Thread by @visakanv

When I was a kid growing up, I heard many different variants of “its important to be honest, because honesty is a virtue. good men are honest. you should strive to be a good man because we respect good men (but you shouldn’t *desire* to be respected, that’s tacky...)”

Here’s how I think I frame it now:

1. the way you think & talk about things with other people easily gets cross-contaminated with the way you think & talk about things with yourself

2. if you are clear & precise in your thinking, you will be able to move faster and do more

Honesty is not really for other people (though they’ll appreciate it). It’s primarily for yourself. It’s worth being honest with other people just for the benefit of keeping your thinking clear and sharp

I know it gets messier, but nobody ever really framed it like this for me

As with optimism, I feel like people who preached honesty at me didn’t fully believe what they were saying when they said it. They mostly said it because they felt obliged to do so

[cheekily] in a way they weren’t being entirely honest...

I’m not perfectly honest myself, and I doubt that I ever will be. (I Live In A Society, Man!)

But I do genuinely find that this frame incentivizes me to want to become more honest in principle, much more than vague handwavy moralizing ever did

If you really dig into it, ”true” honesty is almost an impossible ideal. Past a certain level of competence, it can really just become a matter of how well you pass. The bad guys in fairy tales are often conveniently bad at PR

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/712972281195077632?s=21

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/712972281195077632

And seen from another angle...

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1078195582672367616?s=21

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1078195582672367616