(July 21, 2015 at 2:55 pm)Salacious B. Crumb Wrote:(July 21, 2015 at 2:09 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: As for honesty, I like gentle honesty, and dislike both white lies and brutal honesty. I have a friend who is brutally honest, and though I like her very much, I would find living with her wearing.
To give a stylized example to distinguish between white lies, gentle truth, and brutal truth:
White lie: That shirt looks fine with those trousers.
Gentle truth: I don't care for that shirt with those trousers; please wear a different combination.
Brutal truth: Are you fucking insane? That shirt with those trousers? That is the ugliest combination I have ever seen! What kind of dumb fuck are you? Have you no sense of taste at all?
If I get to choose, I will take gentle truth every time. And that is what I get from my wife, and what I give her as well.
lol. I guess you call brutal truth, what I call, being sort of an asshole, but I see what you mean. I’d say brutal truth, is just being as truthful as you can.
I don't want that. If my wife sincerely feels that the choice is the ugliest combination she has ever seen, and thinks that someone who would suggest such a combination must have no sense of taste at all, I don't want to hear it. I want her to tell me she does not care for it, and to ask me to wear something else. If I am resistant to what she says, then I want her to gently increase her opposition. I don't want brutal honesty all the time. But, I do want honesty all the time. I don't want a white lie.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
