I aspire to a kind of honesty that’s similar to what’s described here. I thought maybe this post was going overboard, but then it kept including caveats that feel similar to the caveats and specifics I go for.
One thing I might add or rephrase:
I think doing a good job with honesty, and having it be actually helpful, includes having a bunch of related soft social skills.
Sometimes the truth hurts people (which might in turn hurt you). One attitude here is “whelp, then either I must not care as much about truth as I thought (because you aren’t willing to inflict or take on that hurt) or I’m just going to deal with a bunch of random costs for sticking with the truth”. But another attitude is “learn the goddamn communication skills to present important truths in a way that hurts less.”
(while you’re still gaining those skills, one solution is various flavors of meta-honesty, which you touch on here. i.e. be clear to people ‘hey, I won’t directly lie, and I will try to tell you useful, unbiased info, but I won’t always go out of my way to do so’. Another is to be like ‘nope, I’mma be deeply honest all the times even when I’m too clumsy to do it without causing harm’, which comes with upsides and downsides)
There’s soft skills in “communicating to others without hurting them”, (i.e. “tact”) and there are also soft skills for absorbing information that might have otherwise hurt you, without getting hurt. (i.e. “thick skin”). Both seem worth investing in, if you want a world with more honesty in it.
There’s soft skills in “communicating to others without hurting them”, (i.e. “tact”)
What about the situation in which:
One has highly religious relatives who are somewhat less cognitively functional that oneself
You wish you could help them have a map more closely coupled to reality
You are confident that you have a good chance of convincing them of reality, but not that the knowledge would actually be a net gain for them to have, since:
They are so invested in their beliefs that the realization of falsehood might do irreparable psychological damage
So there’s “being honest” and “trying to convince people of things you think are true”, and I think those are at least somewhat different projects. I feel like the first is more obviously good than the second.
I would first ask “what’s my goal” (and, doublecheck why it’s your goal and if you’re being honest with yourself). Like, “I want to be able to say my true thoughts out loud and have an honest open relationship with my relatives” is different from “i don’t want my relatives to believe false things” (the win-condition for the former is about you, the latter is about them). The latter is subtly different from “I want to have presented my best case to them, that they’ll actually listen to, but then let them make up their own mind.”
I’d also note there are additional soft skills you can gain like:
feeling safe/nonjudgmental to talk to
making it feel safe for people to give up ideology (via living-through-example as someone who is happy without being religious)
I aspire to a kind of honesty that’s similar to what’s described here. I thought maybe this post was going overboard, but then it kept including caveats that feel similar to the caveats and specifics I go for.
One thing I might add or rephrase:
I think doing a good job with honesty, and having it be actually helpful, includes having a bunch of related soft social skills.
Sometimes the truth hurts people (which might in turn hurt you). One attitude here is “whelp, then either I must not care as much about truth as I thought (because you aren’t willing to inflict or take on that hurt) or I’m just going to deal with a bunch of random costs for sticking with the truth”. But another attitude is “learn the goddamn communication skills to present important truths in a way that hurts less.”
(while you’re still gaining those skills, one solution is various flavors of meta-honesty, which you touch on here. i.e. be clear to people ‘hey, I won’t directly lie, and I will try to tell you useful, unbiased info, but I won’t always go out of my way to do so’. Another is to be like ‘nope, I’mma be deeply honest all the times even when I’m too clumsy to do it without causing harm’, which comes with upsides and downsides)
There’s soft skills in “communicating to others without hurting them”, (i.e. “tact”) and there are also soft skills for absorbing information that might have otherwise hurt you, without getting hurt. (i.e. “thick skin”). Both seem worth investing in, if you want a world with more honesty in it.
What about the situation in which:
One has highly religious relatives who are somewhat less cognitively functional that oneself
You wish you could help them have a map more closely coupled to reality
You are confident that you have a good chance of convincing them of reality, but not that the knowledge would actually be a net gain for them to have, since:
They are so invested in their beliefs that the realization of falsehood might do irreparable psychological damage
So there’s “being honest” and “trying to convince people of things you think are true”, and I think those are at least somewhat different projects. I feel like the first is more obviously good than the second.
I would first ask “what’s my goal” (and, doublecheck why it’s your goal and if you’re being honest with yourself). Like, “I want to be able to say my true thoughts out loud and have an honest open relationship with my relatives” is different from “i don’t want my relatives to believe false things” (the win-condition for the former is about you, the latter is about them). The latter is subtly different from “I want to have presented my best case to them, that they’ll actually listen to, but then let them make up their own mind.”
I’d also note there are additional soft skills you can gain like:
feeling safe/nonjudgmental to talk to
making it feel safe for people to give up ideology (via living-through-example as someone who is happy without being religious)
helping people grieve/orient