Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019) (opens in new tab)

My 2¢:

Don't tell someone they're wrong. You'll never convince them, even when you're right. It's not worth the ink (or the blood pressure).

Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).

Studies have shown that trying to convince people they're wrong with facts and/or truths will instead cement them in their beliefs harder than if you did nothing.

This was a hard learned lesson for me, and I still suck at it sometimes. Because, let's face it, arguing is a time honored form of entertainment.

>Even if my words are accurate, rational, and true, the way I deliver them may color that truth with an entirely different message.

A doctor can deliver bad news of a terminal diagnosis with seriousness and sympathy. Or they can just glibly say "Don't bother buying green bananas."

There’s a hack hidden in this message, one that I’ve built an entire career out of: learn to not take anything personally in a professional context unless you absolutely must. Several times in my career I have heard someone say, “stay away from so-and-so, he’s an asshole.” And every time, literally every time, I have gotten along with them famously. Why? Because I discovered that that I could use the message these individuals couldn’t deliver (because they did not take the advice of Agile Otter linked here) and take it to the right people, with the right tone and the right context, and get shit done. Shit that these people had been trying for months to quarters to get done.

This article reeks of weak sauce. Delivering truth in a "sensitive" manner is a sad testament to the frail sensibilities of modern society. If the unvarnished truth bothers you, that says more about your inadequacies than the person speaking it.

Hiding behind convoluted psychological constructs like "hyper-rationality" and "super-reasonability" is a coward's way to avoid hard truths and difficult conversations. The truth doesn't care about your feelings. It just _is_.

That said, while the truth may be insensitive, that doesn't give anyone license to be gratuitously cruel or dismissive. We are still responsible for our words and their impact. There is a difference between speaking an objective truth and using it as a cudgel. The truth can and should be delivered both accurately _and_ helpfully.

Rationality and empathy aren't mutually exclusive. The most effective truth-tellers understand how to leverage both. They speak hard truths but do so with compassion and care for the listener. They aim to educate and enlighten, not bludgeon and belittle.

In the end, it's not about "handling the truth" but about delivering it in a way that inspires growth rather than induces trauma. The truth may be insensitive but we don't have to be. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, as the saying goes. Too much sugar rots the teeth but too much bitterness poisons the soul. A balanced approach is needed.

This reminds me of:

“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”

Richard J. Needham

Two things -

1. science is the search for being right. It has brought us untold riches and wealth (and weapons). But getting humans to accept the provable facts is really really hard and usually progress is made a funeral at a time.

2. Most people who think they are right are not using scientific rigour but their own instincts and are usually full of hot air - see any middle manager for examples

So yes, you are right - ring right is the most important thing. We should bend ourselves to the correct truth.

however

It's almost impossible that the thing you are arguing about today actually has a right answer that you can prove to even a neutral outsiders standards.

While it is the intelligent to recognize that humans are mostly irrational and can't handle truth, and that you will have better results by working around their defensive instincts - it is still people's responsibility to try to think rationally.

The example of the truck sign is a false equivalence. It would be better if the author said the "Careful, dangerous dog" sign or "electric fence" or "radioactive". If you think of humans as equals, you must also recognize that half of the responsibility of communication lies with the listener. You can become an excellent communicator by taking 90% of responsibility, dancing around people's biases and getting around their defense systems. But that shouldn't be expected of you. If you are right, that should be enough if the listener is doing their part of the communication work. If you insist on irrationally touching an electric fence after being warned about it, that is absolutely not the communicator's fault.

Being mean is noise: It's something the listener has to cut through to get to the actual message, assuming there is one. The fact the noise is in the form of the listener's emotions doesn't really matter, assuming you want to communicate something to the listener beyond bad feelings.

(And, yes, there are definitely people who only really want to communicate bad feelings. Some people have a firehose of hatred they periodically direct at specific targets. Occasionally, they dress it up in language that sounds superficially reasonable and aligned with mainstream political movements; at that point, we call them "Callout Culture Influencers" and they get weaponized.)

Part of communicating is saying things that can be heard. If someone is so emotional over how you deliver your message they can't process it, you have failed at delivering that message. Wasting your time on making someone else emotional isn't really all that rational, is it?

