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Comment on Radical Honesty: I Think You're Fat (2007)parent

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Radical honesty isn't a presently effective means of communication. It's an attempt to reform the channel and move towards a new protocol. Radical honesty guarantees being misunderstood in the short run, because if you say something more honest than expected, you're communicating -- according to the prevailing protocol -- "I'm desperate" or "Fuck you" or both or something worse. You have to accept the cost of the miscommunication you cause by speaking your own niche language to people who only speak the prevailing language (and probably speak it more fluently than you do, simply because they specialize.)

Frankly, I don't see the point. Most people are pretty honest already, if you understand the language they speak. White lies are designed to be transparent; people who expect them to deceive don't get it, and people who are deceived by white lies deceive themselves. "You're not fat" can mean so many things depending on how you say it:

1. You're not fat.

2. You're worried about being fat? Really?

3. Why are you asking that when we're all twenty pounds heavier than you? What kind of bitch are you? Fish for your compliments somewhere else.

4. You're fat, but I don't want to hear about your problems.

5. A better question is, are you hot? And the answer is yes.

Et cetera. There's no point in being dissatisfied with the channel and the protocol because you can actually communicate whatever you want on it. I'd rather just get better at speaking and understanding the language that everybody else speaks. The only problem is that sometimes honesty is unexpected, and the protocol is not optimized for unexpected honesty. If you want to say something completely honest, you might have to spend some time setting it up to avoid it being interpereted as "Fuck you."

I think that part of the success of "Radical Honesty" is not directly about honesty, but about taking risks. So many people live a bland life because they cannot fathom "making waves". This is normal. However, "Radical Honesty" forces us to break these laws. I think life is meant for excitement, and this is one way of achieving it. (As Tim Ferriss and others have pointed out) Happiness and Sadness are two sides of the same coin. Its boredom that makes life miserable.

Yeah. When you've realized the phrase "shit settles on the bottom of the pool" sticks in your mind, alongside the phrase "my co-workers are settling" then you're on the path to misery.

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