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Comment by buss | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't figured it out already, this is a terrible, terrible idea. I tried a variant of this for about two years in college and it caused way more problems than it solved (actually, I don't think it solved any problems).

Despite what you may think about the righteousness of the Truth, people get offended. People get offended at even the slightest of things. Even if they're completely obvious.

We have social filters because they help people get along. The people around us don't want to know our real thoughts and opinions because they are often hurtful or awkward. It shouldn't matter, in the normal course of interaction, what I think about you, your clothes, how you talk, or what I think about anything. By filtering out some of my thoughts & opinions, I avoid pouring sand into the gears of interpersonal relationships.

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I also tried a variant of this for a while in college and I generally agree with you but for me it did have some significant benefits. It caused problems in many relationships and certainly produced a lot of drama but this had an interesting and positive impact on my social sphere as a whole. The people in my life who appreciated my honesty and could deal with it got pulled closer and took the place of the friends who would rather not put up with it. What ended up happening is that all of my close friendships were almost completely free of any pretenses and this greatly strengthened our relationships. We also felt less inhibited to discuss very personal things in a candid way so this brought us closer yet. Looking back on my life I consider these friendships to be unquestionably the strongest and most meaningful that I've ever had.

When you did your experiment did you not have at least some of your relationships grow stronger because of it?

Yes, some relationships grew stronger, but I don't have evidence to suggest that they grew stronger because of it, and not in spite of it.

Ha...an important nuance that gets overlooked in most hindsight evaluations.

I've lived my whole life with "too much honesty" and it works just as you say. People who can't deal with honesty don't want to be around me, and I end up surrounded by a few friends that I can actually trust, instead of a bunch of phonies. My relationships have almost no drama at all.

I'm not going to say there aren't downsides, though. It makes dealing with the rest of humanity difficult because strangers still get upset. As such, I've taken to just smiling at strangers and not talking about anything of substance at all. If they try to lead it there, I generally just grin and nod no matter the topic. If they push, I give them full honesty and they either scurry away, or don't.

It also caused problems in my previous job because when someone asked a question, I'd give an honest answer instead of hedging. That made me 'unapproachable' and I took a hit on my yearly review, every year. I even made a girl cry because I told her she was wrong. When she said that a manager told her that info, I told her the manager was wrong. And he was. 100% wrong. She cried. She was really good at her job, but just couldn't handle anything outside her world view... And managers were always right, to her.

And of course, romance is tougher... Last year, I finally found a girl that is open and honest like me, and we have mutual attraction, and it's working out quite well. Most of my previous relationships died because they were based on lies. I don't blame them for that, it's just a fact.

"Last year, I finally found a girl that is open and honest like me, and we have mutual attraction, and it's working out quite well"

How do you manage the fact that you might be attracted to other women? I believe it's normal, and it's also normal that men don't speak of that to their girlfriends or wives, or give "white lies".

(I'm not talking about cheating, open arrangements or anything). What the guy in the article did is what many would want to do

Physical attraction? I'm lucky there. It doesn't affect me like most men. I don't go freaking nuts about it. Hot women are like art pieces... Great to look at. My girl? Great to be with. Much better.

If she asked me if a girl was hot, I'd answer. (And have.) I don't go around hollering about how beautiful women are, though. Stating the obvious has never been a fault of mine.

If you haven't figured it out already, this is a terrible, terrible idea.

Only if it's done in the way the author does it in the article. Blurting out everything at once is too hard to distinguish from passive agressive smallness. Also, you'd best have done some work first to ensure you don't have some passive agression leaking out somewhere in the first place.

The right way to do this is to not say too much at first, but to also actively seek out those who value the truth. Sharing the truth like sharing intimacy -- it's best done consensually.

Look for those who will take substantive stands, and filter away those who are just saying things to curry favor or fit in. Welcome even those you might disagree with. Admit when the other has a point, and see what they do with that. People reveal whether they really care about the truth rather quickly. Those who do not care often reveal that unknowingly.

The only tact necessary is to withhold an opinion by claiming ignorance or unfamiliarity with a topic and to sincerely respect others. One can usually do both truthfully -- very few people are the world's best experts at a given thing, and few can claim to know all the details of another's situation. If you have the humility to understand this as the truth, then you can usually exercise tact without resorting to untruthfulness.

Maybe, but I had a bad hair cut for 3 years, and I wish someone had had the balls to tell me.

