Social Insight: When a Lie Is Not a Lie; When a Truth Is Not a Truth

I am very suspicious of arguments which boil down to "You're too dumb to understand the truth, so I'm justified in telling you lies".

That seems about right, although the whole 'lies are truth and truths are lies' way of phrasing it make sit seem unnecessarily Orwellian.

Like, the concept of the 'white lie' seems to cover this pretty well. You do it when you talk to kids.

Honestly, the problem with this approach is that it tends to degenerate to "when my side tells lies, they're still emotionally true; when the other side makes inconvenient statements that are true, I can dismiss them as emotionally false".

This is really cool stuff and I think you're hitting on some important things. I think you're basically right in most of it, and yes, this is what Scott Adams is talking about when he says that trump says things that are "emotionally true" even if it "doesn't pass the fact checks".

I have a few minor quibbles though.

What do people hear when you explain concepts they cannot understand? If I had to guess, very often they interpret this as an attack on their social standing, as an attempt by the speaker to establish themselves as a figure of superior ability, to whom they should defer. You sound uppity, cold, out-of-touch, maybe nerdy or socially inept. So, then...if you're socially capable, you don't say those things. You give up.

Yes, they take it as an attack on their social standing. It is very hard to communicate new concepts without positioning yourself as someone who might have something to teach, and that requires your audience to position themselves as someone who might have something to learn. This gets ten times harder when the thing you have to teach isn’t just something about a topic they’ve never thought about before, but something they feel confident about and would feel dumb being wrong on. Notice, for example, how people refer to Scott Adams as the “sex hypnotism guy”, try to twist his words and ask why he’s supporting a “master liar”, and do other things in attempts to sleazily discredit him instead of just letting people laugh at him for being an idiot that believes in voodoo hypnotism or beating him on the object level and giving more persuasive arguments. You’re absolutely right when you suggest that people might take it as a threat to their status.

Here’s where I think you go wrong:

You don’t come off as “socially inept” unless you also come across like you’re unaware of what you’re doing or are doing it on accident. When it is clear that you understand what you’re doing and are doing it intentionally, it comes off as intimidating, and if you do the rest of it right, not in a bad way.

In the cases that count, what you do is use their (limited) vocabulary to build a picture that they cannot comprehend/violates the beliefs they’re attached to, and leave them with it to do what they want. Yes, they will still often take it as an assault on their status and a claim of “I am better than you”, so you want to make really really sure that you aren’t motivated in part by an attempt to make them look bad, but rather to teach them/to give them a chance to teach you (which requires you putting out your model so that they can show you what’s wrong with it). Since, if you’re doing this right, you aren’t claiming to be better than them, any “I’m better than you” feelings will be entirely internally generated and they’ll know this. That’s why it will feel intimidating to them, but not in a bad way. When they are the ones saying “I think he’s better than me” and you are the one saying “no, really, I’m not. I just know this one thing and I’m telling you so that you can know this one thing too” (and meaning it), then that is a very good outcome given the situation. That’s not to say some people won’t try to pin their feelings on you anyway, but they don’t have to stick, and not everyone will.

Basically, the trick is to use their vocabulary to point out contradictions and keep inviting them into that cognitive dissonance while not at all pushing them in or actively implying that you’re better than them. If you do it right, they’ll realize that you’re right, that you know something they don’t, and that you won’t think any less of them for saying “huh, never thought of that” nor that you think it’s your position to be giving out approval or disapproval. I really do admire people who can put their ego aside and learn things, and I aspire to be that way myself. When that comes across correctly, I generally don’t have problems explaining weird/potentially threatening concepts to people.

Yes, even when you do a good job people will react hostilely to you, try to misrepresent you, and try to paint you as someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else. And yes, if you don’t have the time/energy/ability to deal with this, the right answer is to not do this. Personally, while I understand the justification for saying things like “you’re the best!” and while this insight you conveyed has also caused me to move in that direction, I would still be very cautious about how you do that kind of thing. For one, I really value the ability to say “no, that dress doesn’t make your ass look far” and for it to be taken at face value and remove all anxiety, and for compliments to be undiluted in meaning when they come from me. More relevant to the point at hand though, if you aren’t careful you might end up telling them that you can’t threaten their status, and that would be a harmful lie. To speak metaphorically, if you can come off like clifford the big red dog, that’s a really good thing. It means people can feel safe around you because the idea of you turning on them just doesn’t occur to them in the first place. However, if you can’t pull off “I am a ridiculously oversized predator with fangs the size of your head, and you’re not afraid of me because you trust me”, it is not a worthwhile compromise to defang yourself, let your muscles atrophy, and let them keep you in a cage so that they no longer fear you.

