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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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."

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.

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

Richard J. Needham

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.

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

(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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even when gently, thoughtfully delivered.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

  A: knock knock

  B: who's there?

  A: insensitive doctor

  B: insensitive doctor wh--

  A (interrupting): you have cancer.

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.

A lot of the time the modern world tells us that feelings are more important than objective reality. It's bullshit.

— The Dude

Sometimes you need to know/ understand that kind of to do the right thing… well.

IMHO science is about understanding well enough to make useful predictions.

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.

Corollary: it occasionally may regress one funeral at a time.

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.

You may need to present your information in a way that doesn't make the person defensive. Or you need to yell because someone is being an idiot and they need to stop immediately.

You want your words to have a specific result. Tailor your words to your audience in a way that won't harm trust or future conversations. Speak to people in a way where they will best listen.

- Some people want to be confrontational and make you stand your ground. Engage with that.

- Others can be touchy and defensive. They'll need a softer approach.

Now, you can't win with everyone. There comes a point when it's the other person's responsibility to listen in good faith. If they aren't going to do that, consider the people around you. How do you want them to see this conversation?

Or just walk away. There are only so many hills worth dying on. :)

Truth, is only valid within the model that it is defined in. True means something like, one thing being in accordance with some other thing according to some model. Example: 1=1 is true according to the rules of math.

There is always a context/model that describes what it means for something to be true, even if you can't see it. If two people seam to be disagreeing about something being true they are just miscommunicating and they are evaluating the things they think they are talking about in different ways.

With this as a background the original header of the article

> Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth?...

Is nonsense, it is a weak way of blaming once own insufficient communication skills on the receiver.

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.

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.

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