I feel the same as you, but I'm come to realize most people have a deep seated need to be win friends even at the cost of being right. Your response, like my own, is very Aspie.
I fit into that "aspie" category as well which likely manifested itself in ways similar to you and the person you are responding to earlier in my life.
Now at 41 I'm probably indistinguishable in action from the group you've categorized as having a "deep seated need to win friends" not because I do actually have such a need, but because I realized my need to be vocally, publicly "right" was mostly a manifestation of a core lack of confidence, something which has since been mostly alleviated. Also, in retrospect, I was actually wrong about a lot of things I was sure I was right about because I was intelligent but not wise and the two are often divergent.
Well, you can't win "friends" by avoiding conflict. A friend is (among other things) someone you can have a fight with, and then make up. A friend will tell you when you're wrong -- and when you're right. A colleague, peer, acquaintance or fellow traveller isn't the same thing as a "friend". Any such person might become a friend -- but not because you held off being honest.
All that said, there's a difference between being honest and blunt, and being needlessly honest and cruel.
As mentioned in this thread, in text, tone is most certainly an issue.
The photographer Howard Schatz did an interesting series, where he takes
photographs of actors "In Character", among others Ricky Gervais[1], and he
says at one point: "The other thing about it is:
Comedy comes from a good or a bad place.
And I think that the funniest people always
comes from a good place. Two people can say
the same thing, and one person can be so
nasty and vitriolic -- and therefore not funny.
And the other can be, you know, a celebration.
You know, you can be in on the joke." --Ricky Gervais
