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I really don’t lie. Unless it’s for safety or a white lie not to hurt someone’s feelings, I don’t feel the need to stoop to lying.
I accept my faults and I’ll admit wrongdoing before I lie. I’m not concerned with what other people think of me, so I speak my truth even if it will drive others away from me. If that happens, they aren’t the kind of people I want to associate with anyway.
I value honesty, authenticity, and empathy and hold myself strictly to the standards I’ve set in my mind and personal philosophy.
I don’t lie or say anything on the internet that I wouldn’t say in real life. I can’t personally comprehend the point or drive to lie on the internet. I’d rather focus effort on self-actualization rather than make-believe.
Like, verbally or in bed?
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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!
I never lie. (Lie)
I lie down every night
That is quite true.
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.
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.
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.
When people can trust you to tell the truth, they can trust you’ll ask if you really need help.
It varies mostly on the subject and situation. Outside of with a few people and a few situations I won’t hesitate to lie if it serves my needs more than the truth and I think I can get away with it.
I have self-reflected on this a few times. They “say” (I say that in quotes because it’s one of those “human nature” generalizations) that the average person lies approximately a hundred times a day but doesn’t notice. I was confident I don’t fit the mold but took a closer look at that just to make sure. If we’re talking about things that are strictly lies, none under average circumstances (on the average day, I don’t even speak thirty sentences), but many people have had a thing or two to say about me and semantic liberties (could use the golden compass right about now). My lack of a strong social life (not by choice, I’m not good at formulating my end of a chat) or any wealthy, famous, or powerful position probably saves me from lying anywhere near the amount of times the average person lies.
I would dare say that the vast majority of the people on Lemmy are by no means “average”. Not necessarily better or worse, but we do have biases: we seem to trend towards older IT professionals who will put up with all the website glitches, as compared to e.g. a normal tween that would not.
Example “average” lie (in my own addled mind): “Gurl puh-lease, you lookin’ MIGHTY fine right about now!” (translation: bish please, you look like a dumpster fire wrapped in bacon, insteada puttin on makeup and pounds, you need to be going to the GYM!:-P) Or at least this is my impression based on Twitter and YouTube, though tbf I don’t really look at either of them and what posts do make their way onto Lemmy (or Reddit before the collapse) may have been… slightly skewed? :-D
If we are counting work speech:
All Day. Every Day.
On a daily basis? 99% of the time it is to myself. Now I just thought „I will write a meaningful and a super honest answer for a cool, self-reflection provoking question”. Yet, here we are. Any second now, my comment is almost finished and yet, none of that happens. I almost did it tho! Oh, another one, there, just there…
More seriously, lying mostly just costs too much energy. And more often than not, too much time. At least, this is how I feel about it now. I’ve often heard “fuck, you are really a straight shooter / unapologetically honest, ain’t ya?”. One person will enjoy and like that, someone else would love to (very slowly) burn me for it — both sides have their solid / valid reasons.
The best thing, I would like to get a better grasp on is using the blunt version versus cozy version — I often get it quite right but there is definitely plenty of room for improvement.
This comment is a lie.
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.
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…
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.
Do you feel that the omissions are lies?
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.
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.
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.)
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.
[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.
Fair.
I’m still “munching” what you and @OpenStars@startrek.website said; both of you wrote good points, it takes a while to think about this stuff.
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
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.:-)
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.
Omissions are not lies.
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?
I am trying to survive some tough situations where a bit of deception is required. Sometimes it’s just easier to dodge the truth and not cause a screaming match because the details don’t really mean anything but will cause a problem because things are so difficult and explosive. I don’t go around telling lies, but if it’ll help me get through the day in my relationship I’ll definitely skew things.
Yea, I’ll “lie” for the sake of convenience. I’m never lying for personal gain, but I’ll spare the details sometimes because they don’t matter in the first place and I’m tired and just wanna go to my bed.
I try not to lie and I do like to keep it as close to 0 as possible, but it does come up situationally.
My therapist says it’s totally normal if that helps at all.
I’m a psychologist so I know it’s normal lol. A better way of putting tho is withholding the truth vs really lying though
