• Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Never. I never, ever lie. About anything. For any reason. And I certainly wouldn’t lie on the Internet, in an anonymous forum. I especially wouldn’t lie about lying.

    • Zachariah@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone for any reason ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been… ever, for any reason whatsoever…

  • snooggums@midwest.social
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    7 months ago

    I don’t remember the last time I lied.

    I do a lot of changing the subject or give obtuse answers to avoid lying. If something isn’t great, I will focus on the good parts. Like if some food had a bad texture but the taste was good I will mention only the taste instead of just saying it was good or that I enjoyed it, which would be lies.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Sometimes; it depends on intention - if you want the other person to reach the wrong conclusion due to your omission, then you’re lying.

        However nobody knows someone else’s intentions, so knowing when someone else’s omission is a lie or not is impossible.

        • snooggums@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          It is easy to infer intent if they are asked directly and withhold information.

          Can’t really infer if it isn’t brought up it up, which is why I don’t consider it lying unless prompted.

          • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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            7 months ago

            When someone infers a piece of info, they don’t know it. At most, if the inference is strong enough, they can say “for practical matters it’s like I know it”, but there’s always some chance that the inference is wrong.

            That’s relevant here because the main sources of info that you have about the others’ intentions are all under their control, not yours. So inferences dealing with intentions are rather weak.

            For example, they can claim that they withheld info because they didn’t think that it would be relevant, or because they didn’t know it. Or even when asked directly they answer in such a convoluted and indirect way that it’s hard to know if they even said it. (NB: I know at least one person like this.)

            • snooggums@midwest.social
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              7 months ago

              Yes, that is why I did not contradict your statement that nobody really knows other people’s intentions because that is true. But being able to infer covers the times where it is pretty blatant that there isn’t another likely explanation than intentional omission.

              I put an example of someone being asked by their spouse who they were with and what they did the night before. The person answered by naming a couple people and something they did, but omitted hanging out with another person and cheating on the spouse. Something so recent and obviously relevant to what the spouse asked not including the cheating can be used to infer it was intentionally omitted.

              A question about something random that happened 10 years ago isn’t likely to lead to the same inference.

              Someone giving complex and obtuse answers can make inferring unreliable, sure. But that is more of a specific scenario and there are always some exceptions, but some exceptions doesn’t mean the whole concept is invalid.

                • OpenStars@startrek.website
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                  7 months ago

                  Having read this over, fwiw I am definitively siding with @snooggums@midwest.social on this. Here is an illustration that I think will help:

                  Child 1: Hey, let’s grab some cookies!

                  Child 2: Okay! (reaches for cookie but before they can grab one…)

                  Mother: Hey, what are you doing - you two are not eating cookies are you, hrm!?

                  Child 1: No mummy dearest (choose appropriate slang of choice here:-), we two are not eating cookies…

                  Question: did child 1 lie? Technically their statement is accurate according to the narrowest possible interpretation - they both were not eating cookies, yet, even though the intentions of them both were fairly blatantly obvious.

                  Communication among humans is not math - the meaning of a message requires interpretation from the multiple parties involved. And in particular the recipient is usually in possession of additional data than the sender - at the very least, once the sender chooses to send the message packet, then the receiver has obtained +1 message that prior to the sending did not yet exist between them (and which may contain additional data, such as “a sender exists” and “the sender was located in this direction, at the time of the sending”).

                  Anyway the child KNOWS what the mother intended to ask, but deliberately and blatantly told an extremely skewed version of the truth that is SO distorted, SO unwieldy, SO twisted, that there is no doubt that the intention was to deceive. In a normal situation anyway - though ofc exceptions always exist e.g. an autistic child, or one who has suffered some form of brain damage that causes them to struggle with over-literal statements might somehow literally be confused what the intention of the mother was. But in a normal situation, the meaning is clear: the child lied.

                  Any judgement about that is ofc up to interpretation - maybe the mother is actually pleased at having taught her children to lie so well? :-P

                • OpenStars@startrek.website
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                  7 months ago

                  And I for one appreciate so much that you do - take all the time that you need and I will know that the response will be all the better for it.:-)

              • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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                7 months ago

                [Sorry for the double and late reply.]

                Yup, it seems like we reached agreement through different words - epistemically speaking the cheated spouse still has no knowledge strictly speaking, but for practical purposes the inference in this case is so strong that it can be treated as if it was knowledge. Including the fact that spouses often know a lot about each other’s behaviour. In this specific case I’d probably call it lying by omission, even if the intention is not known.

