Truth-telling is necessary but not sufficient for honesty. Something more is required: an admission of epistemic weakness. You needn’t always make the admission openly to your audience (social conventions apply), but the possibility that you might be wrong should not leave your thoughts. A genuinely honest person should not only listen to objections to his or her favorite assumptions and theories, but should actively seek to discover such objections.
What’s more, people tend to forget that their long-held assumptions are assumptions and treat them as facts. Forgotten assumptions are a major impediment to rationality—hence the importance of overcoming bias (the action, not the blog) to a rationalist.
Truth-telling is necessary but not sufficient for honesty. Something more is required: an admission of epistemic weakness. You needn’t always make the admission openly to your audience (social conventions apply), but the possibility that you might be wrong should not leave your thoughts. A genuinely honest person should not only listen to objections to his or her favorite assumptions and theories, but should actively seek to discover such objections.
What’s more, people tend to forget that their long-held assumptions are assumptions and treat them as facts. Forgotten assumptions are a major impediment to rationality—hence the importance of overcoming bias (the action, not the blog) to a rationalist.