White Lies

There are certain lies that I tell over and over again, where I'm 99% sure lying is the morally correct answer. Stereotypical example: my patient is lying in a lake of poop, or is ringing the call bell for the third time in 15 minutes to tell me that they're thirsty or in pain or need a kleenex, and they're embarrassed and upset because they're sure I must be frustrated and mad that they're making me do so much work. "Of course I don't mind," I've said over and over again. "This doesn't bother me. I've got plenty of time. I just want you to be comfortable, that's my job." When it's 4 am and I desperately want to go on break and eat something, none of these things are true. But it's my job, and I want to want to do it, so the fact that sometimes I desperately don't want to do it is kind of moot. But the last thing a patient in the ICU needs to hear from their nurse is "yes, I'm pissed that you shat in the bed again because I was about to go on break and now I can't and I'm hungry and cranky." I keep that to myself.

...Other than that, I generally don't lie to friends, although I do lie by omission, especially when it comes to my irrational feelings of frustration or irritation with things they do. I'm generally not bothered by being very open with people about i.e. my relationships or other personal things, so I'm confused when other people want to lie or conceal information about these sorts of things. I actually have a really hard time keeping up with other people's systems of lying; when you're friends with two people who both have specific lists of things they don't want you to ever tell the other person, it gets complicated. (For almost a year my best friend was dating a man without telling her ex-husband, and I was seeing her ex-husband every time I went to play with my godson, and I had to remember to lie about a whole bunch of random things like "what did you and my ex-wife do on Saturday?" I respected that it was her choice whether or not to tell him, but I still found this really, really irritating.)

I find it takes a great deal of luminosity in order to be honest with someone. If I am in a bad mood, I might feel that its my honest opinion that they are annoying when in fact what is going on in my brain has nothing to do with their actions. I might have been able to like the play in other circumstances, but was having a bad day so flaws I might have been otherwise able to overlook were magnified in my mind. etc.

This is my main fear with radical honesty, since it seems to promote thinking that negative thoughts are true just because they are negative. The reasoning going 'I would not say this if I were being polite, but I am thinking it, therefore it is true' without realizing that your brain can make your thoughts be more negative from the truth just as easily as it can make them more positive than the truth.

In fact, saying you enjoyed something you didnt enjoy, and signalling enjoyment with appropriate facial muscles (smiling etc) can improve your mood by itself, especially if it makes the other person smile.

Many intelligent people get lots of practice pointing out flaws, and it is possible that this trains the brain into a mode where one's first thoughts on a topic will be critical regardless of the 'true' reaction. If your brain automatically looks for flaws in something and then a friend asks your honest opinion you would tell them the flaws; but if you look for things to compliment your 'honest' opinion might be different.

tl;dr honesty is harder than many naively think, because our brains are not perfect reporters of their state, and even if they were good luck explaining your inner feelings about something across the inferential distance. Better to just adjust all your reactions slightly in the positive direction to reap the benefits of happier interactions (but only slightly, don't say you liked activities you loathed otherwise you'll be asked back, say they were ok but not your cup of tea etc)

A few years ago, for example, when I went to see the play my girlfriend had done stage crew for, and she asked what I thought of it. She wasn't satisfied with my initial noncommittal answers, so she pressed for more. Not in a "trying to start a fight" way; I just wasn't doing a good job of being evasive. I eventually gave in and explained why I thought the acting had sucked, which did not make her happy. I think incidents like that must have contributed to our breaking up shortly thereafter. The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.

Boy, I sure wouldn't want to date a person like this (your girlfriend-at-the-time). She asked for your opinion; pressed you to actually give it, thus communicating (by any reasonable measure) that she actually wanted your opinion; and then, when you gave it honestly, was unhappy about it? That's horrible.

I don't think I'd ever willingly choose to be close to someone to whom I'd ever regret not lying in response to being asked for my opinion. The thought of living like that, living with the knowledge that honest communication is basically impossible because any time the person asks me (and presses me) about my opinion, I have to consider the possibility that what they actually want is lies — that this person prefers lies both to truths and to no comment — repulses me.

Failure to realize a statement could be a white lie can create some terribly awkward situations.

While this is true, it is also true that knowing that a given person won't lie, that they will tell you how bad the acting in your play is, makes their praise even more valuable; because one knows that it is not a white lie.

By allowing yourself the small lies, that is what you are trading away. Whether it's worth it or not, I can't say for sure...

This reminds me of something Mark Horstman (I think) said, that people are entitled to honest answers to questions to which they are entitled an answer. He was using it in a workplace context, for example that if one's boss asks about one's sex life it's okay to lie, because she is not entitled to an answer thus she is not entitled to an honest answer. Good post.

I don't normally like to blather on about myself, but I feel that a bit of self-exposition might help some people with their apparent ... Fundamental Attribution Error, perhaps?

I have an extremely malleable identity in certain types of social situations, to the point that I literally come to believe whatever I need to believe in order to facilitate rapport with whomever I'm talking with.

For example, I normally have a pretty strong aversion to infidelity in relationships, but on a few occasions I've deeply connected through prolonged conversation with friends who were engaged in relationship infidelity. It is sort of a running joke among my closest friends that I can get almost anybody to open up to me and share their deepest darkest secrets, and the way I do it is that I am genuinely nonjudgemental, and the method by which I am genuinely nonjudgemental is that I have a "core" module that has my actual beliefs and then I have my surface chameleon module which is actually talking which just says whatever it needs to say to establish the connection.

All of this babbling is to convey that if you were to interrupt me in the middle of doing this and say, "moridinamael, was that a lie?" I would answer "No." Because although I might be saying something that isn't in line with that "I" (whatever that is) don't really "believe" (whatever that means) it doesn't in that moment feel like a lie, it actually feels really good and pure and warm because I'm connecting with somebody over their pain.

Now, there are some people in this discussion thread who I feel like would think I am some kind of monster. And I think my brain probably works very, very differently than theirs, or at least the social circuitry is wired differently. But just bear in mind that people like me exist and we can't really help the way we are ... or if I could help it, I should say, it would basically cripple me.

