—“What is the argument against selfish lying if it serves my self interest, assuming the majority of people don’t lie to burst the language bubble.”– Gyeff @Gyeff
SPECTRUM
Transparent Lies – Signal Conformity
White Lies – provide comfort to the psyche
Grey Lies – protect from consequences of accident, impropriety, or folly
Black Lies – Pursue gains by means of deceit
Evil Lies – Pursue harm for the sake of harm.
People are amoral, and immoral or moral as suits their interests. People conspire ie, cheat, steal, harm and murder as suits their interests.We have just worked very hard to create institutions such that it doesn’t suit their interests. Lying is one of the hardest crimes to limit…
…because we continually shift techniques such that we need only raise the cost of truth discovery by creating ambiguity such that lie is indistinguishable from ignorance, error, or natural limitations in judgement and prediction.
As such only westerners have succeeded in such suppression of falsehood, that we are able to produce high trust commons, and the means by which we evolved that tradition is almost impossible to replicate without intentionally designing a legal system for it (which I did.)
So like manythings, truth telling is just a tax. Truth Before Face, Before Gain, Before All, regardless of impact to the competence-dominance hierarchy is uniquely western. But it is the primary reason for our sovereignty, liberty, freedom, prosperity, and dominion over nature.