9 ms·

Humans are Liars

83 points by tckr 9y ago

chongli 9y ago
This piece is interesting but it misses the elephant in the room: Work is transactional at its heart. When somebody is your boss and you depend on them to pay your bills and feed your family then they are not your friend no matter how pleasant your interactions may be. This is why people work so hard to protect themselves. You ultimately can't ask people to be vulnerable and honest about their true opinions without some kind of consideration to offset the risk. This is why tenure is so coveted in academia.
- ianamartin 9y ago
  Agreed. Friendships happen after work. Either after hours or (more rarely) after you no longer work together. I've got a handful of close friends that I used to work with. Including a couple of former managers. But that friendship and trust didn't really start until after we parted ways. It works the other way too. I recruited one of those friends for my team at my last job. I've known this guy seems like forever. I was at his wedding 12 years ago and took care of his dog during his honeymoon. Threw his divorce party. Started a business with him. Let him stay with me when he was feeling down about the divorce. Celebrated his new wedding with him and play with their daughter while we watch football and eat pizza. We've loaned each other cash when we were having rough times. But when he walked in the door on my team a few months ago, nothing needed to be said. Total professionalism. Just people trying to solve problems. We hang out and be friends on our own time. And work is just work. But the risk is still there in non-tenured situations. There was a situation at the company we started together when things were not going super well. And he had to let me go. I wouldn't want to do that anymore than he did at the time, but if I had to for <reasons> it's a thing that could be done without destroying the friendship. I'm also hoping to go back to a company I used to work for with a manager I really liked. We've stayed friends since I worked there before, and I'm excited to go back for a number of reasons. But the bottom line is that once I sign that piece of paper that says "at will employee", I have to treat it the same as any other job that has no guarantees. And I can't rely on any past friendship with that person. Work is work. In a culture that awards tenure only to a certain select group of people, work is always--as you put it--transactional. Trust really doesn't enter the equation.
- alexanderdmitri 9y ago
  Honesty is all about the right level of abstraction. Knowing the difference between feeling you are right, being right, and the right way of conveying each of those things are all separate issues. If they seem intertwined what that really means is there are race conditions in the processing and it's going to lead to some static.
billsimms 9y ago
I was surprised by sections in "Lying" by Sam Harris where he wrote "Why don't we agree that you won't ask me that so I won't have to tell you the truth." A much more extreme position is Brad Blanton's "Practicing Radical Honesty" and other books by him. He admits in one of his books the huge personal cost he has seen people suffer when people tell everyone all the truth all the time, but he still thinks it is worth it.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Truth isn’t black and white and is based on your perception and knowledge. You can’t offer radical honesty as a solution if you hold information back. Radical truth tellers forget about the sin of omission, and happily lean back and watch others bang themselves.
vletrmx 9y ago
In several instances being honest has cost me socially. There doesn't seem to be a solution that doesn't ultimately result in rejection. Unless ofcourse you're willing to lie.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Being able to convey the various types of lies is an important part of social interaction. If you can't or won't people dislike you, because you are not giving them the answers they want.
- nordsieck 9y ago
  People pretty quickly learn whether or not "blameless retrospectives" are actually blameless. There are a number of examples of corporate culture that is enforced from the top down where being honest is rewarded. The most extreme is probably Bridgewater.
  - chongli 9y ago
    I have a friend who worked at Bridgewater. It sounded to me like a psychopathic cult. He didn't stay very long.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  That's what I said on the article comment. There's a medium reference of gray honesty. The people not wanting honesty are probably scared about some previous negative event that led them to hide some things. Society converged onto the idea of different degrees of honesty. Probably for a reason.
  - guest 9y ago
    Honesty (right or wrong) is black and white. It's the context versus standpoint that lets you decide what is good and bad in any given situation. Semantically correcting you: Society converged onto the idea that there is right and wrong in divulging different degrees of honesty.
- 9y ago
ourmandave 9y ago
There's always Ray Dalio's of Bridgewater school of Radical Transparency. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-the-leadership-strategy-behind-my-success.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-the-l... If you enjoy crying at your desk anyway.
- sowbug 9y ago
  Building on the idea of more transparency in the workplace than we're normally comfortable with, there's also Kim Scott's Radical Candor. The missing ingredient this book brings to the discussion is that transparency generally works only if the messenger also personally cares about the recipient. Without caring, the messenger (often the boss) is simply a jerk, regardless of the validity of the message. https://www.radicalcandor.com https://www.radicalcandor.com
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    She was on the board for my last company and I was so sick of hearing about "radical candor". Almost everyone had a copy on their desk.
sulam 9y ago
> It should be free of incentives that promote individualized results I love to complain about sales people, but good luck getting the really good ones to work at a company like this without the usual compensation structure.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
