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.
I am not Bill Gates. I am not Steve Jobs. I am not Wozniak. I am mercifully not Larry Ellison. I do not have [Google,Amazon,Facebook]'s problems. I do not have Google's customer base. I do not have Google's money. I have pretty normal problems, which require pretty normal to slightly extraordinary solutions. Anything these people are willing to discuss in public is an old solution to old problems. When I do have their problems, better solutions will likely exist, in the literature if not in reality.
I'm not a hero, or a prophet to save the world.
I'm just a child who - delusion, illusion, assumption, pick a word for me my master - believe "man can change the course of history"
Oh sorry master, I sense you said - this is God's work, you are a small, poor individual, do not be a hero -. Accept the truth you say.
But master, what if I'm a potential of progress, or a spark of a delusion.
Employees with too much self esteem are more expensive. 1990's Microsoft was run like Neverland, with all the cruel behaviors of a bunch of middle school children with no adult supervision. Whether he knew it or not, feeding their egos in a not-quite healthy way makes people easier to control for a useful period of time. We are the greatest, only we don't quite believe that's true so we have to be very, very loud about it.
That’s not inherent, and it’s not an excuse. If you’re not the sort of person that gets an inherent kick out of ‘the truth’, that doesn’t that there aren’t others that do.
It's not an either or, feelings are part of our reality. Ignoring them doesn't help you, neither does ignoring reality.
It seems people forget that it's not a binary scenario, you can absolutely respect someone else's time while also being honest with them.
Which is what the modern world is actually getting at, since historically we've ignored feelings far too much for the sake of submission to the status quo.
That depends on the person. I’ve known people who take any criticism at any time for any reason as an offense. There is no kind way (from their perspective) to convince such a person that their behavior is anything negative. Neutral at worst or it’s, “What do you have against me?”
Edit: To add a bit more context, some of these people are family members and close friends (who are now distant, unfortunately); I very much prefer being kind to such people.
Some people only receive straightforward truth that shouts in their face. Otherwise they find a hundred of excuses to slip through any kind argument. I agree that brutality should not be default - it’s simply statistically non-beneficial to your self. But avoiding it at all costs make you and/or your circle pay these costs eventually.
One of the human types may be called “emotional extremist”. They push borders until someone explodes in their face, and this is the feedback they use. Not reality or arguments. Cold controlled unkindness that presses them against the wall is much better in this case because otherwise someone will be driven crazy by them.
I don’t mean to justify or suggest being unkind as a default. In fact, I’ll take the opportunity to say to the person reading this (yes, you): endeavor to be as kind as possible as often as possible.
Instead, I recognize that some people cannot be kindly (again, from their perspective) criticized. There is no, “That was disrespectful,” which is taken at face value. When this person hears such a phrase being directed at them, they hear someone being unkind to them.
You can be honest and critical with someone and still be coming from a place of kindness. To be kind is not the same as being nice. Being kind is acting for the best interests of another person, which sometimes means being honest if it will help that person improve or gain a better perspective.
In addition, you can keep kindness as a guiding principle and still recognize the people who will take advantage of that kindness, and adjust yourself accordingly. You do not need to live to appease people who are never going to be appeased.
To such people, the classic "I statements" sometimes help.
Instead of saying "that was disrespectful" or "you are being disrespectful", you can say "I feel very disrespected by what you just said and it really hurt." This changes the statement from an accusation to a factual statement about your feelings. The other person can legitimately disagree about whether the statement was fundamentally disrespectful, but the other person cannot reasonably disagree about how you feel. It is then up to the other person to decide how to respond, whether to discount your feelings or adjust their words and behavior to be less disrespectful.
I’ve known a handful of people I would layman-diagnose as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder and this cannot ring more true. Absolutely, one should always be willing to see oneself in a critical light.
I see so much of that behavior everywhere I look nowadays. It does make me wonder how much of that is a projection but I doubt it’s only a projection.
This is the epitome of the sentiment: those interested in the pursuit of “hard truths” are only extrinsically motivated to find fault in others and gleefully “correct” another’s “faulty” self perception. Never intrinsically motivated to better themselves…
Tell me more about how everyone else in the “modern world” is the problem…
Why would you bother giving input when you don't care if or how it is received? Stream of consciousness oversharing isn't required for honesty. You don't have to say everything that comes into your head. Practice giving less of a fuck about everyone else and not evaluating them and telling them how great you are (which is what you achieve when you criticize someone for no reason).
Well, I wasn't there, but I'm more inclined to believe that he wasn't given the support and mentorship he needed to learn than that he was simply "bad" and incapable of growing into the role. Maybe your organization wasn't in a position to provide that and it was a bad match, it happens.
If you decide this dude isn't gunnuh make it and start cutting him off projects rather than getting him more support, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's pretty messed up to trash him that way.
If I'm being perfectly frank, this doesn't so much sound like a case where brutal honesty saved a project than a case where you lacked the tact and emotional intelligence to navigate a delicate situation (or perhaps were frazzled by a complex project with deadlines where you felt your colleague wasn't carrying their weight), and so you just took a sledge hammer to it.
That's such a brutal way to treat a colleague, it must have been devastating for their moral. Like, what was your relationship to this person like after that? Did they stay on? Were your team lead and manager really okay with how you handled that?
If you had cared about the consequences, it might have served everyone better (yourself included) if you’d found a constructive way to discuss concerns you’d had for months, so everyone involved would have a better chance of success. It’s possible you’d done that, but it sounds very much like you just left a situation in a far from ideal state until you chose to categorically write off a whole person who may not have even known there was an issue to address in the first place.
If full test coverage mattered to you so much, I'd expect at least a part of this anecdote to include some discussion of how it would be handled in light of prior concerns about test coverage up to that point. If I’d been in a leadership role in this scenario I’d probably postpone whatever next thing was on my daily agenda to sit down with you and convey that waiting months to raise known problems is exactly what I expect you not to do. I would indicate that it’s actively harmful to the success of whatever everyone is working on and to everyone working on it, and since you seem to appreciate bluntness I’d add that I expect it not to happen again.
> It was a frustrated outburst regarding something about which I had repeated (and more discretely) commented.
Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong.
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from your assessment of their person. Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient and faced a longer and harder climb to meet expectations (your own or external)? How much would it help you improve if you were designated not smart enough, full stop, no path forward?
> Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
> (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)
I’m sorry but here I have to call bullshit. You have more informed criteria as a dev about testing than a layperson about construction. You probably have enough familiarity with the system under test to do an adequate job testing it even if you’re not well versed in the broader role of dedicated testing. I’m not saying you were in a position to mentor the tester, or that it was your job to do so. But you were definitely in a position to make more constructive recommendations than blurting out that a person is inadequate.
If I might be more constructive myself, it sounds like you might benefit from becoming more familiar with the testing role you’re evaluating individual competency for. If nothing else it’ll make you a better dev. Maybe you and everyone else will be lucky and you’ll be a little more able to help your teammates succeed, and know how to fill in gaps so you can succeed too.
You're literally telling us about an incident where you were not proficient and don't even recognize the skills you would need to develop to have handled it better. The other version of this story is "yea I had this dev, did fine as a developer so long as you just babysat him through every interaction with someone else. Like, one time he just told this other engineering manager that he would have to do the testing on a project because this dev guy didn't know how to test stuff and he didn't think the assigned tester was any good at his job - and he'd just been sitting on this clusterfuck for months! I learned I had to just coax him into actually telling me about anything that wasn't literally written in an IDE. God, talk about exhausting. He didn't need a manager, he needed a social skills teacher."
And you're using this incident as an example of why social skills don't matter....
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
Of course there is man. Nobody is smart or dumb, they are just curious or incurious. You could have pointed out what was lacking in their knowledge base, pointed to documentation, pointed to inadequacies in the process etc. Just shouting at someone's face that they are good enough was the worst way to tell this truth.
An emotional response is part of the consequences. That’s the objective reality that everyone else knows. Either you do know and are kidding yourself, or you don’t know and people have worked around you or sidelined you, or maaaaaaybe you’re that one brilliant jerk everyone believes themselves to be.
