5 ms·

The article here seems to miss the point a bit I think. I'd say most people don't really consider the word 'lying' to mean the same thing within an employment s

The article here seems to miss the point a bit I think. I'd say most people don't really consider the word 'lying' to mean the same thing within an employment scenario. If people, in general, did treat their jobs as being "real" and as a reflection of their character, rather than as a sort of different 'mode' of humanity, then the world would not quite look the way it does today.

benj111 7y ago
I suppose you could replace 'liar' with amoral, or sociopathic. I don't think it changes the substance. You want your vicar to be an upstanding member of the community, and they are more successful that way. The salesman probably wouldn't do too well with brutal honesty. And I could make a good case that a lot of people a lot of the time actually want the salesmen lying to them. Who doesn't want to be told that X they've just bought will make them a better person?
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  I don't. I want X that I've just bought to do what I bought it for. Unless that was explicitly to "make me a better person", I don't want X or anyone selling X to go anywhere near that. The culture of sales - which eventually shades into law and politics, because they're all based on the same psychology - is incredibly toxic. It's also noisy and expensive, culturally and ecologically. I'd much rather have sales operate as customer solution generation - with "Sorry we can't do that for you" as an option - than customer predation.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Agreed. That's how you would like the world to be, not how the world is.
    - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      It's how the world could be. But first we need to stop using an economic belief system built around feedback loops that reward sociopathic behaviour. A long time ago cannibalism was considered the norm. At some point the disadvantages became obvious. We're about to go through an analogous transition with our economic belief systems.
      - benj111 7y ago
        It isn't clear to me how you would prevent sociopathic behaviour. If current trade relies on trust, sociopaths could take advantage of that trust. If you replace it with a trustless system you take all the humanity out of it(?), which starts seeming a bit dystopian to me. Plus to me marketing is very broad, and can basically be divorced from economics. Marketing (propaganda) still existed in the USSR. Can you be more specific about this new economic belief system?
        seem_2211 7y ago
        I disagree with this - the system we have is based on money and trust, which while gamed easily, is much less violent, brutal and inequal when compared to other systems that we've tried in the past - such as communism/socialism (the USSR still had a market, but it was based on how much political power you had, rather than pure money - a much more violent game), or feudal systems where it was all about how much land you were born into (or possibly conquered for yourself). Of all of the systems we've tried, this is probably the least sociopathic yet.
        benj111 7y ago
        Which bit do you disagree with? I said I cant imagine a system more hostile to sociopaths. You've provided historic examples that are less hostile.
      - arethuza 7y ago
        I wonder if there is some evolutionary mechanism that rewards sociopathic behaviour in a small percentage of the population of any group.
  - seem_2211 7y ago
