> I think that "polite" and "honest" and "direct" are orthogonal.

They are certainly correlated so not orthogonal, its much harder to not be rude when you communicate a complaint than with praise.

You need to put much more effort in when you complain about something to not be seen as rude, that means they are not orthogonal. It also means many will just not do it since its too much work.

Or it means you haven’t practiced and some parts of the space are more difficult for you to traverse individually but still orthogonal objectively. I would say that something isn’t orthogonal if it is impossible to be both. It is clearly possible, just not practiced or easy.

I could grant there is also an objective friction surface, a fourth scalar describing how difficult it is to be direct, honest, and polite at once.