In this example you’re basically just dodging the question, because talking to someone is different than talking about them to someone else. I can’t tell if you genuinely don’t understand this.
Everything in this thread converges on generalizations and platitudes.
I've lived long enough to have learned to present feedback to others diplomatically and inasmuch as possible kindly.
But when it comes to me, dear Lorde, just get to a constructive point quickly and directly. Takes me a while to coach my mentors :) but life is easier for all once they believe me.
The point being, there's all sorts, including those who genuinely want "hard truths" without looking to only correct others.
Yes, there's a hell of a lot of objective reality that these just-the-facts hardbitten-realist people are usually either unaware of or deliberately denying. This frequently results in suggestions that would only be useful for a spherical cow.
I really don’t think the problems in this world are caused by people having too much self esteem. Many times, the toxic behaviors we observe that seem to be caused by excessive self esteem are actually caused by insecurity.
I find this a bit perplexing. What value is there in telling people they aren't beautiful or smart? What objective sense of beauty and smartness are you trying to hold them to?
I can understand being bothered by things that are overly saccharine, I just don't understand the value proposition in providing a "counterpoint" or trying to check this in some way.
Well, I'm not interested in labeling you a cunt, but I think I see where the remark is coming from, and I know what it's like to say something on the internet and now there's just a firehouse of criticism with a lot of it not being in great faith, and I can sympathize with that.
I don't know how reflective the examples you gave are of things you actually say to people, but if you think you know that someone is objectively beautiful or smart and that you telling them that is some kind of bandaid to rip off for them - that is something to reflect on, these are textbook examples of socially constructed ideas. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. You're smart or beautiful when your community regards you that way, it's the consensus of tastemakers. It's nature as consensus can make it feel "real" or objective, but these are vague squishy concepts that change across time and across cultures. Even within a culture there's a huge diversity of preferences.
So some communities might prefer technical skills and call people smart when they're great programmers, some might value media criticism, it's not set in stone. Same goes for beauty, but I'd wager there's even less consensus there.
With that in mind, telling someone you don't find them beautiful is just placing a burden on them. It's telling them about how they fail to measure up to some measure in your mind, but the only outcome here is that either don't care or it bums them out. If you don't find them beautiful - that's a property of your eyes, not them, and you're entitled to feel that way but it's something to keep to yourself.
The thing you said in another comment about people being invariable reminded me of a comment I made recently:
> but if you think you know that someone is objectively beautiful or smart and that you telling them that is some kind of bandaid to rip off for them - that is something to reflect on, these are textbook examples of socially constructed ideas.
> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
Genuine beauty exists is a strong indicator of health and fertility, extremes of human state (such as the anorexic or obese forms) are not only not beautiful but are profoundly unhealthy.
(Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
> Genuine beauty exists is a strong indicator of health and fertility, extremes of human state (such as the anorexic or obese forms) are not only not beautiful but are profoundly unhealthy.
Plenty of people find extremely skinny people attractive - it's one of the reasons anorexia can be a problem, people feel compelled to go without food because they're trying to attain a body shape that isn't achievable while staying healthy in order to conform to a beauty standard. Plenty of people find larger people attractive, and at other times in history this was the dominant attitude.
This is just smuggling your preferences into a frame of objectivity with some spurious comparisons. You're ignoring the is-ought problem [1]. You can tell me a long stream of "is" claims ("this person is obese, this person is anorexic") but you can't actually come to a conclusion about beauty without making or implying an "ought" claim ("you ought to look a certain way"). The rhetorical game here is that, if you leave it implied as if it were obvious and required no justification, then you can pretend that it is an "is" claim instead of an "ought" claim in a trenchcoat. And if you pretend that you've made your argument using only "is" claims we can all agree on, then you can pass it off as objective. But it's mere sophistry, and once you understand how it works, it stops being convincing.
Even if we accepted your framing here, very few people are anorexic or obese or in another extreme state at a given time. So by your logic, surely the vast majority of people are beautiful, and we still don't need to go around policing who gets to feel beautiful.
> (Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
This is does not contradict any claim I made. I'm guessing you've conflated "socal construct" with "fictional," but that's not so. Voting and being elected are both social constructs, that doesn't mean Joe Biden isn't the president of the US. Being smart is real, as a concept, but reasonable people may disagree about the definition or about who is smart, and it's possible for none of them to be wrong.
Plenty of people find extremely skinny people attractive … Plenty of people find larger people attractive … This is just smuggling your preferences into a frame of objectivity with some spurious comparisons
I think you forget that everyone’s stats are on a bell curve, and I may be a very beautiful boy for my mom, but her column is of height 0.02% and columns 20..100% don’t think so. You can’t start going to A if you think you’re at A and you can’t become a version of yourself you want to be if you believe you’re already perfect-ish. Being nice is one thing, another thing is gaslighting someone into unrealistic expectations. Who’s [not] wrong doesn’t matter if you have hard time finding a match or a job.
What I'm telling you is that people are not video game characters, you don't have a charisma stat that determines how attractive you are, and you can't look at someone and score their charisma stat. Toxic positivity is real, giving people unrealistic expectations happens, but the underlying mechanism there is that the world is murky and the future is unknowable and if you tell someone they have control over their destiny you're making a promise you can't keep.
The mechanism is not that everyone has a stat block floating over their head that they can't see and you're lying to them about what that stat block says. It is not a gesture of "being cruel to be kind" to tell someone they aren't smart or beautiful, because you don't actually have that power to see into their destiny.
You can see into statistics, e.g. people who keep their posture are perceived as more confident and attractive. Removing uhm like parasitic words from like your speech also uhm helps in like conversations. You’re trying to boil down this argument to “the future is unknown” and that is true indeed. But there’s a lot of common sense we do know that works for or against you chance-wise.
What I'm telling you is that people are not video game characters
I never said they are. Unless you reject the fact that people have traits, characteristics, etc just tell how you’d like to call them. These concepts weren’t invented in RPGs, they are from natural language.
Except that people who feel good about themselves do much better off in their lives then people who are low on confidence? People who think they are ugly or worthless do worst regardless of what the actual state of situation is.
Let's put it that way. I've had the privilege to work with world class experts in three domains. (And no, I wasn't one in any of those domains, I just got really really lucky)
The people who truly knew what they were doing? Usually extremely kind. They don't need to prove their worth by being rude. They were always considerate of feelings, even when they had to tell you that you were really really bad (ask me how i know :)
None of them had to resort to "objective reality" justifications.
So, just based on that experience, I think we can all afford some kindness. It's not going to make us worse off.
A phrase I grew up with, and a lesson I’ve had to learn and relearn many times over, is “you can be right until you’re blue in the face […]” The implied part, when it wasn’t explicit, was that being right doesn’t accomplish much if it involves being insufferable.
Objectively, if you’re hoping to persuade your audience by being an absolutely correct jerk, you’ll succeed. But only by eliminating your audience and having no one to persuade but yourself.
You don’t have to coddle people to treat them respectfully. And if you think you do, I invite you to consider that maybe you have more to learn on the topic.
Truth (and honesty) can be told with kindness. That's the counterpoint.
Screw this everyone should feel good about everything crap but please be kind. Say the things that need to be said, but remember not everything needs to be said. Being blunt is better than evading.
But kindness is not weakness. If the person you're talking to works well with brutal honesty, have at. You'll probably have a lot of fun. :)
The point is caring about the other person rather than treating them like a punching bag.
What I find with those people I have encountered is they’ve so focused on the scenario where they’re right that they miss why the situation came about, why things are the way they are.
Sometimes you need to know/ understand that kind of to do the right thing… well.
If your "honesty" never contains any positive message, well maybe it is not just others who are an issue. There is such a thing as a honest compliment. And if it is usually brutal or said in a way designed to elicit negative reaction, same applies.
I wouldn't find it funny because it isn't clear that what's being communicated is a joke as opposed to some obscure idiom that I don't know. I wouldn't buy green bananas because they taste terrible, so it would seem on the face, not very useful advice.
