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by seibelj 2125 days ago
I am leery of any company that comes off with culty-vibes and that was the impression I got from various media I read and watched about it. I’m sure it’s great for business but not for me, I am free thinker. Same reason I think Ray Dalio / Bridgewater is an insane asylum. I briefly worked with someone who did a stint there and he embraced the principles / radical transparency thing and it made him extremely hard (even obnoxious) to deal with.
3 comments

You can't be an island of radical transparency. It has to be an organizational thing, and even then you'd be well advised to not act that way with your spouse or at a retail store.
the radical transparency thing is very interesting

When you embrace it, you will definitely piss off a LOT of people

society is all about 'being polite' and 'wearing a mask'

if you stop being polite and stop wearing masks, while still maintaining common courtesy

life becomes MUCH easier

I'll give you an example

2 of your friends have problems which prevent them from having a good relationship

you have a frank talk with them

Hey, Jack, you need to get over your abandonment issues and commit to a woman and marry her. You've passed on some pretty amazing women just because your father walked away when you were 4

Hi Sophie, perhaps the reason you only date losers is that is your type. Perhaps your type is guys who will cheat on you. Perhaps when your mother divorced your father after he cheated on her with her sister, his secretary, and the school principal, you should have realized that's genetically your type. So you can either accept that you are making this choice and be at peace with it, or you CHANGE your decision making process

*

guess what's going to happen

usually, 1 of them will get mad at you, then realize you are right, and then make a change, and then your friendship will be much stronger

and the other will hate you for life. Well not hate you. Will avoid you forever

So that's what radical honesty and radical transparency does

*

of course you have to be prepared for people to also be radically honest with you

you find out things that are painful. Then you have to decide whether you will embrace the honest feedback you are getting or run away from it

Here's another problem with radical honesty: You think you're right, and say something that's going to be a painful but beneficial truth. But you might simply be wrong: you don't have all the facts, you're missing some context, your interpretation is hampered by your own issues, whatever. Now you've caused someone pain and haven't helped them, and maybe further contributed to their problems.

Radical honesty works great with I-statements (e.g., "I stopped listening to you a couple minutes ago because you're boring me") in terms of communicating effectively without the baggage of courtesy. But radical honesty for criticism rarely works as well as propenents think.

Yeah, that's not how it is used though. It is an alternate system of control with its own set of rules. It is creepy and dishonest to its core even if it works at the top, it certainly does not carry all the way down.
Plus one on bridgewater