I endorse the vast majority of the post. Lying in most of those circumstances seems like an entirely appropriate choice, particularly to people you do not respect enough to expect them to respond acceptably to truth. Telling people the truth when those people are going to screw you over is unethical (according to my intuitive morality which seems to consider 'being a dumbass" abhorrent.)

If you're highly averse to lying, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you to tell white lies more often. But I will implore you to do one thing: accept other people's right to lie to you.

People have the right to lie. People do not have the right to lie without consequences. I suggest people respond to being lied to in whatever way best meets their own goals and best facilitates their own wellbeing. Those adept at navigating a sea of social bullshit and deception may choose to never treat lies as defections or provide any negative consequences. Those less adept at that kind of thinking may be better served by being less tolerant of lies from those with a given degree of closeness to them.

I implore you to respect other's right to treat lies, liars, and you in whatever way suits them.

On the other hand, if we ever meet in person, I hope you realize I might lie to you. Failure to realize a statement could be a white lie can create some terribly awkward situations.

I personally assume people lie all the time (or, more technically, I assume they bullshit all the time). However, speaking about other people you may encounter I hope you realize that some people do not interpret lies the way you hope. Failure to realize that your lie will create some terribly awkward situations is your behaviour and your consequence (as well as a consequence to the non-savvy recipient). As the person who is (presumably) more socially aware of the two parties and the person who has analysed the subject more you are going to be better equipped to adapt. So either don't lie to people when it's going to create terribly awkward situations or avoid talking to people when you expect your preferred behavioural pattern will not work with them (eg. based on apparently clumsy body language).

As is the case with all notions about how people ought to interact with each other, if you attempt to enforce your own standards and don't adapt to the person you are interacting with you can expect things to go poorly. This applies to lying averse people interacting with liars. It applies to liars interacting with the lie-averse. It applies to 'Guess culture' people forcing their behaviour or interpretations on non-guessers and the reverse.

The most notable failure pattern that I observe is that of a wilful, stubborn, insistence that consequences are responsibility of the other party because "my" way is the naturally right way for the universe to be. A psychological disposition based precommitment not to swerve in a game of chicken.

I worry this post will be dismissed as trivial. I simultaneously worry that, even with the above disclaimer, someone is going to respond, "Chris admits to thinking lying is often okay, now we can't trust anything he says!"

If you extract the hyperbole this is an entirely valid reasoning. An observed pattern of lies (or an outright declaration of such a pattern) does mean that people should trust everything you say somewhat less than they otherwise would. Reputation matters. Expecting people to trust your word as much when you lie to them as when you don't would be foolish. This is a tradeoff that seems worthwhile but you must acknowledge that it is a tradeoff.

If you're thinking of saying that, that's your problem, not mine

False. It is their problem and yours. People not believing you is obviously a negative consequence to you. Acknowledge it and choose to accept the negative consequence anyway because of the other benefits you get from lies. (Or, I suppose, you could use selective epistemic irrationality as a dominance move and as the typical way to defect on an ultimatum game. Whatever works.)

all but the most prolific liars don't lie anything like half the time, so what they say is still significant evidence, most of the time.

With the caveat that the 'most of the time' excludes all the time when it matters to them most. Assuming a vaguely rational liar the times when they should be least trusted are times when being believed would benefit them the most.

There's a fundamental problem with lying unaddressed - it tends to reroute your defaults to "lie" when "lie"="personal benefit."

As a human animal, if you lie smoothly and routinely in some situations, you are likely to be more prone to lying in others. I know people who will lie all the time for little reason, because it's ingrained habit.

I agree that some lies are OK. Your girlfriend anecdote isn't clearly one of them - there may be presentation issues on your side. ("It wasn't the acting style I prefer," vs., "It's nice that you hired actors without talent or energy, because otherwise, where would they be?") But if you press for truth and get it, that's on you. (One my Rules of Life: Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to.)

But I think every lie you tell, you should know exactly what you are doing and what your goals are and consciously consider whether you're doing this solely for self-preservation. If you can't do this smoothly, then don't lie. Getting practice at lying isn't a good idea.

I note here that I think that a significant lie is a deliberate or seriously reckless untruth given with the mutual expectation that it would be reasonable to rely on it. Thus, the people who are untruthing on (say) Survivor to their castmates... it's a game. Play the game. When Penn and Teller tell you how their trick works, they are lying to you only in a technical respect; it's part of the show.

But actual lying is internally hazardous. You will try to internally reconcile your lies, either making up justifications or telling yourself it's not really a lie - at least, that's the way the odds point. There's another advantage with honesty - while it doesn't always make a good first impression, it makes you reliable in the long-term. I'm not against all lies, but I think the easy way out isn't the long-term right one.

I was at a meetup where we played the game Resistance, and one guy announced before the game began that he had a policy of never lying even when playing games like that.

That's exactly what I'd say too. And then, I'd commence the lying :-)

I wouldn't too much on your ability to "lie with truths," as Quirrell would say.

You accidentally a verb.

I can see how a reputation for lying would be a bad thing to have, but I can also see why a reputation for not being capable of lying would be a bad thing (mainly in social contexts). From one of my other comments:

For almost a year my best friend was dating a man without telling her ex-husband, and I was seeing her ex-husband every time I went to play with my godson, and I had to remember to lie about a whole bunch of random things like "what did you and my ex-wife do on Saturday?"

This was hard for me. There've been other times where I've slipped up and forgotten. Usually not in the context of friends explicitly telling me to lie about something, but in the context of Person X them telling me something which, to them, is obviously something that they want to conceal from Person Y because of conflicts it would cause. However, I don't model this–I model Person X and Person Y both as friends who I trust with details about my life, and assume that's commutative. I don't even think about it on a conscious level–it's not "I want to tell this person the truth about the thing this other person did because lying is complicated"–they just ask me a question and I answer it. I try to avoid having enemies because it makes things complicated, but that's not something I could force my friends to do, and it's not even something I would think was right to force them to do...I just don't get around to noticing potential conflicts.

Among certain groups of my friends, I've definitely earned the reputation for being a bit socially inept because of things like this.

