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childofbaud comments on Rationality Quotes: April 2011 - Less Wrong
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—Oscar Wilde
Can someone wager a guess why this is being downvoted?
It has no obvious connection to rationality.
I suppose it might be a little ambiguous. Here's my interpretation (I'm curious to hear others).
The practice of backstabbing usually refers to criticizing someone when they're not present, while feigning friendship.
Thus, "frontstabbing" would be to criticize someone openly and honestly, which is often very hard to do. Even, or perhaps especially, among friends. But it seems to be something worth aspiring towards, if one is concerned with rationality and truth.
That seems like a good idea, but I'm pretty sure that Oscar Wilde didn't at all intend the quote to mean that. Rationality quotes is not an excuse for quote mining and proof-texting.
So, what do you think he meant?
I tend to judge quotes on their own merit. I thought that was the point. Do people usually look up detailed contextual information about them?
It doesn't take much context to guess at the original meaning- Oscar Wilde was a pretty cynical individual. Given that data point what do you think it means?
I've tried and failed to come up with any reasonable interpretation other than my own. Please frontstab me.
His comment is that humans are terrible, treacherous, disloyal scum. The only difference between the friend and the non-friend is that the friend might tell you when he's harming you whereas the non-friend won't even bother telling you.