I suspect on some level, Scott Adams likes the idea that all humans are “dirty, rotten liars” because it eases his fear that he might be more of a liar than some of his adversaries.
- emerged 9y ago
  The nice thing about this sort of accusation of projection is that you can use it literally any time you want to terminate a conversation! For example, I suspect that your suspecting that Scott Adams is projecting is projection on your part. Checkmate! I'm half joking, btw. So no offense intended.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  haha, Scott Adams cracks me up. Adams blogged about persuasions and writing techniques for years. I learned a lot from reading those posts. Then he uses the same techniques to promote Trump. Which is fine. People can support whichever candidate. But Adams adamantly denied his support.
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    I think the idea that Scott Adams is 'promoting trump' isn't helpful on a number of levels. He is very, very perceptive about humans and their failings, and brilliant at lampooning corporate and bureaucratic group cultures and rat races. I've learnt a lot reading his articles about the way the current crop of republican politicians are operating. He is one of the few people making sense and understanding the zeitgeist of half the American people. I'm not a trump fan fwiw, you can take this more in the Sun Zu sense: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      >the zeitgeist of half the American people I'd like to point out that this is wildly overstated. ~59.7% of eligible voters voters cast a ballot in 2016.[0] Of those votes cast, Donald Trump received ~46.1% of those votes or 62,979,879 votes.[1] So Donald Trump represents at the least the zeitgeist of ~27.5% of eligible voters. It's hard to determine how he represents the zeitgeist of non-voting-eligible inhabitants of the US but when you compare his popular vote total to the total population of the country, or ~323,100,000 in 2016, one can claim with certainty that Trump represents the zeitgeist of at least ~19.5% of the country. I point this out because it is often said that Donald Trump represents half the country, likely because he was the candidate of one of the two major political parties in this country and 1/2 is 50%. However repeating this falsehood of Trump representing the beliefs of half the country lends legitimacy to Trump and his agenda that is unearned and provides cover to people who would like to believe that the beliefs they share with Donald Trump enjoy some sort of popularity that is more widespread than can be justified. The same is true of course for Hillary Clinton and those Americans that cast their ballot for her, though of course the breakdown would be very slightly larger in her favor given her winning of the popular vote by some ~3,000,000 votes. [0]http://www.electproject.org/2016g http://www.electproject.org/2016g [1]http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-popular-vote-final-count/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-...
Synaesthesia 9y ago
I think people are for the most part honest and good, I think it’s overlooked how much goodness is inherent to our nature.
jhiska 9y ago
Humans are liars; systems are dehumanizing. More precisely, humans are interested in preserving themselves, including their ego and social standing. One example of this is when we say "humans are liars" we are not thinking of ourselves, but projecting it to Others. And when I say "we" I'm distancing myself from the Others as well, because otherwise there would be negative focus on me. And when you read "I" you are being distanced from your own guilt, because I'm an Other to you. I don't benefit from calling myself a liar (which isn't always true, anyway, for anyone), and neither does anyone else profit from calling themselves liars. It's rational to preserve yourself given the circumstances. Should we change humanity or change the systems? Which side you consider the problem is political. >Transparency enables to uncover defects, if information and data is available without restriction, there is no use in lying about it or covering it up. This sounds like it should be true, but it's not. People can not accept certain revelations, and "increased transparency" about people's flaws just makes everyone dislike, hate or despise each other. This, too, is a human flaw.
ravenstine 9y ago
I recognized the fact that humans are the lying species a long time ago, and I've tried to counteract that in the workplace. I find opportunities where I can naturally push the boundary a bit, which isn't too hard for a young male with nothing to lose. I do it both for myself and to create room for others to rightfully express themselves and be able to get away with it. It works a little bit. People are still very protective of their position, but I'd like to think people on my team are a little more open about things than when I started. I don't have a way to measure that, though. I can say for sure that we're much more trust-based than when I joined. The truth is a funny thing, literally. I'm not a naturally funny person, and the jokes that I make are often one that only I seem to understand. But it's when I'm honest about things that I get the most laughs. I remember one time when the conversation I was having lead me to say "Some of Charles Manson's music is pretty good" to this one woman, and she laughed at that but I don't think she realized that I meant what I said.
Spooky23 9y ago
You can be honest with your spouse, priest and lawyer. Everyone else is a shade of grey.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  I'd remove spouse and priest from that list. The lawyer is the only one motivated to keep secrets because they have skin in the game.
pdkl95 9y ago
