The truth hurts sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it has no value in those circumstances. Lying also has cumulative long term effects which are not always obvious.
Either way, the lie conceals the truth about religion from the liar. By operating under false pretenses, a false view of the reality of religion is created. One is less able to accurately judge reality when acting under false pretenses.
Yeah, I’m just saying it makes it worse, and that’s just one small side effect of lying. I was trying to give an example to show that lying has long term effects which people often fail to see.
Actually, I think there was at least an implicit promise to Anne Frank (probably an explicit one but I can’t be bothered to look it up) that her protectors would at least try to conceal her. If it weren’t for this promise, I doubt she would have chosen to hide there This is an example where breaking a promise seems to be worse than lying.
Hmm, I’d ask you what these cumulative long-term effects are, but as they aren’t obvious, I’d imagine they’re conveniently difficult to report on.
Though you could probably find a one or two examples of people who told somebody falsely they were having a nice day, and immidiately turned into serial killers as a direct causal result. Which would of course prove that that happens to everyone…except in everyone else, it’s not obvious.
Cite, cite, cite? I dispute every single sentence. When I lie, I know that I’m doing it, and the magical darkness of magical lying doesn’t magically cloud my awareness of things. My awareness of that thing which I am lying about is not impeded in the slightest, in fact. I am not persuaded by my own rhetoric - Heck, if I was, I wouldn’t be lying.
I know there are people who believe their own lies, but I don’t think they’re the norm. Of course I suppose it’s possible that it is the norm, and in the rest of us the derangment just might not be obvious. (Even to ourselves.)
They’re so tough to see, that there’s no evidence they’re even happening! Now, that’s subtlety there, folks!
Okay…for the sake of stationary-goalpost argument, suppose there was not a promise there. Then it’s okay to throw the sheep to the wolves to avoid having to lie, right? Since it wouldn’t be breaking a promise and all.
There are SOME people in the world, who like to pat themselves on the back and proclaim “honesty is the best policy”. And then they abuse “the truth” in order to be mean and spiteful.
I like the truth. But there are times when a lie can be the “lesser evil”.
This too, is a perfectly reasonable response. It does sometimes backfire though. I was a guest once, and this neighbor was (gross understatement) a HORRIBLE cook. I pretended I liked the food. She gave me a huge honking “can’t see the dish” second serving of that God awful stuff
Whoa. But that wasn’t the position that you were responding to:
Let's take an example: "Do you think this makes me look fat?", a veritable landmine of a question, both in practice and theory.
Those who are not in the habit of telling the truth, are likely to lie under all circumstances. So somebody who answers that question: “No, not at all: you look terrific,” is also likely to tell a homeless person that they have no money on them when panhandled or make reassuring if operationally useless noises when asked for advice. That’s fine, but after a while it’s understood that we shouldn’t take this person’s words particularly seriously.
Now the segue into tolerating conmen requires a weaker rule of law. But in a business context, it’s easy to see how the person in my example would feel comfortable blaming the mail system (“I get 3 problems with the post office per day”) in front of a customer when he knows for a fact that there are serious issues in the back office. Those who are not in the habit of respecting veracity are likelier to cut corners.
I haven’t seen the argument made in this thread: here it is.
Consider 2 extremes.
“Hey Joe, how are you?”
“Doctor, give it to me straight: do I have cancer?”
The first case is not an inquiry into one’s health: it’s a greeting. If somebody says, “Fine”, it’s not a lie, because there’s no real deception involved.
Ok, so the truth of the answer depends upon the context of the question. But often the context is murkier than the above. Under those circumstances, giving an accurate answer which is nonetheless misleading permits a questioner to drop the matter if she really doesn’t care and press the issue otherwise. So if an adult hears that their haircut is interesting, they know that the responder may or may not like the cut, but that he definitely cares about the feelings of another, at least to a small extent. And that may be what the underlying question relates to anyway: this could involve a solidarity display.
