This certainly can come up in close friendships. There was an incident last summer where a then-close-friend of mine told me an outright lie about what they were doing on a particular evening, in a one-on-one conversation, and I caught them, and that lie certainly contributed to the breakdown of the friendship and my current distrust of the person. If we had had a convention like this explicitly established, who knows where we would be instead. Probably would have ended up in the same place for other reasons, but it is hard to know.
On the other hand, I don’t think I would value a friendship as much if it had this convention attached to it.
Certainly, trust is an important element in friendships. I meant to say only that the compulsory answer and allowed information-hiding response that is the Glomer response, does not apply to friendships. For close friendships, you have a lot more options. Often, just don’t answer—talk about something else. Or just be truthful, and spend the effort to add the context which makes the answer OK. Or directly lie (if you can do it well enough).
“I am filling my technical responsibility by telling you that I will neither confirm nor deny this” just has no place in non-formal relationships like friends. This doesn’t change if you randomize or otherwise try to make it common.
This certainly can come up in close friendships. There was an incident last summer where a then-close-friend of mine told me an outright lie about what they were doing on a particular evening, in a one-on-one conversation, and I caught them, and that lie certainly contributed to the breakdown of the friendship and my current distrust of the person. If we had had a convention like this explicitly established, who knows where we would be instead. Probably would have ended up in the same place for other reasons, but it is hard to know.
On the other hand, I don’t think I would value a friendship as much if it had this convention attached to it.
Certainly, trust is an important element in friendships. I meant to say only that the compulsory answer and allowed information-hiding response that is the Glomer response, does not apply to friendships. For close friendships, you have a lot more options. Often, just don’t answer—talk about something else. Or just be truthful, and spend the effort to add the context which makes the answer OK. Or directly lie (if you can do it well enough).
“I am filling my technical responsibility by telling you that I will neither confirm nor deny this” just has no place in non-formal relationships like friends. This doesn’t change if you randomize or otherwise try to make it common.