> Humans are Liars Lying may be common, but it isn't universal. I never understood why you would want to make a habit of having to waste memory and mental effort to remember the map of what lies have been told to which people. It's hard enough to remember one version of reality. Regarding social consequences: I'm not sure. I was already a socially awkward nerd, which makes makes it very hard to isolate any lying/not-lying consequences. Politely declining to answer when a lie is socially expected (or, when possible, finding a way to respond that doesn't require lying) has worked out reasonably well so far.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  > Politely declining to answer when a lie is socially expected (or, when possible, finding a way to respond that doesn't require lying) has worked out reasonably well so far. This is a really good alternative, when giving a completely frank answer would cause undesirable results.
- klibertp 9y ago
  > what lies have been told to which people In practice, this is not a problem. People who lie very much, in my experience, have a couple of strong narratives they build their lies on. Because they follow some vague set of rules (which is easier to remember, especially if you use them repeatedly), it's possible for them to re-invent the same lie for the same situation, every time. On top of that, they are prepared to cover any minor differences that can occur one way or another - mostly by diverting the attention of others to something else. As long as they stay consistent with their lies and manage to stay within the bounds of what others consider plausible, it's very hard to recognize their lies. It's even harder, in practice, because what we consider probable is greatly affected by the flow of conversation and what's happening around it, so with a proper preparation, it's possible to sell almost any bullshit to almost anyone. Well, that's the deep end of conmen and people who use lies - one way or another - for work. However, many people are able to lie easily and they are almost never challenged, at least if they don't exaggerate too much. Our brains are great at filling the holes in the narratives, which has both a good side - art - and dark side - lies.
- alexashka 9y ago
phkahler 9y ago
I may be guilty of some defensive tactics at times, but I don't lie. By lie I mean making statements that are false. I have rarely seen overt lies, but... In one case a PhD in my group claimed a certain level of system performance (which he could not meet) was mathematically impossible. Our boss could not refute it, but I quietly went back to the lab and achieved the goal. I filed a note about that man's integrity under my hat.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ianamartin 9y ago
I struggled with this a lot when I was younger and growing up in the South. I got really frustrated by things that just seemed so completely dishonest. Even the basic ritual greeting, "Hi. How are you?" is fundamentally dishonest. It's not a real question because the asker doesn't want an honest answer. And I felt imposed upon because the only socially acceptable response is almost always going to be a partially dishonest, "Great, how are you?" But as I've gotten older, I've decided that there is real value in these rituals, particularly in the workplace. And the value is that these kinds of interactions set a tone and a minimum viable behavior both in public and at work. Performing that little lie when you walk into work forces you to leave a certain amount of your personal life at the door. And this is a good thing. Environments I've worked in (notably, not in the South. NYC is awful about this) that do not adhere to these little ritualistic dishonesties empower the most negative people in the room to do the most damage to morale and productivity. Negativity is absolutely toxic and infectious. And I guarantee you, the person in the room who replies, "Oh, well, you know, it's not going so great right now. My kid is having problems at school, and I don't understand it. S/he is a great kid and really smart, but just isn't getting along well with other kids and not doing well on tests. I just don't get it." when you ask, "Hey, how's it going?" is going to be a problem down the line. (Or something like that. Doesn't have to literally be about a kid. Just anything that breaks the ritual.) It seems innocuous at first. Because we want to care about the people we work with. But this person is also going to gripe about the management and company leadership and bring up politics in ways that make people either angry or uncomfortable. And not in a healthy way in a 1:1 with the management. It will be at lunch, in small meetings, in code reviews, planning sessions, etc. On the coworker side, the idea of total honesty is not a good one. The people who either consciously refuse to engage in these rituals (or are just unaware of them) are guaranteed to cause problems for the entire team over time. If you bring it up as a talking point in, say a 1:1, the person will just say, "What's the problem? I'm just being honest. What do you want me to do? Lie?" I can't think of any reasonable way to create a policy around this. Teams just need to police themselves. When I hear someone invading the workplace with this kind of "honest" negativity, I have two responses depending on what's going on. If it's personal life stuff or politics, I'll offer to take them out for a bite to eat or a drink or something and listen to everything. If it's griping about management or leadership, I'll just say that they really need to have a conversation with <manager> about that because we really can't accomplish anything by brooding over it. And I'll do this even if I 100% agree with what the person is saying about management or politics. Because I guarantee you someone within a hundred feet of us doesn't agree about it. On the management side, I'd argue that total honesty is also a terrible idea. In my experience, the people in management roles who advocate for total honesty/total transparency come in two flavors: the first is the person who says he promotes these ideas but lies constantly anyway. The second is an absolute jackass who uses honesty as an excuse to act like a bag of dicks to people. It is possible do deliver hard criticisms without being a jerk. It just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of effort. Telling someone, "This sucks. You've got to stop being so terrible at your job." is not only lazy and asinine, but also