But it’s easier and indeed possible for the questioner to press for candor if she can assume accuracy to begin with. And the responder can backpedal from “Interesting” to “Perhaps not to my taste” without totally undermining their credibility.
So called weasel words aren’t necessarily constructed for deception. They can permit elaboration or followup that is calibrated to the questioner’s desire for candor, diplomacy or reassurance and the responder’s interest in having an adult interaction.
I have no such bizarre idea and never said it. I’m wondering where you got the bizarre idea I thought that.
How bad does it have to be to qualify as malicious? Doesn’t that occur way before a throat is cut? I work in retail and have for years. I’ve seen plenty of levels of lying from commissioned salespeople and customers alike. People will lie about any number of things to save a couple of bucks. Salesmen lie to make a sale. It bothers me that in general it seems like acceptable business practice to lie. A friend of mine worked for Best Buy and they specifically instructed the sales staff to lie to sell extended warranties. They got sued for that. In his particular store he informed the management that they could not insist their sales staff lie. Those are the kinds of casual lies I was referring to. Even though lying in general may be perceived as a bad thing people often justify these types of lies with “Everybody does it” I realize that different people have different boundaries and not every lie leads to a much worse one. I do believe that once we justify one lie, justifying others becomes easier.
Those are your labels not mine. Since I don’t agree with your description at all I can’t really respond to this. Obviously what I just described as sincere honest answers aren’t weasel words IMO. You’re welcome to yours but it has no more weight than mine. Too bad you decided too piss all over what I described as sincerity to support your predetermined conclusion.
I’m speaking from personal experience and my own efforts at being more honest and trying not participating in casual lies. It’s a philosophy and I don’t claim to have any statistical evidence or even to succeed 100% of the time. I’ve just found that with effort and time it gets better and the effort has other benefits.
Wow. Is it necessary to be this judgmental simply because I don’t think you’re right.
How exactly is my personal efforts at honesty editorializing their question any more than your decision to tell a casual lie? It isn’t. We both answer with an idea of what we want and what they want. IMO your analysis here is bullshit.
And that’s your choice.In the 2nd example I would simply tell them I’d rather they choose this time without adding the no preferences bit.
That may be true but it doesn’t make the lie positive. It may just mean the sum of the negative of the lie and the positive of consideration and compassion was more positive than the positive of the truth and the negative of a lack of compassion, or whatever the negative outcome the truth might bring. {such as the Jews in the attic thing} IMO the effort of trying to remain honest and still retain consideration of others leads to more positive outcomes more often.
Trying to eliminate societies accepted casual lies as part of a personal philosophy is hardly a slavish devotion to honesty. Believe what you like. The reason I believe it is a better way is because I’ve tried it and found the effort rewarding in a number of ways.
Either you’ve purposely ignored what I wrote or you don’t get it. I am not talking about superficial attention to the truth for technicalities sake.
I don’t think it’s known either and I don’t expect an honesty epidemic in the foreseeable future. Based on personal experience I still think it’s a worthwhile effort and hold it to be true.
Well, actually yeah, I don’t often think about this from exactly this angle so I’m having difficulty coming up with a comprehensive overview of the actual methods through which lies have long-term negative effects. For now I only have individual examples like the one I’ve given. It was an example meant to showcase how unexpected and unobvious the consequences of a lie can be, rather than how extreme they can be. Apparently it did that too well since you are still unwilling to accept the possibility.
I think the immediate effects of individual lies are not extreme, and the larger effects are not immediate, but I think I made that clear already.
It’s not magic, but I think it certainly can cloud your awareness of things. Not neccessarily the specific thing you’re lying about, but related things which you hadn’t considered, certainly.
You don’t need to believe your own lies to be unaware of what the implications are of your own beliefs. If you pretend you don’t have those beliefs, you risk remaining ignorant about those implications, even if you never believe your own lies.
Yeah, yeah, I admit I haven’t proven much. My post was more meant to describe my understanding than support it. To prove anything, the issue needs to be aproached from a different angle which isn’t so… fuzzy. I’m err… uhh… working on it.
