I don’t think there’s a sharp distinction between self deception and effective lying. For the lying you have to run some process with the falsehood taken as true.
The main difference is that if there’s reason to presume that they’re lying, any claims of “we’ve implemented these improvements” that you can’t directly inspect become worthless. Right now, if they say something like “Meetings with consultants about bookkeeping/accounting; currently working with our accountant to implement best practices and find a good bookkeeper”, I trust them enough to believe that they’re not just making it up even though I can’t personally verify it.
I don’t think there’s a sharp distinction between self deception and effective lying. For the lying you have to run some process with the falsehood taken as true.
The main difference is that if there’s reason to presume that they’re lying, any claims of “we’ve implemented these improvements” that you can’t directly inspect become worthless. Right now, if they say something like “Meetings with consultants about bookkeeping/accounting; currently working with our accountant to implement best practices and find a good bookkeeper”, I trust them enough to believe that they’re not just making it up even though I can’t personally verify it.
On the other had, you can’t trust their claims that these meetings are accomplishing anything.
True.