                Going a bit deeper on that: inference doesn’t grant us knowledge, only deduction. But if you dig deep enough you’ll need to infer something, so if you go too hard on “inference is not knowledge!” you fall into solipsism.

      • snooggums@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        Not saying everything on my mind isn’t lying, and leaving something out or talking about something else when the social expectation is that I would give a ‘little white lie’ is not lying.

        If I did something bad and avoided admitting to it that would be lying by omission. Doesn’t come up as I admit it when something like that happens.

          • snooggums@midwest.social
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            7 months ago

            Omissions can be lies, but not all omissions are lies.

            Spouse: What did you do last night and who did you hang out with?

            Spouse 2: Went to the bar, drank with Bill and Tina. Came home in a cab.

            Spouse 2 also hung out and cheated on their Spouse with Pat that night. Spouse 2 lied by omitting the fact that they hung out with Pat and cheated on their Spouse when asked. It isn’t any different than saying “No” if asked directly if they hung out with Pat and cheated on the Spouse.

            If Spouse 2 was never asked, not bringing it up wouldn’t be lying, just a terrible person who is hiding something.

  • Olap@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    2 small children need constant lies. How else do noses get stolen?

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    7 months ago

    More than “never”, less than “all the time”. I never counted it, so I don’t actually know.

    I consider lying morally negative (bad). But it isn’t such a big negative that can’t be somehow justified, in some situations - usually because telling the truth would cause a larger negative.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      I consider lying to be on the spectrum of violence. If one can avoid physical violence by telling a lie, then it’s justified. However if one is constantly telling white lies in order to avoid causing discomfort to themselves or others then I think there’s some room for introspection about your motives and the emotional stability of the people around you.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        7 months ago

        I consider lying to be on the spectrum of violence.

        Could you go further on that? I consider lying and violence apples and oranges, but the idea that they’re part of a spectrum is interesting.

        About white lies: it’s interesting that you mentioned them since it’s one of the situations where I actively avoid lying. For me a white lie is a form of belittlement; it’s like saying “you aren’t a rational human being, but a fragile little piece of junk, that would harm itself with the truth”.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          It depends on how one defines violence but personally I think of it as intentionally causing harm to others. It can be both physical or psychological. If you can de-escalate a threatening situation by telling a lie then I think that it’s justifiable assuming the alternative would’ve been physical violence. I think rules like “don’t lie” or “don’t be violent” are good rules of thumb but not absolute. Almost nothing is. There’s always exceptions to these rules. Another example that comes to mind is if a severely depressed and perhaps even suicidal person is showing you a painting they made and you don’t like it at all. If you have a valid reason to worry that they legitimately can’t handle the truth right now then you probably should lie. Again, you’re intentionally causing harm (lying) but honesty would cause even greater harm so choosing the lesser one I think is justifiable.

          It’s a bit slippery slope argument but I think it applies in the most obvious extreme cases that might happen only a handful of times in ones lifetime if even that. I mostly don’t believe in absolutes so that’s why I hesitate to say that lying is always to be avoided. It’s still a good rule of thumb though.

          • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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            7 months ago

            It might be a bit slippery slope, but it sounds practical. I personally don’t consider them in the same spectrum but I don’t see any inconsistency in doing so.

            Thank you for the reply!

  • Quazatron@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    As a person with terrible memory I find that telling the truth requires less work than lying.

    If there’s no work involved in keeping the lie then sure, I’ll lie.

    • Bread@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      If you are lying about this, then that means you only tell the truth. However, if you only tell the truth, that means you can’t lie. So you cannot say you only lie on Lemmy comments because that would be a lie and therefore not the truth. So if you are lying ERROR ErROr ErrOR PAroDOx deTECteD!!!

  • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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    7 months ago

    I think that most days, I don’t lie at all. I actively try to avoid lying; I have a long history of mental health issues, so I used to lie a lot about how I was doing, to avoid worrying people, but that turned out to be counter productive. If someone asks me how I’m doing, a “eh, getting by :/ <shrug>” or similar can be surprisingly informative. I’ve been getting better at gesturing at my general not coping in a way that’s not going to give any more information that is appropriate or necessary. I’ve found that people actually worry less this way.

    • dingus@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The problem I have is figuring out how to tow the line properly between lying and being too unfiltered in your truth and making someone uncomfortable. Because for the most part people aren’t looking for your life story when they ask you stuff like this.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        Oh yeah, I still struggle with that too, but it’s a skill like any other. I’m at least practicing at it now, whereas I wasn’t trying before. When I get the balance right, it feels like I can build some rapport with people who are asking how I am on a surface level, without overloading them. It is a tricky balance to strike though.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    What is truth.

