The Onion Test for Personal and Institutional Honesty

By ChanaMessinger @ 2022-09-27T15:26 (+65)

This is a crosspost, probably from LessWrong. Try viewing it there.

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bbartlog @ 2022-09-27T16:37 (+14)

I think the first negative example is not particularly good. The outer layer is not related to the inner layer. People have a general expectation that others will be private about any illegal activities. Operating a cocaine dealership is negative, but that's really a completely separate concern from social issues of transparency and trust.

A possibly better negative example here might be 'I have an STD and don't inform sex partners about it'.

Luke Chambers @ 2022-09-27T18:20 (+5)

This is helpful. My entire career revolves around "conceal, but don't mislead" and even I'm still learning where lines are. Thank you for this post.

IanDavidMoss @ 2022-09-27T17:59 (+2)

I'm curious how this applies to infohazards specifically. Without actually spilling any infohazards, could you comment on how one could do a good job applying this model in such a situation?

ChanaMessinger @ 2022-09-27T23:26 (+1)

Perhaps "I won't tell you things I think will be negative for the world to be more public" or "by default, I won't tell you things I think will make you worse off"

ChanaMessinger @ 2022-09-28T12:56 (+4)

Curious about disagreement votes if people want to air them, but no pressure.

Guy Raveh @ 2022-09-29T00:37 (+3)

Edit: I want to highlight that I do appreciate the compassion that I think is part of the model in your post, and I don't mean this comment as a personal attack but rather a very specific criticism.

Huh, I'm not sure why I didn't voice my disagreement initially. My vote was because the phrases you suggested come across as arrogant and patronising, in my opinion.

I think it's sometimes obvious that you'd not tell someone you care about something that would hurt them; and at other times whether you should tell them or not is something that needs to be established explicitly according to their preferences. If it's not your private information, it should be an extremely rare occasion anyway.

It also adds that in either case, you're hiding the information without actually giving any information on what they can expect it to be like, which perhaps contradicts your model.

I admit my disagreement partially has to do with rejecting the concept of infohazards, which I find arrogant and patronising in general.

Noah Scales @ 2022-10-02T09:18 (+1)

Really interesting!

I get the impression that you do organizational consulting. I have been in various business environments where I watched organizational consultants work from my perspective as an employee.

I am curious how your approach and ethics let you handle:

emperor wears no clothes organizational problems: everyone seems to think some X is really great, but X is a fiction and only you see that.
elephant in the room communication situations: there's something everyone knows about, fears, and won't talk about and it's the problem that needs handling.
covert consulting needs: you're consulting, but the problems are so obviously related to leadership or the organization, that you either leave or create organizational change covertly despite whatever management identified as problems to fix.

These situations were a test of consultant integrity, from what I saw, but they also show up in everyday life, where fictions, secrets, or politics conflict with desire for integrity.