I think the big thing to remember is that the meaning of something isn't the dictionary definitions of the words combined with the rules of syntax. If someone asks you what you though of a play, wanting to know what you thought of them, and you know this, saying "the acting was bad" is intentionally misinterpreting their question. It is an example of lying with truth.

I would expect someone who presses me for an answer would actually want to know the answer, but maybe I just have bad social skills.

There is one thing I dislike about lying. It's considered rude to tell the truth in certain situations, because it signals that you don't care about that person, because people who care lie, because people who care don't want to appear rude. If people didn't try to signal, things would be better off, but if you lie, you're not only signalling that you care, you're increasing the need everyone else has to signal. You're making things more confusing for other people. It's basically a large-scale prisoner's dilemma. It's like talking in a noisy room, where the other person can hear you if you speak up, but that just makes it noisier for everyone else.

I think this is a great post. I fully agree about accepting other people's right to lie... in limited circumstances, of course (which is how I interpreted the post). I figured it was primarily talking about situations of self-defense or social harmony about subjective topics.

I think privacy is very important. Many cultures recognize that some subjects are private or personal, and has norms against asking about people's personal business without the appropriate context (which might depend on friendship, a relationship, consent, etc...). Some "personal" subjects may include:

• Sexual orientation
• Heath issues
• Configuration of genitals
• Reasons for sexually/romantically rejecting someone
• Current physical state of pain
• Sexual history (outside STI discussion between partners)
• Sexual fantasies
• Past traumatic experiences
• Political views that would be controversial or difficult to explain in the current context

The ethics of lying when asked about personal subjects seems more complicated. In fact, the very word "lying" may poison the well, as if the default is that people should tell the truth. I do not accept such a default without privacy issues being addressed. I will suggest that people do not have a right to other people's truthful responses about private information by default; whether they do depends on the relationship and context.

If someone asks you for information about yourself in one of these areas, and this request is inappropriate or unethical in the current context, then you are justified in keeping the truth away from them.

There are two main ways of withholding the truth: evasion, or lying. As several people in this thread have observed, there are often multiple methods of evading the question, such as exiting the situation, refusing to answer the question, omitting the answer in your response, or remaining silent.

If an evasive solution is feasible, then it's probably morally preferable. But if evasion isn't feasible, because you are trapped in the situation, because refusal to answer to the question would lead to greater punishment, or because evading the question would tip off the nosy asker to the truth (which they don't have a right to know), then lying seems like the only option.

While I admire the creative methods proposed in this thread to evade questions, such a tactic isn't always cognitive available or feasible for everyone. Sometimes, when dealing with a hostile or capricious questioner, pausing to come up with a creative deflection, or refusing to answer, will indicate weaknesses for them to attack. And if dealing with an ignorant or bumbling (but non-malicious) questioner, refusing to answer a question might cause them more embarrassment than you want.

An example from my recent experience: I was at work, and grabbing some Ibuprofen from the kitchen. A new employee walking into the kitchen and asked, "oh, is that Ibuprofen? You're taking it for a headache, right?" I said, "yes."

I lied. I was taking Ibuprofen for a chronic pain condition, which I did not want to reveal.

To me, information about health conditions is private, and I considered the truth to be none of his business. I'm sure there are ways I could have evaded the question, but I couldn't think of any. I viewed his question as a social infraction, but not such a big infraction that I wanted to embarrass him by scolding him, or be explicitly refusing to answer the question (which would be another form of scolding). I didn't sufficiently understand his motivation to want to scold him; maybe he was genuinely curious about what Ibuprofen is used for.

It's possible that he would have liked me to reveal that his question was overly nosy, to improve his social skills in the future and avoid offending people. The problem is that I didn't know him very well, and I couldn't know he would desire this sort of feedback. In a work context, where social harmony is important, I wasn't feeling like educating him on this subject. It's too bad that he has no way of learning from his mistake, but it's not my job to give it to him when it's costly to me. In situations that don't involve my body's health conditions, I am vastly more enthusiastic about helping other people with epistemic rationality.

I endorse lying as a last resort in response to people being unethically, inappropriately, or prematurely inquisitive about private matters. Conversely, if I want to question someone else about a private matter, I keep in mind the relationship and context, I note that they may not be ready or willing to tell me the truth, and I discount their answers appropriately. That way, I am less likely to be deceived if they feel the need to lie to protect their privacy.

I want to have an epistemically accurate picture of people, but I don't want to inappropriately intrude into their privacy, because I consider privacy valuable across the board. I recognize that other people have traumas and negative experiences which might lead them to rationally fear disclosure of facts about themselves or their state of mind, and that it can be ethical for them to hide that information, perhaps using lies if necessary.

If the topic isn't entirely personal to them, and effects me in tangible ways, then I would expect them to be more truthful, and be less likely to endorse lying to hide information. Lying in order to protect privacy should be a narrowly applied tool, but these situations do come up. Consequently, I agree with the original post that there are at least some situations where we should accept that other people can ethically lie.

All this needs the disclaimer that some domains should be lie-free zones. I value the truth and despise those who would corrupt intellectual discourse with lies.

Can anyone point me to a defense of corrupting intellectual discourse with lies (that doesn't resolve into a two-tier model of elites or insiders for whom truth is required and masses/outsiders for whom it is not?) Obviously there is at least one really good reason why espousing such a viewpoint would be rare, but I assume that, by the law of large numbers, there's probably an extant example somewhere.

I agree that the immediate consequences of lying are sometimes better than telling the truth, however, one big problem is lying then having to tell the truth later or lying then getting caught. The more complex the lie, the bigger the risk. The social conventions surrounding lying - feel free to lie, accept other people's right to lie, the guess culture (don't make your desires and feelings explicit) - are a good solution to interacting with strangers since under those conventions, no one is making and effort to detect your lies. This is useful when you don't know how sensitive someone is so you need a strategy for dealing with them without treading on their toes.

I admit I don't have much of a justification for this but the idea of such a social norm within a romantic relationship makes me go Ugh. I'm okay with someone telling me "I don't want to talk about it" in fact I wish that most people were receptive to that. But the idea of someone I trust lying whenever its more convenient than telling the truth does not sit well with me. But perhaps I'm just being unreasonable.

