If I am honest without accuracy… if I am proud to report my results of my reasoning as they are, but my actual reasoning is sloppy… then I shouldn’t congratulate myself for giving precise info, because the info was not precise; I simply removed one source of imprecision, but ignored another.
Saying “you are annoying” feels like an extremely honest thing, and I may be motivated to stop there.
However, saying “sorry, I’m in a bad mood today; I think it’s likely that on a different day I would appreciate what you are trying to do, but today it doesn’t work this way, and it actually annoys me” is even more honest, and possibly less harmful to the listener.
A cynical explanation is that while attempting to be extremely honest, we refuse to censor the information that might hurt the listener… but we still censor the information that would hurt us. For example, the short version of “you are annoying” contains the information that may hurt my friend, but conceals the information about my own vulnerability.
Perhaps a good heuristic could be: Don’t hurt other people by your honesty, unless you are willing to hurt yourself as much (or 20 % more, to balance for your own biased perception) -- and even this only if they agreed to play by these rules. (Of course you are allowed to select your friends according to their ability and willingness to play by these rules. But sometimes you have to interact with other people, too.)
If I am honest without accuracy… if I am proud to report my results of my reasoning as they are, but my actual reasoning is sloppy… then I shouldn’t congratulate myself for giving precise info, because the info was not precise; I simply removed one source of imprecision, but ignored another.
Saying “you are annoying” feels like an extremely honest thing, and I may be motivated to stop there.
However, saying “sorry, I’m in a bad mood today; I think it’s likely that on a different day I would appreciate what you are trying to do, but today it doesn’t work this way, and it actually annoys me” is even more honest, and possibly less harmful to the listener.
A cynical explanation is that while attempting to be extremely honest, we refuse to censor the information that might hurt the listener… but we still censor the information that would hurt us. For example, the short version of “you are annoying” contains the information that may hurt my friend, but conceals the information about my own vulnerability.
Perhaps a good heuristic could be: Don’t hurt other people by your honesty, unless you are willing to hurt yourself as much (or 20 % more, to balance for your own biased perception) -- and even this only if they agreed to play by these rules. (Of course you are allowed to select your friends according to their ability and willingness to play by these rules. But sometimes you have to interact with other people, too.)