If it were possible to always deliver unpleasant truths kindly then of course we would prefer it. But in practice we have limited time and limited ability, so in reality the choice will often be between delivering an unpleasant truth bluntly and not delivering it at all.

Whenever you say something that a reasonable recipient would find upsetting, it means you've failed, in the same way that when you have to add an explanatory note to a translation, or a comment to your code, that's a failure. But it's still often the least bad way forward.

> If we have an objective, context-free, helpful truth then why can't it be offered in a way that respects and honors other people?

In my view, this is essentially the key sentence that the entire blog post builds up to and revolves around.

Honestly, I am fearful of this ideology. What I see, is an author who spends a very long time and many words to explain how, sometimes, truths are "too offensive" or "inconvenient", and therefore sometimes need to be "offered" differently. This is frankly just a problematic ideology.

On the other hand, I concede that a "fact" or "truth", in isolation, can also be problemaric. After all, we have all grown tired of the usual race and crime correlation debates that often devolve into "I'm just stating facts and statistics!" drudgery. However, it's my 2 cents that I think that the author has subscribed to and promotes a somewhat problematic censorship ideology.

Delivering "truth and facts" can be a real tough cookie. I personally find that it is the single hardest thing about my line of work, and I like to think I work on some very complex engineering thingamabobs!

If someone really is wrong, provably, and there needs to be proof (data), because, say they are working on building a bridge and are making important engineering decisions, then what is the author saying you do? Not be an asshole and tell the truth but be "nice and kind" about it? Or, are they saying you lie? Wholly or partly?

I have not met anyone who has this attitude who also happens to be a person of good breadth or depth of understanding of ANYTHING. This doesn't mean they don't exist, it's just that I can't begin to imagine what they'd be like because for all I care, they don't seem to exist. They don't have the breadth or depth of understanding of things not for the lack of trying either. It's just that they shut down everything that is not the "truth" to them and hence become uninteresting to anyone who has other ideas.

If humans weren't tribal, social animals and were instead Vulcan then yes the 'truth' probably would be sufficient.

Any information that challenges our deeply held beliefs can trigger a physical fight or flight adrenaline dump.

Even when gently, thoughtfully delivered.

Actual everyday scams its often impossible convince a person they are being scammed even as they are cashing in their savings to buy itunes giftcards for the IRS.

There's no point in being rude for the sake of being rude, but you can't sugarcoat a turd either. Sometimes you are wrong and it really is that simple, and trying to spare your feelings by hiding the truth will only hurt you in the long run.

There's a reason agreeableness and conscientiousness are different letters in OCEAN.

I'd argue that telling someone the truth does absolve you of responsibility, because if the truth upsets someone, what they're actually upset about is the reality of the universe. Or if it's a truth about them, then the reality about themselves. The truth-teller is just the messenger. Each person is responsible for how they deal with reality, including the parts they don't like.

I get what the article is saying. Given the reality of how people are, when you state the truth it has x effect on others, and the author is arguing that you are responsible for that effect. But I'd argue that when a truth upsets someone, even if you hadn't told it to them, eventually it would've upset them anyway, because the underlying reality that upsets them is still there. You aren't ultimately the cause of their upset.

I found this piece riddled with false assumptions.

>When people are acting hyper-rationally, they often expect to be respected and appreciated for having a superior argument, a more data-backed answer, a provable theory.

This makes no sense. If you were truly hyper-rational, you would understand that the vast majority of people are not hyper-rational (or I would argue, rational at all). Thus you would not expect to be respected and/or appreciated for having a superior argument, a more data-backed answer or a provable theory. Most people aren't interested in hearing "the truth", they are interested in hearing things that enforce their preferred narratives.

>"If the truth bothers you," one may say, "then you are overreacting or overly sensitive."

One may say that, and it might be true, but you would not make this assumption if you were hyper-rational, as there are many other possibilities aside from overreaction and oversensitivity. There is stupidity, mood disorder, insanity, cognitive dissonance and mental disfunction of all kinds that explain being bothered by rational, true statements.

>If we have an objective, context-free, helpful truth then why can't it be offered in a way that respects and honors other people?

