>Never sacrifice truth for niceness if you can avoid it.  Most
>people are total wimps, unable to tell the objective difference between
>"you're doing it wrong" and "I hate you."  On the other side of the coin,
>they take "you're doing ti right" for "I love you."  Total honesty is the
>best way for us to communicate effectively.

I agree. However, there is a difference between honesty about what one
thinks or believes, on the one hand, and truth on the other, which is
whether what you believe or think is really accurate or not. Honesty is
being straightforward in communicating what you believe. But you can still
do that and "be nice" or not come across as an offputting fanatic. Nobody
(least of all me) is saying to compromise saying what you think just to be
nice.

However, one can be completely honest and also be completely, mostly, or to
one degree or another, wrong. Truth and honesty in the realm of personal
subjective perceptions are pretty much the same thing--but they are two
different things in the realm of science, belief, knowledge, etc.. And the
former (truth) is not so easy to be sure about. Science, for instance,
repeatedly shows that what we thought we knew is often no longer completely
accurate (sometimes not even close to accurate) in light of new evidence.
In fact, science (which is what Paleodiet is purportoedly based on) is just
as much a process of showing us the falsity of our previous beliefs as it
is one of showing us new truths.

What it does and can do, however, is keep our minds open, and help us hone
our hypotheses in light of the evidence, so that we can be more confident
they at least have some workable approximation to how things work more
closely as time goes on. So when I hear someone who thinks they have the
complete truth on some topic, I tend to (tentatively) think or conclude
their minds are made up to the point that another way of saying it is
they're minds are closed to anything but what they currently believe. And
if science shows us nothing, it shows us to beware absolutists who claim to
have it all figured out, because scientific "truth" changes over time.

Thus, my earlier comments on "religion vs. diet": The more absolutist
someone is, or who admits no room for error or "flexibility" in diet for
some portion of the population some portion of the time, the less
credibility they have in my eyes. And the more likely I would be to
question their judgment, because I sure as heck don't know anyone who is
right all the time. To me this is critical, because being able to trust
somebody's judgment is particularly important on matters where they are
talking from personal observations of their own or others' experience, but
can't produce any scientific evidence. Because, unfortunately or not, if we
are to act, often we must go by others' judgment in areas such as personal
experience with Paleodiet where clinical studies are few and far between.
Thus assessments of people's judgment are important in this area, and when
someone comes across as too sure of themselves or too zealous, often you
immediately have to suspect their judgment.

So, while it is a prequisite, I don't care how honest someone is if they
are absolutist-sounding enough as to make me doubt their judgment. If the
science often brought to bear on nutrition shows us anything, it is that
truth is somewhat tentative, in the process being refined over time, and
sometimes even wrong or partially wrong. People who are willing to admit
they might be wrong, thus, have more credibility with me as someone to be
listened to carefully.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>