Thanks very much for writing and posting this.

Here's an excerpt from an attorney disciplinary code:

In the course of representing a client, a lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of fact or law to a third person.

And from the commentary on that rule:

This Rule refers to statements of fact. Whether a particular statement should be regarded as one of fact can depend on the circumstances. Under generally accepted conventions in negotiation, certain types of statements ordinarily are not taken as statements of fact. Estimates of price or value placed on the subject of a transaction and a party’s intentions as to an acceptable settlement of a claim are ordinarily in this category . . .

My take on this is that it's pretty much understood and accepted that in negotiations, people bullshit about their intentions all the time. (Whether it's a good idea or not is another question of course.) I was a bit surprised when I first read this rule.

At LessWrong there've been discussions of several different views all described as "radical honesty." No one I know of, though, has advocated Radical Honesty as defined by psychotherapist Brad Blanton, which (among other things) demands that people share every negative thought they have about other people. (If you haven't, I recommend reading A. J. Jacobs on Blanton's movement.) While I'm glad no one here is thinks Blanton's version of radical honesty is a good idea, a strict no-lies policy can sometimes have effects that are just as disastrous.

To point out the obvious, speaking from personal experience, this is indeed a terrible idea.

A couple of months ago I told a lie to someone I cared about. This wasn't a justified lie; it was a pretty lousy lie (both in its justifiability and the skill with which I executed it) and I was immediately exposed by facial cues. I felt pretty awful because a lot of my self-concept up to that point had been based around being a very honest person, and from that point on, I decided to treat my "you shouldn't tell her ___" intuitions as direct orders from my conscience to reveal exactly that thing, and to pay close attention to whether the meaning of what I've said deviates from the truth in a direction favorable to me, and as a consequence, I now feel rising anxiety whenever I feel some embarrassing thought followed by the need to confess it. I also resolved to search my conscience for any bad deeds I may have forgotten, which actually led to compulsive fantastic searching for terrible things I might have done and repressed, no matter how absurd (I've gotten moslty-successful help about this part.) She's long since forgiven me for the original lie and what I lied about, but continues to find this compulsive confessional behavior extremely annoying, and I doubt I could really function if I experienced it around people in general rather than her specifically.

Another thing I should note that it can simply be a matter of human preferences. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of having any truely close relationship (lover or close friend) with somebody who would be willing to lie to me. I see no reason why other wants should somehow override this one.

I will implore you to do one thing: accept other people's right to lie to you

I don't quite understand what are you imploring.

Of course other people have the right to lie to me. And I have a right to change my attitude and my expectations on that basis.

Rephrased in a slightly different way, other people have the right to lie to me but not the right to escape the consequences.

A note w.r.t. the quote:

But please keep in mind that, beyond the realm of science, the views of the characters may not be those of the author. Not everything the protagonist does is a lesson in wisdom, and advice offered by darker characters may be untrustworthy or dangerously double-edged.

-- The Author, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

As long as enemies exist, secrets must be kept.

I find that, sometimes, perfectly honest words are interpreted as white lies because they sound like such.

"What are you doing this weekend?" Me (very early in the term) "Studying for midterms."

"Let's be just friends from now on, okay?"

"You're a wonderful person, and I wish you the best of luck."

On another topic, I find myself lying, not to protect others' feelings but out of cowardice, to hide misdeeds, especially those that I irrationally didn't expect anyone to notice. The worst instances have involved frequent and compulsive food theft, and the occasional sneaking "improvements" into the minutes of a meeting or the report of an interview. Worst of all, for a rationalist, I tend to lie to myself, specifically by hiding my head in the sand and refusing to check on something that I expect will yield inconvenient truths, such as the state of my bank account, or whether I'm late in returning my books to the library. I feel that both kinds of lying are part of a same phenomenon of cowardice that I have yet to understand and resolve... Could it be as simple as "suck it up"?

I guess one problem that crops up when dealing with the issue of lying is that there is no clear litmus test. It may be possible to give broad guidelines such as "it is ok to lie in situations A,B and C, but most definitely not OK to lie in situations D,E and F." Real life is far more complex and subject to all manner of interpretation (not to mention all manner of bias as well). I strongly suspect that before we can rule on when it is ok to lie, or when it is ok to use a half truth we need to perfect the art of communication i.e. develop a system where we can keep perfect score of what words truly mean and how much deviation there is from the intent as well as how much effect the said deviation will have.

Your discussion of Harris's 'Lying' is a little terse, and does miss some of his arguments. I think anyone interested should get his book, its very short and can be read in about half an hour to an hour, depending on your speed. PM me for a PDF copy of the first edition (note: second edition is much updated).

Here's two extended quotes, that I think contains ideas not addressed in the post:

Once one commits to telling the truth, one begins to notice how unusual it is to meet someone who shares this commitment. Honest people are a refuge: You know they mean what they say; you know they will not say one thing to your face and another behind your back; you know they will tell you when they think you have failed—and for this reason their praise cannot be mistaken for mere flattery. Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves. In committing to be honest with everyone, we commit to avoiding a wide range of long-term problems, but at the cost of occasional, short-term discom- fort. However, the discomfort should not be exaggerated: You can be honest and kind, because your purpose in telling the truth is not to offend people: You simply want them to have the information you have, and would want to have if you were in their position. But it can take practice to feel comfortable with this way of being in the world—to cancel plans, decline invitations, critique others’ work, etc., all while being honest about what one is thinking and feeling. To do this is also to hold a mirror up to one’s life—because a commitment to telling the truth requires that one pay attention to what the truth is in every moment. What sort of person are you? How judgmental, self-interested, or petty have you become?

...

