(This post was written a year and a half ago.)
A value that has been on my mind a lot lately is honesty.
Honesty means speaking and acting the truth.
One thing that I come to mean by "the truth" is: rooted in and compatible with all the available information. You must know why you know things in order for them to be the truth. Of course there is no ultimate, root truth, and if you successively ask "But why?" to your answers of why, you will hit dead ends. But true things fit into a web of other provisionally true things, amounting to a coherent model of the world. If the evidence does not hang together, then our truth is incomplete: something is positively wrong, or our model is insufficiently rich to accommodate it all.
As an essential piece of this, the truth requires updating. All truth is provisional. Be honest about all the available information. I've found time and again that the simplest giveaway of the smarter people I know is not that they know everything, but that they understand the limits of their knowledge. Without this good habit of mind, it is hard in practice update your truth. With this practice, you become more correct and ... smarter.
Until recently I thought that that was the end of the story, but I have come to believe more.
Namely, I'm starting to believe that being honest requires authenticity, speaking from your heart. Your own web of meanings and truths, that microcosm in which your belief can possibly take shape, is a big part of what makes it meaningful. Your experience and identity are an essential component of your truth, and you invest that piece of yourself into it. It's a very fuzzy statement to make. I don't know how to be more precise.
I feel it each time I hesitate before speaking. It is not just the exposure to having been wrong; it is the vulnerability of having my heart judged. And I feel it each time I am rewarded for my earnestness: by whatever means, people perceive your honesty and they make themselves open to your truth when they do.
Ask yourself: Have you ever appreciated good acting? Don't you tell yourself that the actor's performance tapped into some genuine emotion?
Honesty goes deeper. Know your motivations, and their relationships to your beliefs. Do you have a stake in believing something? Would not believing it expose you to some risk, or would believing it gain you some advantage? Honesty requires interrogating yourself deeply.
To sum up: I will try to live honestly—by the truth. That truth must draw from and be consistent with all available information, the external reality, and be updated as a practice. That truth must also come from my heart authentically and be meaningful to me. To maintain this, I will continue to interrogate the world and interrogate myself with curiosity and scruples.