Men who mean just what they say

I was raised Quaker, and in theory one of the core tenets of Quakerism is that uncomfortable honesty. Trivial example: refusing to swear on the Bible because that would imply that you might not be honest when you hadn't just sworn on a Bible.

I have found that Quakers are just as fallible as anyone else; but the subset of Quakers who really live that tenet have an unnerving and extremely peaceful unflinching willingness to comment or question on problems in a way that removes the smokescreens of social obligations. I've found it far easier to talk about anything involving money, feelings, sex, danger, beliefs, crime, fear, etc. with those individuals who have really committed their lives to only let truth come out of their mouth (even if they don't always succeed).

Yes. There are distinct male virtues, such as courage, nobility and authority. But if a man isn't honest then he's not worthy of consideration. Or, if you like, he hasn't yet matured into manhood.

This is why so much of totalitarianism is about getting men to repeat lies. Or why those check boxes 'I have read and understood the terms and conditions' are harmful.

Couldn't agree more with this. Another way to describe this kind of honesty is as "integrity", or in other words the coherence of your inner and outer lives. Hypocrites are always in a contest against themselves, which is a kind of self-sabotage. Insisting on personal integrity forces you to align your stated values with revealed preference, sharpening both.

I read a fair bit of history and I’m skeptical that there was a time when people were more honest. The lyrics of a patriotic song tell us little.

Perhaps some people were more naive, though?

> That timeline you gave a client that you hoped you could make but when push comes to shove was still quite optimistic, and in point of fact slipped by several weeks.

The songwriter wouldn’t have faulted a Green Beret for being optimistic in the face of risk, and maybe even failing sometimes. The message really was their whole being was invested in that timeline and making it happen, and you could be sure they would spend blood sweat and tears to give meaning to their words.

When I was in my 20s, I hit a point where I started looking back on my high school years and realized there were a small handful of teachers who had a very large influence on what I use as my "compass" for guiding me towards being the person I wanted to become as an adult.

One commonality among all of those teachers is that decade(s) later, it seems that they are mostly the same person, beliefs-wise and character-wise. It appeared that they had hit a point in their life where they "figured it out", and anchored themselves on that point. I put the phrase in quotes, because as an adult, I know the statement is superficial now, but that it certainly how it seemed when I was younger.

Circling back to the post: in my own lived experience, "Men who mean what they say" became that way not necessarily through the sole virtue of honesty, but by guiding themselves using the same set of virtues (honesty included) for large portions of their life. It was very easy to understand what mattered to them and what they believed in, and as an adult at the end of my 20s, it is clear to me that should I want to become the person my younger self aspired to be, following in my teachers' example means making an increasing percent of my actions reflect the virtues that matter the most to me.

But it is a learned process, not one necessarily passed down through merely being a person who has learned that lying is bad. By learning to practice actions which reflect your virtues, you also learn how to avoid shallower "means-justify-the-ends" behavior (e.g. is it more important to NEVER tell a lie, even if speaking only in facts you know to be true creates more harm?)

I strongly recommend Focault's lectures (or book) on Parrhesia, on direct truth-telling. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/

There are very few men in history remembered and celebrated primarily for integrity over violence and/or wealth and/or cleverness.

I would love to see more of a high-trust integrity culture in business and politics. But Wall St and MBA ethics are diametrically opposed to that.

Personally, I wouldn't trust a Green Beret CEO more than I'd trust any other founder.

this is relatable, one reason I don't like the management track is because of this. I'm not the kind of software engineer that finds it difficult to communicate technical concepts in a non-technical way nor do I find it difficult to balance business decisions over technical pedantry

but I do find it draining to placate people, and largely irrelevant. as a founder when you have customers, clients, vendors, employees, other executives, board, and investors all with competing needs, that's the worst for me. at higher roles within someone else's organization it's even worse because you can get chewed out and be subject to these toxic relationships that actually affect your life. a founder with capital is just kind of annoyed but insulated from immediate consequence of paying down a debt or food and shelter.

outside of work, interpersonally, it's a friction only when around people with a different value system than you. I've moved around a lot and in some areas its like that, and I've "increased my emotional intelligence" more to accommodate but it is a breath of fresh air when a partner or friend is more reality oriented.

I have learned from these sycophantic LLMs and have adopted my language to be more similar, more affirmations even when my subsequent response is completely contradictory. "Good question!" "That's a very representative observation! I haven't seen anything to support that, you picked up on an important undercurrent"

now that I know it's all about engagement, based on how LLM's have been received and why, no other rigid framework is necessary

its important for me to know what reality is, so I prefer not to lie or omit because I want others to give me their objective reality, but its not as important

One of my biggest gripes with the Bay Area tech scene is that its social norms are the opposite of those espoused in this article.

> Perhaps it is also a testament to our incredibly deeply social nature that the highest praise of a man might in fact not be his prowess and ability to survive on an animal level, his ability to kill or run or calculate, but rather his ability to speak, and to do so in a way which accurately reflects the disposition of his soul, even if doing so risks the alienation of the person he speaks to or incurs obligations on himself which might be difficult to fulfill

Can we now acknowledge the harm the Bay Area communication style has done to our industry? This performative "kindness" cant you're supposed to adopt, this kayfabe of epistemic uncertainty, this "shit sandwich" feedback style, the obfuscation of orders as questions and of questions as musings --- it's exhausting. It's dishonest. It gets in the way of making good technology.

It also privileges a certain in-group undeservedly. The San Francisco Performative Niceness Lilt functions as a shibboleth. It comes more naturally to some than others, especially those who grew up far from Stanford's arches and palm trees. Much of the world, and much of the West, rewards a communication style much more in line with this "men who mean just what they say" essay, and it's about time the tech industry stop rewarding indirection-based word games.

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