"He would be eaten alive the instant he took a step outside of your home into the real world."
Jesus Christ.
Over the last 5 years, I've lied 5 times. I regret all of them except for one, and out of the moment reflection and hindsight allows me to say that everything would have been okay without having told any of them.
So come off it with this where-would-we-be-without-lying spiel.
(The most difficult thing is actually others' natural skepticism. How do you deal with that? "No, you don't get it. I don't lie.")
I have to wonder what you consider lying though. Have you ever omitted all of the information necessary for an informed decision? Have you ever purposefully or accidentally misinterpreted what another person has was saying for your own benefit, or misrepresented it to someone else? Have you ever uttered an exaggeration that would be hard to distinguish from the truth? Have you ever presented your opinion as if it was fact? Each of those is a type of lie that we may make without even noticing, often times not using these techniques in certain situation would even be considered a social faux pas. So tell me again with 100% certainty that you have only lied 5 times in the past 5 years, that way at least I can be sure you can lie to yourself.
And if by some freak chance of fates you really have managed to go 5 years while for the most part only telling the truth, if you really are akin to a character out of a fairy-tale then I invite you to take a look at what Robert Greene says about lying in the "48 Laws of Power." You may not even understand how powerful a weapon you wield, and how much it may be hurting you, and those around you.
[Initially I mistook this comment to be from someone really interested in the topic, until I got to this part and noticed your username:
> So tell me again with 100% certainty that you have only lied 5 times in the past 5 years, that way at least I can be sure you can lie to yourself.
I'll go ahead and respond as if my initial impression were correct, though.]
> I have to wonder what you consider lying though.
I had a feeling the "subtleties of lying" thing was going to come up. I'll bite, but I think it's kind of a played out conversation. Maybe not the best use of the phrase. I might be clearer if I say instead that it just smells of the type of pseudo-philosophical discussions that come up within small groups, maybe after a beer or two, with the participants under the impression that it qualifies for profundity or, you know, being otherwise highly insightful in some way. You probably know the type. But I haven't taken part in any of these conversations that've come up yet, so like I said, I'll bite. :)
To give an example, the lie I mentioned that I don't regret involved an issue that came up with my friend's closed bank account after he moved to the opposite side of the world. Obviously, that kind of move can make getting to the resolution more difficult. The lie was me impersonating him to the customer service rep on the phone in order to avoid the latency of twelve-hour-turn based correspondence (at my friend's request).
That might give you some kind of idea of my threshold of "a lie". By most measures, I think, this would be seen as fairly benign one. (Having said that, it is the most benign of the bunch.)
> Have you ever purposefully […] misinterpreted what another person has was saying for your own benefit, or misrepresented it to someone else?
No. (Well, assuming that your "ever" refers to the last five years in consideration, and not actually "ever" as in... ever.)
> Have you ever […] accidentally misinterpreted what another person has was saying for your own benefit, or misrepresented it to someone else?
(emphasis mine)
Even aware of how fickle pinning down the definition of "lying" is, I cannot think it possible for anyone except for the most unpleasant hardliners to consider such an accident to qualify as a lie. And I mean really, truly, genuinely "accidental", not haha-not-really-but-I-have-plausible-deniability-and-you-can't-very-well-prove-otherwise "accidental".
In instances where I feel I have unintentionally caused someone to misunderstand (or really, been a shitty communicator), I'm obligated to correct and explain better.
> Have you ever uttered an exaggeration that would be hard to distinguish from the truth?
Absolutely I have. A good chunk of my humor involves deadpan delivery, then the ensuing "hah, jk" types of motions. (My brother is quite a bit younger than me; when visiting my family and he's the mark, I will often literally say "jk". He's started countering with "jl".)
I don't know if it's a regional difference, but since my last move, I've found that people aren't as likely to be "in on it" (or are painfully slower to recognize) when the "hah, jk" part comes. This is--of course--not as fun, so I don't do it as often anymore.
> Have you ever presented your opinion as if it was fact?
