Why should “that which can be destroyed by the truth” be destroyed? Because the truth is fundamentally more real and valuable than what it replaces, which must be implemented on a deeper level than “what my current beliefs think.” Similarly, why should “that which can be destroyed by authenticity” be destroyed? Because authenticity is fundamentally more real and valuable than what it replaces, which must be implemented on a deeper level than “what my current beliefs think.” I don’t mean to pitch ‘radical honesty’ here, or other sorts of excessive openness; authentic relationships include distance and walls and politeness and flexible preferences.
To expand on Said and quanticle’s comments here, I find this argument deeply unconvincing, and here’s why. I see three things missing here:
A definition of ‘authentic’ in concrete terms—what kind of behaviour does it entail, with what kind of consequences? This can be a dictionary definition, in exchange for shifting a lot of burden to the following two steps.
An argument that ‘authenticity’ so defined is “real and valuable” enough to be more valuable than anything that might be lost in the course of such behaviour—this is not as simple as a superficial argument by analogy to truth might make it appear, since the argument for believing true things is more complex than that in the first place (for instance, relying on the particular role of true beliefs in decision theory).
An argument that Circling is ‘authentic’ in the manner so defined (presumably, since a defense of Circling seems to be the point of the post).
Currently all three holes here seem to be plugged by the simple use of ‘authentic’ as an applause light.
Based on the things I am reading about what has happened, blame, ostracism, and cancelling seem like the bare minimum of what we should do.
This is really, really serious. If this happened to someone closer to me I’d be out for blood, and probably legal prosecution.
Let’s not minimize how fucked up this is.