Because many objective, context-free truths are not "helpful" and certainly cannot be told without perceived disrespect and dishonor by people whose chosen narratives conflict with objective reality. For example, there are many objective, context-free truths that conflict directly with certain religious beliefs and dogmas. For someone who is devoutly religious, and holds their religious beliefs as absolutely true and unassailable, there is very often no way to offer any bit of conflicting objective reality that "respects and honors" them. The same goes for the "secular religion" common among many today (culture and politics). Devout believers are not interested in objective reality that doesn't jive with their preferred narratives. As someone who is hyper-rational, all you can do when it comes to these people is either utter your objective, context-free truth without regard to how offended they will get, or just shake your head and move on (the latter is often the better strategy).

I've more often seen cruelty paired with a willingness to shrug off reason the moment it becomes inconvenient.

Without enlightenment values, disagreements almost always degenerate into power struggles.

For starters a lot of confusion arises when people don't distinguish between truths and facts, the article itself is guilty of this. Facts are empirical, usually simple, self-revealing observations about the world. Truths are subjective and always hold an element of belief. You can believe something to be true, you can't be believe something to be a fact. Truths are underpinned by a subjective stance towards an object, facts are not. There can be competing truths, there can't be competing facts. When it comes to facts, rationality or evidence matter a lot, when it comes to truths a lot of different values start to be important.

Take the example from the article

"It reminds me of the bumper stickers on trucks saying that vehicles must stay back at least 200 feet because the driver is not responsible for damage done to other vehicles by falling rocks. It's nonsense of course. The sign on the truck does not let the company off the hook."

Is it "of course" nonsense? How far one's responsibility on the road extends isn't a factual question. Sure, there's more or less defensible positions, but you're not discussing the weight, the speed, or the position of the truck, you're discussing what social behavior is tolerable or not, who is culpable in case of an accident.

Trying to resolve discussions about the truth or falsehood of beliefs as if they were questions of fact is very common today, because the latter is much easier, but it fundamentally just causes a lot of confusion.

I sometimes participate intentionally in social contexts where truthseeking is a top priority. I've noticed that while you occasionally get some overlap with the kind of people who like trying to win arguments in normal contexts by insisting that they are "objective", for the most part these people tend to be pretty bad at actual truthseeking too. Most of the time, they've simply arrived at a different dance to do to try to give themselves authority and status, a dance which works on a different subset of other humans who, like them, have leeway to decide what matters in context, and don't have enough information to arrive at a definitive "objective truth" regardless.

tl;dr The behavior described is more often just another form of puerile bullying than an honest and effective dedication to truthseeking

Engineers (mechanical, civil, etc.) could easily be arrogant being used to deal with perception or opinion independent data. What they say is not personal opinion or point of view, things are the way the things are, arguing with those has no use.

Yet it is - apart from perception from people being used to bend meaning with will hitting hard wall on engineers - just a side effect sneaking into other than natural science topics. Because context is important, if deling with people not things the set of objective facts are much much smaller, things become fluid and elusive. Pretty hard to get a graps at individual or small groups level systematically. Those engineers forming undeniable stand on human matters too misusing their abilities in areas unfit.

But even when hyperrealistic reasoning is used in its place on objective truth that is independent from individuals, on matters remaining so if people are taken out of the picture, the reality bending people will still consider them arrogant as not open to wrap the universe around will and personality. Branding them insensitive or such in contexts sensitivity and multitude of pespectives has no place.

The world and other people would pretty well exists and live on without the individual and this seems to be forgotten in today's modern societies where those unabale adapt to the world, unable controlling the one thing fully available for them to control and influece: themselves, try to influence and control everyone else, the feel and need of the self is unhealthily sacred in too many situations grinding away the group by the individualistic selfs.

Dealing with humans sensitivity is important as well as knowing our natural and human context and being able to process it, handle it. Handling the truth.

Everyone knows a "I just say it like it is" guy. Most times that guy is just an asshole, and doesn't get the hint that no one needs their wisdom.

What a load of nonsense. Not only that, this is dangerous and frequently weaponized.

People routinely use the idea something said was hurtful and that's way more important than the merits of what was said. This immediately changes the conversation. It's the basis of cry-bullying, for example.

