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Benquo comments on White Lies - Less Wrong
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It seems like this is an example of my new favorite conversational failure mode: trying to map an abstraction onto the reference class of your personal experience, getting a strange result, and getting upset instead of curious.
ChrisHallquist said there are some circumstances in which he feels compelled to lie. It seems like Alicorn assumed both that this must include some circumstances she'd be likely to subject him to, and that what he thinks of as a lie in that circumstance is something that will fall into the category she objects to. Of course, either of those things or both could be true - but the way to find out is to consider concrete examples (whether real or fictional).
Personally I used to make this mistake a lot when women complained (in vague abstract terms) about being approached by strangers in coffeeshops, and talk about how they're not obligated to be polite or nice in those cases. Once I got curious and asked questions, and found out that "approached" meant a guy persistently tried to engage her in conversation with no affirmative encouragement from her, and "not polite" didn't mean "fuck off and die, asshole" but just failing to throw a lot of warmth and smiling into the conversation, it made perfect sense, though I was surprised that it wasn't already obvious to everyone that no such obligation exists.
I really really like this comment. I really want more clarification now. But from my perspective, someone who has a categorical rule against lying is like learning I'm being graded on everything I say. I suddenly have the massive cognitive burden of making sure everything I say is true and that I mean all the implications or I can suddenly be shunned and outcast.
Lying is saying something false while you know better. Not lying doesn't imply only saying true things or knowing all implications.
The added burden should be minimal as between friends most people already assume that they are not lied to without making it an explicit rule.
I'm curious. Is telling the truth really a cognitive burden?
It seems more like the opposite to me. Telling the truth involves keeping track of what is going on in my head, but lying involves keeping track of what is going on in my head and keeping track of what appears to be going on in my head (and making sure they aren't identical).
Saying whatever is in my head is easier than making up lies is easier than picking the phrasing of the truth that doesn't offend or scare people.
Ah, okay. That sounds about right.
This has been my experience as well. Telling the truth requires just saying what's on your mind, sometimes adjusting to avoid making people mad or to be better understood. Lying requires a lot of effort and is stressful.
This is often true, but often the opposite is true. If telling the truth requires extensive evaluation of actual facts, but lying just requires figuring out is the best thing to say, then lying can be less stressful.
As used here, "lying" means "intentional deception", so if you say something, believing it to be true, but it's actually false, it's not lying. The contrast is not saying what's true vs saying what's false, but saying what you believe to be true vs saying what you believe to be false.
Depends on cognitive style.
Walking is not a cognitive burden. Walking on a tightrope is. Being able to say whatever I feel like saying without having to analyze it constantly for punishment is the equivalent of simple walking. I may tell the truth in 90-99 percent of the statements I make, but when I get put into a context of punishment, suddenly I have to worry about the consequences of making what would otherwise be a very small step away from the straight and narrow.
Well, I feel like I'm walking on a tightrope much less when I'm allowed to be honest about everything than when I feel like there are things I'd be supposed to lie about.
My confusion increases. If you say whatever you feel like, you sometimes lie?
yes of course. Someone asks how I'm doing. I'm having a terrible day but say fine because I don't want to talk about it. Is this example clear enough for you?
As noted elsewhere, that's not really a lie, because "How are you?" isn't actually a question, it's more of a greeting protocol.
That statement only makes the web of lies/things that technically don't count as lies I have to keep in my head to stay on Alicorn's good side even more complicated.
I'm not that complicated and I'd rather you didn't pin the entire intricacy of socialization on me personally. I'm okay with phatics like "fine", but if you're actually talking to me, specifically, I'll also take "enh" or other non-information as a sign not to pursue the conversation as long as I'm reasonably on the ball and you can also tell me "I'd rather not talk about that".
That's good to know but I wouldn't have guessed it from what you said in the post about slashing tires.
I think there's something missing there.
If someone were to put me in imminent fear for my life, I would feel justified in killing them. Now that you know that, would you be able to spend time with me without a massive cognitive burden of making sure that you don't put me in imminent fear for my life?
And it's not even like Chris is saying he'd kill anyone. He didn't say "shunned and outcast". He'd just lie to them. You consider being lied to such a horrifying prospect that you would devote massive cognitive resources to making sure it didn't happen?
you've completely misread what I said
To be fair, the sentence he's quoting is ungrammatical or at least weirdly phrased ("person is like learning", I had to read that twice), and that may make it more confusing.
Fairness has nothing to do with whether someone is able to accurately read what someone else means.
When being faced with weirdly phrased writing in most cases the effective thing is to simply ignore the point or be open about the fact that you don't understand what someone means and if you care about understanding it, ask for clarification.
It's a figure of speech.
And confusion sometimes takes the unfortunate shape of someone thinking they understood and not realizing that they didn't - they can't ask to clarify then, can they? Since I believe that, purely as a matter of cause and effect, avoiding poorly formed sentences leads to this happening less often (even in cases when after the fact we would blame the reader more than the writer) I offered that remark as possibly helpful, that's all.
Do you really believe that someone doesn't already know that avoiding poorly formed sentences improves understanding of messages? If you don't then why do you consider it worth saying?
Not really, but then again I'm not sure why you started arguing with me after I gave drethelin feedback on his poorly formed sentence, which he might have not been aware of. So I endevored to explain to you as clearly as I could why I did that. What are you trying to do here exactly?
Some day I really should get around to writing the post I've been thinking of for about a year.
Write the bad version now. Don't worry about the good version until you have a complete bad one.
K. opens gedit
Just don't lie to yourself.
You know, unfortunately I'm so much worse at not lying to myself than at not lying to others. (Then again, I've found a way to put this to a good use: if promising myself I won't eat junk food from the vending machines doesn't work, I promise that to my girlfriend instead. See also Beeminder. Yvain's “fictional deities” approach also sounds interesting.)