Intellectual Honesty

According to SteveMcConnell acting in a intellectually honest way in the world of software development involves the following:

• Refusing to pretend you're an expert when you're not
• Readily admitting your mistakes
• Trying to understand a compiler warning rather than suppressing the message
• Clearly understanding your program - not compiling it to see if it works
• Providing realistic status reports
• Providing realistic schedule estimates and holding your ground when management asks you to adjust them

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I used to work with someone that performed ProgrammingBySuperstition?. If something was wrong with his software it was always the data or the hardware or a corrupt executable (he never did use the phases of the moon as an excuse however). He would tell the QA people that he was going to get them a new executable but that he was currently working on something else so it would be a little while. A short time later a new executable would arrive and the offending code would be magically fixed in this new non-corrupt executable.

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How does "intellectual honest" differ from "honesty" in general? Misleading people is dishonest, period. It has nothing to do with "intellect".

• Picking out some commonality between intellectual honesty and honesty in general does not establish there is no difference; it is in fact intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty is a failure to apply intellectual tools when they are called for ... for example, failing to be sufficiently critical of one's own claims.

It's a subset relationship. One uses the qualifier 'intellectual' to allow that someone who might be dishonest in, say, romantic relationships might still be honest in intellectual fields, and vice versa.

• No, it's not about fields, it's about processes. Ordinary dishonesty is knowingly making false claims. Failing to investigate a claim so as to be able to continue to make it without being explicitly dishonest is an example of intellectual dishonesty.
  • {That's a matter of degree. Nothing is 100% certain. Where is the cut-off point of where "sufficient" research and verification is done? What is "sufficiently" critical of one's own claims? What are the metrics for sufficient-ness? It may be more useful and less contentious to consider "level of vetting" rather than make a value judgement about the author. If the author presents the idea as being heavily vetted when it hasn't, that's just general dishonesty and nothing unique to the "intellectual" world.}

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In my observation, a little bit of carefully-placed dishonesty can be beneficial to one's career. This is not the same as condoning the practice, but merely an observation of cause and effect. 100% honesty may not be good for your career; although may provide personal satisfaction. Sometimes it's called, "being able to sleep sound at night." Related: ChoosingSatisfactionOverMoney.

Indeed, a career is a political endeavor as advancing often requires convincing people above you that you are worthy of advancement. Dishonesty is a powerful tool for making yourself seem more worthy. Further, in the higher echelons, too much honesty can be seen as a disadvantage - i.e. you might be seen as the guy who'd show weakness to a competitor.

Intellectual honesty is a scientific attitude.