I see I’m not the only downvoter, so I’ll try to stay positive on this. There are plenty of contexts where lying is desirable, from a consequentialist perspective—it sometimes IS legitimately expected to be a better long-term outcome than strict truth-telling. But it’s somewhat rare, and not as simple as your post makes it seem.
It’s an added complexity over telling the truth, because you need to keep a counterfactual consistency in your head to support the lie. So MOST of the time, it’s not worth the cost, even aside from the potential harm from either being caught or the epistemic contamination caused in others. Oh, and yourself—as a human, telling lies too often makes your weak little brain forget they’re lies, and you’ll much more easily believe falsehoods.
The truly adversarial cases do justify lying. Hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors is trivial (though it gets complex if that’s all you’re doing, rather than actively fighting the oppression). Social smoothness in casual or group settings often requires lies, or at least avoidance of controversial statements. I’d recommend keeping them simple, and more denials of importance than direct (false, in your belief) predicates.
The private discussions with long-term partners (“do I look fat”?) can often be better handled by evasion (“you’re always beautiful to me”) or actual honesty (with details of how you differentially perceive the person now vs yesterday—sometimes that’s actually useful information, asked rationally).
Also, remember that lies are FAR more effective if you haven’t publicly stated your preferences for lying in those contexts.
I think the counterargument to your “added complexity” point would be that this complexity might be a good thing (returning to the ‘theatre/ fun’ point and the ‘mental practice’ point in the piece), so I would only consider it a cost if you’re trying to simplify your social interactions. I personally tell the truth almost all the time now, but this is partly just out of laziness- I struggle to harness the energy or creativity to weave and maintain interesting webs of deception (it was both easier and more fun to lie when I travelled more and didn’t have a full-time job). On the other hand, I also suspect that it’s mentally more difficult to be radically honest than to lean towards the ‘mostly honest’ part of the spectrum of honesty/ dishonesty.
I’m not sure if people who lie are more likely to believe falsehoods, actually. It seems plausible that liars could be better at detecting deception.
I deliberately wanted to avoid the ‘truly adverserial cases’ here- I find that the debate around honesty is too closely anchored to the premise that ‘lying is always bad’ (but what about the murderer at the door?) and I wanted to make the case there might be rational and fairly obvious reasons to lie.
Having said that, I do think honesty norms are generally good, especially with colleagues, close friends and partners- I’m probably more honest than the default in my culture, and would bring a child up with fairly strong honesty norms, at least until they were old enough to weigh up the trade-offs themselves.
But I also think that, when people lie, they should do so with a sense of playfulness, which probably inspired the tone for the post.
Just a clarification before I bow out of the discussion: I didn’t mean that liars are more likely to believe other liars, they’re in fact less likely (though perhaps less likely to believe truth-tellers as well, which is a separate problem).
I meant that it is very common to start to believe some of your own lies, and this is epistemically very harmful. The mental effort of splitting your beliefs into “real” and “expressed” modes is hard to overstate, and the brain seems to have evolved such that it’s easier to convince people if you believe your statements yourself, and therefore to self-deceive in many situations.
Doesn’t this also imply that those who are ‘justifiably lying’, such as the case of “hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors”, are deceiving themselves too?
(Since they also have limited human faculties.)
If so, how can we be sure there isn’t another layer of deception underneath?
Of course, yes. Justifiable lying has costs and risks, just like any other reason for lying. The word “justifiable” only indicates that the costs are less than the value, in the eyes of the decider. The fact that it’s sometimes necessary doesn’t mean it’s not harmful.
How can we be sure it’s sometimes necessary if there could be another layer of deception underneath? (due to the aforementioned propensity of human’s mind where lies induce more lies)
My models of morality and of bounded rationality make me highly suspicious of any claim of surety. But in this case, I’m also unclear on what you’re asking. Perhaps if you can give two examples, one on each side of the line, we can generalize from there. Or, more likely, we’ll disagree on something and identify an underlying disagreement in our models.
I mean, there’s ALWAYS more layers of human-level modeling of each other. Whether that layer is deception, honest mistake, or shared truth-seeking becomes really hard to know or use after a few levels.
My models of morality and of bounded rationality make me highly suspicious of any claim of surety. But in this case, I’m also unclear on what you’re asking. Perhaps if you can give two examples, one on each side of the line, we can generalize from there.
Well this is an interesting dilemma.
I can’t provide ‘two example on each side of the line’ because I’ve only ever heard of activities related to “hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors” from third-hand sources, who also have fallible minds probably containing multiple lies. Nor can I tell exactly where the line is because I’ve likely also self-deceived in some capacity.
