3 ms·
The truth about lying: who does it, and why
- dkarl 17y agoI lie all the time to people who do their best to stop me from telling the truth. When people relentlessly and shamelessly manipulate situations to deter me from telling them something, and I can afford to wait, I'll wait for an opening. It's like dealing with a military adversary who interprets truth as aggression. You don't strike when they're posturing right off your coast. You wait until their navy is in port and their planes are on the ground, and you hope they won't go to the trouble of punishing you, or that they calm down before they manage to muster a retaliatory strike. I don't feel guilty about lying under such circumstances. They're demanding to be lied to, and I'm telling them the truth against their will. Whether I'm doing them a favor by ultimately telling the truth or just telling the truth for my own selfish reasons, I figure they share responsibility for the lies I tell in the meantime.
- christofd 17y agoHmm... the real circumstances of social experiments are tough to evaluate. I'd have to be there to believe it. I'm skeptical... people might just have thought: hey cool, a social experiment, let's play with the situation and enjoy myself. In real life telling somebody, that might know your friends or classmates, you play in a popular band will not do good for your reputation. I don't think people outright lie... they omit, expand, exaggerate, twist, etc., but not outright lie. There's probably a socially accepted ratio of how much you're allowed to bend it, with 1.0 being totally honest and 0.0 outright lying. I'd say you can get away with 0.5 often (try at your own risk). Bell curve?