This post seems a little bit vague and I’m not sure I fully understand what it’s pointing at. So I will respond to the best of my understanding, but I might be a little off the mark?
I think the way you interact with a person should depend a lot on the particular person. The key question is “what common ground do you have?” Communicating across inferential distance is hard, and it’s more or less impossible if you don’t even know what the inferential distance is. You can make incremental progress in communicating ideas, but it requires introducing a new idea only when the ground for it was already prepared by previous ideas it depends on.
I think that this doesn’t contradict strong commitment to honesty. Honesty means you should not say falsehoods, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be fully transparent with everyone and it doesn’t mean you should voice every possible opinion at every possible situation.
The real challenge is what to do you when you’re speaking publicly. I think that, once again, the answer depends on who your target audience is. But of course you should take into account that people outside the intented target audience might also hear the same words. Here I feel that I might be out of my depth, since I was never good at politics, and I’m not ready to make the claim that you can be good at politics without lying. However, I do feel that this should be a more or less binary decision. If you decided to go into politics, this is one thing. But if you decided not to go into politics, then be honest. Maybe we need good people of both kinds? Politicians can acquire power and use it for good ends. However, only the Honest can be truly committed to seeking truth, and only the Honest can make alliances based on real trust.
I added a more cleanly delineated definition of Hufflepuff cynicism; hopefully that’ll help clarify. On my view, everything you’re saying is compatible with Hufflepuff cynicism. Someone who is not a Hufflepuff-cynic might respond that a “strong commitment to honesty” is not very meaningful if you lie by omission all the time, especially if it gives a false image about something important—not that you should always tell the whole truth even if it hurts someone’s feelings or gets you fired etc, but that you should sometimes be unwilling to compromize even when your words will not be received in a way which will increase the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs.
It sounds like I endorse this Hufflepuff cynicism myself. If honesty does not contradict HC then I don’t see why HC should cause you to lie to yourself. And I don’t think HC implies becoming complicit: I see it more as looking for opportunities to nudge things in the right direction. I also don’t necessarily agree with the rule of correcting exactly once. You might correct any number of times if you think hard enough about the form in which you deliver your criticism and improve over time. I certainly have to correct my son many times before ey learn anything, lol.
Regarding the notion that “you should sometimes be unwilling to compromize even when your words will not be received in a way which will increase the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs,” I think that precisely because your goal is increasing the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs, you should not always be blunt about it. In order to change someone’s beliefs you need to find a way which will cause em to listen.
If honesty does not contradict HC then I don’t see why HC should cause you to lie to yourself.
I agree in principle, but in practice, I am concerned. Dancing around taboo topics in your speech makes it easy to dance around them in your head, too.
And I don’t think HC implies becoming complicit: I see it more as looking for opportunities to nudge things in the right direction.
Again, I agree in principle, but am concerned in practice. Sometimes, nudging isn’t enough. HC can look an awful lot like cowardice / risk aversion.
I also don’t necessarily agree with the rule of correcting exactly once.
Perhaps this is more of a bug in my implementation of HC. :)
Regarding the notion that “you should sometimes be unwilling to compromize even when your words will not be received in a way which will increase the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs,”
It’s somewhat difficult for me to play the anti-HC side, but I suspect it would be something about “sometimes the accuracy of their beliefs isn’t all that’s at stake”.
This post seems a little bit vague and I’m not sure I fully understand what it’s pointing at. So I will respond to the best of my understanding, but I might be a little off the mark?
I think the way you interact with a person should depend a lot on the particular person. The key question is “what common ground do you have?” Communicating across inferential distance is hard, and it’s more or less impossible if you don’t even know what the inferential distance is. You can make incremental progress in communicating ideas, but it requires introducing a new idea only when the ground for it was already prepared by previous ideas it depends on.
I think that this doesn’t contradict strong commitment to honesty. Honesty means you should not say falsehoods, but it doesn’t mean that you have to be fully transparent with everyone and it doesn’t mean you should voice every possible opinion at every possible situation.
The real challenge is what to do you when you’re speaking publicly. I think that, once again, the answer depends on who your target audience is. But of course you should take into account that people outside the intented target audience might also hear the same words. Here I feel that I might be out of my depth, since I was never good at politics, and I’m not ready to make the claim that you can be good at politics without lying. However, I do feel that this should be a more or less binary decision. If you decided to go into politics, this is one thing. But if you decided not to go into politics, then be honest. Maybe we need good people of both kinds? Politicians can acquire power and use it for good ends. However, only the Honest can be truly committed to seeking truth, and only the Honest can make alliances based on real trust.
I added a more cleanly delineated definition of Hufflepuff cynicism; hopefully that’ll help clarify. On my view, everything you’re saying is compatible with Hufflepuff cynicism. Someone who is not a Hufflepuff-cynic might respond that a “strong commitment to honesty” is not very meaningful if you lie by omission all the time, especially if it gives a false image about something important—not that you should always tell the whole truth even if it hurts someone’s feelings or gets you fired etc, but that you should sometimes be unwilling to compromize even when your words will not be received in a way which will increase the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs.
Thank you Abram, that helps.
It sounds like I endorse this Hufflepuff cynicism myself. If honesty does not contradict HC then I don’t see why HC should cause you to lie to yourself. And I don’t think HC implies becoming complicit: I see it more as looking for opportunities to nudge things in the right direction. I also don’t necessarily agree with the rule of correcting exactly once. You might correct any number of times if you think hard enough about the form in which you deliver your criticism and improve over time. I certainly have to correct my son many times before ey learn anything, lol.
Regarding the notion that “you should sometimes be unwilling to compromize even when your words will not be received in a way which will increase the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs,” I think that precisely because your goal is increasing the accuracy of the other person’s beliefs, you should not always be blunt about it. In order to change someone’s beliefs you need to find a way which will cause em to listen.
I agree in principle, but in practice, I am concerned. Dancing around taboo topics in your speech makes it easy to dance around them in your head, too.
Again, I agree in principle, but am concerned in practice. Sometimes, nudging isn’t enough. HC can look an awful lot like cowardice / risk aversion.
Perhaps this is more of a bug in my implementation of HC. :)
It’s somewhat difficult for me to play the anti-HC side, but I suspect it would be something about “sometimes the accuracy of their beliefs isn’t all that’s at stake”.