But let’s imagine the truth is harder to tell: Your friend looks fat in that dress, or any dress, because she is fat. Let’s say she is also thirty-five years old and single, and you happen to know that her greatest desire at this moment in life is to get married and start a family. You believe that many men might be disinclined to date her at her current weight. And, marriage aside, you are confident that she would be happier and healthier, and would feel better about herself, if she got in shape. A white lie is simply a denial of these realities. It is a refusal to offer honest guidance in a storm. Even on so touchy a subject, lying seems a clear failure of friendship. By reassuring your friend about her appearance, you are not helping her to do what you think she should do to get what she wants out of life... ...False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

I wouldn't count non-literal use of language (“it was okay” when it's obvious to both interlocutors that the actual intended meaning is ‘[it sucked but I don't want to hurt your feelings]’) as lying.

But still, I prefer to be with people to whom I can also say why it sucked (so they get a chance to do better the next time) without hurting their feelings either. I can't choose my own parents and I can't choose whether the Nazis will come to my door, but I can choose whom to interact with in most other situations (excluding NPC-like situations, where topics I'd want to withhold my opinions about aren't likely to come up in the first place). Feeling like I'm walking on eggshells whenever talking to someone is not a pleasant sensation and kills most of the fun of talking to them in the first place. (YMMV.)

I reject this idea for a fairly simple reason. I want to be in control of my own life and my own decisions, but due to lack of social skills I'm vulnerable to manipulation. Without a zero-tolerance policy on liars, I would rapidly be manipulated into losing what little control of my own life remains.

The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.

Why? Best case scenario is she keeps taking you to unenjoyable plays until you find you have to end the relationship yourself anyway or finally tell her the truth. Out of all the things in a relationship whose end was "a good thing for other reasons", one argument about whether a play was any good seems like a trivial thing to regret.

I can't favour lies as such. I am however on board with people honestly communicating the connotation that they care how you feel at the expense of the denotational literal meaning of their words.

In lies, the intention is not to soften but to deceive. So I don't even like the phrase "white lie". It's like, if you're going to stab me in the back, is it better if it's with a white knife?

If you're a gay teenager with homophobic parents, and there's a real chance they'd throw you out on the street if they found out you were gay, you should probably lie to them about it. Even in college, if you're still financially dependent on them, I think it's okay to lie. The minute you're no longer financially dependent on them, you should absolutely come out for your sake and the sake of the world. But it's OK to lie if you need to to keep your education on-track.

In the ordinary course of events, parents are allowed to not support their children in college. So I'm puzzled as to what the principal at work here is meant to be. "It's ok to deprive people of their autonomy on the basis of a moral belief of theirs, even if this belief doesn't cause them to undertake any actions that would be considered immoral in the absence of the moral belief"?

Suppose I think that being a communist is immoral. Is it thereby ok for me to found a charity called "Workers Communism", solicit donations from communists, and then secretly donate them to the US Republican Party?

Lying is acceptable when done to protect your life or livelihood, but for most of our lives, most opportunities to tell lies won't be in situations like that. You shouldn't lie to friends or romantic partners, because if you can't communicate with them honestly, they shouldn't be your friends/partners in the first place. And I'm not going to respect other people lying to me. Instead of teaching men to accept lies (as in your date example), teach them to accept a "no".

I've been trying to figure out which group I belong to, and reached the conclusion my strategy is entirely tangential: In between the oversimplification, steelmaning, multilayered metaphor, ambiguus sarchasm, faulty grammar, omission of disclaimers on source of information, bad epistemic standards etc. a truth value is simply not a property sounds coming out of my moth or symbols from my keyboard have. Including this post. Unless I'm making a very specific oath it should be fairly obvius a statement I make is not to be taken as actual knowledge or oppinion, simply brainstorming.

All this needs the disclaimer that some domains should be lie-free zones. I value the truth and despise those who would corrupt intellectual discourse with lies.

I don't think this will work in practice. Lying is a habit. If you habitual lie in private life I won't you expect you to be completely honest when you are in academia. Even if you try to be honest I doubt you will be so completely. It relatively easy to try to control your data in different ways and then report the way that provided the best p value while not reporting the other ways. Yes, the p value is real for that statistic test but you weren't fully honest either.

Then there are the big lies such as: "The data that we have follows a normal distribution." which you find in a lot of papers and which you can't really escape.

I don't think lying in relationship with significant other is a great idea. There a girl with whom I dance fairly intimately. Two weeks ago I accidentally hit her with my elbow with a bit of force. She doesn't has that much experience but wants to dance fancy so I danced fancy with her. We both made a little mistake and my elbow hit her face.

She directly told me nothing happened and we continue dancing. Next week I meet her and she has a big bruise at the location and tells me my elbow was responsible. The fact that she told me in the moment that it didn't hurt was a lie. In the moment she got what she wanted by continuing the dance but it makes the whole interaction between us so much harder. Dancing relatively intimately without any good feedback about when you hurt the other person is hard.

Normally I have decent feedback about whether the kind of intimicy I have with a girl is a bit uncomfortable for the girl I'm dancing with and can adept in that moment. With her I don't feel like I can read her one that level. It feels like she made a decision that she wants to dance close and if that raises a bit of anxiety in her she won't show any sign of it because it might mean that I increase the distance.

I think my lack of reading her body even resulted in the situation of hitting her with my elbow.

The whole situation is pretty weird for me. I have a woman that I find attractive who wants physical intimacy during the dance but it doesn't feel right because I have no feedback about what she feels.

In intimate relationship I think it's very worthwhile to be open about feelings so that the other person can react to what you feel. When in doubt, focus on communicating what you feel instead of making judgements.

If you're highly averse to lying, I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to convince you to tell white lies more often. But I will implore you to do one thing: accept other people's right to lie to you.

This sounds right and is the central idea of you post.

Maybe you should place "accept other people's right to lie to you." as a summary at the top?

Meta comment: I think it says something interesting about our community that the debate over "is it acceptable to lie in social situations?" is by far the nastiest, most emotional debate I've ever seen on this site.

A thread about social justice a while back, which grew at about the same rate and encompassed rape, eugenics, and unrepentant racism, was significantly more civil. Go figure.

Hierarchical, Contextual, Rationally-Prioritized Dishonesty

This is an outstanding article, and it closely relates to my overall interest in LessWrong.