> I can't be the only one who thinks this delivery might be hilarious?
Of course, it is literaly a joke.
But think about the context. In reality people who are informed that they have only days to live are usually gravely ill. They are typically not joking around with their doctors at a cocktail bar, but are in considerable discomfort and pain. They also probably worried about their symptomps, their loved ones, and their financials. It is also probably not the first day they are being ill. Being sick makes one cranky, being deathly ill makes you even more so. The patient maybe haven’t slept well in days, possibly weeks. By the time a doctor is certain enough that a patient is about to die they have run a gammut of test. Very likely many of them quite invasive and unpleasant.
On top of that nobody goes to the doctor expecting to be told that they are about to die. People are optimistic. They think a few more tests, and the doctor will figure out what is wrong with them, they might need an operation, or some new medicine and things will improve.
So you are feeling the worst you ever felt, has been probed and poked for a while, you are in an uncertain situation. This whole disaster is going on since days, perhaps weeks. There is no respit. Maybe you can’t breath, or curled up in fetal position from pain, or your hearth is pumping like it is about to explode. You are scared. Are you still sure you would enjoy that joke?
What is even worse, what if the patient misunderstands? Hears the joke and thinks the doctor is just being funny. Will they feel like the rug was pulled from under them once they realise that, yes the doctor is just funny, but no they are going to die for real.
But there is more. It is not enough for the prognosis to be medicaly correct. The patient has to also believe it. There is so many reason to reject to believe a deadly prognosis. I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.
> I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.
Many physicians (and some other medical staff) seem to enjoy mocking dying (or dead) or seriously ill patients and treating them as the punch line of a joke, and do so routinely - but doing it directly to the patient in question is usually considered bad taste.
It's an ugly practice, and one that can certainly alienate patients and family members when they overhear it, but I've heard it defended as "gallows humor" and a coping mechanism. Compassion, it is argued, is an inappropriate luxury.
Sometimes intentionally disparaging and mocking notes or comments are written in charts as well, much to the dismay of any patients who discover them.
My brother was diagnosed with cancer. Almost died on the third chemo treatment so cannot finish the other five treatments. He would think the banana line is hilarious and greatly appreciate it. His wife? Not so much. It really depends on the person.
OK, I do have to share: after receiving news that the surgeon on my cancer treatment team wasn't willing to tackle my liver metastasis, I was talking to my primary oncologist about next steps, if any, and timelines. He told me I should feel free to buy a new pair of shoes, but maybe not a car. (I appreciated his humor - and he helped me find a new surgeon, and that was 6 years ago. And I did end up buying a car when I needed to after. Probably shoes too.)
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.
That's what happens in practice, but the idealized version of science (like if you properly apply the scientific method in your backyard with no outside influence) is an iterative process for getting closer to the truth. Or maybe closer to an accurate model of reality, since "truth" is a bit of a weird concept. Of course the end point ("truth") may be unreachable, and often we get stuck in local maxima until someone finds some radical new approach. But it strives to get closer to "truth".
It's... not? It's an iterative process to come to a deeper and more complete understanding of any subject, with the quality of the result being measured by how well predictions based on that understanding correspond to observation.
Science does not concern itself with "truth", it leaves that to the philosophers. Instead, it concerns itself with finding models and the (often vast) set(s) of preconditions that must hold before those models can be said to apply.
In fact, many branches of science know that they can't decide on truth, simply because of fundamental limits in what can be done by science, illustrated by things like Godel's incompleteness theorems, astrological event horizons, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc. etc. etc. It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't, and that reality is what science works within.
> It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't.
And that's just for external reality. Science can't penetrate subjective experience for reasons unrelated to incompleteness, event horizons, or uncertainty principles.
I've a strong opinion that folks tend to confuse the objective and subjective by misapplying preferences or experience as "is" in far too many circumstances and too many disagreements are people attempting to dominate the objective with their personal subjective. Language, rather than helping clarify, tends to muddy the waters in these cases too.
As part of a larger project that you touched on, I believe it's important to convey the bounds of science as an epistemological process. There are other epistemological frameworks to draw on that do cover these areas and likely new ones to discover or create. If you couldn't tell, I'm an epistemological pluralist.
In practice, some seek truth and others seek a useful story to tell and, conveniently enough, they can pursue the same scientific goals without having to agree on philosophy.
But this frame you've got where truth exists in some kind of metric space... it sounds like metaphysics to me.
1. Science absolutely has something to do with consensus, as a practical matter. Because humans are agents of "bounded rationality", and humans do the science. We have to defer to expertise not because it's the "spiritually ideal" thing to do or whatever, but because we have no choice.
2. Science is not about belief in the ignorance of experts-- on the contrary, expertise in science is all about having the skills and the knowledge to characterize and quantify uncertainty.
When somebody announces that a certain kind of particle exists and has certain properties... And they're equipped with all of these arguments, backed by experiment, which will help you come to the same conclusion. That's science, right?
The invitation to perform the experiment, replicate the result, and start using stories about things you can't see (e.g
. electrons) to explain the world around you, that's consensus building, because now you're using the same stories as everyone else who has followed the same process.
For best results we should be skeptical about any notion that those stories won't later be superceded by different ones (i.e. skeptical that they are true), but that's as much a belief in our own ignorance as it is in the belief in anyone else's. So where do the experts come in?
Science (to be more precise: "the natural sciences") is much more about developing useful models, discarding flawed models, and characterizing and quantifying uncertainty.
It's the closest thing you can possibly get to a "formal truth" about the real world.
Is it really though? To me science is more about asking questions and then figuring out how to answer them. Both right and wrong answers tell us something potentially new about the world around us.
I thought science is actually the search for wrong - the null hypothesis. And science seems to mostly progress by showing your predecessors and colleagues are incorrect. The laws of science are nothing like laws.
It's more about characterizing and quantifying uncertainty.
And the "null hypothesis" focus in introductory stats is hotly contested, both pedagogically and philosophically. It's not wrong per se, but it can be a bit misleading and it's arguably not the most elegant framework.
I think they meant "grow a big rubbery one," which is referring to the tumescence of the corpus spongiosum of a penis. Though I believe the comment to be facetious, and no sexual arousal was actually, or has actually been, achieved due to content of their original claim.
> 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.
To focus only on the liability instead of the danger is missing the point. This article does a lot of that.
If the sign seems obtuse it's because it addresses the danger by pointing out the liability. Yes it can seem condescending, but wouldn't you rather everyone notice the sign? The problem still lies squarely with those who do not heed warnings, not the sign.
>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.
I'm sure that included in the waiver you sign at the mechanics shop, its included that they are not responsible for lost or damaged items. The extra sign is just to let you know.
The sign on the back of the truck is nonsense because it has no basis in reality. You can't just slap a sticker on your truck and say 'laws don't apply to me'
You can't sign certain rights away. If you sign a contract saying the mechanic isn't responsible for broken or missing stuff and they use that as an excuse to steal, drive recklessly with the door open, not take their gloves off before smearing oil on the upholstery, ..., they can and will be held liable if there's a modicum of evidence.
The law (at least in my state) holds the truck driver responsible for what is called an unsecured load. Meaning if it is unable to be driven without stuff flying off it, it shouldn't be on the road. The signs have no legal significance.
Do I drive closely to dump trucks, though? Nope, I keep my distance. They might be responsible for the damage, but I don't want to deal with a broken windshield in the first place.
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 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.
But noticing that something else is self-contradictory gibberish is not.
Sometimes you can pull meaningful information out of a model, argument, or measurement, but sometimes there's nothing there. Then you have to decide whether and how you can get better results by calling it out or walking away and doing something else. Sometimes people learn from mistakes and/or ask for help and sometimes they don't.
“When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together”
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.
This comment sounds like copy-pasta so not sure if it's being posted in disagreement or in satire.
However if it is genuine, as someone who used to think this way I realize now it is falling for the same black and white worldview that you accuse the "insane" others of following.