Oh god… these dang nazi hypotheticals just seem to follow me everywhere. I’m not sure I can answer that without getting into a whole other can of worms. Somehow I think you already knew that.
I think at this point, the thing for me to ask is, is there any reason to think that lying itself is inherently habit-forming or progressive in some way? Because it’s one thing to point out that different people have different levels of resistance or inclination towards lying than one another (which goes without saying), and quite another to decide that to tolerate the most benign and spotless of white lies has some sort of cuasative effect in making you more likely to tell increasingly grey lies as time goes on.
The fact that people who tell white lies are more likely to tell grey and black lies (if you’ll excuse by extending the color metaphor) is both unsurprising and uninformative, given the similarly obvious fact that people who are already willing to tell morally dubious lies are obviously not going to be bothered by telling harmless ones. Presuming that there is a slippery slope there ignores the fact that there are people (like myself) who will tell one but not the other, and aren’t in the slightest inclined to ‘fall further to the dark side’ over time, because as far as we’re concerned we haven’t fallen to the dark side. We simply don’t draw the line between good and bad arbitrarily at no lying; we draw it where we percieve the difference to be whether we judge the lie to be harmful or not.
Well, sure. There are lots of reasons to decieve or otherwise control the amount and type of information you give, and not all of them are malicious by any stretch. However, to my mind that doesn’t change the fact that you are decieving and manipulating the amount and type of information you’re giving. I just prefer to call a spade a spade; if somebody cheerfully asks me how I’m doing, and I just found out my grandma died and feel terrible, but say I’m fine because I don’t want to blitz the conversation, then I am lying. The fact that the lie is in response to a greeting doesn’t change the fact that my response was a lie.
Really, this is exactly my point. There are lots of cases where it’s perfectly morally alright to lie and decieve. Some people just like to pretend to themselves that they’re not lying on those cases, for personal reasons, is all.
And as for undermining your credibility, that depends on which lies you tell. Obviously there are ways to blast your credibility by telling complete obvious reversals of the truth, but you’d be surprised how honest people think an old liar like me is.
Oh, pardon me. You are the one who is setting all lies on the far side of the ‘morally acceptable’ line. In doing so, you’re setting all white and grey and black lies on the same footing, aren’t you? Or at least, that’s a ridicuous extreme that you seem to be implying.
Are you now saying that lies have some benign and morally correct uses, parallel to the benign use of the knife to cut the apple?
Is there, or is there not, a slippery slope? If so, where does it stop? Anywhere?
If there isn’t a slippery slope, there isn’t any risk in telling malicious lies due to telling benign lies, which as far as I can tell torpedos the one argument supporting your theory that white lies are bad. Doesn’t it?
Obviously, there is a continuum for how bad lies can be in intent, and I think we can agree that there’s a fairly clear distinction between a benign lie and a malicious lie. We both agree that conning customers is malicious, for example.
Obviously your last sentence is true as well, in the trivial sense that if you don’t let yourself tell any lies at all you are less likely to tell a malicious lie than a randomly selected person who is willing to tell white lies. However, it doesn’t follow from that that a given person who has set their moral limit at telling white lies is any more likely to tell malicious lies than you are. And I think that the latter sentence is the one you’d have to defend to argue that telling white lies is immoral, and I don’t believe you’ve shown it to be the case.
I suppose we could get into a battle of definitions here, but IMO, a lie is a lie.
Well, a person who is a recovering lieaholic would definitely see benefits from moving their internal moral limit from “lie recklessly and selfishly” to “don’t lie at all”. But that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t enjoy similar benefits from moving the line from “lie recklessly and selfishly” to “lie carefully and unselfishly”.
Into my mind pops a similar analogy regarding driving a car; a reckless driver could stop driving completely and see benefits, but that doesn’t mean that all driving is bad. Or should I just save an analogy and stick with not giving up knives?