completely unproductive. If someone on your team is performing that badly, it is your job to invest time in that person. Whether it's some coaching earlier in the dev process or extra time in code reviews or providing some educational material or designing a pip, that's your job. Being harshly critical because "honesty" is garbage. Grow up. And take the time to actually do your job. I don't need to say much about the "total honesty" liar category. They are either sociopaths or utterly incompetent (often both, but competent sociopaths are the worst) and can only get by through manipulating people and playing political games. The two best managers I've ever had as an individual contributor are what I would call transparently dishonest. Yes, sometimes they had to either be silent about a situation or whitewash certain organizational details, but they also let you know when that was happening. Their criticism was direct and effective, but not cruel. They focused on three key things: providing clearly defined tasks, guarding our time, and protecting the team from organizational politics. They were sometimes (often?) less than totally honest about what was going on, but we knew it and trusted them to know that it was okay to not know. My best manager as a manager is . . . well, I haven't had a good one yet. So I'll let you know when that happens. So, I'm going to go out and say it. A certain amount of dishonesty is a good thing. Social structures depend on it to function in a healthy and productive way. Go too far in the honesty direction, and you end up with a culture like NYC, which, as much as I like many things about the city here, it's only a barely functional society. Go too far on the dishonest side, and everyone is stilted and uncomfortable, and no one feels like they can say anything to anyone because we're all Stepford Wives at work, and it's all pretty on the outside but awful on the inside. Like in much of the South and Texas in particular. It's a balancing act. The Dilbert strip in the article is good because it's useful for us to remember that we are actually selfish and dishonest. But solving that isn't the real problem, and being totally unselfish and honest isn't the solution. That's like reading an article about how bad waterfall is and then moving to a 1-day sprint Agile system. (You laugh, but I've seen it. Seriously. 1-day sprints with 5 standups a day. Sprint planning in the morning, scrum coding sessions in the afternoon, retro just before end of day. You can guess what happened: every day every task ended up blocked. This went on for over a year. Literally nothing got done. But, wow, that team looked busy.) Apologies if I've offended anyone who is perfectly honest all the time, a coworker, a manager, an Agile practitioner, a Waterfall advocate, a sociopath, an incompetent, a New Yorker, a Texan, or even human. I'm just being . . . totally honest.
unabst 9y ago
You will find dishonesty between managers and workers. This is because workers try to get away with things, and managers are paid to catch them. You will find dishonesty between executives and shareholders. This is because executives are paid to lie about performance, and share holders exist to punish them. But this is just as systematic as it is human. Dishonesty is rarer among workers. Their gossip is honest, and hence cathartic. Dishonesty is also rarer among the executive team. For running a company can only be done with facts, and in almost all cases of corporate scams, the executives were all in on it. And even the whistle blower would have had to known the truth.
jimnotgym 9y ago
I went to work at a long serving SME that had a lot of staff with very long service and was given the job of moving some things forward. > It should be safe to be vulnerable The number one cause of stress for me is that management did not protect me enough. When I changed something, it would have some minor knock on impact that upset someone (sometimes someone very junior), who would go and see a director, who would go and see the MD and then I would get career threatening back room deals going on that I was not party to. If you are going to get someone to come and push the company forward at sub-boardroom level, make sure your directors are 100% committed to the changes.'You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs', make sure you are ready to accept broken eggs. Make sure when petty stuff is brought to senior people they divert it straight back to the project sponsor (or whoever). Make sure individual managers know this change is happening, and it is their job to allow it and make their staff happy with it. There is nothing worse than when you are in the heart of a technical change, than to find out you are in trouble with the boss because a secretary in another dept is sad that you changed their UI. Worse still when you are passed over for a promotion because the MD is concerned that you upset a few people, when it wasn't your job to manage the people side in the first place. Transparency is part of the answer, but in the situation I describe it actually becomes a matter of giving people far too much info, so they can't claim they were not consulted! This is counter-productive too. Senior managers need to take a very firm line with passive-aggressive behavior that is trying to stop change, or not start the change off to begin with.
- tckr 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, Jim!
tckr 9y ago
OP here, thanks for all the great comments and anecdotes. While nobody disagrees that this kind of culture would be worth striving for, the majority's opinion seems to be that it is impossible to achieve. But we all share the desire for living/working in an environment like this and this gives me hope! Anybody who start the discussion in their team or company about the way they interact, will quickly and most certainly find allies and can grow a team of change agents from that. Everyone culture was already mentioned and I would also recommend books like Unboss https://coderbyheart.com/unboss-a-compendium-for-future-organizations/ https://coderbyheart.com/unboss-a-compendium-for-future-orga... or Joy, Inc. https://coderbyheart.com/joy-inc/ https://coderbyheart.com/joy-inc/