I'm convinced that lying to someone who is evil, who obviously has immediate evil intentions is morally optimal. This seems to be an obvious implication of basic logic. (ie: You have no obligation to tell the Nazis who are looking for Anne Frank that she's hiding in your attic. You have no obligation to tell the Fugitive Slave Hunter that your neighbor is a member of the underground railroad. ...You have no obligation to tell the police that your roommate is getting high in the bathroom, ...or to let them into your apartment.)

For example, I am a subscriber to the ideas and materialist worldview of Ray Kurzweil, but less so to the community of LessWrong, largely because I believe that Ray Kurzweil's worldview is somewhat more, for lack of a better term, "worldly" than what I take to be the LessWrong "consensus." I believe, (in the sense that I think I have good evidence for) the fact that Kurzweil's worldview takes into account the serious threat of totalitarianism, and conformity to malevolent top-down systems. (He claims that he participated in civil rights marches with his parents when he was five years old, and had an early understanding of right and wrong that grew from that sense of what they were doing. This became a part of his identity and value system. The goal of benevolent equality under the law is therefore built into his psyche more than it is built into the psychological identity of someone who doesn't feel any affinity with the "internally consistent" and "morally independent" mindset. Also, the hierarchical value system of someone who makes such self-identifications is entirely different than someone who is simply trying to narrowly "get ahead" in their career, or optimize their personal health, etc.)

Perhaps I can't do justice to the LessWrong community by communicating such a point. I'm trying to communicate something for which there might not be adequate words. I'm trying to communicate a gestalt. Whereas I think that Eliezer has empathy on the level of Kurzweil (as indicated by his essay about his brother Yehuda's unnecessary and tragic death), I don't think the same is true of the LW community. So far as I can see, there is little discussion of (and little concern for) mirror neurons differentiating sociopaths from empaths in the LW community. Yet, this is the primary variable of importance in all matters of social organization. Moreover, it has been recognized as such by network scientists since the days of Norbert Weiner's "Cybernetics."

A point I've often made is that "lying to the police" or "lying to judges and prosecutors" is different from lying in other areas. Lying to an (increasingly) unjust authority is, in fact, the centerpiece of a moral society. Why? Because unjust authority depends entirely on "hijacking" or "repurposing" general values in perverted narrow situations in order to allow sociopaths to control the outcome of the situation. As the example of primary importance, let me cite the stacking of the jury, before the trial. The purpose of "voir dire" (AKA "jury selection") historically, is to determine whether there is a legal "conflict of interest" (ie: whether a juror is a familial or business relation to one of the parties to the action, which might introduce an extreme bias of narrow self-interest into the trial) in the proposed construction of the jury. (Since the 1600s this has been true.) However, by expanding the definition of "voir dire" to assume that all existing laws are morally proper, correct, and legitimate, the side of the prosecution (and judge, since judges are subject to the exact same perverse incentives as the prosecutors) is itself morally wrong in most cases. Why "most" cases? Because most of the laws currently on the books criminalize behavior that lacks injury to a specific, named party, and also lacks intent to injure the same specific, named party (it lacks a "cause of action" or "corpus delicti" that targets a specific aggressor, for a specific act of aggression).

"Voir dire" actually translated to "to see the truth." It is the judge and prosecutor "seeing the truth" about the philosophy of the juror. Shouldn't this be considered a good thing? If you mindlessly (too narrowly) assume that the judge and prosecutor have good intentions, then "yes." If you make no such assumptions, then the answer is definitively, obviously "no, quite the opposite."

Too narrow honesty is actually the height of immorality. Honesty always involves a question of what goal is being served by the honesty. Honesty is simply one tool available aid human goals. When "human" goals are malevolent or destructive, the communication disruption caused by dishonesty is a blessing.

This is where the legitimate empathic priority hierarchies described in Kurzweil's The Power of Hierarchical Thinking presentation / speech / slideshow are vitally important. You see, both judge and prosecutor are commonly sociopaths. Their career choices have selected them as such, because in their professions, if seeing the destruction of young people's lives for "victimless crime offenses" or "mala prohibita" is bothersome to your brain (if it activates your mirror neurons, causing you pain), you cannot take the stress imparted by believing your job requirement to be immoral. So, you quit your job, or are outperformed by people who thrive on the misery and suffering of people who are sentenced to 10 years in prison for "crimes" like drug possession. And what of the people who dare to stand up for property rights, boldly declaring themselves "not guilty" in order to fight the unjust system? Well, the commonly-accepted view amongst prosecutors is that those heroic people (who stand in defense not just of their own property rights, but of the entire concept of a system that protects property rights) are to be crushed. Those heroic people don't get to "plea bargain" for 4 year sentences, they are sent to prison for the maximum term possible, as a punishment and disincentive for daring to declare themselves "not guilty," and standing up for such ideas as individual property rights, the constitution, individual freedom. Those who don't accept a plea "bargain," but who instead risk their lives to fight injustice at great personal risk are targeted for extreme "cruel and unusual punishment." At one point in the history of the USA (and the American colonies before the US was created) the most popular law book in the colonies was considered to be Giles Jacobs' book "The New Law Dictionary." His follow up book, almost as popular, was "Every Man His Own Lawyer." These two system-defining books, more than any others, afforded the view in the colonies that "All men are created equal," ie: "all men are (or should be) equal under the law."

Such a view was a high-level "honest-to-goodness" view. ("Honest to goodness" is an interesting concept. It bears repeating, because it implies that there can be "honest to evil" or "evil-serving honesty.")

I think one of the reasons that we are hesitant to say negative things is that we leave out a lot of positive things. I noticed that it's a lot easier to say when someone is bothering you when you've let them know about the many times you've been glad they came over or you were happy they called. The same is true when critiquing things, accurately reflecting the good and bad in something as you see it causes you to say far more positive things than you might otherwise even realize.

Also, I think that a lot of our negative opinions are probably a result of our own limited perspective. For example, if a friend asks me "does this make me look fat"...I notice that I start thinking of women I see in .jpg's and fashion magazines, who aren't representative of the general population. So while I might think "yes" within that incorrect perspective, in comparison to the actual population of people and the average body they have (which I assume is the standard which "fat" reflects), the REAL correct answer is "no."