Er, your personal efforts are more like editorializing because I don’t have to editorialize at all to lie. I simply interpret the question as having the basic meaning a plain reading of its words implies, and then decide how best to answer. And sometimes consciously lie.
You do not describe yourself as interpreting the question as having the basic meaning a plain reading of its words implies, do you not agree?
Regardless, the tactics you use to convince yourself that you are not telling benign lies are, by and large, irrelevent. The question is whether telling benign lies (presumably consciously and deliberately) is immoral.
You’d be surprised how poorly that works. These people are lifelong practiced accomodators; getting them to express an opinion, even when asked bluntly and distinctly, is like pulling teeth.
You are we’ll note, presuming an inherent negativity to the lie, in order to make this argument. There are many cases where the lie has no observable negative effects whatsoever, in the short or long term. (Actually a lot of lies don’t even have long term effects; both sides forget about the conversation and life moves on.)
And, yes, if you quit lying entirely you avoid the negative outcomes of lying. Similarly, if you quit eating chocolate entirely (and don’t replace it with other things), then you’ll probably get a little thinner. But that doesn’t mean that every consumption of chocolate has negative effects or is morally wrong.
Well, there are casual lies, and then there are casual lies. Nobody here disagrees that it would be good if salesmen stopped deceiving their customers about their products. But the question of the thread is whether any lies are moral (or even just neutral!), not wether we can think of immoral lies if we try hard enough. Which is not something you are properly addressing by touting the benefits of abstinence (absent some actually support for your slippery slope theory, anyway).
No, you are talking about convincing yourself that there is another way of interpreting questions that you don’t want to give an honest answer to the direct interpretation of. Right?
Well, this is the forum for witnessing, I suppose. We both know that doesn’t count as argument around here, though.
Which example did you give again? I recall you asserting that there would be negative effects for lying about your lack of religion, but I don’t really get what your argument was that there actually would be negative effects - besides that you asserted there would be, that is.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. A person who pretends to have beliefs is of course going to be aware of the implications thereof, because they will remain exposed to the religion and the culture therein. The only thing they will be spared is annoying people telling them they’re going to hell, but that sort of thing isn’t exactly a secret. Your typical atheist or agnostic is fully aware of the asserted downsides of putting down the kool-aid cup.
So, what ‘implications’ do you think such a person would remain ignorant of?
Well, if you can start by describing this understanding in a way simple 'ole me can understand it, we can start working on supporting it from there. 'Cause at this point, it looks to me like you’re asserting that there’s secret knowledge of the evils of atheism that only gets told to known unbelievers…which can’t possibly be what you’re saying. Can it?
Hmm, I didn’t make the connection with that other thread; I’m not following that one. The point I’m digging at here is that you asserted that the only type of consequence that could result from a lie that would, itself, be worse than lying is breaking a promise…which seems a ridiculous position to take. I could lie somebody into falling into a pit and dying, essentially killing them with a lie; that seems worse than breaking a promise, doesn’t it?
(I sicced the Nazi’s on you because that seems the standard extreme example for this thread. Nothing personal. )
No I didn’t imply that. I never implied I thought all lies were of equal negative impact. That makes the analogy a ridiculous extreme.
No I’m not saying that.
It stops where the individual chooses to stop it and that varies from person to person and situation to situation. IMO accepting the meme that “sometimes you have to lie” creates an opening for justification of other lies that result in overall negative for society. Devotion to the truth OTOH maintains movement forward in ethical and moral behavior in society much as devotion to the truth does in science in an objective sense.
If a customer lies to me about when they bought something to circumvent our return policy, is that a white lie? Most people would think so. Is it also malicious on some level?
You weren’t judging factual issues. You were judging intent and when I described something as completely sincere you waved it away as a lie and/or personal justification. To me that indicates you missed the point or simply wanted to believe your own view must be the correct one, so mine had to be dismissed, regardless of my assertion of sincerity.
