Thoughts on Honesty, Truth, Trust, Integrity, and Sincerity

I have had an interesting relationship between all of the above/below ideas/concepts. The article about their opposites will come eventually, maybe, no promises. It strikes me as a little odd that I am writing the beginning as one of the last things I do. Just structurally speaking, but it make sense in all other factors. I have to know what I am talking about to best introduce it afterall, and originally this was going to be about the respective subjects, opposites as well, but I realized that this would take way too long, and be way too long.

All of these topics represent something, that I in the very least believe that the general majority of people, find to be moral. Or are qualities of a person that make them perceived as morally good. In this I hope to define, and discuss the meaning of each of theses premises in order to help find value in each of them.

Truth

def :

• The body of real things, events and facts
• A judgement, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true
• The property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality
• Fidelity to an original or to a standard
• Sincerity in action, character and utterance

The truth, an interesting concept. The idea of a real thing. The property of being in accord with fact or reality. In many different countries, people are taught history. It is presumed in all of these countries that, the histories taught are all fact. Yet, not all history books are the same. Obvously, in America we spend a lot of time on American history. I will just blindly assume here, that this is the same for other countries as well. In this assumption is relatively harmless, in nature, if I am wrong so. But the point in this is that we are seeing a divergence in the histories being taught, not by this point in any unfactual way, but just in the nature of we as humans have a very limited time to live and cannot be taught all of history. Then we come to where there is blatent lies in history such as "Monopolies are bad" and painting all monopolies in a bad light, when John D Rockafeller, someone who was villanized in school (or at least in my experience with school), he was said to have a monopoly and because of that monopoly he raised prices and the american citizen lost out. What in truth actually happened, after doing some research in college on the subject, (where I was taught this orignally in high school), it turns out that he in fact lowered prices in order to get the monopoly, and once all of his competition was bought out he raised them back up a little bit, but not in any dramatic way, but he also passed the profits onto his employees. Granted, I will say that the public school system probably had the intention of warning students that having power without the ability to check that power is bad. They presented it in an unfair light and in a way that is utterly not the truth. If American school systems do this, the country all about the free the proud the brave, the type of system to promote individuality and unsensorship, does this, other countries probably do this as well.
I suppose now is a good time to mention, that I am too lazy to go fact check myself, this is all coming out of my incredibly poor, and human brain, that it is in human nature to error, do not take things as gospel, unless source is given.

Truth itself is just facts, in accordance to reality. The sad truth of truth is that it also has the ability to be manipulated in order to paint pictures that aren't true, despite being made from entirely true facts.

For Example

The correlation between ice cream and drowning is possitive, and high. It is therefore easy to make an argument based off these facts that Ice cream, is the cause of drowning, afterall a correlation of .91 (if I remember correctly) must imply some sort of relationship between the two. The two easily deduced hypotheses are:

1. Drowning people, cause an increase in Ice Cream sales
2. Ice cream somehow causes more people to drown

Because the first option seems a bit unlikely, maybe at the funerals of people that drown, people eat icecream, or order it to help with the mourning process. Still, the second option seems more likely. (I am also just doing a summary of what Andreas Madsen said in his article, though I came across this example seperatly, and then found his article.) If we do a test to close down all the icecream shops, or give away icecream, we probably wont see a change either. But this doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't related. New hypothesis:

1. Eating Ice cream makes you a worse swimmer, and therefore are more likely to drown.

But there is apparently no link between the two here either, when scientist researched it. For more information about this I will leave a couple of links discussing this further, but I am, hereby contented with the argument posed.

Yet Another Example

This example comes from something I actually read earlier today.

This article supposes in a headlining quote

"Seventy-eight percent of ocean microplastics are synthetic tire rubber, according to one estimate."

With what seems like this outrageous figure, with all the other populations of plastics in the ocean this seems like a lot. With 75 to 199 million tons (398 billion pounds) of plastics in the ocean in 2020. 15 % of that actually stays on the surface with 70% sinking into the ocean and another 15% being left on beaches. It is estimated that 92% of the plastics that float are microplastics. Which are defined as plastic particles that are smaller than 5mm. Which would mean that 54.9 billion pounds are microplastics (I know I am mixing metric units and imperial units, but they are what are given to me, I would be using metric if I could. I just am too lazy to convert). 78% of 54.9 billion pounds is 42.8 billion pounds.