Just some thoughts about lying...

In general I think one should only lie when it's clearly justified by one's moral philosophy. In my case, as a Utilitarian, that means that my justifications for lying generally have to do an exceptional circumstance where it's obvious that the consequences of not lying would be bad. To simplify things I generally follow four heuristic conditions where lying is acceptable: 1) To save a life. 2) To prevent unnecessary suffering or to bring happiness to someone else given that they cannot act on the information in the lie (i.e. lying to someone on their death bed about the success of one of their projects that actually failed, or if anyone has seen Code Geass, Suzaku to Euphemia). 3) If the person would understand and be happy if the lie was revealed (i.e. to keep a surprise birthday party a secret). 4) If I know the person who I am lying to intends malice with the information I am providing.

Other than that, I generally avoid lying for selfish reasons even if it is detrimental to me to tell the truth, because otherwise I might be tempted to lie way too much.

Also, I factor in a few things whenever I think about lying. First, I don't like lying because I feel like I will be directly morally responsible if someone takes the false information I give them and does something bad or stupid. I also feel that it respects a person's intelligence and dignity to expect that they can handle the truth. Second, every lie I tell has the potential to decrease people's trust in others if discovered. Mutual trust is essential to well functioning society and relationships, so the danger of damaging this trust must be considered as potential consequence of any lie. Third, the more reliably honest I am, the more powerful my lies actually become when I do need to lie. After all, if I have a reputation for lying, no one is likely to believe me when I lie. But if I have a reputation for honesty, the few times when I am justified in lying will be that much more effective and convincing.

I used to be a bit paranoid about other people lying to me, but now I recognize that I shouldn't worry so much. Generally among my friends I believe that if they are lying to me, it must be because either there is a secret they want to keep to themselves, and therefore I should respect their desire for privacy, or they probably have some moral justification or good reason for lying and I should respect their judgment of the situation.

Back when I was more paranoid, I read two books that claimed to be able to teach you how to detect lies, namely, "You Can't Lie To Me", and "Spy The Lie". I wish I could say they were effective and useful, but they actually contradicted each other and I found it exceedingly hard to actually practice what they suggested in casual conversation settings.

Nevertheless, there are a number of psychology studies that purport to have discovered a number of cues that may be suggestive that a person might be lying. They usually suggest looking at body language, especially extremities, and also sudden changes in vocal pitch. Stuff like that.

There's also this (for what its worth): http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies_eyes.php

In my own experience, it can be quite difficult to keep in mind all these cues that the various lie detection systems/theories suggest and still be focused enough to keep up with a conversation, so I don't know that they don't work or if I just wasn't observant enough, but I've generally not had much success as a human lie detector. When I was in an undergrad social psychology class, they actually ran an experiment on the class where we got to guess who was lying and who was telling the truth from previously recorded experiments. Turns out most people are around 50% accurate. Has anyone else had better luck?

I agree that in some cases, including the homophobic parents example, lying can be justified. Even in significantly more mild cases, I can see lying as occasionally consequently the better course of action, even if you take into account the chance of the lie being found out and trust being lost/hurt to other people due to being lied to.

However, correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be arguing something much stronger than this? From my read this article promotes at least accepting, maybe even encouraging, using white lies as a way to ease potentially uncomfortable social situations. I'd guess some of the other commenters (particularly Alicorn) have a similar read, and that's prompting some strong reactions. While white lie culture may be common, and going against the grain (e.g. replying that you're not particularly keen on some item of clothing when asked by an acquaintance) may go against our social instincts, refusing to say you don't like things in many situations disallows useful opinion giving in all similar situations. If I want to get a second opinion on something, I want to ask someone who will give me information. If no matter their true opinion, they'll give some mild nicity/white lie to spare my feelings, I'm not going to learn much. If every time someone asks if their friends if their new hair cut suits them their friends must say yes, that person is both never going to learn they have a haircut few people like and maybe more importantly they're going to start automatically downgrading similar praise, quite correctly, because "people saying my haircut is nice" has zero correlation to the haircut being nice.

I accept that many, maybe even a significant majority of, people do just look for compliments or niceties some of the time. I accept that giving them those compliments rather than honesty may be better for their self-esteem in the short term. However, I have found that so long as I present myself as direct but gentle from the start and don't hide honesty from someone then spring it on them at a bad moment, a vast majority of even those compliment seekers at least respect gentle honesty and many of them find it refreshing. Perhaps this is in part due to my social group being unusually tolerant, and this strategy would fail elsewhere.

On the other side, I prefer people to be honest with me and attempt to self-modify towards being someone who would, in all but the most convoluted situations, prefer in the long term to be told the truth in response to all serious questions. I do this specifically so I can appear to be a person who it is better to tell the truth to in effectively every case, because I want to be able to reliably get true opinions. This is something I have never had a negative reaction to once explained, and has been the gateway to many interesting conversations.

Due to these working well for me and the large advantages of being able to communicate openly with greatly reduced fear of unintended offence provided by a general near-universal policy of honesty, I remain very skeptical of the idea that the habit of looking for reassurance at the expense of honest advice or opinions is something to be respected or encouraged (especially in rationalist circles where truth-seeking is prized).

Last note: I see the saying the truth but bending the meaning to be polite as signaling to someone that you don't quite mean what you're saying subtly enough that if (and only if) they care about your true opinion enough to pay attention to what you say and ask a followup question you'll tell them the full story. If they were just looking for a generic nicity, they either won't notice your slightly careful wording, or should not request information they do not want. This is useful for people who may have reason to want your true opinion, and as a way of avoiding getting into the habit of telling white lies. It's rarely hard to avoid the question or skip over it even if you can't come up with a convincing not-lie, so long as you don't get too obviously caught up in debating internally what to say or how to avoid offense first.

I don't think people have a right to lie to other people. I also can't understand why you would regret breaking up with someone so truth-averse and horrible.

(Old post)

So why do discussions of the ethics of lying so often focus on the extreme cases, as if those were the only ones where lying is maybe possibly morally permissible?