I wouldn’t say all social white lies are unselfish. The intent may be to spare the feelings of another or to spare ourselves and easily escape an uncomfortable situation. It’s interesting that you use the term carefully with lie. When I used it with truth you seemed to dismiss it as bogus. So, being careful with a lie is unselfish but being careful with the truth is just dishonest justification?
Bullshit word games. I also interpret the question and the context of the situation and decide how I can answer truthfully while still showing consideration.
If I prepare a meal for someone and they are allergic to something should they lie about their allergy to spare my feelings? Well no, because I obviously wouldn’t want that. If I cook ham for someone that I didn’t know was a practicing Jew should they eat it and say it’s fine to keep the wheels of society rolling along? No, because I would understand and wouldn’t want them to eat it under those conditions. I think most of the little white lies we accept are unnecessary if we simply put some effort into approaching them more honestly. I think there would be a variety of positive results at the effort and society would keep on rolling.
No I don’t agree. Obviously when a child hands me a crude picture and asks “Do you like it?” it would be inappropriate and insensitive to judge it as an art critic. Finding the beauty in the effort and affection they put in it and answering “I really really like it” is completely sincere, and therefore , true. That’s part of my point. the effort of self examination and efforts toward honesty have positive results in perception and how we understand ourselves and others.
I repeat, truthfulness does not exist in a vacuum. Sometimes the choice is the lesser of two evils. A lie may have a what is apparently a short term positive outcome. That doesn’t make the lie a positive.
I wouldn’t be that surprised. I’ve dealt with them too. In one instance I flatly refused to go out unless she chose. She couldn’t choose so we didn’t go.
So we’ve been led to believe. I think the negative consequence is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Instead of moving toward a more honest society, lies are accepted as a “fact of life” I think that’s a long term negative that could be avoided.
Playing with the food analogy, A fast food burger and fries are convenient form time to time but that never increases their nutritional content.
I am addressing it with a philosophy that I can’t prove in any objective sense. Never claimed I could. I maintain that all lies are negative but since truth does not exist in a vacuum we are occasionally faced with choices where the lie seems to be the lesser of two evils.
No I’m not.
Since both of us are expressing opinions my argument is as good as yours. Mine is also not merely rhetorical in nature since it’s based on long term real life efforts. Both of us have conclusions we can’t prove.
So, all lies still are bad, yet you complain about ridiculous extremes. Fine, let’s get less extreme, since the analogy doesn’t require it and all your whining about the extremity of it is just an irrelevent smokescreen anyway.
Modified quite: “I don’t think this slippery slope follows. Nobody thinks that one person telling his wife that he likes her hair to make her feel better justifies a salesman lying about what’s in the contract, any more than people think that one person using a knife to cut up an apple justifies another using a knife to poke somebody to the point of irritation. Like everything else, the morality of lies varies by the situation.”
Your slippery slope is imaginary.
I dispute that the line moves because of “sometimes you have to lie”. And if the line doesn’t move, there is no slippery slope. And if there is no slippery slope, you are left with nothing but empty assertions in your argument against benign lies.
Your argument is of the form, “If everybody practiced extreme abstinence from lying, that would improve things over extreme abuse - ergo nothing but extreme abstinence is good. We will therefore not consider any other avenue.” That looks like an excluded middle to me.
It’s malicious. “Most people” might call it a white lie - which includes nobody I’ve ever met. What scum are you hanging out with?
In my opinion you ‘adapt’ the question to the answer. Similarly, if somebody asks me if one plus one equals two, I can “truthfully” answer false if I pretend they wanted the question answered in binary. And if I actually convince myself that was the question, I can be entirely sincere in giving that answer.
Well, if you think that trying to weasel around the time limits of a return policy is a white lie, then yeah, duh, of course not all of them are unselfish. :rolleyes:
And now you are playing bullshit word games. If you are careful to use your lies in ways that are not hurtful, then that’s benign. If you’re careful to always tell the truth, then, well, that’s good if the truth is benign. But if you are “careful” with the truth, as in very carefully tell the truth in such a way as to decieve…well, we’re back to lying again, right?