83 points by tckr 9y ago

This piece is interesting but it misses the elephant in the room: Work is transactional at its heart. When somebody is your boss and you depend on them to pay your bills and feed your family then they are not your friend no matter how pleasant your interactions may be. This is why people work so hard to protect themselves. You ultimately can't ask people to be vulnerable and honest about their true opinions without some kind of consideration to offset the risk. This is why tenure is so coveted in academia.

ianamartin 9y ago
Agreed. Friendships happen after work. Either after hours or (more rarely) after you no longer work together. I've got a handful of close friends that I used to work with. Including a couple of former managers. But that friendship and trust didn't really start until after we parted ways. It works the other way too. I recruited one of those friends for my team at my last job. I've known this guy seems like forever. I was at his wedding 12 years ago and took care of his dog during his honeymoon. Threw his divorce party. Started a business with him. Let him stay with me when he was feeling down about the divorce. Celebrated his new wedding with him and play with their daughter while we watch football and eat pizza. We've loaned each other cash when we were having rough times. But when he walked in the door on my team a few months ago, nothing needed to be said. Total professionalism. Just people trying to solve problems. We hang out and be friends on our own time. And work is just work. But the risk is still there in non-tenured situations. There was a situation at the company we started together when things were not going super well. And he had to let me go. I wouldn't want to do that anymore than he did at the time, but if I had to for <reasons> it's a thing that could be done without destroying the friendship. I'm also hoping to go back to a company I used to work for with a manager I really liked. We've stayed friends since I worked there before, and I'm excited to go back for a number of reasons. But the bottom line is that once I sign that piece of paper that says "at will employee", I have to treat it the same as any other job that has no guarantees. And I can't rely on any past friendship with that person. Work is work. In a culture that awards tenure only to a certain select group of people, work is always--as you put it--transactional. Trust really doesn't enter the equation.
alexanderdmitri 9y ago
Honesty is all about the right level of abstraction. Knowing the difference between feeling you are right, being right, and the right way of conveying each of those things are all separate issues. If they seem intertwined what that really means is there are race conditions in the processing and it's going to lead to some static.

billsimms 9y ago

I was surprised by sections in "Lying" by Sam Harris where he wrote "Why don't we agree that you won't ask me that so I won't have to tell you the truth." A much more extreme position is Brad Blanton's "Practicing Radical Honesty" and other books by him. He admits in one of his books the huge personal cost he has seen people suffer when people tell everyone all the truth all the time, but he still thinks it is worth it.

Spooky23 9y ago
Truth isn’t black and white and is based on your perception and knowledge. You can’t offer radical honesty as a solution if you hold information back. Radical truth tellers forget about the sin of omission, and happily lean back and watch others bang themselves.

vletrmx 9y ago

In several instances being honest has cost me socially. There doesn't seem to be a solution that doesn't ultimately result in rejection. Unless ofcourse you're willing to lie.

blattimwind 9y ago
Being able to convey the various types of lies is an important part of social interaction. If you can't or won't people dislike you, because you are not giving them the answers they want.
nordsieck 9y ago
People pretty quickly learn whether or not "blameless retrospectives" are actually blameless. There are a number of examples of corporate culture that is enforced from the top down where being honest is rewarded. The most extreme is probably Bridgewater.
- chongli 9y ago
  I have a friend who worked at Bridgewater. It sounded to me like a psychopathic cult. He didn't stay very long.
agumonkey 9y ago
That's what I said on the article comment. There's a medium reference of gray honesty. The people not wanting honesty are probably scared about some previous negative event that led them to hide some things. Society converged onto the idea of different degrees of honesty. Probably for a reason.
- guest 9y ago
  Honesty (right or wrong) is black and white. It's the context versus standpoint that lets you decide what is good and bad in any given situation. Semantically correcting you: Society converged onto the idea that there is right and wrong in divulging different degrees of honesty.
9y ago

ourmandave 9y ago

There's always Ray Dalio's of Bridgewater school of Radical Transparency. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-the-leadership-strategy-behind-my-success.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/12/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-the-l... If you enjoy crying at your desk anyway.

sowbug 9y ago
Building on the idea of more transparency in the workplace than we're normally comfortable with, there's also Kim Scott's Radical Candor. The missing ingredient this book brings to the discussion is that transparency generally works only if the messenger also personally cares about the recipient. Without caring, the messenger (often the boss) is simply a jerk, regardless of the validity of the message. https://www.radicalcandor.com https://www.radicalcandor.com
- devmunchies 9y ago
  She was on the board for my last company and I was so sick of hearing about "radical candor". Almost everyone had a copy on their desk.

sulam 9y ago

> It should be free of incentives that promote individualized results I love to complain about sales people, but good luck getting the really good ones to work at a company like this without the usual compensation structure.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