    Intentionally lie? - never.

    I wouldn’t call anyone in an anonymous place a valid primary source. So maybe I view all of this as a lie?

    I think the very concept of truth should be questioned. Human memory is not truthful or accurate in nature. The very act of remembering has been shown to alter one’s recollection.

    Science is about consensus, collaboration, and time. There are few binary truths and everything is subject to new evidence and revision based on observation.

    I view truth like all oversimplifications. It is useful in a fake idealized world, within a lie - if you will, but absolutes are a fallacy in the real world.

      • j4k3@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        If a truth is given as an answer such as a favorite color or song, while lying to one’s true self about one’s underlying complexity, is the answer a truth or a lie?

        Green. Why? Because when I asked someone special why she said green, she had the prettiest smile when she said, “It’s the color of life.”

        “Green” is truthful to who I am by a concept with deep meaning; a truth to your intentions and expectations in asking the question; but a lie in saying I have any color preferences for some narrow frequency band in a spectrum.

        Did I tell the truth?

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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      7 months ago

      I don’t think that truth itself is an oversimplification. 2+2=4 | {2, 4} ∈ ℤ remains true regardless of observer or their acknowledgement of that truth. This shows that at least some things are true, and available for knowledge.

      However, we humans (plus any other potentially intelligent being) do not have a complete knowledge of truth. It’s impossible. And conflating “what I know from the truth” with the truth itself is what I believe to be the oversimplification. (More specifically, conflating subjective and objective matters.)

      I would not call anyone in an anonymous place a valid primary source either. However, that does not mean that all descriptive statements coming from those people (us) are lies; it’s simply that I don’t know if it’s true or false, let alone if the person believes on it (false, but not a lie) or not (a lie).

      Regarding science, truth could be seen as a “goal” for science; consensus, collaboration and time as the means to reach that goal. (…or at least that’s what positivists would say, I think. Popper would instead say that the goal is not to reach the truth, but to get rid of false claims. And Feyerabend would probably agree with you and not me.)

      • OpenStars@startrek.website
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        7 months ago

        (also @Crackhappy@lemmy.world)

        The older I get, the more I think that people primarily lie to themselves, and then tell others that “truth” that they have internalized.

        Part of this is that people think in a sloppy manner, but if they were to acknowledge that (to themselves) then it would cause emotional distress. So they… don’t. To clarify: I don’t even say that fully as a value judgement so much as an observation of human psychology i.e. an instance of the natural world. And yes I include myself in this as well:-).

        This paradox means then that these “truth-tellers” are fully literally incapable of telling you the objective Truth, b/c they do not know it themselves - and even if they are aware that they do not know, that part they will not admit for fear of being perceived as weak. (Edit: obviously there is a spectrum here, and different people operate in different modes at different times, e.g. an actor who knows a lot about conveying emotions with their facial expressions might not know anything about physics and vice versa, but neither of them knowing anything about pediatric care, and so on - so even someone who is capable of telling the truth in their chosen area of expertise might not be capable of doing so outside of that sphere, especially if they drink their own cool-aid and allow themselves to forget where the proper demarcating line is - which seems to me to be roughly 100% of all people who ever lived… though I might not be fully capable of telling the truth there?:-P)

        Another part is the lies that get passed back and forth so often that they begin to take on a ring of truthiness - this seems to just be an extension of the above, using an external second party rather than happening solely inside of one brain. (This one I *do* levy a value judgement at: just b/c all your “friends” think that a vaccine does not work, does not outweigh the opinions of actual medical professionals - nor do such people even truly believe in this manner themselves, b/c whenever they get sick do they turn to their “friends” or do they suddenly cry out for help from an actual doctor? this is just hypocrisy plain & simple: “hanging out” and “playing around with”, like a kid in a playground, is not the same thing as “believing” in the adult world, and when shit finally gets real these people suddenly start adulting, so why not do the adulting at all times, especially when e.g. voting on things that affect millions of other humans?)

        This second group could tell the objective Truth - b/c they suddenly do it themselves when they have a personal stake in the matter - but for whatever reason they choose not to, I guess for fear of losing friends.

        Either way, it seems unreasonable to expect the truth from someone who does not value that concept themselves - either in their own minds or in their discourse with others. The same with compassion, and patience, and every other aspect of life that can variously be either a virtue or a deficit depending on how much someone has or lacks of it.

