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.
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.