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Lying is good. You cannot live without lying. We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotio
by klibertp 14y ago
Lying is good.
You cannot live without lying. We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotional (to varying degrees, ofc) - we, as humans, are simply incapable of comunicating the "truth", at least beyond very formal systems.
The only thing for us to decide is how much to lie on any given topic. Or what story to tell - it's really the same thing worded differently.
We do not value the truth. We value narrative, stories. Don't do yourself a disservice and don't make your story sound pathetic and uninteresting for the sake of the "truth".
In my country not too long ago there was a public debate about some very famous journalist (after his death) who used to (as his biographer insisted) put factually incorrect sentences and paragraphs in his reportages. He lied! There is evidence of this, and much of it. But there's a catch here: fragments of his works were lies, yet read as a whole they conveyed the truth in a stunning, poetic way which many hoped to copy but failed. The debate I mentioned was something along the lines: do those lies invalidate the truth he told? I'm very, very strongly convinced that that's not the case. Through his lies he almost touched the truth.
I'm talking about Ryszard Kapuścinski biography, if anyone is interested, BTW.
- redspark 14y agoI upvote for your interesting perspective, but want to downvote for your conclusion. :D
- klibertp 14y agoI know it's controversial - the debate I mentioned in my edit was really heated in my country :) To clarify: I don't think that lying for the sake of lying is any good, of course. It's just that we are incapable of not lying, so we can as well do it well and to achieve something good :)
- alttag 14y ago> It's just that we are incapable of not lying ... You seem to be removing our ability to choose from the equation. Clearly, perceived short-term self-interest has its lure, but please don't frame this as if we must lie, or that the ends justify the means.
- klibertp 14y agoNot at all, we can choose! It's just that we choose between different lies, that's all. I think we use different definitions of a 'lie'. I call everything that is not a truth, that is it's not 100% factually correct and 100% complete, a 'lie'. Are you confident that - outside of very narrow formalisms - you can describe anything 100% accurately? I'm quite sure it's just impossible. EDIT: it seems I can't reply to jd and davidhollander just yet; I'll do it later, when I get home. I just wanted to say that I upvoted you guys, because your criticism of my posts is very good :)
- davidhollander 14y ago> I call everything that is not a truth, that is it's not 100% factually correct and 100% complete, a 'lie'. Are you confident that - outside of very narrow formalisms - you can describe anything 100% accurately? This is an unworkable definition. A lie is defined as a 'deliberate untruth', not an 'incidental untruth'. To tell an untruth deliberately requires the preexistence of knowledge of what is true. If someone knows nothing, they are incapable of telling a lie.
- klibertp 14y agoYou're right and I apologize, I was sloppy in wording and left much of my usual argument out. Please read my response to jd if you're interested in clarification.
- JadeNB 14y agoI think "100% factually correct" is reasonable, but "100% complete" is not. Is "2 + 2 = 4" a lie, because it does not also mention (for example) that 2 + 3 = 5?
- klibertp 14y agoActually you can be 100% correct and 100% complete in mathematics. That's why I specifically said "outside of narrow formalisms".
- denzil_correa 14y agoIt is always good to tell the truth; the carefully edited truth.
- klibertp 14y agoThanks for a good summary, can I put it as tl;dr on top of my post? ;)
- denzil_correa 14y agoSure! There will be no copyright infringements or trademark duress.
- jeremyt 14y agoThis is called "fake, but accurate", and it's an attitude that troubles me greatly – especially in journalism.
- andyjohnson0 14y agoSam Harris wrote an interesting essay [1] putting the case for the opposite position - that you should just never, ever lie. I don't necessarily agree with him, but its an interesting and thought-provoking read. Its about $3 for the PDF or kindle ebook. [1] http://www.samharris.org/lying http://www.samharris.org/lying
- techtalsky 14y agoI don't know if I'd go so far as to say, "Lying is good." but I also wouldn't go so far as to say "Always tell the truth." simply because it is not possible. It is literally impossible to tell people the 100% truth about your life, for the simple reason that all telling is choosing information to tell, which always omits something. You MUST omit something, because otherwise you'd be telling your unabridged autobiography to every single person who asked you a question about anything. Obviously everything short of that is an information choice. I think it's worth aiming at truth and not invention, but I think it's also wise to think about what information is going to be effective when sharing.