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ChristianKl comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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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 don't think being genuinely nonjudgemental is lying. If I'm having an intellectual argument it's also not lying to agree for the sake of having a good argument with the opposing side on some points.
If I disagree with someone about A, B, C and D it's completely fine to assume for the sake of the discussion that A, B and C are true to convince them that D is right.
If specifically asked you might say that you don't believe A, B or C but you don't have to be open about everything that you disagree with by default. That just leads to confusion and no effective intellectual exchange.
Any good therapist learns that he doesn't tell his client everything that the therapist thinks but that he tells the client what's helpful for the client. A good therapist will still honestly answer direct questions about the beliefs of the therapist.
I put much more trust into the people who have a strong core and are judgmental so that they can morph into whatever they need to connect on a deep level with another person.
All the people who I would trust to jump from a bridge if they would tell me to jump from a bridge have that quality. My first reaction would be to ask: "Do you really think that's a great idea?" but to the extend that I know they come from a warm and pure place and are in strong empathy with me that's why I would follow them.
I wouldn't extend that kind of trust to someone at a lesswrong meetup who has the reputation of always telling the truth but who sometimes says things from a judgemental state and sometimes says things from a warm place.
Over the last year I developed a stronger personal identity and got more clear about what I value. On the other hand in a game of Werewolf people who could read my emotions to sometimes find out whether I'm lying can't anymore. Knowing who I am allows me to be a lot more socially flexible to do whatever I want in the game of Werewolf in a way that's not readable by the people I'm playing with.