I suspect on some level, Scott Adams likes the idea that all humans are “dirty, rotten liars” because it eases his fear that he might be more of a liar than some of his adversaries.

emerged 9y ago
The nice thing about this sort of accusation of projection is that you can use it literally any time you want to terminate a conversation! For example, I suspect that your suspecting that Scott Adams is projecting is projection on your part. Checkmate! I'm half joking, btw. So no offense intended.
kelukelugames 9y ago
haha, Scott Adams cracks me up. Adams blogged about persuasions and writing techniques for years. I learned a lot from reading those posts. Then he uses the same techniques to promote Trump. Which is fine. People can support whichever candidate. But Adams adamantly denied his support.
- olivermarks 9y ago
  I think the idea that Scott Adams is 'promoting trump' isn't helpful on a number of levels. He is very, very perceptive about humans and their failings, and brilliant at lampooning corporate and bureaucratic group cultures and rat races. I've learnt a lot reading his articles about the way the current crop of republican politicians are operating. He is one of the few people making sense and understanding the zeitgeist of half the American people. I'm not a trump fan fwiw, you can take this more in the Sun Zu sense: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    >the zeitgeist of half the American people I'd like to point out that this is wildly overstated. ~59.7% of eligible voters voters cast a ballot in 2016.[0] Of those votes cast, Donald Trump received ~46.1% of those votes or 62,979,879 votes.[1] So Donald Trump represents at the least the zeitgeist of ~27.5% of eligible voters. It's hard to determine how he represents the zeitgeist of non-voting-eligible inhabitants of the US but when you compare his popular vote total to the total population of the country, or ~323,100,000 in 2016, one can claim with certainty that Trump represents the zeitgeist of at least ~19.5% of the country. I point this out because it is often said that Donald Trump represents half the country, likely because he was the candidate of one of the two major political parties in this country and 1/2 is 50%. However repeating this falsehood of Trump representing the beliefs of half the country lends legitimacy to Trump and his agenda that is unearned and provides cover to people who would like to believe that the beliefs they share with Donald Trump enjoy some sort of popularity that is more widespread than can be justified. The same is true of course for Hillary Clinton and those Americans that cast their ballot for her, though of course the breakdown would be very slightly larger in her favor given her winning of the popular vote by some ~3,000,000 votes. [0]http://www.electproject.org/2016g http://www.electproject.org/2016g [1]http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-popular-vote-final-count/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/politics/donald-trump-hillary-...

Synaesthesia 9y ago

I think people are for the most part honest and good, I think it’s overlooked how much goodness is inherent to our nature.

jhiska 9y ago

Humans are liars; systems are dehumanizing. More precisely, humans are interested in preserving themselves, including their ego and social standing. One example of this is when we say "humans are liars" we are not thinking of ourselves, but projecting it to Others. And when I say "we" I'm distancing myself from the Others as well, because otherwise there would be negative focus on me. And when you read "I" you are being distanced from your own guilt, because I'm an Other to you. I don't benefit from calling myself a liar (which isn't always true, anyway, for anyone), and neither does anyone else profit from calling themselves liars. It's rational to preserve yourself given the circumstances. Should we change humanity or change the systems? Which side you consider the problem is political. >Transparency enables to uncover defects, if information and data is available without restriction, there is no use in lying about it or covering it up. This sounds like it should be true, but it's not. People can not accept certain revelations, and "increased transparency" about people's flaws just makes everyone dislike, hate or despise each other. This, too, is a human flaw.

ravenstine 9y ago

I recognized the fact that humans are the lying species a long time ago, and I've tried to counteract that in the workplace. I find opportunities where I can naturally push the boundary a bit, which isn't too hard for a young male with nothing to lose. I do it both for myself and to create room for others to rightfully express themselves and be able to get away with it. It works a little bit. People are still very protective of their position, but I'd like to think people on my team are a little more open about things than when I started. I don't have a way to measure that, though. I can say for sure that we're much more trust-based than when I joined. The truth is a funny thing, literally. I'm not a naturally funny person, and the jokes that I make are often one that only I seem to understand. But it's when I'm honest about things that I get the most laughs. I remember one time when the conversation I was having lead me to say "Some of Charles Manson's music is pretty good" to this one woman, and she laughed at that but I don't think she realized that I meant what I said.