        You cannot extract blood from a stone.

        • Crackhappy@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          Thank you. I appreciate what you’re saying about objective truth, because objective is still subjective.

        • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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          7 months ago

          Lying to oneself / self-lie is such an amusing concept - if lying is defined as “saying something knowingly false”, once you get rid of that piece of knowledge it stops being a lie. As such, self-lie only keeps being a lie if it’s ineffective. It’s a lot like you said later on about lies being passed back and forth being an “extension of the above, using an external second party rather than happening solely inside of one brain.”

          This second group could tell the objective Truth - b/c they suddenly do it themselves when they have a personal stake in the matter - but for whatever reason they choose not to, I guess for fear of losing friends.

          I wonder if it isn’t because sometimes saying the truth is far, far more complex than saying some simple lie. It’s easy to say this shit like “ivermectin is good against covid!”*, but it’s hard to actually dig into what doctors say, and why they say it, to reach conclusions that agree with them.

          And typically there won’t be any benefit for you to tell the truth - in both cases you’ll get people screeching at you (“what do you mean? The water isn’t turning the frogs into gays? You should check yourself, you soy-drinking degenerate! Reeee!” versus “you’re being a fucking stupid muppet”).

          To clarify: I don’t even say that fully as a value judgement so much as an observation of human psychology i.e. an instance of the natural world. And yes I include myself in this as well:-).

          No worries - I get that you’re being descriptive, not judging.

          Either way, it seems unreasonable to expect the truth from someone who does not value that concept themselves - either in their own minds or in their discourse with others.

          This makes me wonder if we [people in general] aren’t falling into solipsism. As in: “if truth is unreachable, then what’s true or false doesn’t matter”.

          *context: dunno in the rest of the world, but at least here in Brazil ivermectin - a parasite medication - was being touted as fighting against COVID (a virotic disease), because of a muppet of a former president. I’ve had the displeasure to talk with those people, and their reasoning is never something plausible like “it’s a side effect” followed by studies, it’s consistently ignorance on the difference between parasites and virus.

          • OpenStars@startrek.website
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            7 months ago

            First, a lot of people are indeed falling into solipsism. However, not everyone is, and not everything is “impossible”. It is true that the barriers can sometimes be high, but they are never insurmountable - e.g., how hard would it be for someone to go get a medical degree? Okay, so that one is high, but there are other, much more low-hanging fruit! e.g. if a religious authority figure says that “nobody will die”, and then a couple of months later, half the congregation dies, that does not need a decade’s worth of study to figure out that the person “lied”. Either knowingly or unknowingly.

            Which brings me to point 2: if you can say the former phrase about lying unknowingly, then the definition of lying must be a bit broader than what you are using? People can be said to be “living a lie”, as you said b/c they find out later - but perhaps even if they do not? Google’s AI when I type in “lie” says:

            used with reference to a situation involving deception or founded on a mistaken impression

            So someone can be lying unknowingly if they pass on a statement that is itself a lie - and depending on the context, the punishment might not even be that much less severe, i.e. whenever the consequences are highly severe. But it varies with the level of “responsibility” aka the expectations set forth. Example: a nurse repeats word-for-word what they are told by a doctor to say - are they lying? Not really, especially if they are clear to attribute what is being done, in terms of merely “relaying” the message. The message itself may be a lie, but the person was clear, so is not a responsible agent for the deception, even if participating in it. But a doctor prescribing ivermectin on the other hand? They should have known better, and thereby for a person in such a position of responsibility to pass on improper information, may still constitute a “lie” in that case, even if an unknowing one - b/c they should have known. And if they did not know, then they should have found out. Others may need DECADES of study to catch up to them, but for a doctor who already knows the foundational framework, it is only a matter of a few hours to read some primary source material to catch up on exactly whether that drug is indicated in that scenario, and like what the side-effects are, etc.

            In the above I had to make a major presumption here, in that someone did not pollute the various information streams that doctors have access to. Indeed if that were to happen, then it is possible for even doctors to, while passing on incorrect information, not be “lying” while doing so, in the same manner as a nurse. But I think at least that my former scenario is what happened during the pandemic? Someone started talking about using that horse drug, doing the work of a scientist except skipping the parts about actually doing proper testing, and so essentially doing unauthorized “human trial experiments” on actual, live human test subjects! :-( Perhaps they thought it was for the greater good even, like if people were going to die anyway then at least they could offer some protection? Except that’s not even how that drug works under the most ideal conditions, thus doing so violates the most foundational and sacred oaths of the medical profession: to first do no harm. So then… it’s a lie either way? Whether through nearly criminal ignorance or to fully criminal and unethical behavior. Tbf, not every “doctor” is a good one, BUT, in defense of my position, EVERY doctor (in the USA at least, and I thought in every part of the world?) MUST take the Hippocratic Oath. So it gets REALLY hard to defend such a person then, who either lied while taking it (in that they could not in fact manage to uphold those standards of integrity) or got lazy later on in terms of upholding it.