1 + 1 = 10
Oh please, what is this, an abortion debate? Nobody is trying to force you to lie, nor is anybody saying that people should always lie compulsively when in social situations, regardless of the reasons to tell the truth. That’s not even intelligent straw.
The time when it is moral to lie is when (to the best of your ability to determine) telling the lie results in the most positive situation for all concerned. You know, weighing the anticipated effects of the lie on all effected parties, including onesself, against one another. At least, that’s what you do when you don’t have some absolutist rule masquerading as morality.
This may come as a shock to you, but a benign liar has the exact same positive perception and understanding of themselves and others - that’s why we tell the lie. Without that understanding we’d just say “It’s a crappy crayon drawing, kid; it’s not great art.” (Telling the truth, incidentally.)
A dedication to telling the truth isn’t going to give you squat regarding understanding of others - a jerk will just say jerky honest things. If you have it in you to try to weasel around and twist out truthful-ish kind statements, then you have it in you to be kind, period. Regardless of wether you’re trying to be strictly truthful. (You’re just making it a little trickier on yourself to do so.)
So you assert. You’ve utterly failed to even give a mechanism by which it would not be positive, though - given that your slippery slope argument is a thing of fantasy. Which leaves us with only the positivity of the intended outcome to judge it by.
Which is not to say that we always predict the outcome correctly. But that’s a consideration applies to every moral choice we make, and which doesn’t invalidate the attempt to make moral choices, based on their anticipated outcomes.
Again, nonsense about the slippery slope. People are capable of discerning the not so subtle difference between trying to be kind and trying to be shifty, and those inclined to be the former and not the latter aren’t going to succumb to this ‘peer pressure’ you seem to imagine exists. The ‘fact of life’ nonsense is a justification, not a reason to do anything; it will only be used by those who are otherwise inclined to lie maliciously anyway and need some sort of flip response when somebody calls them out as a lying scumbag. It doesn’t actually cause anybody to lie maliciously.
Mm-hmm. Now, let’s bring in the fact that there is no actual reason to think that lies have inherent negativity. Which actually makes them more like an apple. If you eat ten thousand apples a day, you’ll explode or something, which is obviously bad, and if you eat rotten apples, you’ll get sick, which is also obviously bad, ergo all apples are bad for you, regardless of circumstance. Right?
And I maintain that you have given no argument that does even a passable job of demonstrating, or even hinting, that all lies are negative. That being the case, there’s no reason not to think that the lie is the best option. (Or that it’s an “evil” at all.)
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
You’re the one who’se arguing that all lies are inherently “evil” based on nothing but assertions and a flawed slippery slope argument. And, as for your experience, precisely how much of a liar were you before you decided to walk the straight and narrow? 'Cause if you told more lies than just non-malicious lies before, you are not a data point that supports your conclusion.
Whereas I am arguing that lies can be the best option by any measure of results-based morality, which can be demonstrated, and that absent some reason to think that they’re inherently evil there is no reason not to judge lies based on their results. The only part of this that’s opinion is that it depends on not assuming that lies are magically inherently eeeeevil. And you’ve done a poor job of demonstrating the magic.
I’m only going to respond to this because this discussion has degenerated into an excess of words and content free argument that amounts to each of us saying the other is full of crap. It’s a waste of time.
I offered a perspective based on the thread. You don’t agree. Fine and BFD. If you think you’ve offered anything more than a personal opinion to support your theory that lies keep the wheels of society greased or whatever it is you’re fooling yourself. Even here as you insist your is based in reality and mine isn’t you’ve got nothing but your opinion to support that. I never presented my concept as anything other than a personal opinion and philosophy.