Spooky23 9y ago

You can be honest with your spouse, priest and lawyer. Everyone else is a shade of grey.

antisthenes 9y ago
I'd remove spouse and priest from that list. The lawyer is the only one motivated to keep secrets because they have skin in the game.

pdkl95 9y ago

> Humans are Liars Lying may be common, but it isn't universal. I never understood why you would want to make a habit of having to waste memory and mental effort to remember the map of what lies have been told to which people. It's hard enough to remember one version of reality. Regarding social consequences: I'm not sure. I was already a socially awkward nerd, which makes makes it very hard to isolate any lying/not-lying consequences. Politely declining to answer when a lie is socially expected (or, when possible, finding a way to respond that doesn't require lying) has worked out reasonably well so far.

dwaltrip 9y ago
> Politely declining to answer when a lie is socially expected (or, when possible, finding a way to respond that doesn't require lying) has worked out reasonably well so far. This is a really good alternative, when giving a completely frank answer would cause undesirable results.
klibertp 9y ago
> what lies have been told to which people In practice, this is not a problem. People who lie very much, in my experience, have a couple of strong narratives they build their lies on. Because they follow some vague set of rules (which is easier to remember, especially if you use them repeatedly), it's possible for them to re-invent the same lie for the same situation, every time. On top of that, they are prepared to cover any minor differences that can occur one way or another - mostly by diverting the attention of others to something else. As long as they stay consistent with their lies and manage to stay within the bounds of what others consider plausible, it's very hard to recognize their lies. It's even harder, in practice, because what we consider probable is greatly affected by the flow of conversation and what's happening around it, so with a proper preparation, it's possible to sell almost any bullshit to almost anyone. Well, that's the deep end of conmen and people who use lies - one way or another - for work. However, many people are able to lie easily and they are almost never challenged, at least if they don't exaggerate too much. Our brains are great at filling the holes in the narratives, which has both a good side - art - and dark side - lies.
alexashka 9y ago

phkahler 9y ago

I may be guilty of some defensive tactics at times, but I don't lie. By lie I mean making statements that are false. I have rarely seen overt lies, but... In one case a PhD in my group claimed a certain level of system performance (which he could not meet) was mathematically impossible. Our boss could not refute it, but I quietly went back to the lab and achieved the goal. I filed a note about that man's integrity under my hat.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ianamartin 9y ago

I struggled with this a lot when I was younger and growing up in the South. I got really frustrated by things that just seemed so completely dishonest. Even the basic ritual greeting, "Hi. How are you?" is fundamentally dishonest. It's not a real question because the asker doesn't want an honest answer. And I felt imposed upon because the only socially acceptable response is almost always going to be a partially dishonest, "Great, how are you?" But as I've gotten older, I've decided that there is real value in these rituals, particularly in the workplace. And the value is that these kinds of interactions set a tone and a minimum viable behavior both in public and at work. Performing that little lie when you walk into work forces you to leave a certain amount of your personal life at the door. And this is a good thing. Environments I've worked in (notably, not in the South. NYC is awful about this) that do not adhere to these little ritualistic dishonesties empower the most negative people in the room to do the most damage to morale and productivity. Negativity is absolutely toxic and infectious. And I guarantee you, the person in the room who replies, "Oh, well, you know, it's not going so great right now. My kid is having problems at school, and I don't understand it. S/he is a great kid and really smart, but just isn't getting along well with other kids and not doing well on tests. I just don't get it." when you ask, "Hey, how's it going?" is going to be a problem down the line. (Or something like that. Doesn't have to literally be about a kid. Just anything that breaks the ritual.) It seems innocuous at first. Because we want to care about the people we work with. But this person is also going to gripe about the management and company leadership and bring up politics in ways that make people either angry or uncomfortable. And not in a healthy way in a 1:1 with the management. It will be at lunch, in small meetings, in code reviews, planning sessions, etc. On the coworker side, the idea of total honesty is not a good one. The people who either consciously refuse to engage in these rituals (or are just unaware of them) are guaranteed to cause problems for the entire team over time. If you bring it up as a talking point in, say a 1:1, the person will just say, "What's the problem? I'm just being honest. What do you want me to do? Lie?" I can't think of any reasonable way to create a policy around this. Teams just need to police themselves. When I hear someone invading the workplace with this kind of "honest" negativity, I have two responses depending on what's going on. If it's personal life stuff or politics, I'll offer to take them out for a bite to eat or a drink or something and listen to everything. If it's griping about management or leadership, I'll just say that they really need to have a conversation with <manager> about that because we really can't accomplish anything by brooding over it. And I'll do this even if I 100% agree with what the person is saying about management or politics. Because I guarantee you someone within a hundred feet of us doesn't agree about it. On the management side, I'd argue that total honesty is also a terrible idea. In my experience, the people in management roles who advocate for total honesty/total transparency come in two flavors: the first is the person who says he promotes these ideas but lies constantly anyway. The second is an absolute jackass who uses honesty as an excuse to act like a bag of dicks to people. It is possible do deliver hard criticisms without being a jerk. It just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of effort. Telling someone, "This sucks. You've got to stop being so terrible at your job." is not only lazy and asinine, but also completely unproductive. If someone on your team is performing that badly, it is your job to invest time in that person. Whether it's some coaching earlier in the dev process or extra time in code reviews or providing some educational material or designing a pip, that's your job. Being harshly critical because "honesty" is garbage. Grow up. And take the time to actually do your job. I don't need to say much about the "total honesty" liar category. They are either sociopaths or utterly incompetent (often both, but competent sociopaths are the worst) and can only get by through manipulating people and playing political games. The two best managers I've ever had as an individual contributor are what I would call transparently dishonest. Yes, sometimes they had to either be silent about a situation or whitewash certain organizational details, but they also let you know when that was happening. Their criticism was direct and effective, but not cruel. They focused on three key things: providing clearly defined tasks, guarding our time, and protecting the team from organizational politics. They were sometimes (often?) less than totally honest about what was going on, but we knew it and trusted them to know that it was okay to not know. My best manager as a manager is . . . well, I haven't had a good one yet. So I'll let you know when that happens. So, I'm going to go out and say it. A certain amount of dishonesty is a good thing. Social structures depend on it to function in a healthy and productive way. Go too far in the honesty direction, and you end up with a culture like NYC, which, as much as I like many things about the city here, it's only a barely functional society. Go too far on the dishonest side, and everyone is stilted and uncomfortable, and no one feels like they can say anything to anyone because we're all Stepford Wives at work, and it's all pretty on the outside but awful on the inside. Like in much of the South and Texas in particular. It's a balancing act. The Dilbert strip in the article is good because it's useful for us to remember that we are actually selfish and dishonest. But solving that isn't the real problem, and being totally unselfish and honest isn't the solution. That's like reading an article about how bad waterfall is and then moving to a 1-day sprint Agile system. (You laugh, but I've seen it. Seriously. 1-day sprints with 5 standups a day. Sprint planning in the morning, scrum coding sessions in the afternoon, retro just before end of day. You can guess what happened: every day every task ended up blocked. This went on for over a year. Literally nothing got done. But, wow, that team looked busy.) Apologies if I've offended anyone who is perfectly honest all the time, a coworker, a manager, an Agile practitioner, a Waterfall advocate, a sociopath, an incompetent, a New Yorker, a Texan, or even human. I'm just being . . . totally honest.

