Naivety vs Honesty

What's the difference between naivety and honesty?  When it comes to honesty, the definition we use most often is to measure the level of truthfulness of someone's responses, or conversely, to measure the level of deception we perceive to have been employed.  If you ask a question and someone replies with truth then they are considered honest, and conversely if you ask someone a question and we perceive deception in their response then they are deemed to be dishonest - it's important to note here that the latter deals with perception, not reality, as you need to know the actual answer in order to measure their honesty, whether we deem someone dishonest often has no bearing on the underlying truthfulness of that person, there need only exist doubt.  Of course you can immediately see that there is a problem here, that honesty encompasses more than just responses, it also applies to actions and behaviours, it's not just about right and wrong.

As for naivety, this we often define as the act of taking something complex and reducing it to something simple.  Some would argue that naivety necessitates childishness but I would argue this isn't the case, I would instead argue that naivety is the acceptance of a simple answer as being complete.  If we take political issues that are complex and ask simple questions then we are sometimes perceived as being naive, there is a tendency here to label someone who asks those simple questions as naive as judgement for thinking you could give them a simple answer to a question you regard as broaching a complex issue.  I would go further and argue in these situations it's actually the person asking the question that is exhibiting honesty and you are the one displaying naivety in truth for not giving a simple answer as there is no requirement that your answer actually encompass every facet of the issue the question touches upon, it is your own perception that leads you to believe there is a requirement to do so.

I believe the reason naivety is used as the label applied in these situations is not because of what the person asked but quite simply because we can't answer the question and we don't want to admit that.  The truth is if someone asks a simple question then you should be able to give a simple answer, without complicating the question or the answer it should serve only as a starting point for further discussion.  If you are incapable or uncomfortable giving a simple answer then you might want to take a step back and look at the question and the answer and ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable.  When we think of children trying to learn about complex issues and subjects, we understand that their thought process usually follows a train of questions, i.e. they'll ask something simple and then continually ask questions until their understanding deepens or until their curiosity is satisfied - or perhaps most irritatingly for many adults, they will ask 'why' repeatedly until they reach the point where you can't actually provide them with an answer.

So, taking a step back for a moment, ask yourself, is a child naive for asking a question?  The answer to that question should obviously be 'no', with the understanding that any attempt to further their own knowledge and understanding should be encouraged, and that a child's curiosity should never be seen as naive, yet the reality is whether we view it as naive seems to depend entirely on their age and our perception of whether or not we believe they should have figured out the answer by now for themselves, or that they should have learned by now not to ask that question - therein lies my greatest gripe with the concept of naivety, that ultimately it's not about what you ask or how you ask it, at it's core naivety is about authority and whether you are allowed to question it, if you're not allowed to question it then you're labelled as naive when you do.

One of the easiest examples of this that I can give here is that of quantitative easing. If you don't know what that is, it's a policy response used by central banks in extenuating economic circumstances which basically involves deliberately devaluing a currency to make it more appealing to outside investors or to boost exports.  The theory goes, if you reduce it to something incredibly simple, that in extreme economic circumstances a central bank will print more money to stimulate the economy, reducing the value of the currency.  If that doesn't make sense then imagine that I have 10 tonnes of gold in a vault and print 10 tickets each entitles you to 1/10th of the gold, when quantitative easing is used I can print another 90 tickets so that 100 tickets exist in total, each one ends up being worth 1/100th of the gold.  This in theory is what happens when quantitative easing is used, or at least it would be if the value of the currency was linked to something tangible like gold - something that is actually quite rare, this is known as the gold standard and it has a lot of problems, namely that you can't supply enough gold to match the growth of the economy so it's not practical, instead the value of most currencies is determined by foreign exchange markets that float the currency in a similar way to shares of a company.

Returning to the concept of naivety, when a child asks the question "If they run out of money why don't they just print more?" - most people will immediately recognise the issue isn't that simple, but understanding that the child has a limited understanding of finance and economics, they would likely attempt to explain why you can't just do that.  The trouble is, in this situation when asked this question, an honest answer is simple - "Sometimes they do" - that's an appropriate response to give to a child as it reduces the complexity of the concept to something simple in response, it's not all encompassing and doesn't deal with all the facets of quantitative easing but the point is it doesn't have to, it need only answer the question that was asked.  How we answer that question however changes with the age of the person who asked it in the first place, the older they become the more we begin to perceive them as naive for asking that question when in reality the child who asked it in our first scenario did so because of genuine curiosity, they had an honest question and we attempted to answer it without judgement, but we don't extend that grace to adults.

We conflate naivety with honesty, when we're asked simple questions about complex issues that we can't give simple answers to, then we perceive the one who asks as being naive.  We do this because we don't know the answer, not because the person asking exhibited any behaviour that truly merits being labelled naive.

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.  This alone isn't a difficult concept to grasp, but it is something we afford to children and people we perceive as still learning about the world.  Maybe if we weren't so quick to label people as naive when they had honest questions then we might actually evolve into a society that still values learning beyond the halls of academia.  Venture into any forum or website that specialises in any given field and start asking questions and you will very quickly be met with indignation.  Those who already know, or who have gained an understanding of a topic that is complex will deride those who ask simple questions - because they have forgotten how to approach things without complication and give simple responses.  I think one of the reasons why this is the case is because there is an intellectual elitism that emerges, where individuals treat their knowledge the way many people treat money, the more of it they acquire, the more they hold disdain for those without it and attempt to separate themselves and prevent those with aspirations who they deem unworthy. 

I believe society as a whole has reached this point, particularly in regards to information.  As the Internet has become more ubiquitous in our lives, the access to information we have has also grown.  To that end, many more people now have access to information that they may not understand, the trouble is when they ask questions, rather than taking the time to explain and educate those who ask, society as a whole seems to respond first and foremost with the belief that they should go and figure it out for themselves - the real problem here is that there are no elements of verification or validation with self-teaching, if a false conclusion is made without someone with greater understanding present who is able to correct that mistake, the individual will continue to build upon that broken foundation until they have built up a fundamentally flawed understanding of complex issues.  The greater the weight of understanding that rests on that broken foundation, the harder it becomes to remove it or fix it after the fact.  The result is that we end up with a society where people hold their beliefs so deeply that it becomes impossible to challenge them as doing so would cause the whole thing to fall apart, so much to the point where the builder recognises this and will not only prevent you from ever getting near the foundation but will become actively aggressive in the process.

What is the solution?  There are only 2 in so far as I can see, the first is to limit the access of information so that it is only accessible in environments where it will be given the context necessary to process it, or the second is to require individuals to demonstrate an understanding of the information that they request, in order to ensure that the information is only accessed by those who have the understanding necessary to process it.  The trouble with both of these solutions is that neither one would prevent those who access it from then disseminating false information afterwards safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people they pass the information on to will not be able to verify it for themselves - although it is worth noting here that transparency and verification in and of itself does not ensure security or accuracy, if you take open source software for example, disclosing the source code will only provide both of these things if those who wish to use it take the time to read it, are able to understand it, or have a wide enough community of people who are informed who can do this for them.  Transparency in and of itself is not a panacea.