It seems to me that judging lies based on the results is exactly what commissioned salespeople and the customers I referred to are doing and it removes the question of whether a lie is moral or not. If the lie accomplishes the purpose you want it to then it’s fine regardless of what others think. That appears to contradict some of your other comments but no matter. I’m sure you have some sarcastic way of saying I’m wrong. Feel free to continue to misrepresent my position. I’m done.
I think that it’s patently obvious that there are situations where lies have beneficial effect, ranging from the Anne Frank case to various other cases where you wish to manipulate your audience in ways that the truth would not allow, where your aims and the anticipatable effects are all benign. This is not “opinion” any more than the fact that the earth orbits the sun is opinion. Let’s not pretend that we’re both on the same lack of footing here.
“If the lie accomplishes the purpose you want it to then it’s fine regardless of what others think.”? You think that describes the attempt to tell only moral lies? Do you know what “moral” means? And similarly, the salespeople and customers you speak of explicitly aren’t trying to be moral, so it is entirely disengenous to use them to try and discredit attempts to use lies in a moral manner.
You are misrepresenting and strawmanning my entire position -and in fact the entire philosophy of subjective morality- in the attempt to pretend it’s not a valid position. Kind of ironic, given your position, isn’t it?
*Note - this post is utterly free of sarcasm. Seriously.
It’s also free of meaningful content. “I think it is patently obvious” isn’t a compelling argument. It an attempt at giving your opinion more weight by cloaking it in stronger language. I’m not impressed or convinced.
My position is perfectly compatible with am ultimately positive outcome in a situation in which a lie is involved.
“Free of meaningful content”, huh? You don’t know how impressed I am by your debate tactics. Including, notably, the honesty of your debate tactics.
You shoot yourself in the foot with your closing sentence, because in it you concede the very basis of my arguments; that there are (very obviously) situations where lies lead to an ultimately positive outcome. If you did not understand this to be the case, you would not bother clarifying that your position is compatible with them. So much for there being no content there for you respond to, eh?
I know that your position is compatible with them - the point where we differ is that you attribute magic, ephemeral, and causeless negativity inherent to all lies, regardless of their outcome. As best I can tell, you have come to believe this attribution based on deciding that you have observed a slippery slope in the matter (when the data doesn’t actually support that conclusion), and personal experience of how switching from some level of overt personal dishonesty (which I strongly suspect included malicious lies) to a rigid policy of mostly-honest honesty has cased people to trust you more and led to an overall improvement in your life. Of course, unless you were previously telling only benign and moral lies, and no malicious lies, your experience has no real relation to the quesion of moral lies at all, and your position is just an overreaction as unsupported by real data as the conclusion that it’s best not to drive cars at all based on an improvement in quality of life from one where you were running people down regularly and spending all your time in jail for it.
Absent there being magic, ephemeral, and causeless negativity inherent to all lies, we are forced to abandon the absolutist rules and assess the lies by their effects. At which point the obvious existence of lies with positive effects comes to the fore.
You may not be willing to honestly admit it, but I feel that I have shown the flaws in all the lines of reasoning you have presented for believing that benign lies are a moral evil. Feel free to argue against my arguments, and if you do so, we will have a grand old time. If all you do is ad hominem me or my posts, that will not be a grand old time, though, and you will certainly not convince me that you are in the right.
Yes, the portion I responded to was content free. “I think” points out you’re speaking of your opinion. “patently obvious” says nothing except that you value your opinion far more than I do. It carries zero weight as evidence to support your opinion. That’s zero content.
You are blatantly wrong. I conceded no such thing. You read with your ego.
Zero new content.
I haven’t bothered to answer your bullshit analysis of my motives and thinking with an equal bullshit analysis of yours. I still won’t. That would be too easy and equally meaningless. I will say that when I express sincerity when explaining my experience and the details of my philosophical opinion and you proceed to piss all over it with dripping sarcasm, insisting that my sincerity isn’t sincerity, and my honesty is just weasel words, I tend to not take your posts to seriously as sincere arguments. How strongly you FEEL about your position doesn’t actually give it added weight. How much you value your opinion over mine doesn’t make yours any better in reality. You repeatedly miss that distinction.