    This is based on a faulty understanding of what sales is supposed to be (and what it is, when it is done well) - at any level, sales is primarily a discovery exercise (what does the customer want?) and working out if you can mostly fulfill those needs. This is hampered by a few things namely 1: commission structures, 2: customers not knowing what they want (regardless of what they might tell you) and 3: customers not wanting to admit what they want. While there are some egregious examples, the rate at which a sales interaction is based on outright fraud is thankfully very small. As for focusing on customer solution generation, I would highly recommend you spend more time working with customers before setting others up for that sort of torture.
    - mrunkel 7y ago
      Is this your first year? Because this is completely contrary to my experience. Salespeople are some very driven folks but honesty and a desire to help customers solve needs is not a common trait.
      - seem_2211 7y ago
        No, but I should disclose that I am a recruiter (salesperson alert!) who works to help salespeople get jobs. Not to say I've met some terrors in my time, but I think the vast majority of salespeople are good people (just like the vast majority of devs/engineers are also well intentioned people).
    - benj111 7y ago
      Fraud wasn't mentioned. Take for example the Pepsi challenge, in a blind test people reliably choose Pepsi, but knowing brands, they choose coke. Coke are successfully increasing sales for something people arguably don't want. Except they do because they feel coke says something about them? They're told coke says something about them? What's the morality implications there? Anyway, whatever your opinion that isn't about finding a customer solution, customers clearly want Pepsi, perhaps with coke branding, marketing is working against that in this case.
- interfixus 7y ago
  > You want your vicar to be an upstanding member of the community Part of a vicar's job description is "claiming something to be true for which he has no evidence", a.k.a. lying.
  - benj111 7y ago
    I've never been to Australia, on some level the existence of Australia is an article of faith. Nevertheless I have evaluated the evidence, and claim with a clear conscience that Australia does indeed exist. I'm not a religious person, but I have no problem believing that others believe he exists. It isn't lying if they truly believe what they are saying.
- esotericn 7y ago
  I suppose what I'm saying is that when an individual human, in a social capacity, tells you they saw X at the bar yesterday (when actually they didn't at all), that's lying, there's an intention to deceive, it's an abnormal interaction; out of the ordinary. What salesmen do is not really lying in the same sense. It's more of an eternal waffle, the words required of them fall out of their mouth in smoothly flowing paragraphs, a distortion field where truth and falsehood blend together. They'll say what you want to hear, which can be both better or worse than lying, but it's quite a different thing. People talk about this in the context of politicians quite a lot. It's quite rare for them to outright lie, it's more about the waffle.
  - benj111 7y ago
    Agreed, except "but it's quite a different thing". Is it? The person that says they saw X at the bar, is probably the same kind of person that will say black is white at work. Whereas the person that tries to maintain integrity at work isn't likely to be the type to go home and lie. There are times at work where the way I've felt comfortable presenting something hasn't matched what the company would like me to present it as. I can see how someone with less scruples would go further than I were willing to.
  - short_sells_poo 7y ago
    "The words required of them fall out of their mouth in smoothly flowing paragraphs." This made me chuckle. I see what you are trying to point out, and generally agree, but it's sort of a way to make a fundamentally negative behavior seem almost endearing. "the sword was deployed in smooth swipes and swift thrusts to achieve victory over the enemy" sounds different from "make the enemy's guts spill and blood gush in torrents until they flee in terror".

