actually, you know what — scratch that. The more salient point, I think, is that having to strategize basic conversation to that extent is a) much too hard for my preference, and more importantly, b) something I definitely do not want to be doing with close friends and loved ones. I mean, good god. That sounds exhausting. If someone forces me to go through such knots of reasoning when I talk to them, then I just don’t want to talk to them.
I wouldn’t want to be in that kind of relationship long-term either. But I still have to interact with normal people too, and enjoyment is often not the goal there.
Edit: also family, whose company you don’t want to discard entirely because of a few flaws like playing social games like this.
Sorry if I said it unclearly, but all I meant was, “make them think they tricked you.”
No, empty praise is still worthless, because Said’s cooking and baking not perfect, and there is with near certainty some small flaw, some awkward stylistic choice that could use improvement. Best is the gentle nitpicking of these flaws with a prepended (This is amazing, but) and with the consequent inference that the bread/food/what have you is actually already REALLY GOOD.
There is value to knowing the quality of your work apart from knowing ways to improve it.
For example, “Should I personally cook something for this upcoming potluck, or should I let my spouse do it?”
The problem is that knowing how well you cook doesn’t really affect who should cook past a certain basic point of competence, as far as I can tell.
I agree with your point but I think you may have misunderstood Mestroyer’s comment (totally understandable, as I found his comment difficult to parse, myself).
I take from your response that you interpret Mestroyer as referring to a scenario where there’s nothing in my work to criticize, and I ask for feedback and receive praise, and correctly interpret the absence of criticism as evidence for there being nothing to criticize.
I don’t actually think that’s the scenario Mestroyer had in mind, based on his second paragraph. (Or was it? If so, then he ought to adjust his terminology, because the term “empty praise” is not appropriate in that context.)
Not if it’s explicit, well-understood and is just one of the rules of how the game is played.
There are LOTS of way to convey meaning besides just blurting it out.
Mmmnope, that definitely doesn’t change the horror.
(I’m not sure how to take what looks to be a correction to a statement about my feelings about something. Regardless, it’s misplaced.)
That was just a shorthand way of saying “I am surprised that you feel this way given that I see the world in a way that...”
Fair enough. In that case, to clarify my response:
I acknowledge that your view of things is plausible in many cases; taking said view does not change my feelings about the situations in question.
Well, let me clarify, too, then :-)
I didn’t really have the particular situation of pianoforte611 in mind. I am sure there are many families where the communication between spouses is ritualized, lacks meaningful content, no one can actually say what they really feel, and is a mess in general.
My point was—and I should have phrased it better—is that, for example, a prohibition of criticizing cooking, may be a symptom of such a dysfunctional relationship, but does not necessarily have to be. Relationships tend to have many implicit rules about what means what. I can easily imagine a good, healthy, intimate relationship where you just can’t tell your girlfriend “Oh, today you look terrible” in the morning even if she, in fact, does look terrible. And that doesn’t sound horrible to me.
To make this point yet again[1], there’s a difference between not wanting (or outright forbidding) spontaneous criticism, to forbidding criticism that is provided when asked. In pianoforte611′s example, his dad is forbidden from saying the cooking’s bad even if he’s asked for his opinion.
Telling your girlfriend “Oh, today you look terrible”, apropos of nothing, seems like a reasonable thing for said girlfriend to object to. If she asks you “How do I look today? Please be honest”, and then you’re not allowed to answer honestly, lest you break the Rules Of The Relationship — that seems obviously dysfunctional to me.
[1] Sorry if I sound frustrated, but people seem to keep ignoring this distinction.
Edit: Upon a bit more consideration, pianoforte611′s example seems even more dysfunctional than at first glance. I mean, if you forbid someone from criticizing you even in response to a request for an opinion, and both parties are aware of this prohibition, what does it signify when you go ahead and ask them for their opinion anyway? It seems like a really ugly power dynamic: one person says “Well, what do you think of my cooking, honey? Hm? Be honest, now...”; all the while knowing full well that the other person can’t answer honestly, lest they break The Rules; holding this over the other person; and fully expecting, correctly, that the other person will dutifully lie, while dutifully pretending that they’re telling the truth — in other words, will submit to the first person’s display of dominance in the relationship.