Fragility, usually imagined but sometimes real, is so often weaponized to deflect from the merits.

I'm just gunna drop this here with no comment.

https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/fil...

I think this principal has great application to political discourse, and I struggle everyday to apply it.

In terms of politics, the fundamental question can be reframed to ask, "are you trying to change someone's mind or are you trying to argue and feel self-superior".

Almost all the time the “truth” is less important than the values and feelings of people involved. Humans are emotional beings first and foremost. I have met a few “super rational” people in my life and they were clearly driven by strong emotions. Emotions they were blind to or refused to acknowledge. They also typically didn’t understand that all rational value judgement is relative to and built on top of a foundation of axiomatic values that are different for different individuals. So your “rational” truth might not be my “rational” truth.

This shouldn't need to be said, but probably does:

It's important not to transform the advice for speakers to speak the truth in love, into advice for listeners that they can ignore any truth not spoken in love. Any excuse for ignoring truth reinforces the post-truth world that so many are falling into. Ignoring the truth for any reason is suicide.

So yes, when speaking the truth, you are responsible for doing what you can to help the listener understand. If not, the rest of us are free to point out both that you are handling the truth poorly, and that the listener is a fool for not handling it anyway.

It turns out the 'hyper-rationality' concept the author describes as having excessive faith in 'rational truth' has another meaning in game theory in the 'rational actor context', which oddly enough sort of inverts the meaning:

> "The assumption of rational behavior is based on the fact that each player seeks the maximum benefit, but in assumption of hyper-rational behavior, each player thinks about profit or loss of other actors in addition to his personal profit or loss and then will choose an action, which is desirable to him. One of the most important advantages of this concept emphasizes the importance of the outcomes of other actors in the game."

"The behavioral model and game theory" (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0265-2

Note this can have different effects depending on circumstances - e.g. one person could damage another's outcome by not being truthful with them about their chances of success with a particular strategy, which is comparable to the malicious giver of bad advice (if not as actively harmful). For some people in some situations, the goal is not so much that they win as that some other person loses (e.g. the academic feud scenario).

Another scenario would be to withhold truthful opinions that might benefit another out of fear of alienating them, particularly if that person has a history of retaliating against anyone who disagrees with them. This kind of hyper-rational thinking is 'well, if I criticize this, it might help the overall project but it would hurt me personally' (e.g. the corporate team player).

In the ideal situation, this kind of hyper-rationality leads to win-win outcomes, if one can find a way to play a game that benefits both oneself and others. Playing with that goal in mind is of course something of an ethical choice.

Maybe the behavior the author is describing could better be called 'rational fundamentalism'? It's not very healthy, being so sure that you've got the right answer, and also shuts down the playful spirit of inquiry that scientific progress has always relied upon.

There is a time and a place for all things.

In teaching, teaching the wrong thing is not merely suboptimal but actively evil. So therefore while it is best to be both right and helpful, if one must give way, then helpfulness must give way. Otherwise you are just being successful at being evil.

In comforting someone in a time of crisis, say, then obviously truth can sometimes give way (but that's not always the solution!). But one can try to organize one's life so that opportunities for teaching (say) come far more often, and then the super-rational approach can be beneficial.

this is conflating a lot of concepts. there's nothing wrong with being rational with regard to the development of your own beliefs, and there's nothing wrong with using rationality to determine the best way to achieve your goals. when considering whether to be blunt with someone, you should consider your goals. if telling them the bare truth is going to offend them, and that's not in your interest, it's not rational to do so. being rational doesn't mean acting like a truth-telling robot.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and mansplaining is a concept because what works for X person may not work for Y person no matter how hard they try. Two people doing the exact same thing can get different results because they are different people.

Science is the art of trying to suss out what is reliably true in physical reality and a lot of things are more art than science because context weighs so heavily on the detail of what's real or true or practical.

If you are working in a company with other people and have little say in matters, it is the reasonable choice to navigate people's emotions. Is it unfortunate? Maybe. But it is what it is, and the company well being is not your responsibility. Of course, your stance should change if things were to change and your position is different.

It seems to me that the super-reasonable choice is always the stand to take.