unabst 9y ago

You will find dishonesty between managers and workers. This is because workers try to get away with things, and managers are paid to catch them. You will find dishonesty between executives and shareholders. This is because executives are paid to lie about performance, and share holders exist to punish them. But this is just as systematic as it is human. Dishonesty is rarer among workers. Their gossip is honest, and hence cathartic. Dishonesty is also rarer among the executive team. For running a company can only be done with facts, and in almost all cases of corporate scams, the executives were all in on it. And even the whistle blower would have had to known the truth.

jimnotgym 9y ago

I went to work at a long serving SME that had a lot of staff with very long service and was given the job of moving some things forward. > It should be safe to be vulnerable The number one cause of stress for me is that management did not protect me enough. When I changed something, it would have some minor knock on impact that upset someone (sometimes someone very junior), who would go and see a director, who would go and see the MD and then I would get career threatening back room deals going on that I was not party to. If you are going to get someone to come and push the company forward at sub-boardroom level, make sure your directors are 100% committed to the changes.'You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs', make sure you are ready to accept broken eggs. Make sure when petty stuff is brought to senior people they divert it straight back to the project sponsor (or whoever). Make sure individual managers know this change is happening, and it is their job to allow it and make their staff happy with it. There is nothing worse than when you are in the heart of a technical change, than to find out you are in trouble with the boss because a secretary in another dept is sad that you changed their UI. Worse still when you are passed over for a promotion because the MD is concerned that you upset a few people, when it wasn't your job to manage the people side in the first place. Transparency is part of the answer, but in the situation I describe it actually becomes a matter of giving people far too much info, so they can't claim they were not consulted! This is counter-productive too. Senior managers need to take a very firm line with passive-aggressive behavior that is trying to stop change, or not start the change off to begin with.

tckr 9y ago
Thanks for sharing this, Jim!

tckr 9y ago

OP here, thanks for all the great comments and anecdotes. While nobody disagrees that this kind of culture would be worth striving for, the majority's opinion seems to be that it is impossible to achieve. But we all share the desire for living/working in an environment like this and this gives me hope! Anybody who start the discussion in their team or company about the way they interact, will quickly and most certainly find allies and can grow a team of change agents from that. Everyone culture was already mentioned and I would also recommend books like Unboss https://coderbyheart.com/unboss-a-compendium-for-future-organizations/ https://coderbyheart.com/unboss-a-compendium-for-future-orga... or Joy, Inc. https://coderbyheart.com/joy-inc/ https://coderbyheart.com/joy-inc/