In breaking the plastic wave (link above), on pg 90, I believe the original article found the data, but it doesn't leave a link to who the one estimate is, It has a graphic that says "tyre dust contributes 78% of microplastic leakage by mass". Above this in a paragraph, it says "about 11% of today's plastic flow into the ocean comes from only 4 sources..." Just using these two numbers we get a markedly different result. Giving only about 9% of all microplastics being 4.7 billion pounds. Massively different numbers, partly because we multiplied it by .11 to get the second.

The point is because of possible bad math, or just the want to have a "click bait" quote, the statistic is less than the whole truth of the matter, but still the truth. And to the credit of Breaking the plastic wave, The do say that microplastics from the 4 sources that they analized contribute 1.3 million metric tons of 11 million metric tons that slipped into the ocean in 2016 (note this is 2016 while mine are from 2020), which means that 1.014 million metric tons are from tyre pollution. This also does not take into account that plastics in the ocean will also start to degrade into microplastics.

Actual Analysis of Truth rather than misrepresentation

The point of the two above examples are to point out the ability to use the truth to spread lies. While we can use data to argue that Ice cream causes people to drown, doesn't mean that it actually happens that way in reality. Does this make someone less truthful? I would say that they are 100% truthful. What they would lack, is honesty, or sincerity, or maybe just a lack of understanding that correlation is not causation.

Honesty

def :

• free from fraud or deception
• being genuine or real
• humble or plain
• reputable and respectable
• to be worthy of praise
• marked by integrity
• marked by free, forthright and sincere expression
• to be direct and uncomplicated

I have the working definition of honesty to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That any deviation from this is dishonest. I think it is much harder to be honest, and decieve people than it is to be truthful, and still decieve them. Afterall, the first item in the definition of honesty is free from fraud or deception. The best thing you can do is deflect to try and remain in a place of honesty, but it is very easy for deflection and redirection to become apparent and for someone to ask a question that you can't deflect. Or for them to just re-ask the same question if you answer with a question. Though even the last portion of the definition says being uncomplicated and direct. Which both deflecting and redirection are not being direct.
I think it is also worth mentioning that no where in the definition of honesty does it say anything about truth. Only that it is free from deception which is to cause to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. Which I find this to be a very interesting notation about the semantics of what it means to be honest.

I had a talk with a friend about honesty as I find that he is one of the more honest people I know, or in the very least, he holds honesty higher than most people I know. He said that honesty has a portion of it that involves betrayal. That you could be honest, as long as it doesn't involve a betrayal of another person's trust. This makes sense in a way to me. I seems in the spirit of honesty, I suppose. I don't believe I am convinced by this reasoning. He suggested for example, if he had a hard day, went to the bar after work, and his wife asked him when did he get out, when he returned home, replying "a while ago," would not be dishonest. I would say that this statement is 100% truthful, but whether or not it is honest. He said that it isn't anything that would betray her. He is not out to meet other people, he just wanted a drink and some time to himself. This also goes along with the definition of being genuine, as he genuinely just needs some alone time, and he doesn't deviate from truth, and because he is not betraying her in any way he says it is honest. Fair enough I suppose.

But still don't really buy this way of thinking though.

In a similar vein, I use sarcasm a lot. Like, a lot, a lot, like, the amount of times our moon could fit into our sun, a lot. I am also a fan of hyperbole, if you couldn't tell. Combine these two factors, and we could say that I lie a lot, and I am very unreal. This is because sarcasm, has a solid base in irony which is the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning. And hyperbole is the extravagent overstatement of the truth. But, because people know that I am being sarcastic, or hyperbolic, there is no perceived deception and therefore no loss of the image of me being an honest person, and no loss of trust. So it does seem that intention does have a role to play in honesty.

