Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

WHITE LIES AS HONEST, ETHICAL AND MORAL

(contrary perspective – truth telling as potential verbalism)

I have a really good lie detector, but I also know who is capable of fooling me. The value of lying increases rapidly under certain conditions, and decreases rapidly under others. So, in my life, under these conditions, I just don’t have an opportunity to work under conditions with the class of people who even desire to outright lie. Nor do I put people in a position where they can lie to me, or would want to. So, in my world, people don’t lie. They negotiate, fail to understand, and they err.

I have no problem at all with white lies and I usually prefer that people tell them whenever possible if it’s ‘good manners’: as means of preserving confidences primarily. Even one’s own confidences. It is a signal that they are trustworthy rather than blabbermouths or social incompetents.

I usually rely on distractions or incomplete truths in order to preserve confidences while at the same time sharing information that is not in confidence. I think, or at least, my experience is, that this is a sort of necessary, well-understood-language if not protocol among those with power.

To some degree, great politicians do nothing EXCEPT tell white lies that convey information while preserving confidences. Great negotiators tell half truths for the same reason. The art is in never lying EVER while at the same time preserving confidences. And confidences are necessary for constructing networks of economic dependencies. The reason is that incentives can be manipulated under truth-telling, for unethical, immoral, and un-earned advantage. So in that case, white lies, particularly, distractions and incomplete information that eliminates the ability for others to use unethical, immoral, and un-earned advantage are both ethical and moral. (Wrap your head around that.)

However, I’ve found that ordinary folk who live in a world of suspicion because they can’t function as good lie detectors, nor can they model incentives of others, get angry with you for this behavior. So it’s somewhat of a problem if you mix class-associations. Because as andy says,we all use only one means of lying.

So, like violence, it is not the action itself that is moral or immoral, but whether one is violating a property right (including a confidence). Lying is never required because it is for one’s advantage – fraud), but distraction, obscurantism, and truth telling (the amount of information communicated) must be present in some terms, because otherwise you are assisting in a conspiracy to gain advantage where the seller does not want his incentives to be considered as part of the transaction.

We have to separate negotiation over demand, for negotiation over supply. Incentives are external to the transaction. The question is only whether what is represented in the transaction is true or not.

For some reason this gets lost in our ethical, moral, and legal theory.