Radical Honesty: I Think You’re Fat (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Radical Honesty: I Think You’re Fat (2007)

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41 pointswallflower13 comments

It's an interesting idea and an interesting story, but I'm frustrated by what the personal narrative approach does to it. And I'm frustrated that the author didn't take a class or otherwise push Blanton on some deeper questions than "did I do good?"

The standard social norm is "people think some amount, and say less than that". What's being changed is "say less", but an audience that doesn't know that might expect "think more". The comment to the nanny isn't just weird because it's inappropriate, it's unnerving because it raises the question of "if he's willing to say that, what must he be thinking?"

So the consequences seem very different between people who are prepped to expect radical honesty, and people who don't. The second group has far more reason to be disturbed than thin-skinned-ness - they think they're talking to someone who's operating way outside normal limits. I'd like to hear Blanton's take on that, though it might well be "screw em".

And, of course, I sort of get the sense that the author was an asshole about the whole thing. Radical honesty is radical, but honesty when things inconvenience you is just "being a jerk". And we get... honesty about sexual urges, honesty about wanting to flake on stories and events, honesty about anger at an editor. There's very little that's confessional here, and quite a lot that's demanding.

Radical honesty doesn't have to mean blurting out everything you are thinking. I can tell you the truth without having to explain every way I rationalize how I would process that sentence to you.

For example, if someone asks you "do you like this watch?" and you don't, it's just as truthful to say "no" as it is to say "no because that brand is tacky and it looks out of character for you." Now, if they continue to probe and ask "why," you can answer honestly. But if a simple "no" would suffice for the other party, I don't see how the additional information helps either party.

Doesn't that lead to a pretty big loophole that allows lies of omission?

After all, you could just as easily answer "do you like this watch?" with "I like the way its blue colour matches your eyes" or some other true, positive statement that doesn't answer the question as stated.

You could, but that would be missing the point of the whole honesty exercise by using an overly restrictive definition of lying.

In 'Lying', Sam Harris defines a lie as an intentional act of deception (or something like that).

That definition fits your suggested responses and I would call them lies.

Answering "No, but I think the colour matches your eyes", on the other hand, would not be deceptive, assuming you did believe that.

In my opinion, an omission would only constitute a lie if, and only if, the information omitted cannot be safely ignored as irrelevant. Because otherwise the answerer would be omitting information which he personally considers important.

Whenever a person is asked a question, they have at least some idea of both what's relevant to the inquirer (i.e. what's being asked, implicitly or not) as well as what they personally consider relevant (i.e. all that information which might relate to the question). And some thoughts can be safely omitted if they're uninformative.

For instance, it might occur to me when asked about the watch that it looks shitty and tacky. But that thought might occur to me less like an actual opinion and more like an intrusive thought. So it can be safely ignored as completely uninformative to the inquirer, because whatever value it could have to the inquirer later on would be only due to a "broken clock" effect. Because I'd be talking out of my ass.

Now, if there's a loophole, it's only as big as people make it out to be. Because the real difference between honest and dishonest people would remain. And that is, that the former are willing to express their own opinions when asked to do so, whereas the latter would attempt to manipulate their answers, either by omitting information they personally consider relevant or, as you suggest, by attempting to misdirect the inquirer by adding information which they know is irrelevant, but which doesn't appear as such the inquirer.

To an even further extent, being radically honest doesn't mean you have to comment on someone's watch without being prompted in the first place. Also some of the suggestions given were blatant attempts to make money off of seminars.

That being said I enjoyed the article and some of the concepts and I admired the author's willingness to try it out at the expense and risk of his own social circle.

I agree. The movie Liar Liar and the therapist Brad Blanton confuse not lying with saying the worst of the many things that dance through your mind. What about all the noble thoughts that also flashed through it? Blanton's technique is like confession but brazen.

So a guy named Blanton drinks Maker's Mark? That's messed up.

As someone who is socially awkward and struggles with the nuances of interpersonal communication, this has a certain appeal. I don't know if I could go whole hog the way the coach in the story does, but removing some of the annoying everyday white lies sounds nice.

Sam Harris wrote a good short book on this topic:

https://www.samharris.org/lying

This book changed my thinking about lying. One interesting hypothetical raised here is what to do or say when Nazis come to your door asking about the Jews hiding in the attic. To tell the whole truth without omission in such a situation has serious ethical implications.

Ronald A. Howard has quite an interesting take on this situation in a conversation with Harris in the appendix. They both talk about lying as self-defence:

> ... The next level is stealing: Needless to say, if I could steal a weapon from someone who was about to kill me, that would be fine. And if I couldn’t transform the situation as some more enlightened person might—into a real circumstance of teaching—then I would lie. I would use the minimum distortion necessary to get the problem to go away.

> At one end of the spectrum, you can be super-optimistic about people. But let’s face it, there are people who are up to no good in all kinds of ways. I’m not going to abet them in violating other people’s right to be left alone, and I’ll do whatever is necessary to avoid that.

I didn't read the book, but anything else than lying is intellectual cowardice (if you were brave enough to hide people).

It is like those people (I do not remember which religion it is) who will let their child die rather than have blood transfusion. No matter the philosophy, they do not love their children, maybe not even like them.

Same with priests who, for their own comfort, would not go to the police to tell about a pedophile who is about to go for a child, just because this was told under the secrecy of confession. Going to the police and therefore condamning oneself to hell would be the courageous thing to do, not to be "intelectually pure"

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