I wonder how high the correlation is between being on the autism spectrum and being super-reasonable (as defined by the article's author)

You can build a toxic environment out of kindness too. You do need to coach and mentor and guide people towards the truth (regardless of if you even have it).

I also just don't have time to make everyone's ignorance my problem. I wish I did, but I don't, I have a hard enough time dealing with my own ignorance. Sometimes all I can do is point out the problem.

Whenever I read these articles about being kinder in the truth, which I think people can be, I think there needs to be a follow up about how you should also be more accepting of the truth. One side should work to be less offensive and the other side to be less offended. It seems like the articles are always for one side and I’m not sure why that is.

The little diagram with five figures might have been better with 2^3 = 8 figures. One of these would be those that neglect truth for the sake of feelings, self and other. When social context is emphasized this is of course common behavior, a la the emperor’s new clothing.

It’s interesting that the three cases left out all involve neglecting truth.

Hyperrationality is like a videogame. It's only fun when you get totally immersed, forget it's a game and call it "reality".

But if you stay aware of the thousand arbitrary interpretations and devices supporting the facade, then the game isn't nearly as impressive or compelling. Then it's just a toy for kids.

Truth should be sufficient, but I agree we should also develop some tact whenever we are dealing with people who are not receptive to a more direct conversation. For me, as long as I don't feel that the person is trying to hurt me by "telling the truth", then I am pretty ok with that.

Manners and politeness goes a long way.

Honestly, people do not entertain useful fictions anymore. It's increasingly difficult to posit an idea without tripping over social landmines. Outside of speciality areas anyway.

Communicating meaning has never been harder, in normal life.

> Sometimes we put too much emphasis on being right and forget to be helpful

Usually people who say things like this are actually putting more emphasis on being "helpful" (or rather, to avoid giving offense) and forgetting to be right.

on occasion i give up trying to impose truth and instead give them enough rope to hang themselves with. encourage them instead. but it feels to me really bad form to say “i told u so” after shit hits the fan..so i avoid doing that.

Personal approach:

If you're right and you managed to convince exactly no one, you're wrong.

You have to convince others because it's much more rational, impactful, and less biased than just wanting to be right according one's own standards.

throughout vs. kindness

it takes 10x more effort to deliver painful truths tactfully

sometimes that’s worth it, sometimes it’s not

often times i choose to just keep my mouth shut but feel like i’m letting someone drowned

no winning here

“You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.” - The Dude

Assuming there is one “truth” is usually a mistake.

“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”

        — Richard J. Needham

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Unless they beg you.

If someone says something that is objectively not true, I genuinely want to know why? So asking questions led to know that person more. Which gives bigger perspective about way of thinking that person.

TLDR ask questions a person that you don't agree with.

Smart people attribute their success to their intellectual superior. When in reality of them have led a cuddled life, and their success is based on their social status, and not intellect. They act without questioning, defer to authority, and are rewarded for it by Society.

Think about how many Scientific truths are based on the reliability of carbon dating. What if it turns out its wrong.

How quickly would a scientist lose social status if they went around questioning evolution, the vaccine, or any myriad of socially accepted Truths.