benj111 7y ago

I suppose you could replace 'liar' with amoral, or sociopathic. I don't think it changes the substance. You want your vicar to be an upstanding member of the community, and they are more successful that way. The salesman probably wouldn't do too well with brutal honesty. And I could make a good case that a lot of people a lot of the time actually want the salesmen lying to them. Who doesn't want to be told that X they've just bought will make them a better person?

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
I don't. I want X that I've just bought to do what I bought it for. Unless that was explicitly to "make me a better person", I don't want X or anyone selling X to go anywhere near that. The culture of sales - which eventually shades into law and politics, because they're all based on the same psychology - is incredibly toxic. It's also noisy and expensive, culturally and ecologically. I'd much rather have sales operate as customer solution generation - with "Sorry we can't do that for you" as an option - than customer predation.
- benj111 7y ago
  Agreed. That's how you would like the world to be, not how the world is.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    It's how the world could be. But first we need to stop using an economic belief system built around feedback loops that reward sociopathic behaviour. A long time ago cannibalism was considered the norm. At some point the disadvantages became obvious. We're about to go through an analogous transition with our economic belief systems.
    - benj111 7y ago
      It isn't clear to me how you would prevent sociopathic behaviour. If current trade relies on trust, sociopaths could take advantage of that trust. If you replace it with a trustless system you take all the humanity out of it(?), which starts seeming a bit dystopian to me. Plus to me marketing is very broad, and can basically be divorced from economics. Marketing (propaganda) still existed in the USSR. Can you be more specific about this new economic belief system?
      - seem_2211 7y ago
        I disagree with this - the system we have is based on money and trust, which while gamed easily, is much less violent, brutal and inequal when compared to other systems that we've tried in the past - such as communism/socialism (the USSR still had a market, but it was based on how much political power you had, rather than pure money - a much more violent game), or feudal systems where it was all about how much land you were born into (or possibly conquered for yourself). Of all of the systems we've tried, this is probably the least sociopathic yet.
        benj111 7y ago
        Which bit do you disagree with? I said I cant imagine a system more hostile to sociopaths. You've provided historic examples that are less hostile.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I wonder if there is some evolutionary mechanism that rewards sociopathic behaviour in a small percentage of the population of any group.
- seem_2211 7y ago
  This is based on a faulty understanding of what sales is supposed to be (and what it is, when it is done well) - at any level, sales is primarily a discovery exercise (what does the customer want?) and working out if you can mostly fulfill those needs. This is hampered by a few things namely 1: commission structures, 2: customers not knowing what they want (regardless of what they might tell you) and 3: customers not wanting to admit what they want. While there are some egregious examples, the rate at which a sales interaction is based on outright fraud is thankfully very small. As for focusing on customer solution generation, I would highly recommend you spend more time working with customers before setting others up for that sort of torture.
  - mrunkel 7y ago
    Is this your first year? Because this is completely contrary to my experience. Salespeople are some very driven folks but honesty and a desire to help customers solve needs is not a common trait.
    - seem_2211 7y ago
      No, but I should disclose that I am a recruiter (salesperson alert!) who works to help salespeople get jobs. Not to say I've met some terrors in my time, but I think the vast majority of salespeople are good people (just like the vast majority of devs/engineers are also well intentioned people).
  - benj111 7y ago
    Fraud wasn't mentioned. Take for example the Pepsi challenge, in a blind test people reliably choose Pepsi, but knowing brands, they choose coke. Coke are successfully increasing sales for something people arguably don't want. Except they do because they feel coke says something about them? They're told coke says something about them? What's the morality implications there? Anyway, whatever your opinion that isn't about finding a customer solution, customers clearly want Pepsi, perhaps with coke branding, marketing is working against that in this case.
interfixus 7y ago
> You want your vicar to be an upstanding member of the community Part of a vicar's job description is "claiming something to be true for which he has no evidence", a.k.a. lying.
- benj111 7y ago
  I've never been to Australia, on some level the existence of Australia is an article of faith. Nevertheless I have evaluated the evidence, and claim with a clear conscience that Australia does indeed exist. I'm not a religious person, but I have no problem believing that others believe he exists. It isn't lying if they truly believe what they are saying.
esotericn 7y ago
I suppose what I'm saying is that when an individual human, in a social capacity, tells you they saw X at the bar yesterday (when actually they didn't at all), that's lying, there's an intention to deceive, it's an abnormal interaction; out of the ordinary. What salesmen do is not really lying in the same sense. It's more of an eternal waffle, the words required of them fall out of their mouth in smoothly flowing paragraphs, a distortion field where truth and falsehood blend together. They'll say what you want to hear, which can be both better or worse than lying, but it's quite a different thing. People talk about this in the context of politicians quite a lot. It's quite rare for them to outright lie, it's more about the waffle.
- benj111 7y ago
  Agreed, except "but it's quite a different thing". Is it? The person that says they saw X at the bar, is probably the same kind of person that will say black is white at work. Whereas the person that tries to maintain integrity at work isn't likely to be the type to go home and lie. There are times at work where the way I've felt comfortable presenting something hasn't matched what the company would like me to present it as. I can see how someone with less scruples would go further than I were willing to.
- short_sells_poo 7y ago
  "The words required of them fall out of their mouth in smoothly flowing paragraphs." This made me chuckle. I see what you are trying to point out, and generally agree, but it's sort of a way to make a fundamentally negative behavior seem almost endearing. "the sword was deployed in smooth swipes and swift thrusts to achieve victory over the enemy" sounds different from "make the enemy's guts spill and blood gush in torrents until they flee in terror".