Maybe I’m unusually honest—or possibly unusually bad at remembering when I’ve lied!?—but I’m not sure I even remember the last time I told an outright unambiguous lie. The kind of situation where I would need to do that just doesn’t come up that often.
I would say that you should consider yourself fortunate then, that you are living in a situation where most of the people surrounding you have your best interests in mind (or, at worst, are neutral towards your interests). For others in more adversarial situations, telling lies (or at least shading the truth to the extent that would be considered lying by the standards of this post) is a necessary survival skill.
In situations where others can hurt you, clever solution like “no comment—because this is the situation where in some counterfactual world I would prefer to be silent” results in you getting hurt.
(A few weeks ago, everyone in the company I am working for got a questionaire from management where they were asked to list the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues. Cleverly refusing to answer, beyond plausible excuses such as “this guy works on a different project so I haven’t really interacted with him much”, would probably cost me my job, which would be inconvenient in multiple ways. At the same time, I consider this type of request deeply repulsive—on Monday I am supposed to be a good team member who enjoys cooperation and teambuilding, and on Tuesday I am asked to snitch on my coworkers—from my perspective this would hurt my personal integrity much more than mere lying. Sorry, I am officially a dummy who never notices a non-trivial weakness in anyone, now go ahead and try proving that I do.)
Also, it seems to me that in real world, bulding a prestige of a person who never lies, is more tricky than just never lying and cleverly glomarizing. For example, the prestige you keep building for years can be ruined overnight by a third party lying about you having lied to them. (And conversely, you could actually have a strategy of never lying… except to a designated set of “victims”, in situations when there is no record of what you said, and who are sufficiently lower-status that you, so if they choose to accuse you publicly, they will be percieved as liars.)
I would say that you should consider yourself fortunate then, that you are living in a situation where most of the people surrounding you have your best interests in mind (or, at worst, are neutral towards your interests). For others in more adversarial situations, telling lies (or at least shading the truth to the extent that would be considered lying by the standards of this post) is a necessary survival skill.
In situations where others can hurt you, clever solution like “no comment—because this is the situation where in some counterfactual world I would prefer to be silent” results in you getting hurt.
(A few weeks ago, everyone in the company I am working for got a questionaire from management where they were asked to list the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues. Cleverly refusing to answer, beyond plausible excuses such as “this guy works on a different project so I haven’t really interacted with him much”, would probably cost me my job, which would be inconvenient in multiple ways. At the same time, I consider this type of request deeply repulsive—on Monday I am supposed to be a good team member who enjoys cooperation and teambuilding, and on Tuesday I am asked to snitch on my coworkers—from my perspective this would hurt my personal integrity much more than mere lying. Sorry, I am officially a dummy who never notices a non-trivial weakness in anyone, now go ahead and try proving that I do.)
Also, it seems to me that in real world, bulding a prestige of a person who never lies, is more tricky than just never lying and cleverly glomarizing. For example, the prestige you keep building for years can be ruined overnight by a third party lying about you having lied to them. (And conversely, you could actually have a strategy of never lying… except to a designated set of “victims”, in situations when there is no record of what you said, and who are sufficiently lower-status that you, so if they choose to accuse you publicly, they will be percieved as liars.)