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Matt_Duing comments on The Santa deception: how did it affect you? - LessWrong
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I figured out the non-existence of Santa Claus when I was about 5, I don't remember how. Someone posing as Santa visited a relative's Christmas party I was at and gave the children gifts and the local news in my city tracks "Santa's current location" on the weather radar periodically on Christmas Eve, which kind of made it a pink goo moment for me. I was angry and confused, but mostly kept this to myself. From this experience I concluded that my parents were not completely reliable and that society has a significant disrespect for children, although I did not make much use of this information until years later. I summary of my thoughts on child deception can be found here.
I'm inclined to think that lying to children is dominance behavior-- the people who do it are reassuring themselves that they're in charge. However, it's hard to get evidence about covert motives.
That makes sense, since it explains why deceived children are so cute.
It doesn't even have to be a covert motive; the motive can quite honestly be that it's so nice to see the little darlings really believe. But reinforcing the sense of dominance in our own minds could still be the covert motive of our genes.