Honesty and why people hate it

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From my own observations, NTs consider it to be emotionally abusive to be given nothing but truth without any sugar coating or lies. That really goes for objective fact or subjective opinion.

People (especially NTs) also tend to confuse objective fact for subjective opinion very often. When this happens they respond as though you were another NT intentionally insulting them.

For example, you might say to them "You lied about this ( you gave me incorrect information )", and the NT might say "Well, you're an as*hole", and then claim that you were emotionally abusive.

What happened:

You stated an objective fact
They stated a subjective opinion with intent to harm
They blamed you for intent to harm

Apparently they were upset that they had previously attempted a deception and got called out on it, which is a no-no in the NT world of identity. Perhaps the thought is that you should not notice this crafted inconsistency (lie), and that you have a social requirement to just go along with it without question. I'm not sure?

This has happened to me personally countless times.

To me, pointing out an inconsistency is not an opinion, or an attempt to do psychological harm.

If instead I said something like "I think you're ugly and should kill yourself", then that is absolutely a subjective opinion that seems to clearly intend to do psychological harm.
Opinion is not something that can be tested out in reality because it is completely imaginary.

The only way a statement like this can harm (in a one-on-one situation) is when it is understood by another human who is willing to experience the harm.

If I were an NT and crafted that statement about killing yourself, then it would be clear that I am playing the game of emotional manipulation with intent to harm, and so both retaliation and claims of emotional abuse are fair game.

If I were simply reading the statement from a book or repeating it as a quote, then no intent for emotional manipulation should be implied.

Personally, I think one of the biggest communication obstacles is that people too often treat testable statements as opinion, and further assume an intent.

I have gotten people mad at me for correcting them and telling me to quit arguing. People would get the wrong idea about me so I would correct it so they knew the right perception of me. Also my history teacher hated being corrected but I wasn't trying to correct her, I just wanted accurate information so I always asked. Her husband had her turn it into a game and she started to go through her facts before teaching. I never tied it down to honesty because honest always meant not lying, not stealing. It was when I was adult when I started to hear another definition of honesty and how people perceive it. I learned honesty isn't always the opposite of lying. So someone doesn't ask you about their breath so you never say anything about it. That isn't being honest but it's not lying. I also learned in my adult years honesty is a subjective word because it means different things to different people. To an NT, honesty may mean moral. They follow the law and don't steal and if they find someone's debit card, they give it to the nearest employee or they take it home with them and cut it up, they may inform the cashier they handed them back too much change when they see them do an error, they don't take something without paying for it, they don't try and change the prices on items to get it for cheaper, etc. but yet they will do white lies and spare peoples feelings and pretend they like a gift and all.

I have learned to not correct people so much even though I get tempted to sometimes.

On Star Trek Seven of Nine, Vulcans, and androids have all run into this issue where they shouldn't always be completely honest with normal humans.

Some species of humanoids particularly despised telepaths because could not deceive them as their social rules required them to do.

The bottom line is that our social rules require deceit of others.
This is part of a built-in, endless conflict & resolution cycle.
It ensures non-stop drama.

Last edited by olympiadis on 24 Jul 2014, 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

People love to live in a deluded world as it perceptively creates less problems for them. How else can people in first world countries wasting food and water not feel bad if they pretend all the developing don't exist let a lone the homeless they see on their commute to work?

Yes.
I've said this before but,
"You can make a fortune selling people lies, but you cannot give away reality."

Could you please give examples of what you mean by this 'inefficiency' and 'deliberate deception'?

How often do you encounter this type of behaviour in real life, and in what contexts? In my life, I very rarely have problems concerning these things, and even when it happens, the person displaying the behaviour has usually been heavily damaged in the past, or is someone that no-one would not get along with.



Can you please explain this with reference to differences with autistic individuals?

I see how it could make sense for some NT behaviours to be part of a 'hive-mind', but not in the way you originally stated it, unless you mean to say that we should dismiss all form of thought that does not concern only that which is entirely concrete.



I don't understand how the analogy is unique to NTs (forum posts here suggest autistics don't differ with regard to the subject). From my point of view, blatantly calling someone fat is completely different to stating that a wall is white. The wall possesses no immediate value to the aliens in the analogy, nor does it imply anything negative. Calling a person fat shows that you would point out the victim's failure to maintain good health, rather than to offer assistance or something similar.

If somebody experiences negative emotion (that could otherwise be avoided) purely as a result of your actions, why not reconsider the true value of what you perceive to be honesty in that situation? Whether NT or autistic, you should always aim to be considerate of others. Obviously you're free to be negative, but you can't fall back on 'honesty' as justification for negative response.



1. I don't think I'm sure what you mean by this. I suppose refer to the response to the above quote for how I might reply to this.

2. That would invalidate the analogy, as a person stating that someone is fat knows exactly what they're saying, while the person amongst the aliens would not.



The term 'insane' is typically used as a description for something significantly different from a norm, and that difference severely impacts quality of life in a negative manner.

You explicitly implied that all NTs are insane, because they would not value the honesty in directly calling a woman fat. An individual may be regarded as insane if they're amongst ghost believers and state that they believe otherwise, but that's only the opinions of the ghost believers, who lack credibility and number. It's not necessarily true to say that their opinion is a false one, but by clinical standards, it is.



If it's something the masses are 'taught to buy into', why is it that it only applies to NTs, and not autistic individuals also? The distinction between NT and autistic is something that from your posts alone, I find to be unexplored. To me it appears that you are making effort to find negatives, and applying them to NTs alone.

How does honesty play into this? Is honesty not strictly in the 'imagination'?



1. It is true that peer-pressure affects behaviour in the way you describe. However, it is not just 'real' consequences that are associated with actions. Autistic or NT, having multiple people oppose your point of view is likely to cause one to avoid expressing what was said, again in the future, in many circumstances. It would be enormously ignorant to dismiss others' points of view, and crush the integrity of personal opinions. It is advantageous to seek information (potential corrections) from others, as you're never going to always be correct.

2. Are humans actually capable of truly objective reasoning (assuming you believe thoughts are all conceptual)? Furthermore, how would honesty be regarded as objective reasoning?



1. How is it that words cannot harm in reality? How are they different from pain, from anything else?

Our brain is literally our 'reality'. To relate to the above sentence, have you heard of the saying 'Pain is all in the mind'?

2. I assure you most would agree that psychological manipulation is inappropriate (in the context that you mean it).


I'm too tired to response to other posts, so this last one is it for now:



Human social skills are far more complicated than those found in monkeys, and autistics can bully too. Posters on this forum have said that kids with Asperger's were ones that bullied them the most in their daily lives. I don't intend for that statement to provide the idea that people with AS are the biggest bullies, only that they can bully just as an NT may.

If my interpretation of your post is accurate, I assume you pin bullying and these 'monkey social skills' to NTs alone rather than all humans, as you have had many negative experiences with NTs (the common social definition, [NT = non-autistic] only). It's not the case, indicated by this forum and elsewhere.