I'm inclined to just say that matters of opinion are inherently opinionated, so I'm not sure I can conceive of anyone actually being able to do this, really. I admit I haven't tried to think very hard of any scenarios. Why kinds of opinionated statements can be made that could be presented (or misinterpreted) as a factual one?
> You may not even understand […] how much it may be hurting you, and those around you.
I think that's unlikely to have happened so far, or at least to much of an effect, but I wouldn't rule it out for eternity. I can definitely imagine some scenarios here where trying to maintain my current stance would probably be against my best interest/livelihood, although I don't put a lot of stock in those particular scenarios occurring.
Obviously, I have thought lying to be the better approach at some points (otherwise my count would be 0 for the past five). Like I said, though, everything would would've worked out okay. I absolutely don't believe that a truthful response in any of my cases would've made a significant difference about where and how I'm sitting right now.
> I invite you to take a look at what Robert Greene says about lying in the "48 Laws of Power."
Some of those seem to be decently okay advice (law 45, the first part of 39, 26 in name), but for the most part (law 7, 12, 24, 32, last part of 39), it seems it would have been better described as "how to be a selfish dick and perpetuate misery".
Wow, you are really good at being covertly insulting. At least I had the decency to make my insults really obvious, you decide to attack me on a multitude of vectors while persisting in keeping your unsubstantiated moral high ground. Note, you set the tone for the conversation with the original reply dismissing my first (Long and detailed) post as utterly ridiculous using a rather difficult to believe, and quite unsupportable claim. Now you suddenly expect some sort of polite response to show an interest in you and your topic. I am no where near nice enough to accommodate, but I will gladly call you out on your hypocrisy if you decide to make an issue of it. That said, why would I spend time writing a post if I didn't care at all what you have to say? Sure, I may think your assertions are silly, your debating technique flawed, and your tone is more insulting by accident than mine is on purpose, but if I didn't care for the topic I would not bother replying at all.
To start of, let's not ignore how you decided to omit the lie of omission from your point by point response to my post. That is already quite telling of your tone, and could humorously enough be construed to be a lie of omission.
You are quick to dismiss my points as pseudo-philosophical without actually explaining why you may believe that, or what sort of reasoning you use to dismiss them. Regarding your example I can see that your threshold of lying lies at the definition of "direct lie," which is certainly the easiest to detect. However, there are many other types of lies, each of which serve important roles in the properly functionality of our society. You could easily discover this on your own if you didn't dismiss perfectly valid resources because at first glance they appear to describe "how to be a selfish dick and perpetuate misery."
For instance, you are quick to deem an accidental lie to be outside the scope of acceptable definitions of lying. For some reason you only consider something a lie if you are actually aware of it. However, while intention is certainly a part of lying, it is by no means the most important. A lie is simply an untruthful statement, regardless if you mean for it to deceive someone. I will agree that trying to correct yourself in these cases is certainly a remedy, but that hinges on you understanding that you have caused someone to misunderstand something, which may not always be the case.
Regarding your "hah, jk," will you honestly say that even in situations where it would be socially awkward or even unacceptable? "Thank you for the food, it was very good... hah, jk, that was one of the most bland meals I have ever eaten" or "You look good, that shirt does not make you look fat at all... hah, jk, you should go get liposuction." Going back to the point I made originally, lying is literally a core part of our culture, you may not even notice when you are doing it since telling the truth can often be amazingly insulting.
Presenting opinions as facts is probably just as common as the lie of exaggeration. It may be something as simple as presenting yourself as an expert when you are not; perhaps you have tried to explain a complex scientific theory without a full understanding of the material in question. Even if the actual content of your description is accurate, you have lied in acting as if you are a knowledgeable expert in the field. Or maybe if you are are asked to provide a design a work to replace an aging system, and you decide to do your work without actually understanding why and how the previous design functioned, and what limitations it was meant to overcome. Really, any situation where you act as an expert without actually being one qualifies for this category. Again, this is actually very common in the business world. You seldom have the time necessary to familiarize yourself with all the relevant material, yet cannot run the risk of appearing unqualified or incompetent by using looser terms like, "In my opinion X" or "I think Y" in place of "X is Y."