Is your goal to convince others of the truth, or to simply feel smug about convincing yourself you know the truth? You are enjoying the idea of uncomfortable truths more than the actual discomfort of having to use empathy and mutual context to introduce someone else to a new or uncomfortable view.
Also you wouldn't actually like a world in which everyone was hyper-rational and had no illusions or falsehoods. It would be quite dull.
> Is your goal to convince others of the truth, or to simply feel smug about convincing yourself you know the truth?
My experience has been that for most people who know the truth and state it bluntly, they don't care about either. They don't want to convince and they don't want to feel smug. They just want the truth to be known so they can wipe their hands and conscience and just move on.
The world is not about status or victory for everyone, especially not these pesky people who always seem to be right about stuff! When you know better, there's nothing to prove or gain by bothering with any of that. Being right keeps things moving along. Smart people don't argue nor have to fight for what they have. They just effortlessly float through this world being right and avoiding ignorant people who love to throw tantrums; underappreciated.
I think we may be talking about different goals here. There is no effect in stating a "truth" that is not received and you don't enjoy stating. If they want the truth to be known, they need to make more effort for it to be communicated, not just heard or read. If there isn't even that desire, and it is purely for the sake of a pattern of sound passing through the air, what should be appreciated about that?
I am not talking about status or victory alone, I am also talking about moving things along and being effective in collaborative or social situations. As someone who used to believe (and still does to varying degrees) that they were one of those smart people floating through the world untouched, I had to learn the hard way why I was under-appreciated. Also considering how often my smart self has been wrong about things that at the time I was 100% certain I was right of, the floating through the world being right part begins to fall apart given enough time.
There is a space between throwing tantrums and being a self-absorbed dick, and that gray area is far more effective, moves things along faster, floats through the world being right better, and is far more appreciated than what the original comment and you are describing.
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
Yeah, it's fascinating how often I observe people saying "I'm just telling it like it is", but the range of judgements and subjectivity they are demonstrating is just blatant. Like.. nah, you're not seeking an objective truth, you're deciding which facets of "truth" you want to focus on and propagate/strengthen.
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.
Sounds like textbook pride. Not like, "My child is my pride and joy!"
But more along the lines of, "You're a prideful person with no room for any outside input that doesn't already align with what you've already latched onto, and in the face of evidence that should shake up your beliefs, you refuse it and insist upon yourself as being more correct than data, evidence, wisdom, etc."
The latter kind of pride is often underlying those who claim to be "telling it like it is," and it's more about them feeling morally or intellectually superior, than actually being right. Their "rightness" is usually contextually dependent at that.
That's just my 2 cents from seeing the pride in myself and in others. And having reality slap us in the face and refuse to bend to our version of it.
Agreed. I had trouble finishing the blog post without wanting to quit from arrogance overload. The “questions” at the end seem like they are for me, but not them, they’re above all that.
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.
Does "good enough" satisfy the definition of "Leveler" though? How can we objectively predict that "good enough" would still not cause offense?
I personally think not because I do not think "good enough" can be objectively predicted without testing it out on the other person -- "good enough" is subjective.
If "trying" is all that matters, then how hard are we supposed to try? I personally struggle with this as I find it very time consuming and stressful to even know when to stop trying. I have no objective measure to stop because I have incomplete knowledge and am just guessing.
Granted there are obvious and quick things to consider to avoid being "cruel or dismissive," but I had to learn about those things beforehand. Everytime I say something I will learn some more, but I will definitely not learn everything.
The OP also seems to be claiming that collaboration is the greatest ideal to strive for in every context. But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
(I'm not sure I understand you fully, because I don't know where the phrase 'good enough' came from in this context.)
In terms of gauging one's impact on others and calibrating one's expression—that's definitely a long, hard road for a lot of us. But just the insight that being right isn't sufficient already gets you a big chunk of the way.
This comes up with HN moderation because people frequently break the site rules and then justify it by saying "but it was a factual statement". I usually point out that there are infinitely many facts, and infinitely many ways to express a fact. These things don't select themselves—people choose them, very much for non-factual reasons, and different choices can have quite different effects.
Human communication is complicated; more than one dimension is involved, and to get it right requires navigating all of those dimensions—not just the "true vs. false" dimension. The latter is important, of course, but the relational dimension is as well. If you (I don't mean you personally!) blast someone with a truth in a way that they're not capable to hear, you actually give them an incentive to reject the truth even harder, and that hurts everybody.
> But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
I believe you that you care about those, but no one cares only about those. If I were you I would cultivate the skill of tracking my other motives as well. That isn't comfortable, but it eventually produces huge benefits in just the area you're asking about. Best of all, it doesn't require you to give up any of your passion for truth and reason. You just widen the frame to include more information. As you become more aware of that "more information" in yourself, you become more aware of others too, and this gives you more skill (and less stress!) in navigating those waters.
> I believe you that you care about those, but no one cares only about those. If I were you I would cultivate the skill of tracking my other motives as well. That isn't comfortable, but it eventually produces huge benefits in just the area you're asking about. Best of all, it doesn't require you to give up any of your passion for truth and reason. You just widen the frame to include more information. As you become more aware of that "more information" in yourself, you become more aware of others too, and this gives you more skill (and less stress!) in navigating those waters.
This implies, that some people prioritizing objectivity are not aware of their internal motives, and the perception of others, or rather not able to incorporate this effectively in their communication. In other words: it is their fault, made subconsciously, to deliver (bluntly?) a message that their counterpart are "not capable to hear". And it's something they could work on.
But have you considered, that this choice is made consciously? People can absolutely pick truthfulness, and stick to it, as a matter of principle. The delivery has by no means to be cruel, and not stating specific facts can be very tactful. But shying away from uncomfortable truths, and being incapable of hearing them, is first-and-foremost a problem at the receiving end (given they are delivered respectfully).
> first-and-foremost a problem at the receiving end (given they are delivered respectfully)
The problem is that respect has many layers. What the speaker considers respectful may not at all be experienced as respect by the listener.
I think we all need to work on both sides: we need to do a better job of listening to truth instead of rejecting it; and we also need to do a better job of calibrating how we express the truth so that our expression can have good effects rather than harmful ones.
In my experience, people who see themselves as deliverers of objective truth and see other people as deficient in truth-hearing capacity (I'd include myself in this group btw) do tend to have an oversimplified view of this, and yes, do tend to be unconscious of the effects they're producing, which they mostly ascribe to inadequacy in their audience.
Don't get me wrong—I'm not suggesting that anyone reduce their passion for truth. I'm saying it's one axis and there are other axes that are orthogonal to that one—for example the relational axis. Where you're located on those other axes also matters. If you occupy a point of high passion on the objectivity/truth axis and low awareness on the relational axis, it becomes easy to cause both others and oneself a lot of pain. You can think of the truth—especially uncomfortable truth—as a power tool. Wielding it skillfully is important.
The solution is to maintain one's high passion for objectivity and truth while at the same time taking up the work of advancing where one stands on the other axes.
The article seems to be anti-blunt truth. No room for bluntness.
But the comment by 19h ends with "effective truth-tellers...speak hard truths but do so with compassion". So they appear to be pro-blunt but with a sprinkle of sugar. I agree! Stay hard and sweet!
> The truth doesn't care about your feelings. It just _is_.
Yes, but the truth is also that there is a skeleton inside you that is wet at all points in time. The true question is how to wield truth — which truth to speak in which context and how to present it? Do you wield it as a weapon or as a guiding light?
Being "the truthful person" is a very strong position to be in within a world filled with people trying to selling each others down a river. It is also a more difficult position, because you have to have the reality to back your words up and you have to know a lot about what is actually happening (or admit you don't).
Someone speaking truth is not something people are used to, so if you care about the outcome of a conversation you definitly need to wonder how they could even trust your word first. You of course know how truthful you are, but how would the other know?
> 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.
The fundamental quesion of communication: do you care about the message you send, do you care about the message that will be received or do you just care about the outcome?
> 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.