I read some Krisnarmurti. We can put a thousand kinds of labels -truthfull ?- on it. And he is known as a person who constantly talks about seeking the truth. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti) One of the features that I pay attention to in his speeches is that he always puts reality in a high, inaccessible, -perhaps-mystical place, interacting with people like sitting together in parks and public places instead of communicating with people through publishing articles. And usually starting with "Let's think together" when putting forward an argument. Knowing something, authority - you can examine it if you're curious, he rejected all serious religious titles given to him and abolished the community that brought him to that position-, I come across many books "How to argue everyone", "How to win every argument". No, reality is not something that can be grasped only by the mind and reinforced with thoughts and arguments, life is a common field of cognition, develops through asking questions and getting to know oneself. As he mentioned a lot, all "isms" are like a kind of mental prison. (I'll try to find individual citations if desired). I found rationalism beautiful, despite the ism at the end, Although I didn't do much research on it, it caught my interest. On the other hand, the information I don't remember from where I know is: "Reality is something pure and clear as it is, rather than something that changes with arguments as a result of judgment." Mental arguments under reality and the prevailing assumptions in them only determine the perception of reality in the viewing community. I don't want to talk about absolute reality anyway, but I use it in a sentence. After that, saying something like "You can't accept the truth" to someone is like an unfortunate, ignorant attack on each side's own reality. The party that sees himself as the one who knows and tells the truth - there are all kinds of it, the one who dictates, the one who legislates, the one who makes religion - actually does not take the humble position required by science. may have distanced himself, put himself in a position he would not want. For the other side, the situation is already pathetic. In my own serious discussions, I note that let's not call it reality, please, but a common consensus area. The other party may break away from the common consensus and find itself in an unpleasant place as alienated and excluded. After that, it would be like living in a dungeon that creates isms, can make people do very bad things when necessary, and at least does not see the sun - real -. I think accepting the truth may be the way to go, with an open desire, a desire for heart, mind, self-knowledge, and actually accepting the truth as one whole. In my inner reality, in the mental world, what is called reality is consensus. And reality is experienced in a way that is modest, more or less scientific, by living it, being humble, rather than living in life without a serious will to exist and being presented to outsiders saying this is the truth. It's just experienced, knowing is a mental thing, and reality is beyond mere knowledge - yes, I seem to put the concept on a higher ground - it's a single, changeable whole, reinforced by life. In my experience, the situation is often painful because, let alone thinking together, consensus spaces - forums, political consensus spaces, academies, I don't even want to include religions - are like sunless, depressing places, even under the influence of the pathetic human ego. We can think about all these things together, I don't expect anyone to agree with me, to approve me with their mind, to be told that you are right - this is ego food, it can get me out of my way - but if you want, let's think about this together. Wouldn't this world we have created be a place to live if we did not have a common area of consensus and conditioning, if we had a constant fear, punishment and reward mechanism, and these methods are no longer obsolete? Imagine if I'm presenting all I've said by saying this is the truth, Will this belong to me, I will write my name under it, if I convince you with scientific evidence, mind games, interesting discussion methods, Ooh we will say, have we reached the truth, will I start to get fat in a position like a great sage and now be more confident - if it is possible to stay - will I start to lead people and will our ground be reality. I don't know, let's think together if you want, but I think at best we would be like a helpless, sunless forest. Without symbiosis - the forest - pure, direct communication, we can turn to humans who worship the gods of their own creation. I think that happiness, peace, joy, compassion, meaning meaning cannot exist in the realm of pure thought and logic.

(2019)

Bill Gates was known to be blunt with his feedback. He still is. But I can see his justification for it. He is knowledgeable and MSFT is a huge company, so directness is needed.

> It reminds me of the bumper stickers on trucks saying that vehicles must stay back at least 200 feet because the driver is not responsible for damage done to other vehicles by falling rocks. It's nonsense of course.

No, it isn't nonsense. Neither are the signs at a mechanic's shop telling you they're not responsible for lost or damaged items. What all these signs have in common is that they signify dangerous work.

A dump truck can't be unloaded without everything else out of the way, a car on a lift should be treated with caution, and of course a rational statement of fact cannot be sugarcoated or censored without affecting its truthfulness.

Particularly with software, it can absolutely be dangerous to not be as clear as possible what is occurring. Computers are machinery too and humans should respect that.

I wield the truth proudly, because it cut my hands when i picked it up, it slices them when i wield it and it hurts even more when i knight you with it. I actively search out discomfort, i embrace knowledge about my retardation and i attempt to work out solutions for them. I detest the hive, the cuddling together in falsehood and illusions, the disasters it has spawned time and time again, the justifications for evil it was, over and over.

I rather suffer in misery alone for the rest of my life, then to be happy with you together in some delusion.

Those that shirked the burden, have mined the path to the future and parked there misery in addition to my own upon my shoulders. And of course, if we want to redistribute what you parked on the rational as your beast of burden to carry, that is an outrage. It makes sense in a insane way. But then why stay in our society. Why not walk, to those crashing, looping societies that embrace your madness full time. Why eat the fruit we grow, but condemn the gardener? Oh, now you will come with it all, with majority, loudness, the resilience of the true insane. And then you will walk of the cliff, once every generation. Go on then. I will still be here.