Might it be a good way, in general, to ensure that children grow up instinctively distrustful of authority? I realize that may be a negative trait in an ideal world, but in this corrupt one I think it’s essential.
H. Keith Henson says he grew up with a family tradition of telling really obvious whoppers to small children so that they would learn to think. He hypothesizes that this would help immunity against bad memetic infections:
It is possible that lie detection is like language; there is a learning window. Telling “whoppers” to small children seems to be a family tradition in many families. (There were some great examples in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbs.) Generally the tradition is to tell lies so blatant that even small children spot them. A study of the outcome of this variation in child raising might be of great interest.
My family had that tradition via my mother’s father. He had a whole series of crazy lies that were super fun. For years I was told that lifesavers candies were actually “bear pills” that would make my brother and I strong and brave enough to wrestle bears into submission.
Once, when my brother and I were really little, we visited our grandparents the week before Easter and Grandpa came out to the front porch with his shotgun, shouting about how he had just missed the Easter Bunny, and he put such a scare into the bunny with his near miss that the bunny dropped some candy as he made his escape. Sure enough, running over to where the bunny was supposed to have made off into the wilderness we found still-wrapped candy scattered around on the ground, with a trail of less and less candy that we followed for about 50 feet before it tapered off.
And then there was the “live rock” and the “medfly killer” and “eek eek eggs” and the trick where pouring salt on a deer’s tail it will cause it to become tame...
If you search LW for Santa Claus you’ll find a lot of people here who find that particular systematic lie disturbing, but I’ve always thought it was the same basic idea as part of western culture, and very healthy for that reason. When I was little my parents actually hid an audio playback system in the attic that made “reindeer on the roof” sounds and had a carefully constructed “interview” with Santa. It caused me to believe in Santa for years longer than otherwise. When it happened I already knew that there were microphones that could broadcast to simple clock radios and I thought that my parents might be using one of those so I “talked to Santa” while watching them to try and see if they pulled out such a microphones or if their lips moved when Santa talked. I couldn’t detect the trick I thought might be happening, so I was “forced by logic” to accept the data as proof of Santa’s existence. This experience helps me to understand why scientists are so easy for stage magicians and people who are good at cold readings to trick...
H. Keith Henson says he grew up with a family tradition of telling really obvious whoppers to small children so that they would learn to think. He hypothesizes that this would help immunity against bad memetic infections:
My family had that tradition via my mother’s father. He had a whole series of crazy lies that were super fun. For years I was told that lifesavers candies were actually “bear pills” that would make my brother and I strong and brave enough to wrestle bears into submission.
Once, when my brother and I were really little, we visited our grandparents the week before Easter and Grandpa came out to the front porch with his shotgun, shouting about how he had just missed the Easter Bunny, and he put such a scare into the bunny with his near miss that the bunny dropped some candy as he made his escape. Sure enough, running over to where the bunny was supposed to have made off into the wilderness we found still-wrapped candy scattered around on the ground, with a trail of less and less candy that we followed for about 50 feet before it tapered off.
And then there was the “live rock” and the “medfly killer” and “eek eek eggs” and the trick where pouring salt on a deer’s tail it will cause it to become tame...
If you search LW for Santa Claus you’ll find a lot of people here who find that particular systematic lie disturbing, but I’ve always thought it was the same basic idea as part of western culture, and very healthy for that reason. When I was little my parents actually hid an audio playback system in the attic that made “reindeer on the roof” sounds and had a carefully constructed “interview” with Santa. It caused me to believe in Santa for years longer than otherwise. When it happened I already knew that there were microphones that could broadcast to simple clock radios and I thought that my parents might be using one of those so I “talked to Santa” while watching them to try and see if they pulled out such a microphones or if their lips moved when Santa talked. I couldn’t detect the trick I thought might be happening, so I was “forced by logic” to accept the data as proof of Santa’s existence. This experience helps me to understand why scientists are so easy for stage magicians and people who are good at cold readings to trick...
Good times :-P