No, the article is 100% right. First of all, it is not actually talking about people who are factually right. It is talking about people who hide behind supposed rationality while putting strong emotional load into how they are saying it. Second, in the past societies, saying true things or things in general could get you into duel. Southern gentleman could lie ... but gentleman could not accept other people saying he lies.
It is not that truth is insensitive on itself. It is that how you say it is part of the message people getting offended are frequently actually reading you exactly correctly.
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.
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.
1. Often "you can't handle the truth" is used for something that is... less than the truth. The speaker wants it to just be the truth, with no argument, but they're ignoring some very relevant issues/context/details/data. When that's pointed out, they say "you can't handle the truth". No, you (the one claiming this is "the truth") can't handle the complexity of reality, and are using this cliche to try to stop conversation that is threatening to make you deal with all the complexity of the real world. We're not actually upset (maybe a little annoyed at this person who won't listen accusing us of being unable to handle the truth). It's more you who are upset, and are either projecting that on us or pretending that it's us.
2. If you tell me the truth and you're a jerk about it, I may get offended by the truth, but I'm almost certain to get offended by you being a jerk. You are absolutely the cause of that part of us getting upset.
I don't think I disagree with point #1. What you're describing is just not stating the truth. I'm sure "you can't handle the truth" is wheeled out in all kinds of situations where the person saying it is the one who's wrong.
I'm refuting the narrower argument that is sometimes made that just because something is true, it doesn't give you the right to say it.
In regards to point #2, I agree that if I deliver the truth and include a side payload of being-a-jerk, certainly, I'd be responsible for that payload. But many people in many cases think that just stating the truth simply, plainly, no extra malice or attacks, just stating a disagreeable truth bluntly, is being a jerk. In those cases I think the upset really is just about the underlying unpleasant truth itself.
No. They can also be upset because you are bringing up negative things that make them sad/annoyed to think about, to which there is absolutely no benefit in thinking about.
Like spending a wedding reception saying to everyone "there are people starving to death right now". Is that true? Yes. Are people upset by that knowledge? Yes. Are they, completely separately, pissed off at you for being an asshole that decided everyone should think about starving people during the wedding reception? Yes, quite reasonably.
That feels like a bit of an edge case. I mean, I take your point that you can definitely have no social skills and run around interrupting people's conversations and going "hey, did you know that animals are tortured every day?" and that would be you being a jerk. But I'm not talking about that.
Am I crazy? I feel like what I'm describing is a near universal phenomenon and everyone knows what I'm referring to/has experienced this. I'm talking about how in general, people just don't like people who are "right all the time." People don't like criticism delivered bluntly even when it's correct, relevant and actionable. People don't want to hear things with implications that go against their moral values, or suggest that something they spent lots of time on was wasted, or reflect badly on themselves. There's that famous quote about how people don't want to hear things when their paycheck depends on them not hearing it. They don't like hearing those things even when they are true and directly related to them. I don't like hearing those things. I'm talking about those cases.
You’re looking for straightforward “shooting the messenger”. While it’s true that it can be straightforward deflection of negative feelings about the scenario to the person who made them aware of it, I think you’re still discounting that a lot of the time, the majority IMO, people shoot the messenger so that they stop getting messages. Stop telling me your colleague is stealing paperclips so I can pretend I don’t know. Stop reminding me I have homework to do because I’m trying to forget it.
OK, 3: You're telling the truth, with no jerkiness.
3a: Some truths you have to earn the right to tell. They're being a bad spouse? Nothing useful is going to come from a random stranger pointing that out, even if they're right. That kind of truth takes a close friend, telling them in the right situation, with the right amount of firmness and the right amount of gentleness. You have to build the bridge of the relationship before you can take that kind of freight over it.
3b: You're telling the truth, but they're a snowflake, and they're melting. That is totally not on you, but once you find that out about them, you have to realize that there is nothing you can usefully do. (At least, I don't know of any way where you can get them to actually listen, rather than just blowing it off because it offends them.)
> When people claim that they are just telling the truth and can't be blamed, it is likewise nonsense. We are always responsible for the words we speak and the actions we take. We're not let off the hook just because it's true.
It's not just about upsetting the other person, it's more about the end goal. If the end goal is to express superior knowledge, do strike down your hammer of truth.
But if the end goal is to enlighten the people around you, and let them enlighten you, then it matters how you package your truth. Sadly it's seems to be human nature that if you tell someone that their perspective of the universe is wrong and don't give them any leeway, there's a high chance of them just dismissing it because it would hurt them.
Now if you are more diplomatic with your self devised absolute thruths, you might find that the people on the receiving end are more willing to accept them.
This concept seems to be fully absent from politics these days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 294 ms ] threadI am not Bill Gates. I am not Steve Jobs. I am not Wozniak. I am mercifully not Larry Ellison. I do not have [Google,Amazon,Facebook]'s problems. I do not have Google's customer base. I do not have Google's money. I have pretty normal problems, which require pretty normal to slightly extraordinary solutions. Anything these people are willing to discuss in public is an old solution to old problems. When I do have their problems, better solutions will likely exist, in the literature if not in reality.
Most people who are blunt tend to use their rudeness to hide their inability to grasp the full context of the arguments being made.
They were Rupert Mannion, not Ted Lasso.
“People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.”
Richard J. Needham
A lot of the time the modern world tells us that feelings are more important than objective reality. It's bullshit.
It seems people forget that it's not a binary scenario, you can absolutely respect someone else's time while also being honest with them.
Which is what the modern world is actually getting at, since historically we've ignored feelings far too much for the sake of submission to the status quo.
And feelings are not opposed to objective reality, for that matter.
It's entirely possible to be clear, explicit, truthful, and kind.
That depends on the person. I’ve known people who take any criticism at any time for any reason as an offense. There is no kind way (from their perspective) to convince such a person that their behavior is anything negative. Neutral at worst or it’s, “What do you have against me?”
Edit: To add a bit more context, some of these people are family members and close friends (who are now distant, unfortunately); I very much prefer being kind to such people.
If you can communicate the truth with kindness and be heard, great. If not, move on.
In my experience, unkindness isn't any more effective than kindness in effecting change; it usually prompts defensiveness.
One of the human types may be called “emotional extremist”. They push borders until someone explodes in their face, and this is the feedback they use. Not reality or arguments. Cold controlled unkindness that presses them against the wall is much better in this case because otherwise someone will be driven crazy by them.
Instead, I recognize that some people cannot be kindly (again, from their perspective) criticized. There is no, “That was disrespectful,” which is taken at face value. When this person hears such a phrase being directed at them, they hear someone being unkind to them.
In addition, you can keep kindness as a guiding principle and still recognize the people who will take advantage of that kindness, and adjust yourself accordingly. You do not need to live to appease people who are never going to be appeased.
Instead of saying "that was disrespectful" or "you are being disrespectful", you can say "I feel very disrespected by what you just said and it really hurt." This changes the statement from an accusation to a factual statement about your feelings. The other person can legitimately disagree about whether the statement was fundamentally disrespectful, but the other person cannot reasonably disagree about how you feel. It is then up to the other person to decide how to respond, whether to discount your feelings or adjust their words and behavior to be less disrespectful.
I see so much of that behavior everywhere I look nowadays. It does make me wonder how much of that is a projection but I doubt it’s only a projection.
Tell me more about how everyone else in the “modern world” is the problem…
Because the point of the statement is in the consequences that result, not the emotional response elicited?
Here's an example, I once worked with an absolutely useless tester, the only tester on my team.
Hadn't picked up by month four on the sort of basic shit he should've had on day one.
And he never did.
I'd been implementing some rather complex features for the technical lead of one of the other teams, and the changes were almost ready to be built.
We had a meeting, with the team lead, my manager, the tester, and I told the team lead that he'd need to test the changes once they were in place.
"[The tester] will do that."
"No he won't, he's not good enough."
Full test coverage mattered more to me than some dude's feelings.
If you decide this dude isn't gunnuh make it and start cutting him off projects rather than getting him more support, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's pretty messed up to trash him that way.
