It’s deceitful if you know it won’t be believed, but make no effort to address the non-believability of what you’re saying.
If I think Gary’s dead, and you know I think Gary’s dead, and you deadpan say to me “Gary’s waiting for you in the lobby” without addressing that you know I think he’s dead, and without addressing that you know I don’t believe you, then that’s deceitful in my book. The statement itself would still be true, but the broader context is what makes the overall interaction deceitful.
“Gary’s downstairs in the lobby”
“No, he’s not, he’s dead”
“You are mistaken, Gary’s not dead, he’s downstairs waiting for you”
The OP gave an example of a response to a question.
Question.
Truthful response.
It’s not the giver of information’s responsibility to make other people believe them. Other people can question what they are told and they can be given more information if they need it. Otherwise, disbelief is down to the disbeliever.
blob, we’re straying way out of GQ here, but let me put you in a hypothetical situation.
Let’s say I am made aware of some information that if not conveyed to you, will have dire consequences for you.
I get ready to verbally pass the information to you, but before the words even leave my mouth, I have complete and utter confidence that you’re not going to believe what I’m about to say. In fact, so unbelievable is what I’m about to say, that after you’ve heard it, you’re certain that I wasn’t expecting to be believed.
I state the information once with deadpan, matter of fact delivery. I then turn, and walk away.
You’re convinced what I said isn’t true. Both of us know you haven’t believed it, and both of us know what the other person thinks about whether you’ve believed it.
Later, after you’ve suffered the dire consequences and realised my statement was truthful, would you be upset with me for not addressing, at the time of our interaction, the important point that I knew you didn’t believe me?
When you say “don’t bother saying anything, I don’t want to hear it, I’m not going to believe a word you say”, I’d say, “ok, it was important that you knew what I was going to tell you, but that’s fine”, and then I’d leave. I wouldn’t give you the information after you’d TOLD ME that you were not going to believe me.
Or is this a mind-reading scenario, where everybody “just knows” what everybody else thinks and believes? Anything short of verbal communication is not a basis for “complete and utter confidence”.
Anyway, I just disagree that somebody is dishonest if they don’t put effort into making other people listen, understand, or believe information they give.
If somebody tells me something I wouldn’t just dismiss it out of hand without checking. Presumably I’d know there were “dire consequences” from what I was told and I’m the one who needs to do something about it.
I shouldn’t have said “complete and utter confidence” I should have said “high confidence”.
Anyways not sure we’re going to agree. I personally would feel I am deceiving you if I interacted with you in the manner I posited in my hypothetical scenario.
I think the OP is talking more about something like this:
Wife to husband: So what did you do last night? Husband: Oh the usual stuff: Went out with some colleagues, had a few drinks. Had a great meal at a Vegas restaurant. Saw a show.* Fucked the hotel receptionist*. Ordered a club sandwich. Went to bed. Wife: WHAT? That’s terrible! Husband: I know what you mean - there was far too much mayonnaise on the sandwich. I sent it back. Wife: Hahaha! Oh, you’re a funny man.
That is, deadpanning the unpleasant truth, fully expecting that it will be brushed off as a joke or a falsehood.
I think we’re all talking about elements of gaslighting, which involves strategic truth telling, outright lying by blatant falsity, and lying by omission. The idea is that, through a combination of truth and lies, the other person no longer knows what’s true and what isn’t. Gaslighting is effective not just because of the deception, but because the party being deceived can’t just end their relationship, or can’t end it easily. The aggrieved party depends, or assumes they depend, on some sort of cooperation with the gaslighter. Maybe the gaslighter is that person’s employer, or their spouse, or their close family member, or someone in a position of authority. Controlling the flow of information is a form of power. The gaslighter knows this, and cooperates on his/her terms, controlling the flow of information as it suits his/her purposes.
Has anyone addressed the point that the listener should have asked a follow-up question? Or maybe believed the person when they gave them the correct answer?
In the Gary case, no one’s going to just sit there thinking “This person must be lying, because Gary’s dead. So I’ll just stay here. I won’t check or say anything…”
They’d immediately ask another question, like “Wait, are you saying Gary’s alive?!?” [cue soap opera music]
I agree that with the examples given in that article, “paltering” doesn’t quite fit your example. The examples given in the article are examples of technically telling the truth, or not lying, but leaving information out or requiring a strict technical parse. That said, I don’t know if the term is restricted simply to that type of example.
I don’t agree. The person in the OP’s example told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It’s just that the truth was apparently stranger than fiction and was not believed by the OP (and supposedly told with the intention that the OP wouldn’t believe it.)
That said, I don’t really think it’s deception or lying if the other person doesn’t believe the truth. Like in the Grosse Point Blank example, the person talked to can follow up with “are you serious?” and do their due diligence in ascertaining whether the statement is truthful or in jest. To me, if you don’t believe a truthful statement, that’s on you.
I’d be curious to hear a more concrete example of what the OP is talking about, though.
I used to do this all the time growing up. Mom would ask “What are you doing this evening?” My reply would something along the lines of “Gonna smoke a lot of dope and fool around with godless women.” “Well, don’t tell me then!”
You’re talking about the kid who gets in at four in the morning and tells his mom that he got in “after midnight”, right. Technical truths told to create a false impression. Like Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” line meaning that he didn’t fuck her.
I call that sort of thing “embarrassing the truth”.
About 15 years ago I decided to never lie again. Lying had caused me more trouble then it was worth, so I stopped. Ask me if those pants make your ass look fat and you’ll either get an honest reply or I’ll not answer.
Last month my gf accused me of eating her super-secret stash of brownie things. I told her it wasn’t me. She glared at me, silently calling me a liar, since it’s only the two of us and she knew she hadn’t eaten them.
A week later on the kitchen counter there was a replacement package and a note from our house-cleaner who comes in every other week. The note read, “Sorry I ate the last of your treats. I had a low blood sugar thing happen and needed some sweets”.
I did not get an apology. Instead I was chastised for not defending myself. Sometimes you can’t win.
The Carl Sagan aphorism is this: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
I would say that when you assert something, albeit truthfully, that is an extraordinary claim, you can expect to be disbelieved, and there is an element of deceitfulness if you walk off without offering extraordinary proof-- or any proof at all.
In the “Gary” example, if Gary’s death has been widely reported, or he has been missing for a long time and been declared legally dead, then you know that the person to whom you say “Gary’s waiting for you in the lobby,” is going to require proof, and there’s an element of deceit not to be prepared to offer any.
However, if the disbelief is due to weird beliefs, or something, of the person to whom you are speaking-- for example, you say “There was a case of measles in the area; thank goodness my daughter was old enough for the vaccine last month, and got it in time, and was not in danger,” and the person to whom you are speaking (maybe even unbeknownst to you) is an anti-vaxxer, doubts that the vaccine had anything to do with your daughter not getting measles, and says something weird, like “Does she eat a lot of melon?” you don’t owe than person anything-- no proof, no studies, no JAMA articles, no medical records, not even any details of your daughter’s diet. You did not make an extraordinary claim, and there is no taint of deceit in expecting someone to take it on face value.