You are actually right when you say that you hurting someone with truth is unlikely to have happened so far, but for a wholly different reason than the one you present. Returning yet again to my original point, you are probably not even consciously aware of all the lies you say day in and day out, simply because you do not consider them lies. To you these things are part of your social strata; you say them because not doing so could be offensive. During your childhood your were exposed time and again to situations where lying was acceptable, you may in fact have been punished for not lying at times. That leads back to the point I was trying to make in my original post. You must be cautious when teaching a child about lying, since lying is simply a part of our society.
> Wow, you are really good at being covertly insulting[…]
I really don't know what all the claims in your first paragraph are all about, though something else you say gives me the idea of an explanation for some of it.
> To start of, let's not ignore how you decided to omit the lie of omission from your point by point response to my post.
Genuine oversight.
> You are quick to dismiss my points as pseudo-philosophical[…]
Ah. This, maybe. But no, I'm afraid you've misunderstood and not in a way that I feel I'm equipped to address now without sacrificing brevity or comfort.
> Regarding your "hah, jk," will you honestly say that even in situations where it would be socially awkward or even unacceptable?
Although you might take some glee in putting those words in my mouth (and with some truly terrible material, at that), no.
---
There's more to be said for the rest of it, but my heart's not in it to counter at this point, especially since much of it would deal with addressing so many frivolities. Unfortunately, my inclination to do so is likely to come at a time when my ability to reply here is dead and the attention has moved elsewhere.
Do note that I'm not very excited at the prospects of giving the appearance of backing down.
> "Thank you for the food, it was very good... hah, jk, that was one of the most bland meals I have ever eaten"
> Ah. This, maybe. But no, I'm afraid you've misunderstood and not in a way that I feel I'm equipped to address now without sacrificing brevity or comfort.
Really now?
> In instances where I feel I have unintentionally caused someone to misunderstand (or really, been a shitty communicator), I'm obligated to correct and explain better.
How's this for putting words in your mouth? I have spent well over an hour writing a in depth analysis of your posts, describing my thought process, and theorizing on what I believe to be your thought process. At this point I am confident that I may flat out call you out on a lie perpetrated during this very discussion; you stated you are obligated to clear up any misunderstandings, and are now flat out refusing to do so due to "brevity and comfort." Clearly your so called obligations don't amount to much.
Oh, and perhaps you should learn to differentiate between "Asking a question" and "Putting words in my mouth." If I ask whether you will honestly consider something to be true, I'm looking for an insightful answer (Longer than one word usually), not suggesting that you do or do not. Instead, you are presenting a series of inconsistent, unsubstantiated claims, half formed thoughts, and backing all that up with an obvious disinterest in anything resembling an attempt at allowing me to understand you. After I gave you countless examples of various magnitudes you could use for counter-examples that is really quite rude.
In hindsight it should have been obvious since your original dismissive reply, but I was still holding on to the vain hope that as a poster on HN you would have slightly more dedication to communication than an average redditor. The idea that there is something to back down from really crystallizes the difference; you appear to think this is some argument which one of us could win, while I am trying my best to understand you and point out where I feel you are contradicting yourself or reality. Sure, I may be doing it in a rude fashion, but again, I do so in response to what I perceive to be a hostile tone, for reasons I described in my previous post.
In short, I don't care in the slightest whether you think you are backing down or not; I feel that this entire exchange was a complete waste on my part since you clearly had no interest in attempting to clear up any of the misunderstandings that obviously exist between us. Thank you for allowing both of us to waste our time, and I apologize for have participated in this farce of a discussion.
Jesus Christ.
Over the last 5 years, I've lied 5 times. I regret all of them except for one, and out of the moment reflection and hindsight allows me to say that everything would have been okay without having told any of them.
So come off it with this where-would-we-be-without-lying spiel.
(The most difficult thing is actually others' natural skepticism. How do you deal with that? "No, you don't get it. I don't lie.")