If I'm being perfectly frank, this doesn't so much sound like a case where brutal honesty saved a project than a case where you lacked the tact and emotional intelligence to navigate a delicate situation (or perhaps were frazzled by a complex project with deadlines where you felt your colleague wasn't carrying their weight), and so you just took a sledge hammer to it.
That's such a brutal way to treat a colleague, it must have been devastating for their moral. Like, what was your relationship to this person like after that? Did they stay on? Were your team lead and manager really okay with how you handled that?
He would ask about something that I expected him to be able to figure out, I would answer. Then he ask the same question with different parameters.
Day after day, week after week, month after month.
So yeah, the truth fell out of my mouth. It's always harshest when it's actually true.
If full test coverage mattered to you so much, I'd expect at least a part of this anecdote to include some discussion of how it would be handled in light of prior concerns about test coverage up to that point. If I’d been in a leadership role in this scenario I’d probably postpone whatever next thing was on my daily agenda to sit down with you and convey that waiting months to raise known problems is exactly what I expect you not to do. I would indicate that it’s actively harmful to the success of whatever everyone is working on and to everyone working on it, and since you seem to appreciate bluntness I’d add that I expect it not to happen again.
And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
(Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)
Okay, I’ll grant that my first impression might’ve been wrong.
> And there was no constructive way to address the situation where someone simply is not smart enough to learn their required tasks.
I think maybe there’s something constructive in just separating your assessment of someone’s present skills from your assessment of their person. Have you never found yourself in a position where you didn’t know enough to be proficient and faced a longer and harder climb to meet expectations (your own or external)? How much would it help you improve if you were designated not smart enough, full stop, no path forward?
> Beyond that, just because I can recognise that testing is inadequate, does not mean that I can guide how to do it.
> (Just because I can point when a builder puts a hammer through the glass, does not mean that I can fix the window myself.)
I’m sorry but here I have to call bullshit. You have more informed criteria as a dev about testing than a layperson about construction. You probably have enough familiarity with the system under test to do an adequate job testing it even if you’re not well versed in the broader role of dedicated testing. I’m not saying you were in a position to mentor the tester, or that it was your job to do so. But you were definitely in a position to make more constructive recommendations than blurting out that a person is inadequate.
If I might be more constructive myself, it sounds like you might benefit from becoming more familiar with the testing role you’re evaluating individual competency for. If nothing else it’ll make you a better dev. Maybe you and everyone else will be lucky and you’ll be a little more able to help your teammates succeed, and know how to fill in gaps so you can succeed too.
I've never been in a position where I lacked the ability to develop the skills that I needed to be proficient.
If I were ever that inadequate on a team project, I would leave of my own volition.
And you're using this incident as an example of why social skills don't matter....
Of course there is man. Nobody is smart or dumb, they are just curious or incurious. You could have pointed out what was lacking in their knowledge base, pointed to documentation, pointed to inadequacies in the process etc. Just shouting at someone's face that they are good enough was the worst way to tell this truth.
In this example you’re basically just dodging the question, because talking to someone is different than talking about them to someone else. I can’t tell if you genuinely don’t understand this.
I've lived long enough to have learned to present feedback to others diplomatically and inasmuch as possible kindly.
But when it comes to me, dear Lorde, just get to a constructive point quickly and directly. Takes me a while to coach my mentors :) but life is easier for all once they believe me.
The point being, there's all sorts, including those who genuinely want "hard truths" without looking to only correct others.
For example, I remember reading "For people to change, first they have to feel accepted as they are".
This is some "objective reality" people should keep in mind when disclosing "objective reality".
"But my spouse/friend/child/coworker is <doing this stupid/misguided/unhealthy thing>!"
I can understand being bothered by things that are overly saccharine, I just don't understand the value proposition in providing a "counterpoint" or trying to check this in some way.
Or maybe I'm just a cunt.
I don't know how reflective the examples you gave are of things you actually say to people, but if you think you know that someone is objectively beautiful or smart and that you telling them that is some kind of bandaid to rip off for them - that is something to reflect on, these are textbook examples of socially constructed ideas. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. You're smart or beautiful when your community regards you that way, it's the consensus of tastemakers. It's nature as consensus can make it feel "real" or objective, but these are vague squishy concepts that change across time and across cultures. Even within a culture there's a huge diversity of preferences.
So some communities might prefer technical skills and call people smart when they're great programmers, some might value media criticism, it's not set in stone. Same goes for beauty, but I'd wager there's even less consensus there.
With that in mind, telling someone you don't find them beautiful is just placing a burden on them. It's telling them about how they fail to measure up to some measure in your mind, but the only outcome here is that either don't care or it bums them out. If you don't find them beautiful - that's a property of your eyes, not them, and you're entitled to feel that way but it's something to keep to yourself.
The thing you said in another comment about people being invariable reminded me of a comment I made recently:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35318596
> Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.
Genuine beauty exists is a strong indicator of health and fertility, extremes of human state (such as the anorexic or obese forms) are not only not beautiful but are profoundly unhealthy.
(Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
Plenty of people find extremely skinny people attractive - it's one of the reasons anorexia can be a problem, people feel compelled to go without food because they're trying to attain a body shape that isn't achievable while staying healthy in order to conform to a beauty standard. Plenty of people find larger people attractive, and at other times in history this was the dominant attitude.
This is just smuggling your preferences into a frame of objectivity with some spurious comparisons. You're ignoring the is-ought problem [1]. You can tell me a long stream of "is" claims ("this person is obese, this person is anorexic") but you can't actually come to a conclusion about beauty without making or implying an "ought" claim ("you ought to look a certain way"). The rhetorical game here is that, if you leave it implied as if it were obvious and required no justification, then you can pretend that it is an "is" claim instead of an "ought" claim in a trenchcoat. And if you pretend that you've made your argument using only "is" claims we can all agree on, then you can pass it off as objective. But it's mere sophistry, and once you understand how it works, it stops being convincing.
Even if we accepted your framing here, very few people are anorexic or obese or in another extreme state at a given time. So by your logic, surely the vast majority of people are beautiful, and we still don't need to go around policing who gets to feel beautiful.
> (Intelligence is a social construct, says a member of the only species intelligent enough to hold that notion.)
This is does not contradict any claim I made. I'm guessing you've conflated "socal construct" with "fictional," but that's not so. Voting and being elected are both social constructs, that doesn't mean Joe Biden isn't the president of the US. Being smart is real, as a concept, but reasonable people may disagree about the definition or about who is smart, and it's possible for none of them to be wrong.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
I think you forget that everyone’s stats are on a bell curve, and I may be a very beautiful boy for my mom, but her column is of height 0.02% and columns 20..100% don’t think so. You can’t start going to A if you think you’re at A and you can’t become a version of yourself you want to be if you believe you’re already perfect-ish. Being nice is one thing, another thing is gaslighting someone into unrealistic expectations. Who’s [not] wrong doesn’t matter if you have hard time finding a match or a job.
The mechanism is not that everyone has a stat block floating over their head that they can't see and you're lying to them about what that stat block says. It is not a gesture of "being cruel to be kind" to tell someone they aren't smart or beautiful, because you don't actually have that power to see into their destiny.
What I'm telling you is that people are not video game characters
I never said they are. Unless you reject the fact that people have traits, characteristics, etc just tell how you’d like to call them. These concepts weren’t invented in RPGs, they are from natural language.
The people who truly knew what they were doing? Usually extremely kind. They don't need to prove their worth by being rude. They were always considerate of feelings, even when they had to tell you that you were really really bad (ask me how i know :)
None of them had to resort to "objective reality" justifications.
So, just based on that experience, I think we can all afford some kindness. It's not going to make us worse off.
Objectively, if you’re hoping to persuade your audience by being an absolutely correct jerk, you’ll succeed. But only by eliminating your audience and having no one to persuade but yourself.
You don’t have to coddle people to treat them respectfully. And if you think you do, I invite you to consider that maybe you have more to learn on the topic.