Of course that could be an exaggeration in the particular case of pianoforte611′s family. But I’ve actually seen this exact dynamic play out in real life, and it’s a common enough cultural script, as offered up regularly by e.g. Hollywood.
That depends. Words are only one of many levels of communication between a couple. You should understand your girlfriend enough to know when she actually means “Please be honest” and when she doesn’t even if she says the same words and their literal meaning is “be honest”. Again—it may well be a symptom of a dysfunctional relationship but it does not automatically have to be.
A lot of communication is non-verbal. A lot of meaning flies across regardless of which words are being said. I feel it is a mistake to focus solely on the literal meaning of the words pronounced.
Well, ok. I suppose if people are ok with having relationship where communication is that complicated, and it works for them, then far be it from me to speak against that. (Not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive here; I generally genuinely don’t care how other people conduct their relationships so long as it doesn’t affect me.)
But I certainly am not interested in being with someone who would say “Please be honest”, but then expect me not to be honest, but only sometimes, and then expect me to know when is which. Nooo sir, I surely am not.
People come as complete packages :-) Some things maybe deal-breakers but some things may be compensated by other advantages.
Oh, and communication is complicated.
I refer you to this comment thread and also this comment here.
I understand the sentiment, but I’d caution that the desire to be able to express yourself freely can be seen as cover for having license to say whatever you want without regard to how it effects the other person. This is bad even if you don’t intend to use it that way: you should be spending some cycles thinking about how the other person will feel about what you say. I speak from experience: saying what’s on my mind has at times been hurtful to people I care about and I should have censored it or redirected the impulse.
Perhaps part of what you’re objecting to is not that the person prefers you to lie, but that they prefer a world that can’t exist to exist. If this were really what’s going on, that would be a severe lapse of rationality. But that world can exist: our opinions are mutable and it’s quite possible to decide to like the play. The conversation is actually about something completely different: whether you’re willing and able to emphasize the positive over the negative aspects of something for her sake, which is an essential skill in any relationship.
The conversation is also about asking for acknowledgement and approval for something she’s worked hard on and probably partially identifies with.
Please note that I’m not saying this is easy or obvious. Empathy is a difficult skill and requires training (or socialization), followed by practice and attention even for those to whom it comes easily.
(and now, the other part of my reply to your comment, with a quite intentional difference in tone)
Certainly. I’m not suggesting that you ought to just run your mouth about any opinion that pops into your head, especially without giving any thought to whether expressing that opinion would be tactful, how the other person will feel about it (especially if it’s a person you care about), etc. Often the best policy is just to shut up.
The problem comes when someone asks you for an opinion, and communicates that they really want it. If they then take offense at honesty, then I am strongly tempted to despise them immediately and without reservation. (Tempted, note; there may be mitigating factors; we all act unreasonably on occasion; but patterns of behavior are another thing.)
One of the issues with behaving like this is: so what happens when you really do want the person’s opinion? How do you communicate that? You’ve already taught your partner that they should lie, tell you the pleasing falsehood, rather than be honest; how do you put that on hold? “No, honey, I know that I usually prefer falsehood to truth despite my protestations to the contrary, but this time I really do want the truth! Honest!” It erodes communication and trust — and I can think of few more important things in a relationship.
Behavior like this also makes your partner not trust your rationality, your honesty with yourself; I don’t think I could be with a person whom I could not trust, on such a basic level, to reason honestly. I couldn’t respect them.
Yes. Certainly. Heck, I sometimes don’t want to hear the truth, or someone’s honest opinion of me. Not because I am necessarily in denial, or any such thing, but because I don’t want to think about it at the moment; or any number of reasons.