            Which begs the next question: how can someone both “lie” and yet “not know that they are lying” at the same time? Admittedly this one is fairly complex in needing to dig deeper into human psychology. Or, I don’t even think this is unique to humans, though it does seem far more developed in us than in animals. Let us switch scenarios b/c I think I have an easier one here. Let us say that a person has read the Christian Bible, and know for certain what the commandment by Jesus to “love one another” means - it means to be patient, and… you know what, let’s just stop there. So when someone KNOWS that they have been COMMANDED to be patient, and yet they are NOT patient, but they still call themselves a “Christian” - that word means “follower of” btw - how then are they not “lying”? The answer, I believe, is that they are lying to themselves. Specifically, I am referring to cognitive dissonance: b/c our brains are complex enough that we utilize neural pathways that interconnect with one another without necessarily having to uphold one single, consistent Truth, it is fully possible for someone to both “know that they are lying”, but also “not know that they are lying”, at the same time. Such a person is usually LOUD in their condemnation of others who lie, and who e.g. are impatient, and yet they do not choose to see that they themselves are being thus. Hence the lie, b/c this is “knowing / willful misrepresentation of the Truth”, the caveat being that here, only half of the cognitive processes are aware that it is a lie, while the other half act as if it is legit. These people will look you full in your face and claim that they are telling you the Truth. And that is the Truth. But it is also a lie.

            2+2=4 | 2, 4} ∈ ℤ is a True statement? But if I say then that 2+2=2 {2, 4 ∈ ℤ is also a True statement, is that a lie? What if I have no idea what those things (“numbers”) mean? That gets back to that “accountability” issue from above - I really should know that, and all the more so if I am the one bringing them up? So acknowledging that and setting it aside, adding statements that are untrue converts a True statement into a False one. “There exists a True statement within this pair of statements” is True, but the overall pack of them is False. Hence, someone suffering from cognitive dissonance is guilty of telling a lie, to themselves. We all do it I am sure, it takes ENORMOUS efforts not to, especially when our culture is… well, as you mentioned, the way that it is. Though as we agreed: it is a descriptive statement to say that if and when that happens, those statements are still “lies”, even if they are only partially known while partially unknown.

            And all the more so when someone raises themselves up to become a (co-)leader of a nation - e.g. by voting. In that case, the statement that “they should have known” raises that specter, yet again, of responsibility: if they are going to chart the way forward for the entire nation - i.e. by depriving people of certain rights, like to medical care - then they should have thought deeper about the matter, and the excuse “but I did not know” does not work anymore. The reason it does not work anymore is b/c if you ever cross one of these people, they will cite this exact thing to you: YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. It is the metric by which they judge - so it is not even me judging them, so much as acknowledging that this is the metric by which they judge themselves, and indeed by which we all judge our “leaders”. At which point… they really should have known better, than to believe in a lie so hard that they actually vote on it, and all the more so when they do that in order to overturn the determinations of the people who actually DO know better - e.g. the doctors, who are aware that ivermectin is a horse drug, and if ever to be used in humans is only for extreme cases and for malaria, not covid and especially not as a preventative, and all the more so not as a substitute for a vaccine.

  • The Giant Korean@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    When I was 19 I decided that I was going to be honest about everything. I don’t know why - I guess it just seemed like the “right” thing to do? I’d literally just say anything that came to mind, unfiltered. I lost several good friends and hurt my family members because of it. After that I realized that you just have to lie about some things, or at least keep silent about how you really feel.

  • Buglefingers@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Frivolous stuff and/or pleasantries it tends to happen. Never for anything important or that matters to a reasonable degree. I do tend to choose my words more carefully if I want to answer but don’t want to fully speak on something.

  • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.org
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    7 months ago

    I consciously try not to, but still have those stupid random moments where I realize I just pretended to have already understood or known something. It doesn’t happen often, but it creeps in here and there. Why do we do that? Is it just some human insecurity thing?