Screw this everyone should feel good about everything crap but please be kind. Say the things that need to be said, but remember not everything needs to be said. Being blunt is better than evading.
But kindness is not weakness. If the person you're talking to works well with brutal honesty, have at. You'll probably have a lot of fun. :)
The point is caring about the other person rather than treating them like a punching bag.
Sometimes you need to know/ understand that kind of to do the right thing… well.
— The Dude
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."
I can't be the only one who thinks this delivery might be hilarious?
Of course, I respect and understand that not everybody would find it to be.
Of course, it is literaly a joke.
But think about the context. In reality people who are informed that they have only days to live are usually gravely ill. They are typically not joking around with their doctors at a cocktail bar, but are in considerable discomfort and pain. They also probably worried about their symptomps, their loved ones, and their financials. It is also probably not the first day they are being ill. Being sick makes one cranky, being deathly ill makes you even more so. The patient maybe haven’t slept well in days, possibly weeks. By the time a doctor is certain enough that a patient is about to die they have run a gammut of test. Very likely many of them quite invasive and unpleasant.
On top of that nobody goes to the doctor expecting to be told that they are about to die. People are optimistic. They think a few more tests, and the doctor will figure out what is wrong with them, they might need an operation, or some new medicine and things will improve.
So you are feeling the worst you ever felt, has been probed and poked for a while, you are in an uncertain situation. This whole disaster is going on since days, perhaps weeks. There is no respit. Maybe you can’t breath, or curled up in fetal position from pain, or your hearth is pumping like it is about to explode. You are scared. Are you still sure you would enjoy that joke?
What is even worse, what if the patient misunderstands? Hears the joke and thinks the doctor is just being funny. Will they feel like the rug was pulled from under them once they realise that, yes the doctor is just funny, but no they are going to die for real.
But there is more. It is not enough for the prognosis to be medicaly correct. The patient has to also believe it. There is so many reason to reject to believe a deadly prognosis. I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.
Many physicians (and some other medical staff) seem to enjoy mocking dying (or dead) or seriously ill patients and treating them as the punch line of a joke, and do so routinely - but doing it directly to the patient in question is usually considered bad taste.
It's an ugly practice, and one that can certainly alienate patients and family members when they overhear it, but I've heard it defended as "gallows humor" and a coping mechanism. Compassion, it is argued, is an inappropriate luxury.
Sometimes intentionally disparaging and mocking notes or comments are written in charts as well, much to the dismay of any patients who discover them.
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.
IMHO science is about understanding well enough to make useful predictions.
Science does not concern itself with "truth", it leaves that to the philosophers. Instead, it concerns itself with finding models and the (often vast) set(s) of preconditions that must hold before those models can be said to apply.
In fact, many branches of science know that they can't decide on truth, simply because of fundamental limits in what can be done by science, illustrated by things like Godel's incompleteness theorems, astrological event horizons, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, etc. etc. etc. It's not that we don't know whether we can find truth, it's that we know that we can't, and that reality is what science works within.
And that's just for external reality. Science can't penetrate subjective experience for reasons unrelated to incompleteness, event horizons, or uncertainty principles.
I've a strong opinion that folks tend to confuse the objective and subjective by misapplying preferences or experience as "is" in far too many circumstances and too many disagreements are people attempting to dominate the objective with their personal subjective. Language, rather than helping clarify, tends to muddy the waters in these cases too.
As part of a larger project that you touched on, I believe it's important to convey the bounds of science as an epistemological process. There are other epistemological frameworks to draw on that do cover these areas and likely new ones to discover or create. If you couldn't tell, I'm an epistemological pluralist.
But this frame you've got where truth exists in some kind of metric space... it sounds like metaphysics to me.
2. Science is not about belief in the ignorance of experts-- on the contrary, expertise in science is all about having the skills and the knowledge to characterize and quantify uncertainty.
When somebody announces that a certain kind of particle exists and has certain properties... And they're equipped with all of these arguments, backed by experiment, which will help you come to the same conclusion. That's science, right?
The invitation to perform the experiment, replicate the result, and start using stories about things you can't see (e.g . electrons) to explain the world around you, that's consensus building, because now you're using the same stories as everyone else who has followed the same process.
For best results we should be skeptical about any notion that those stories won't later be superceded by different ones (i.e. skeptical that they are true), but that's as much a belief in our own ignorance as it is in the belief in anyone else's. So where do the experts come in?
It's the closest thing you can possibly get to a "formal truth" about the real world.
there is no science in truth
riches and wealth signal progress on a relative plane
what of the absolute?
Is it really though? To me science is more about asking questions and then figuring out how to answer them. Both right and wrong answers tell us something potentially new about the world around us.
I thought science is actually the search for wrong - the null hypothesis. And science seems to mostly progress by showing your predecessors and colleagues are incorrect. The laws of science are nothing like laws.
It's more about characterizing and quantifying uncertainty.
And the "null hypothesis" focus in introductory stats is hotly contested, both pedagogically and philosophically. It's not wrong per se, but it can be a bit misleading and it's arguably not the most elegant framework.
Corollary: it occasionally may regress one funeral at a time.
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.
If you aren't tailgating those gravel trucks, you're already fine.
If the sign seems obtuse it's because it addresses the danger by pointing out the liability. Yes it can seem condescending, but wouldn't you rather everyone notice the sign? The problem still lies squarely with those who do not heed warnings, not the sign.
I'm sure that included in the waiver you sign at the mechanics shop, its included that they are not responsible for lost or damaged items. The extra sign is just to let you know.
The sign on the back of the truck is nonsense because it has no basis in reality. You can't just slap a sticker on your truck and say 'laws don't apply to me'
Do I drive closely to dump trucks, though? Nope, I keep my distance. They might be responsible for the damage, but I don't want to deal with a broken windshield in the first place.
(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?
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.
Sometimes you can pull meaningful information out of a model, argument, or measurement, but sometimes there's nothing there. Then you have to decide whether and how you can get better results by calling it out or walking away and doing something else. Sometimes people learn from mistakes and/or ask for help and sometimes they don't.
― Isaac Asimov
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.
However if it is genuine, as someone who used to think this way I realize now it is falling for the same black and white worldview that you accuse the "insane" others of following.
Is your goal to convince others of the truth, or to simply feel smug about convincing yourself you know the truth? You are enjoying the idea of uncomfortable truths more than the actual discomfort of having to use empathy and mutual context to introduce someone else to a new or uncomfortable view.
Also you wouldn't actually like a world in which everyone was hyper-rational and had no illusions or falsehoods. It would be quite dull.
My experience has been that for most people who know the truth and state it bluntly, they don't care about either. They don't want to convince and they don't want to feel smug. They just want the truth to be known so they can wipe their hands and conscience and just move on.
The world is not about status or victory for everyone, especially not these pesky people who always seem to be right about stuff! When you know better, there's nothing to prove or gain by bothering with any of that. Being right keeps things moving along. Smart people don't argue nor have to fight for what they have. They just effortlessly float through this world being right and avoiding ignorant people who love to throw tantrums; underappreciated.
I am not talking about status or victory alone, I am also talking about moving things along and being effective in collaborative or social situations. As someone who used to believe (and still does to varying degrees) that they were one of those smart people floating through the world untouched, I had to learn the hard way why I was under-appreciated. Also considering how often my smart self has been wrong about things that at the time I was 100% certain I was right of, the floating through the world being right part begins to fall apart given enough time.
There is a space between throwing tantrums and being a self-absorbed dick, and that gray area is far more effective, moves things along faster, floats through the world being right better, and is far more appreciated than what the original comment and you are describing.
People who legitimately doubt their own beliefs have a hard time conjuring up much malice, and an impossible time conjuring it up in other people.
tl;dr The behavior described is more often just another form of puerile bullying than an honest and effective dedication to truthseeking
But more along the lines of, "You're a prideful person with no room for any outside input that doesn't already align with what you've already latched onto, and in the face of evidence that should shake up your beliefs, you refuse it and insist upon yourself as being more correct than data, evidence, wisdom, etc."