There’s no magic involved in my philosophical theory. I’ve said several times that’s all it is. A philosophical theory that I’ve done long term personal experiments with.
Am I completely unbiased? Of course not, but nothing I’ve encountered has shown me I’m clearly mistaken, and that definitely includes your opinionated little rant.
The thing that seems to bother you, or you just can’t admit, is that my philosophical position matches observed reality as much as yours does. I’m not the one ranting that I must be correct or that my opinion is vastly superior {as if by magic}
In your opinionated little mind. There is no reason to assume your position is more likely other than you really want that to be true. If a lie is a part of of a situation that had an apparently benign or positive outcome that does not make the lie positive. Real life situations consist of complex details of cause and effect. What you represent as blatantly obvious seems like oversimplified nonsense to me.
No No I admit it. You really do feel that way. I don’t. You clearly do.
I have very little interest in trying to convince you of anything because it sincerely seems to me, based on your degree of sarcasm, consistent misrepresentation of my position, and needless exaggerated analogies, that you are so enamored of your position that you have closed your mind to honest consideration of any alternatives. When you piss on my expression of sincerity with a casual accusation of my honesty being dishonest you also piss on any desire I have to continue communication. Take your opinion and have a grand ole time with yourself.
You folks are making it more complicated than it needs to be. If you lie in order to cheat, defraud, steal, or cause harm, it’s bad.
On the other hand, there is the “Does this outfit make my butt look big”. If you nod and say “Hell yes, you are friggin’ huge”, I hope you can run very very fast. :eek:
You have zero reading comprehension, you mean. The one thing -the only thing- that I said was patently obvious was that some lies have positive results. That is certainly true, and has nothing to do with opinon, mine or anyone else’s.
Keep trying, though.
I’m sorry that you let slip a fact that you didn’t want to admit and kicked your own position in the balls because of it. And I’m sorrier that you’re not capable of swallowing that fact and have to retreat behind ad hominem instead.
Who said it was new content? I keep repeating myself over and over in the hopes you’ll intelligently debate it, sooner or later.
We can pass on you making bullshit analyses, thanks. When you calm down and scrape together enough coherent thought to comprehend and intelligently respond to my arguments (rather than just mindlessly ad-homineming them), feel free to try again.
Nobody disuptes that refraining from lying is better than lying to deliberately rip people off and cause people harm, which is ALL that your philosophical theory and long term experiments are based on. They are completely irrelevent to the current discussion.
Keep repeating that to yourself until you get it.
And then explain why lies that do only good are somehow bad. Cause so far, magic is all you got.
Ah, yes, I’m the one ranting.
Oh you’re not, are you? Which aren’t you doing, again? Asserting a philosophy as being correct, asserting that mine is incorrect and thus inferior, or ranting?
And observed reality disagrees with you, if you happen to observe the part of reality (that is, the set of lies) that has anything to do with the discussion at hand. Nobody here is claiming that all lies are moral, you know. Just the ones that have good effects, which observed really supports the existence of.
Ah yes, the “nobody can possibly know, so I know I’m right” argument. Good one!
Sorry, no. In reality, some people are capable of actually assessing the outcomes of things. Especially after the fact! Benign lies exist. Deal with it.
If you think I’ve got flaws in my argument, point them out, or shut your mouth.
But you can’t point them out, because all you have are crappy ad-hominem arguments and your impotent rage. You got nothin’.
Wahh wahh, my arguments were all torn apart and my philosophical position got its knees kicked out from under it. And the big man is picking on me!
Kind of sucks how the witnessing and the debating are put in the same forum here, doesn’t it? Nobody gives your philosophical positions the unquestioning respect and absolute unthinking agreement they, er, deserve.
But do feel free to stomp off in a huff, especially if you are indeed unable to argue your position.
This is an example where breaking a promise seems to be worse than lying.
