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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3561 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 23, 2022

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https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26792/honesty0707/

It's not high science, but it's pretty much exactly that.

A few random thoughts on the article.

  • This Blanton guy is a fucking degenerate. Getting a blowjob from a dog???

  • I think the author is exceptionally lucky. None of his close relationships faltered; that is a miracle in my books.

  • This is probably somewhat mentally taxing. For various reasons, I would wager that most humans have a baseline "dishonesty" level, with significant variance, but a non-zero baseline nonetheless.

  • I actually do employ "radical honesty" in my personal life. At least a lot more than I used to. Sometimes saying exactly what you think is not that easy, if your thinking is fuzzy. You have to spend disproportionately more time explaining things when a white lie could have just sufficed. And I don't mean that the bottleneck is mutual agreement, the bottleneck is mutual understanding. (You would be surprised how little abstracting most people do.)

  • There is a Molochian aspect to it. One person doing it would probably just reap all the punishments and none of the rewards. If everyone did it, the aggregate rewards could be reaped.

  • This would work only if you are surrounded by high decouplers. For a certain class of people "you didn't add enough salt to the stew" is equivalent to "you are a dumb human being".

Yeah, I think to do this irl as the only guy playing the game requires a certain Charlie Manson energy that most humans lack. It's like the gag about the movie Yes Man recast with a woman just being a porn, a guy with nothing going for him who is honest all the time is just going to fail while a charismatic psycho who is radically honest gets a hot open marriage and a following.

It's fascinating, but I don't know how to get through some scenarios like that. I was just at xmas with a couple that everyone at the table knows is going through a divorce, but I've only heard it 2nd or 3rd hand. How the hell do you handle that one? Lies are grease to get us through the world.

At the same time, I'm of the opinion that noble lies are key to enjoying some things. Constant cynical honesty isn't helpful. Tell your woman she is beautiful, even when she's not at her peak, telling her she's ugly when she knows she is doesn't make you honest it just makes her sad.

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