The latter kind of pride is often underlying those who claim to be "telling it like it is," and it's more about them feeling morally or intellectually superior, than actually being right. Their "rightness" is usually contextually dependent at that.
That's just my 2 cents from seeing the pride in myself and in others. And having reality slap us in the face and refuse to bend to our version of 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.
I personally think not because I do not think "good enough" can be objectively predicted without testing it out on the other person -- "good enough" is subjective.
If "trying" is all that matters, then how hard are we supposed to try? I personally struggle with this as I find it very time consuming and stressful to even know when to stop trying. I have no objective measure to stop because I have incomplete knowledge and am just guessing.
Granted there are obvious and quick things to consider to avoid being "cruel or dismissive," but I had to learn about those things beforehand. Everytime I say something I will learn some more, but I will definitely not learn everything.
The OP also seems to be claiming that collaboration is the greatest ideal to strive for in every context. But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
In terms of gauging one's impact on others and calibrating one's expression—that's definitely a long, hard road for a lot of us. But just the insight that being right isn't sufficient already gets you a big chunk of the way.
This comes up with HN moderation because people frequently break the site rules and then justify it by saying "but it was a factual statement". I usually point out that there are infinitely many facts, and infinitely many ways to express a fact. These things don't select themselves—people choose them, very much for non-factual reasons, and different choices can have quite different effects.
Human communication is complicated; more than one dimension is involved, and to get it right requires navigating all of those dimensions—not just the "true vs. false" dimension. The latter is important, of course, but the relational dimension is as well. If you (I don't mean you personally!) blast someone with a truth in a way that they're not capable to hear, you actually give them an incentive to reject the truth even harder, and that hurts everybody.
> But what if I have different priorities such as objectivity, truth, and reason?
I believe you that you care about those, but no one cares only about those. If I were you I would cultivate the skill of tracking my other motives as well. That isn't comfortable, but it eventually produces huge benefits in just the area you're asking about. Best of all, it doesn't require you to give up any of your passion for truth and reason. You just widen the frame to include more information. As you become more aware of that "more information" in yourself, you become more aware of others too, and this gives you more skill (and less stress!) in navigating those waters.
This implies, that some people prioritizing objectivity are not aware of their internal motives, and the perception of others, or rather not able to incorporate this effectively in their communication. In other words: it is their fault, made subconsciously, to deliver (bluntly?) a message that their counterpart are "not capable to hear". And it's something they could work on.
But have you considered, that this choice is made consciously? People can absolutely pick truthfulness, and stick to it, as a matter of principle. The delivery has by no means to be cruel, and not stating specific facts can be very tactful. But shying away from uncomfortable truths, and being incapable of hearing them, is first-and-foremost a problem at the receiving end (given they are delivered respectfully).
The problem is that respect has many layers. What the speaker considers respectful may not at all be experienced as respect by the listener.
I think we all need to work on both sides: we need to do a better job of listening to truth instead of rejecting it; and we also need to do a better job of calibrating how we express the truth so that our expression can have good effects rather than harmful ones.
In my experience, people who see themselves as deliverers of objective truth and see other people as deficient in truth-hearing capacity (I'd include myself in this group btw) do tend to have an oversimplified view of this, and yes, do tend to be unconscious of the effects they're producing, which they mostly ascribe to inadequacy in their audience.
Don't get me wrong—I'm not suggesting that anyone reduce their passion for truth. I'm saying it's one axis and there are other axes that are orthogonal to that one—for example the relational axis. Where you're located on those other axes also matters. If you occupy a point of high passion on the objectivity/truth axis and low awareness on the relational axis, it becomes easy to cause both others and oneself a lot of pain. You can think of the truth—especially uncomfortable truth—as a power tool. Wielding it skillfully is important.
The solution is to maintain one's high passion for objectivity and truth while at the same time taking up the work of advancing where one stands on the other axes.
The article seems to be anti-blunt truth. No room for bluntness.
But the comment by 19h ends with "effective truth-tellers...speak hard truths but do so with compassion". So they appear to be pro-blunt but with a sprinkle of sugar. I agree! Stay hard and sweet!
Agreed.
However, insisting that speaking the unvarnished truth is problem free speaks a lot about you as well.
As for the rest of your comment, I agree with dang - you are violently agreeing with the submission. It almost is as if ChatGPT wrote this.
Yes, but the truth is also that there is a skeleton inside you that is wet at all points in time. The true question is how to wield truth — which truth to speak in which context and how to present it? Do you wield it as a weapon or as a guiding light?
Being "the truthful person" is a very strong position to be in within a world filled with people trying to selling each others down a river. It is also a more difficult position, because you have to have the reality to back your words up and you have to know a lot about what is actually happening (or admit you don't).
Someone speaking truth is not something people are used to, so if you care about the outcome of a conversation you definitly need to wonder how they could even trust your word first. You of course know how truthful you are, but how would the other know?
> 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.
The fundamental quesion of communication: do you care about the message you send, do you care about the message that will be received or do you just care about the outcome?
That's the very definition of reality.
In other words:
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
No, the article is 100% right. First of all, it is not actually talking about people who are factually right. It is talking about people who hide behind supposed rationality while putting strong emotional load into how they are saying it. Second, in the past societies, saying true things or things in general could get you into duel. Southern gentleman could lie ... but gentleman could not accept other people saying he lies.
It is not that truth is insensitive on itself. It is that how you say it is part of the message people getting offended are frequently actually reading you exactly correctly.
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.
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.
2. If you tell me the truth and you're a jerk about it, I may get offended by the truth, but I'm almost certain to get offended by you being a jerk. You are absolutely the cause of that part of us getting upset.
I'm refuting the narrower argument that is sometimes made that just because something is true, it doesn't give you the right to say it.
In regards to point #2, I agree that if I deliver the truth and include a side payload of being-a-jerk, certainly, I'd be responsible for that payload. But many people in many cases think that just stating the truth simply, plainly, no extra malice or attacks, just stating a disagreeable truth bluntly, is being a jerk. In those cases I think the upset really is just about the underlying unpleasant truth itself.
Like spending a wedding reception saying to everyone "there are people starving to death right now". Is that true? Yes. Are people upset by that knowledge? Yes. Are they, completely separately, pissed off at you for being an asshole that decided everyone should think about starving people during the wedding reception? Yes, quite reasonably.
Am I crazy? I feel like what I'm describing is a near universal phenomenon and everyone knows what I'm referring to/has experienced this. I'm talking about how in general, people just don't like people who are "right all the time." People don't like criticism delivered bluntly even when it's correct, relevant and actionable. People don't want to hear things with implications that go against their moral values, or suggest that something they spent lots of time on was wasted, or reflect badly on themselves. There's that famous quote about how people don't want to hear things when their paycheck depends on them not hearing it. They don't like hearing those things even when they are true and directly related to them. I don't like hearing those things. I'm talking about those cases.
3a: Some truths you have to earn the right to tell. They're being a bad spouse? Nothing useful is going to come from a random stranger pointing that out, even if they're right. That kind of truth takes a close friend, telling them in the right situation, with the right amount of firmness and the right amount of gentleness. You have to build the bridge of the relationship before you can take that kind of freight over it.
3b: You're telling the truth, but they're a snowflake, and they're melting. That is totally not on you, but once you find that out about them, you have to realize that there is nothing you can usefully do. (At least, I don't know of any way where you can get them to actually listen, rather than just blowing it off because it offends them.)
But if the end goal is to enlighten the people around you, and let them enlighten you, then it matters how you package your truth. Sadly it's seems to be human nature that if you tell someone that their perspective of the universe is wrong and don't give them any leeway, there's a high chance of them just dismissing it because it would hurt them.
Now if you are more diplomatic with your self devised absolute thruths, you might find that the people on the receiving end are more willing to accept them.
This concept seems to be fully absent from politics these days.
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.
Without enlightenment values, disagreements almost always degenerate into power struggles.
There's a reason agreeableness and conscientiousness are different letters in OCEAN.
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.
It’s interesting that the three cases left out all involve neglecting truth.