For the same reason that a lot of discussions about other kinds of ethics include extreme situations such as trolley problems and killing patients for their organs.

Here is a (somewhat transhumanist) webcomic's take on the matter.

A very interesting take on rationalizing lying, though I think that you might be over-rationalizing it (if such a thing is possible). It seems to me that such a thing can be summed up it a couple sentences: if it benefits you and those around you, it is okay. If it doesn't, than it is not okay. Lying only to benefit yourself is unethical, immoral, and under plenty of circumstances, illegal. Honestly, you can use this as a general principle: if it is unethical, then there is an increased probability it is illegal. Now, this doesn't apply to announcing one's homosexuality, or to simply lying about a friend's looks, but still...

A few years ago, for example, when I went to see the play my girlfriend had done stage crew for, and she asked what I thought of it. She wasn't satisfied with my initial noncommittal answers, so she pressed for more. Not in a "trying to start a fight" way; I just wasn't doing a good job of being evasive. I eventually gave in and explained why I thought the acting had sucked, which did not make her happy. I think incidents like that must have contributed to our breaking up shortly thereafter. The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.

It could be that the wrong lesson is being learned here. If someone were to write a relationship debugging cheatsheet flowchart it would almost certainly start with "Was I being a pussy[1]?". Weakness is the problem here, the honesty is secondary. The pattern described is:

• Request for feedback.
• Evasiveness.
• More requests.
• More evasive answers.
• Push for clear communication.
• Critical comment.

That is one of the worst reply strategies imaginable[2]. It signals fear, lack of confidence, untrustworthiness, incompetence at navigating the flow of conversation and submissiveness. The precise details of the final reply there are not important. The reluctant honesty presented effectively as a 'confession' doesn't work well. Reluctantly getting badgered into lying to say what you think she wants you to hear isn't exactly optimal either.

If you want to lie in response to a social-feedback review situation then just do it, straight off. If you don't want to lie then an option is to honestly say that you enjoyed the play and particularly liked <one of the many things that didn't suck> and have a clear boundary against being pressed. Evasiveness then compliance is just way off.

1. People uncomfortable with that term can either replace it with a preferred one or do a search for previous discussions here of the etymology.

2. There are exceptions including but not limited to "get naked and start beating her with a maggot infested Koala liver".

I'm a bit confused by an evangelist for lying. I can see why a person would be a defector, but why on earth would you profess it?

My downkarma stays. You really should have made this clear in your post, and you advocate for a departure from radical honesty even when that works, instead of discussing strategies for determining whether your interlocutor is ask, guess, or (gasp!) tell. This advocates an overly radical departure towards lies for anyone, and argues for defection on PD. It's one thing to say that given people will lie, you should become skilled at it and learn to detect them; quite another to advocate that it should occur from the start.

If you're a gay teenager with homophobic parents

I found this to be overly political (especially since you used it as your very first example), and I was tempted to downvote and stop reading right there. I didn't, and I thought the post was fine, but just thought I should mention it.

"Is it not the case that in our spiritually exhausted age, that seeks to fill the void created by Christianity's passing with reverence for 'science', 'democracy', or 'the people' - as if such reverence were not simply Christianity by another name! - that even the noble art of lying has been sullied by the hidden demand that all things of value must be within the reach of all men? All the achievements of higher culture - love, art, politics, morality, education, commerce - depend on lying well and lying appropriately, and consciousness itself is little more than the tissue of lies which a life finds expedient to tell. Many a great spirit has suffered distress at such realizations, and in a desperate search for relief, has contrived bold new lies in the name of truth, expert dissimulations whose uncanny plausibility has in fact strengthened the reign of the lie and allowed higher forms of life to continue flourishing. A deep gratitude is owed to these geniuses of self-deception, who discovered for humanity new ways for it to deceive itself and thereby make life bearable...

But our age, which denies all differences of rank and instead posits a fundamental homogeneity of spirit in the guise of equality, can know nothing of these lonely struggles, in which those two forms of will to power, will to truth and will to flourish, collide within the one soul, and at length bear strange new fruit - new perspectives and new principles of evaluation - that will serve to justify an age, a nation, or a civilization to itself. The overwhelming psychological compulsions which produce these great lies are beyond the imagination of priests and shopkeepers; and so, when the tribunes of equality turn their attention to the role of the lie in culture, the only form of lie which they can understand and support is the lie told to protect someone else from a banal truth; a lie usually intended to protect the liar from an equally banal response. Thus the only form of lying that is sanctified, in the periods of the lowest cultural ebb, is the white lie." -- Nietzsche, "Dionysos und der Streich der Tragödie"

I find being generally known to be unwilling to lie highly useful in many situations. Less than a week ago I spontaneously volunteered a compliment to someone who politely thanked me, only to then double-take and remark that she thought that I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't meant it. Consequentialists who think that consequentialists should be able to solve the precommitment problem and be effectively honest nonetheless, in real life, cite my deontological prohibition on lying as a good reason to trust me. I am fairly good at omission, and have successfully avoided outing closeted people of my acquaintance who make that preference known to me, though I never felt the need to go through a similar period myself.

Arbitrary people are not obligated to trust me to handle the truth correctly. If for some reason I'm giving the impression that I'm the equivalent of a Nazi at the door or a homophobic parent, I see no reason from their perspective that they should confess to me these secrets even if I ask. This does not mean that we will be friends if I learn that this has been happening. There are plenty of things people might choose to do for reasonable or even unavoidable reasons that mean we will not be friends.

This post makes me less interested in inviting you over for dinner again. What has to happen in your head for you to be willing to come to my house and eat food I cook and participate in charming conversation and then blithely slash our tires if we ask the wrong question because you think we're going to become hysterical or behave immorally should we gain access to information or be told that we cannot have it? Why does that sound like a welcoming environment you'd like to visit, with us on such a supposed hair trigger about mere true facts? Why should you sound like a guest I'd prefer when you say this? Whatever it is, I don't like or want it closer to me. You may make that tradeoff, but imploring the people around you to "accept" others' "right" to lie to them seems like a kind of fucked-up way to attempt to cheat the tradeoff.