Considering the real situation of adults circa 2022, where everyone likely has deceived themselves with at least a few lies, how could this conversation continue?
I see I’m not the only downvoter, so I’ll try to stay positive on this. There are plenty of contexts where lying is desirable, from a consequentialist perspective—it sometimes IS legitimately expected to be a better long-term outcome than strict truth-telling. But it’s somewhat rare, and not as simple as your post makes it seem.
It’s an added complexity over telling the truth, because you need to keep a counterfactual consistency in your head to support the lie. So MOST of the time, it’s not worth the cost, even aside from the potential harm from either being caught or the epistemic contamination caused in others. Oh, and yourself—as a human, telling lies too often makes your weak little brain forget they’re lies, and you’ll much more easily believe falsehoods.
The truly adversarial cases do justify lying. Hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors is trivial (though it gets complex if that’s all you’re doing, rather than actively fighting the oppression). Social smoothness in casual or group settings often requires lies, or at least avoidance of controversial statements. I’d recommend keeping them simple, and more denials of importance than direct (false, in your belief) predicates.
The private discussions with long-term partners (“do I look fat”?) can often be better handled by evasion (“you’re always beautiful to me”) or actual honesty (with details of how you differentially perceive the person now vs yesterday—sometimes that’s actually useful information, asked rationally).
Also, remember that lies are FAR more effective if you haven’t publicly stated your preferences for lying in those contexts.
Thanks for the positivity! Much appreciated.
I think the counterargument to your “added complexity” point would be that this complexity might be a good thing (returning to the ‘theatre/ fun’ point and the ‘mental practice’ point in the piece), so I would only consider it a cost if you’re trying to simplify your social interactions. I personally tell the truth almost all the time now, but this is partly just out of laziness- I struggle to harness the energy or creativity to weave and maintain interesting webs of deception (it was both easier and more fun to lie when I travelled more and didn’t have a full-time job). On the other hand, I also suspect that it’s mentally more difficult to be radically honest than to lean towards the ‘mostly honest’ part of the spectrum of honesty/ dishonesty.
I’m not sure if people who lie are more likely to believe falsehoods, actually. It seems plausible that liars could be better at detecting deception.
I deliberately wanted to avoid the ‘truly adverserial cases’ here- I find that the debate around honesty is too closely anchored to the premise that ‘lying is always bad’ (but what about the murderer at the door?) and I wanted to make the case there might be rational and fairly obvious reasons to lie.
Having said that, I do think honesty norms are generally good, especially with colleagues, close friends and partners- I’m probably more honest than the default in my culture, and would bring a child up with fairly strong honesty norms, at least until they were old enough to weigh up the trade-offs themselves.
But I also think that, when people lie, they should do so with a sense of playfulness, which probably inspired the tone for the post.
Just a clarification before I bow out of the discussion: I didn’t mean that liars are more likely to believe other liars, they’re in fact less likely (though perhaps less likely to believe truth-tellers as well, which is a separate problem).
I meant that it is very common to start to believe some of your own lies, and this is epistemically very harmful. The mental effort of splitting your beliefs into “real” and “expressed” modes is hard to overstate, and the brain seems to have evolved such that it’s easier to convince people if you believe your statements yourself, and therefore to self-deceive in many situations.
Doesn’t this also imply that those who are ‘justifiably lying’, such as the case of “hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors”, are deceiving themselves too?
(Since they also have limited human faculties.)
If so, how can we be sure there isn’t another layer of deception underneath?
Of course, yes. Justifiable lying has costs and risks, just like any other reason for lying. The word “justifiable” only indicates that the costs are less than the value, in the eyes of the decider. The fact that it’s sometimes necessary doesn’t mean it’s not harmful.
How can we be sure it’s sometimes necessary if there could be another layer of deception underneath? (due to the aforementioned propensity of human’s mind where lies induce more lies)
My models of morality and of bounded rationality make me highly suspicious of any claim of surety. But in this case, I’m also unclear on what you’re asking. Perhaps if you can give two examples, one on each side of the line, we can generalize from there. Or, more likely, we’ll disagree on something and identify an underlying disagreement in our models.
I mean, there’s ALWAYS more layers of human-level modeling of each other. Whether that layer is deception, honest mistake, or shared truth-seeking becomes really hard to know or use after a few levels.
Well this is an interesting dilemma.
I can’t provide ‘two example on each side of the line’ because I’ve only ever heard of activities related to “hiding innocent victims from evil oppressors” from third-hand sources, who also have fallible minds probably containing multiple lies. Nor can I tell exactly where the line is because I’ve likely also self-deceived in some capacity.
Considering the real situation of adults circa 2022, where everyone likely has deceived themselves with at least a few lies, how could this conversation continue?