honesty is the best policy against points
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People have long claimed that honesty is the best policy, but that saying became popular long before our society was flooded with personal data. In some circumstances, it is no longer true.
Take, for example, standardized tests. Schools are obsessed with them. But standardized tests don't necessarily measure ability or achievement. In many cases, they measure how well your teacher "taught to the test," or whether your parents are affluent enough to hire a tutor for you.
If you work in a building with digital IDs, the odds are your employer knows how much time you take for your lunch breaks and exactly what time you arrive and leave. If your lunch "hour" is 56% longer than average, does that mean you are a lazy employee? (It might mean you are a talented networker, or an excellent mentor, or both.)
I'm worried that these "honest" snapshots of the truth could lead us to a far crueler world.
In a civilized world, honesty and compassion need to go hand in hand. You must use honesty to help other people, not to hurt them. And you must be extremely cautious not to accidentally harm others.
When you meet up with a friend you haven't seen in a year, you wouldn't immediately say, "You are 17 pounds heaver than you were last year."
Why not?
Doing so would be tactless and cruel, so instead you say something like, "It is so great to see you again," while you might think to yourself that your friend looks a bit on the heavy side.
Our world is increasingly flooded with data, and we haven't seen anything yet. With every passing year, more of our lives will be measured, recorded, analyzed and saved. Your smartphone already knows more about your life than your closest friends.
If you take a test online, the system is theoretically capable of not only revealing how many answers you got correct, but also whether it took you more time (or less) to take the test versus others.
Do you really want to know that you were slower than 73% of the people who took that test?
Here are five tips for navigating a workplace that is increasingly flooded with data:
Be compassionate. Honesty without compassion is cruelty. Compassion requires that you sometimes avoid the truth. In most situations, it is less important to reveal the unvarnished facts than to empower the people around you.
Don't overdo it. Resist the movement to document every aspect of your work or personal life. There are true advantages to preserving gray areas in which people can let their hair down and relax. If you can't find positive, constructive and supportive uses for more data, don't gather more data.
Be humane. You are surrounded by people with emotions and egos. Even those who seem outwardly confident and charismatic often harbor insecurities (this is often true of famous actors, for example.) Recognize that you are dealing with human beings, not machines.
Make sure the truth is the truth.Recognize that the "truth" is often subjective. Each of us sees "facts" through a haze of beliefs, attitudes and experiences. No single test can judge the worth or potential of another human being.
Always be generous. The best skill is bringing out talent in others, so rather than judging others, do your best to help them. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and be quicker to lend a hand than to cut someone down - even if your intention in sharing data was not to be cruel.
Take, for example, standardized tests. Schools are obsessed with them. But standardized tests don't necessarily measure ability or achievement. In many cases, they measure how well your teacher "taught to the test," or whether your parents are affluent enough to hire a tutor for you.
If you work in a building with digital IDs, the odds are your employer knows how much time you take for your lunch breaks and exactly what time you arrive and leave. If your lunch "hour" is 56% longer than average, does that mean you are a lazy employee? (It might mean you are a talented networker, or an excellent mentor, or both.)
I'm worried that these "honest" snapshots of the truth could lead us to a far crueler world.
In a civilized world, honesty and compassion need to go hand in hand. You must use honesty to help other people, not to hurt them. And you must be extremely cautious not to accidentally harm others.
When you meet up with a friend you haven't seen in a year, you wouldn't immediately say, "You are 17 pounds heaver than you were last year."
Why not?
Doing so would be tactless and cruel, so instead you say something like, "It is so great to see you again," while you might think to yourself that your friend looks a bit on the heavy side.
Our world is increasingly flooded with data, and we haven't seen anything yet. With every passing year, more of our lives will be measured, recorded, analyzed and saved. Your smartphone already knows more about your life than your closest friends.
If you take a test online, the system is theoretically capable of not only revealing how many answers you got correct, but also whether it took you more time (or less) to take the test versus others.
Do you really want to know that you were slower than 73% of the people who took that test?
Here are five tips for navigating a workplace that is increasingly flooded with data:
Be compassionate. Honesty without compassion is cruelty. Compassion requires that you sometimes avoid the truth. In most situations, it is less important to reveal the unvarnished facts than to empower the people around you.
Don't overdo it. Resist the movement to document every aspect of your work or personal life. There are true advantages to preserving gray areas in which people can let their hair down and relax. If you can't find positive, constructive and supportive uses for more data, don't gather more data.
Be humane. You are surrounded by people with emotions and egos. Even those who seem outwardly confident and charismatic often harbor insecurities (this is often true of famous actors, for example.) Recognize that you are dealing with human beings, not machines.
Make sure the truth is the truth.Recognize that the "truth" is often subjective. Each of us sees "facts" through a haze of beliefs, attitudes and experiences. No single test can judge the worth or potential of another human being.
Always be generous. The best skill is bringing out talent in others, so rather than judging others, do your best to help them. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and be quicker to lend a hand than to cut someone down - even if your intention in sharing data was not to be cruel.
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