If that is the choice at hand, I think it’s better to be fairly quiet and just not really engage with those types, because at least then there’s the option for them to ask why you’re so quiet and you can give them the honest answer that you didn’t think they wanted to hear what you would have to say - and that gives them the chance to decide that they do.

When you do have the time/energy/ability to deal with it, that hostility is a feature, not a bug. It’s peacocking and inviting shit tests, in PUA terms. Heck, look at how much that hostility “got in the way of” Trump’s political campaign so far.

<...> then perhaps telling a lie in a way that you know will communicate a true concept is not a lie.

This is fair.

There are certain truths which literally cannot be spoken to some people.

But this is a completely different case. Lies told to stupid people are still lies, the stupid people don't understand the truth behind them, and you have communicated nothing. You could argue that those lies are somehow justified, but there is no parallel between lying to stupid people and things like "You're the best".

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Suppose X is the case. When you say "X" your opposite will believe Y, which is wrong. So, even though "X" is the truth, you should not say it.

Your new idea as I understand it: Suppose saying "Z" will let your opposite will believe X. So, even though saying "Z" is, technically, lying, you should say "Z" because the listener will come to have a true believe.

(I'm sorry if I misunderstood you or you think I'm being uncharitable. But even if I misunderstood I think others might misunderstand in a similar way, so I feel justified in responding to the above concept)

First I dislike that approach because it makes things harder for people that could understand, if only people would stop lying to them or prefer to be told the truth along the lines of "study macro economics for two years and you will understand".

Second, that seems to me to be a form of the-end-justifies-the-means that, even though I think of myself as a consequentialist, I'm not 100% comfortable with. I'm open to the idea that sometimes it's okay, and even proper, to say something that's technically untrue, if it results in your audience coming to have a truer world-view. But if this "sometimes" isn't explained or restricted in any way, that's just throwing out the idea that you shouldn't lie.

Some ideas on that:

• Make sure you don't harm your audience because you underestimate them. If you simplify or modify what you say to the point that it can't be considered true any more because you think your audience is limited in their capacity to understand the correct argument, make sure you don't make it harder to understand the truth for those that can. That includes the people you underestimated, people that you didn't intend to address but heard you all the same and people that really won't understand now, but will later. (Children grow up, people that don't care enough to follow complex arguments might come to care).
• It's not enough that your audience comes to believe something true. It needs to be justified true believe. Or alternatively, your audience should not only believe X but know it. For a discussion on what is meant with "know" see most of the field of epistemology, I guess. Like, if you tell people that voting for candidate X will give them cancer and the believe you they might come to the correct believe that voting for candidate X is bad for them. But saying that is still unethical.
• I guess if you could give people justified true believe, it wouldn't be lying at all and the whole idea is that you need to lie because some people are incapable of justified true believe on matter X. But then it should at least be "justified in some sense". Particularly, your argument shouldn't work just as well if "X" were false.

[Quick comprehension check]: I think that you are saying that it is important to acknowledge when our notions of truths and lies break down because saying a thing that is apparently "true" can have connotations we didn't intend, thus making it "false". And you're flipping it around to say that the opposite is also valid-- that you can say a thing which is apparently "false", yet the way that it's interpreted could make it more "true".

I think you are saying that there are other factors when communicating, which is the context you convey with your words, i.e. meaning that is imparted which is distinct from the actual referents of the words in your utterances. And that this meaning is also important to keep in mind because we can't "just" communicate with only the words themselves, apart from connotation / context. It's just part of the package.

I think that you then took this to show that there are often times where knowledge about true things isn't easily transmissible due to a lack of prerequisite knowledge. And that this has problems when that information might be important.

[Actual response, if the above was accurate]: I think the part of this essay about how trying to get across points is often difficult is important. There are certain tradeoffs to be wary of, like when someone asks you a question, and you give an abridged / simplified question to optimize more for communication rather than accuracy. (EX: Giving someone a stripped-down description of your medical condition when they ask you why you're taking a pill.)

Thus, one of the questions we might want to take out of this is "How can we convey information many inferential steps away from the other party, especially when it's beneficial to them?" which seems like it could be resolved several ways:

• 1) Take the time to build up their prerequisites.

• 2) Convince them you're competent / trustworthy such that they can defer to your judgment.

• 3) Tell them false things such that they do the thing the information would have convinced them to do.

(I don't really like these options. Feel free to take this as an open invitation to spend 3 minutes thinking of other things.)

Anyway, it's less clear to me that you can tell people false stuff to make them believe true stuff. It feels more like you can people false stuff to do either 2 or 3, but not 1.