I think there's something to be said for telling people hurtful truths that can be quickly remedied. If broached appropriately and with a right-minded heart, I think a comment about your haircut would have been taken just fine - because of the temporarily and ability to instantly or quickly be solved, it's not as offensive, and actually, it ends up being quite helpful. Like having body odor in one moment or a huge stain on our shirt.

However, if that solution takes time to be alleviated, such as being grossly overweight, ugly or simply stupid, these kinds of "honest truths" will cause true harm because they will cause strong self-esteem hits that will linger over time. I for one would be happy and want with these kind of "temporary hurtful truths" told to me. I would like to say I would be the same for the long-term ones, but I'm sure I would be truly hurt just the same.

Regarding 'grossly overweight' - every fat person knows s/he is fat. You're not telling them anything they don't know. And you're not going to give them an incentive to lose weight by doing so.

That's not even near true. Many people are completely oblivious about their weight. Though I highly doubt you will do anything but hurting them by telling them that they're fat.

As a fat person, I ask: how??

Seriously, the idea that I could have just not realised I'm fat baffles me.

Body image isn't always accurate. Surely you have heard of anorexia?

Clip from white chicks about that (opposite of a fat person thinking they are not, but similar principal I guess): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gy4xMgArmk (dressing room scene -- possibly NSFW)

Body dymorphia is a very real phenomenon, although it's commonly seen the other way around. As a formerly fat person, I have to say that I'd go long periods where I'd be willfully oblivious to my weight. The occasional hurtful comment and/or painfully bad photograph really did jar me into action.

True story:

I was out drinking one night many years ago right around the time mullet spotting became a meme. Several beers into the evening I spotted a college age kid walking into the bar sporting a classic example of the tennis mullet. Being a service minded individual (not to mention very drunk) I marched over to him and asked him if he was aware he had a mullet and directed him to http://www.mulletsgalore.com/ the next time he was near a computer. The kid looked at me like I was nuts but he wrote the URL down. Mission accomplished I went back to drinking with friends.

A month later at the same bar I was approached by a vaguely familiar dude with a sharp looking haircut. He introduced himself, thanked me profusely for telling him about mullets and bought me a round before joining up with the rest of his friends. Apparently the kid just hadn't heard of mullets yet and I'd done him a real service by bringing him up to speed on the subject.

Classic! You might have done him a service, but perhaps you've done those around him a disservice - now he bears no evidence of toolhood as obvious as a mullet!

If he took the stranger seriously, visited the website, acted on the well-meant and accurate advice, and months later remembers the stranger well enough to buy him a round - I'm going to say that that's pretty good evidence he is not a tool.

And you would be correct. He was a nice guy who had an unfortunate haircut.

I hate to glom onto just this example, but I've ever so gently suggested to a fellow who wishes to advance in his endeavors that maybe he might find it worth his while to pay more than $10 for a haircut. The response was a pretty miffed retelling of a time he paid $30 in San Diego, and it looked "just the same." (I wondered if it were possible he couldn't tell the difference between qualities of haircuts, being that his appearance suggested that.) The lesson I took from this is that people chose the haircut they have and they're likely happy with it - the alternative being that they don't care. Your differing tale intrigues me.

You can be completely open and honest and still be polite. It's a lot harder than just being a tactless dick, which is of course the default that everyone thinks of when they think of "complete honesty with no filter". It's the true mark of a nice person when they can be completely honest and still be nice.

Also, I might add this idea being terrible or not depends on the types of people you interact with. There are people in the world who value these sorts of communications, and if you do this long enough, eventually the ones who don't self-edit themselves out. You get called "asshole" and "weirdo" and "maniac" along the way, but years later, life is pretty grand.

I don't take it to this unnecessary extreme (there are better ways of putting most of the things he said and still being just as honest), but it really does work.

It might just be that people are so easily offended because they're not used to being offended.

That's interesting. Were the people most offended the ones you lied to most frequently?

Also, certainly, committing to telling the truth doesn't mean having to utter every thought that comes to mind and answer every question put to you.

Part of the exercise was to always respond truthfully. I didn't make any distinction between omitting truth and actively lying.

I never really lied to people in the first place, but I would offer standard niceties. Those counted as lying and were no longer said. It's hard to say who was most offended. I can say that the least offended typically were somewhat antisocial themselves; those who found social norms something to analyze, rather than to follow.

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