Banning the cowardice answer doesn’t kill the cowardice. It just relocates it.

If you’ve ever had anything I baked, you know I’ve asked you to rate it. No 7s allowed.

The rule started with cookies. It now runs on dinners I host, conversations I want real feedback on, anything I’ve made where “fine” is too easy a thing to say. No 7s. The middle is where cowardice hides. Remove it and people commit.

My bake shelf has 8 entries. On a 1–10 scale: 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10. No 7s. Four 6s.

I banned the cowardice answer. Cowardice migrated to 6.

Every Scale Has a Free Answer

7 is a hiding place, but it’s not the only one. Every rating system has a free answer: the choice that costs nothing to give. Whichever number lives there inherits the cowardice. Banning a digit doesn’t kill it. It moves it.

The free answer migrates with scale, social cost, and platform incentives. A polite friend rating cookies: 7. Google reviews: 5. Uber, where drivers below ~4.6 risk deactivation: any 4 is a 1. Same psychology, different number.

Brian Chesky’s “11-star experience” exercise does the same thing at the top of the scale. He asked his team to define 11. The answers got absurd: the Beatles meeting you at the gate. Designers can’t see how shallow 5 stars is until they’re asked to imagine 11. The exercise doesn’t fix the inflated ceiling. It makes the ceiling visible. Once you can see the resting position, wherever it lives, you can stop pretending it’s not there.

The Rule Is a Lens

The rule isn’t a fix. It’s a forcing function for noticing. Before I banned 7s, a polite 7 and an honest 7 looked the same. Both were just “fine.” After the rule, the 6 is the resting position made visible. A 6 on my shelf means a friend didn’t want to commit. You stop trying to extract honest ratings from systems that don’t reward honesty. You start reading them for what they reveal: where the resting position is, who’s parked there, and what to discount.

When the Free Answer Is Honest

The free answer is cowardice when your unforced view supports a more decisive answer than the one you gave. It’s legitimate when it doesn’t. Test: write what you actually think about the thing, in private, no audience. If the result reads more decisive than your rating, the rating was hiding. If not, the 6 is honest.

The 4 on my shelf is honest. It’s a bake I have nothing more to say about. Some of my 6s are 7s in a different mask.

Ban the 7. Read the 6.