This does however seem to imply that there is a portion of sincerity as a part of honesty. I would also say that there is a part of trust, except that would create a semi-circular definition. As I would say that in trust there is a part of honesty, and that we trust people that are honest. It also seems a bit ingenuine / dishonest to only be honest with someone, in order to be in accordance with their trust. So we will say that trust has some component of honesty within itself, but honesty does not have any component of trust. That being honest or dishonest should not be affected by the amount of trust that you have with someone else.

Trust

def :

• assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something
• one in which confidence is placed
• a dependence on something future or contingent
• to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of
• to place confidence in : rely on
• to hope or expect confidently

Trust, well, trust is interesting to say the least. I find people take trust and apply it to someone as a whole. Most people take it as a blanket and wrap someone up in it. I find that I only trust aspects of people and not necessarily the whole of that person. I have accepted sometime ago, that you cannot wholely know a person. Or rather, not in the small amount of time that most people generally form trusting bonds with people. According to This link it typically takes 7 months to create trust between 2 people. But in the current face paced world we don't actually have that much time learn to trust people. It also mentions that there are three ways to build trust quickly. I also find that younger people trust more people, with probably the reason being that they haven't felt betrayal yet, and they are typically very forgiving.

1. Creating Psychological Safety
2. Focusing on Impact
3. Reinforcing Connection

Psychological safety is the safety to speak up, and to disagree openly, to surface concerns openly without fear of negative repercussions.
Focusing on Impact, is when they see that they have made an impact, or if you show them that they are contributing, in a meaningful or impactful way they will have higher morale. This means that they will have a more positive outlook towards you, and therefore more likely to trust you
Reinforcing Connection, basically making sure that you are consistently sending the message of "hey you can trust me," inconsistency in this basically errodes any trust made so far.
It is also important to note the secret other tip hidden in the article that says "You can't talk your way into trust, you have to behave your way into it." This is because,

The part of the brain that is responsible for feeling trust and loyalty has no capacity for language. That’s why just talking about improving trust with others doesn’t work as we process whether we can trust someone through our emotions. We don’t trust others by what they say, it’s how they make us feel. It’s their consistent actions that show that they care about our well-being that determine whether we feel we can or cannot trust them. That’s why when people tell us to trust them, we instantly feel slight disgust intermingled with disbelief.

I am a bit proud of myself that I knew this before reading this, why I don't know but I remember very clearly describing "its not what is said, it is how you make them feel" to a friend.

Anyways, this kinda overlaps with the idea of the difference between 'to know' vs 'to feel' vs 'to understand' but that is a topic for another day. It is the little things that make people trust one another. The showing, not telling. I show that I care about you, and your well being, and you feel it. Once you feel it deep down inside, that is when you trust someone. I think I agree with the definition of trust one in which confidence is placed, in this manner.
Though, I still hold to what I said earlier, in that most people hold the whole of someone in trust, while I tend to trust aspects of them. I trust that they will arrive on time, I trust that when my roomate finishes the last of something, he will replace it. I also in this way think people tend to place trust as a means of thinking someone will do the right thing. While, I do not, I trust that he would say whatever he needs to in order to get what he wants. In the example I trust that the person, would do a 'bad' thing in order to acheive their goals. I find this way of looking at trust gives a far more fine detail in order to understand the true nature of it. And in a sense I am placing confidence in this aspect of the person, rather than the whole.
As before, in this day and age often we are put into situations where cannot learn to trust someone before we are in need to trust them. These situations tend to quicken the process by which we trust people tremendisly. If the situation goes well, we gain significant trust in that person, if the situation goes poorly then we proceed to lose a significant amount of trust in that person. Or possibly we start to trust in the opposite aspect of that person. We trust that they will let us down in this department. But also the shorter amount of time we have with someone the more the trust moves, kind of like a weighted average. A weighted average that appears only to take 3 months to break trust. This is probably why the "people have such short memories" trope is a thing in movies. Though it is also generally considered that negative emotions / experiences tend to have a stronger affect on human beings than positive emotions / experiences. Which might also be why it takes 7 months to make and 3 months to break, because the feeling of betrayal is stronger than the positive feelings that make trust.
Trust is said to be made by actions not words. Actions speak louder than words afterall. Most people, don't really consider the idea that words are inthemselves actions. Small, tiny, cheap, little, actions, but they have a large affect on how we can make eachother feel. We say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Then we turn around and say that the pen is mightier than the sword. Words have more power than anyone can imagine. Though, if I speak, they are gone in an instant, and all it cost me was the air in my lungs, so easily replenished by the next breath. We also live in a time of shared experiences, where I can say "hello there", to a random human being and they respond "General Kenobi". Where even, small words, small phrases can be picked up and reconized and cause an emotional reaction. The leveraging of these small little actions in order for your benefit is the practice of social engineering. It's kinda only fitting that I became good at the practice. Just a small boy, abused in childhood, and now a Bartender whose living is based on the impression I give in the midst of running around telling jokes and taking orders. Where often I have to make lasting impressions within seconds, and build on it over the course of an hour to two. I am just saying what I've been told though, and I'll leave it to the audience to decide how good I am. Afterall this is in the media of words.

