It seems like this is a reasonable response to andrewzah, but to be clear, my argument has nothing to do with virtue--I don't even believe in virtue ethics.
I also know people who don't express preferences directly when they think those preferences will harm me. We can call this empathy or we can call it fear, but what it comes down to is that it's irrational: the end result is that they don't get what they want from the relationships in their life, and that comes out in negative behaviors.
This isn't a moral judgment of these people, it's just not something I want to deal with: I'll try to help these people work through their social anxiety, but if that doesn't work, that's going to limit how close we can be, because I can't trust them to be honest with me.
It's not kindness/empathy to coddle these people, either: that's just enabling them in a behavior that is going to limit them in many aspects of their life.
It has to do with the health of the relationship, whether people can really be connected with each other. A good chunk of drama that happens among people happen unnecessarily, often because they don't feel they can be honest with each other. They cannot be who they really feel.
Are there times people going to have white lies? Yes. Or how about withohlding information out of concern for them? Sure.
Figuring out whether you want to go the bar is one thing. It's when these things really matter, where people are not aligned in what they want out of the relationship that trying to keep things from each other makes things fall apart quickly.
Even simple things like, a friend who keeps asking you to go hangout with him, would borrow money from you and never return it. You feel used. But you also feel you cannot say anything for whatever reason. How can you tell this person, this behavior is not OK while keeping him as a friend? (Do you even want him to remain a friend?)
A married couple with kids. One of them is offered a promotion, but it requires moving overseas. It is a big opportunity, potentially career-defining. The other partner would have to leave a job and it would be highly disruptive to the kids, and does not want to move. Do you think putting this into a communication escrow app will help with talking this out? I don't think so.
Labeling things like "ignorance" and "poor social skills" as "disparaging" isn't particularly useful. When I say someone is ignorant or has poor social skills, that's not a statement that they're a bad person, it's an identification of a problem they have (which is correctable).
> I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person necessarily needs to correct
It sounds like this may be the core of our disagreement.
I won't say that a person "needs" to correct it--instead I would say that the person, and my friendship with that person, will be significantly limited by not correcting this problem.
I'm not suggesting it's something they need to correct. The problem tends to solve itself through selection. Flaky people hang out with other flaky people. Dishonest people have dishonest friends. Mercenary and opportunistic people have friends who are likewise.
Why bother with these elaborate rationalizations to justify dishonesty?
I disagree that avoiding the trade-off makes things better off.
But at least you've made your views known and so have I.
I'm not sure who the "you" are addressing here, I'm talking about this problem from a game theoretic perspective which abstracts over all people.
It some situations there will be no lack of clarity - for example, if two people prefer honesty over empathy (shorthand for "will people be more honest even if they are concerned it will not maximize utility between the parties, or they are aware such utility is not at risk"), there will be no source of moral confusion. It's when there's unrevealed information about value judgements this problem manifests.