But you know what I don’t do in that case? I don’t ask them for their honest opinion! I don’t do what the girlfriend in the anecdote did, which is essentially demand that someone close to her to lie to her, and furthermore without acknowledging that this is what she was asking! To demand that your partner subvert their reason, and engage in doublethink to support your own irrationality… I really have a hard time finding words strong enough to express how much the very idea revolts me.
But then, this might be one of those “different people have different values/preferences” things.
One scary thought I had a while back is that this is essentially what friendship and especially love is, i.e., sabotaging one’s rationality, specifically one’s ability to honestly asses one’s friend’s/lover’s usefulness as an ally as a costly way to signal one’s precommitment not to defect against the friend/lover even when it would be in one’s interest to do so.
On the other hand, it’s just as easy to make up a story in the opposite direction: friendship and love are what we call having a true judgement of a person’s fundamental virtue that is unswayed by transient, day to day circumstances.
“Love is the inability to follow a logical argument concerning the object of one’s affection.”
… is a quote along those lines, from a former classmate; with which I do not actually agree.
But “usefulness as an ally” does not at all fully capture a loved one’s value to me, even absent any failures of rationality.
(Not that you said it does, I’m just pre-empting likely replies.)
Feel free to substitute whatever you feel is appropriate for “usefulness as an ally”.
The difference is that I explain it in terms of game theory.
Possible, but utterly abhorrent.
Doublespeak for “doublethink, self-deception, and lies”.
One can acknowledge hard work without lying about outcomes. Approval given regardless of worth is meaningless and devalues itself (because if I approve of what you made, even if it’s crap, then my approval is worthless, because it does not distinguish good work from bad, good results from dreck).
Perhaps, then, she should heed Paul Graham’s advice to keep her identity small; and apply the Litany of Tarski to whether the thing she worked on was good.
Sure, but something can be difficult, non-obvious, and undesirable.
I strongly disapprove of equating empathy with deception and tacit support for irrationality and emotional manipulation. They are not the same.
That is something the people do have actual conversations about, something that is, indeed, important to consider and a good reason to adopt the practice of emphasising positive things. However, it is not the kind of conversation that SaidAchmiz was talking about unless you read it extremely uncharitably.
There is a rather distinct and obvious difference between emphasizing the positive aspects of something and emphasizing something that does not exist. In fact, choosing to emphasize something to exists entails outright failing to emphasize a positive aspect of the the thing in question. Sometimes that is necessary to do, but doing so does not constitute a converstation of the type you describe.
Your reply has distinct “straw man” tendencies.
You’re right, I made some assumptions that probably don’t apply to SaidAchmiz, and I realize my comment comes off poorly. I apologize. I was trying to refer to the situation from the OP, but found it difficult to write about without using a hypothetical “you” and I’m not entirely satisfied with the result.
What I was trying to get across is that this kind of situation can be complex and that the girlfriend in the scenario can have legitimate emotional justification for behaving this way. I agree that wishing you’d lied is a bad situation to be in. I agree that the OP’s story is not a very good mode of interaction even if handled the way Sam Harris would. I agree that people should be able to have explicit conversations about emphasizing positives rather than veiled ones (which I was trying to get at when I said the conversation was “actually” about that).
I don’t mean to imply that SaidAchmiz wants to feel completely free to say anything regardless of consequences. I’m trying to say that I have felt that tendency myself and have unintentionally taken advantage of a “we should be able to say anything to each other” policy as an excuse not to think about the effects of my speech.
Hopefully this is clearer. I’m only trying to relay what I’ve learned from my experiences, but maybe I’ve failed at that.
Particularly given the replies you have prompted it is worth emphasising the ‘pressed you’ phrase. The combination of pressing for honest feedback and handling it poorly is a very different thing to handling honesty poorly without attempting to force ‘honest’ feedback be given.
(Note that the information given does not lead me to conclude that the girlfriend must have been executing that pattern but hypothetical people who do so do thereby lose some measure of want-to-date-them-ness.)
It’s possible that she learned that pressing for an honest opinion isn’t a good idea for her.