Integrity

def :

• firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values
• an unimpaired condition
• The quality or state of being undivided

I think, perhaps, that the friend I was talking about in honesty, might not have been honest, but it didn't in the conversation did not sacrifice his integrity by doing so. This being said, this is all gut feelings. I have a working definition for Integrity as "the coherence between intent and action." But in truth it seems that this fits more with the definition of sincerity rather than integrity. While integrity itself would be holding to this ideal rather than the ideal itself. Integrity might then have a representation as a percentage to how much we hold to the ideals that we say that we value. Originally I thought hipocrisy was the antonym of Integrity, but it fits more as the opposite of sincerity.

"Integrity, implies trustworthiness and incurruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility or pledge."

Maybe Integrity would be represented best by a percentage of how often one follows through on trusts, responsibilities, and pledges. Though this seems to also require a degree of competency, in whatever the pledge discusses. This leads to a question of can one posses integrity without competency? And because Integrity is defined as strict adherence to a moral code, does that mean that you can trust someone who has no integrity?

Sincerity

def :

• free of dissimulation : Honest
• free of adulturation : Pure
• marked by genuinesss : True

I think in order to be sincere, there has to be a level of self-acceptance. That you are not ashamed of who you are. So that you can be honest, pure, and true to yourself at any given moment. I also find, the idea that "adulturation" being defined as "to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element" with the base word being adult, kinda hillarious.

Conclusion

I think I decided that honesty isn't necessarily important to me... Or rather that there is something deeper than honesty that I shall strive for. I don't know what it is yet. I know that I find honesty to be like money to happiness. Money cannot buy happiness, but it does buy the yacht that you pull along side it. Honesty does not make me a good person, but I find that it follows behind. That once I find what it is to be a good person, then I will naturally be honest. Like proper form.

Future Jacob Here,
I have been working on this for about a week now, and I think maybe I figured that it is sincerity, or in the very least the coherence between intent and the concequences of my actions. I dare not ordain what is truly moral. As I myself, am just a wanderer. The reason I say the concequences of my actions rather than my actions, well I think that is best saved for a different, massively long article. As I still have to write an intro, and about integrity and sincerity as I type this. And probably finish the signoff, which needs imporvement, which will come in future articles, not this one. Sorry, not sorry. Just for now, I will say that the concequences of actions matter more than the actions themselves in my opinion. This may change in the future. But this isn't about making statements that last all of time, only to see how I grow, and change. Maybe even to make a book out of all these concepts one day.

I don't really know

It's important to understand, that I don't know the answers. That I am a wanderer, on a journey. I don't know if there is a destination. All I know is where I have been, the path I walk, the trail I track. From these places I take only memories. Like stones I pick them up, admire them for a while, put them in my pocket. One day the stone falls out, and I never see it again. Sometimes I reach into the bag, and find a stone that I haven't seen for a while, and thought was lost for good. Often during these times I take it, hold it up to the light and feel the texture in my hand. The rough spots, and smooth faces, the pointed tips. I admire the color, and the way it catches the light. I appreciate the weight, or at times the weightlessness of the stone. I hold onto it for a while, and eventually slip it back into my bag. Some stones are just uncomfortable no matter where we put them though. They poke and prod us with their sharp points, and somehow if we cast them out of our bag, they pop right back in. It is a sign that we are not done with them quite yet.