This reminds me of a similar type of “lie”.
Suppose Jack is staying at our house. My girlfriend asks me if John ate the last brownie. I know John hasn’t been here in a while, so I say no; however I am fully aware that she really wanted to inquire about Jack’s actions.
The term ‘lying by omission’ is used by people as an attempt to lay the blame anywhere other than at their own feet.
“The Aes Sedai only tell you the truth they want you to know.” – Thom Merrill
Nonsense. There was NO statement and NO assertion. The person here responded to a QUESTION, they did not march up to someone with an intent to do anything. They were asked a question, they answered that question completely and truthfully.
What this is called is “trying to blame somebody else for something that you, and you alone, are responsible for”. You can take information, ignore it, and then accuse the giver of that TRUTHFUL information that you asked for of deceit because they didn’t do what, exactly? Sit you down for an hour and say “it’s really, really true, you have to believe me”? There was nothing untrue, no falsehood, no attempt to deceive at all. If YOU chose not to accept the information and didn’t go “what? are you serious? Really?” that’s down to you. You’re an adult human being, with a tongue in your head, you are not a toddler where everybody has to coddle you and make sure you understand and accept everything you are told.
If you want a word to describe it, it’s egocentricity.
I just thought of a perfect example–everything Lucifer says on Lucifer.
“To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error" (A Catholic Catechism)
Also called deceit, deceitfulness, ‘a deceit’, which avoids a problem with the word ‘lying’.
Technically, for when people want to be technically clear, ‘false signification’ (which relates to an earlier discussion about the idea that words aren’t required to ‘tell’ lies: you can use all kinds of different signals)
Aquinas expressed the opinion that it is wrong to cause someone to have a false opinion by telling the truth. I haven’t read Aquinas, so I don’t know what words he used.
This is crazy. I think if anything, prefacing a comment with “So I know you won’t believe me” would be more likely to close the other person’s mind before even getting a chance to test your ‘hypothesis’. I cannot wrap my brain around the idea that someone, upon being asked a question that is assumed to be asked in good faith, can answer totally truthfully and can be vilified in any way? Huh?
I think the OP and others may be looking at a variant of Crying Wolf. They are assuming the person making the truthful statement is deceitful in the first place, otherwise why have such great doubt about the statement? So they should disbelieve the statement based on that person’s reputation. Why they think the purpose of the truthful statement is to deceive I have no idea.
I don’t know of a simple one-or-two word name for it. The Playboy Adviser once said that “the best lie is the truth told unconvincingly.” I’ll go with that.
A simple example could go something like
A: I assume that…
B: You may so assume.
Here it is B that is paltering.
Under pretty much every scenario, of course this is correct analysis.
But it really isn’t that hard to conjure up a scenario where telling the God’s honest whole truth can be used as an act of deception.
For example…
Let’s imagine you ask me a question, of which I know the answer, but I don’t want you to know the answer, so I decide I’m going to conceal the truth from you. Additionally, and this bit is crucial, I am very, very confident you won’t believe the truth if I told it to you. In fact, I’m quite confident you’ll be sure I’m lying.
“Excellent”, I think to myself. “Just tell blob the God’s honest truth. He’ll be convinced you’re lying, and therefore think the truth must be something else. Mwa ha ha, this is genius!”.
I then proceed to tell you the God’s honest truth. Sure enough, you’re convinced I’m lying, and now believe the truth is something other than what I told you. I can see that my plan has worked a charm. “Yes!”, I think to myself, “blob is convinced the truth is something other than what I told him! YESS!!!”
blob, surely you can see how in the above scenario, I would have intentionally deceived you, even though I was telling the whole truth.
NO. I’ve given you truthful information. I HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING TO YOU. If you are sceptical or cynical or untrusting or don’t listen or reject what you are told YOU HAVE DONE THAT YOURSELF. Your disbelief is down to you, you weren’t induced by anything deceitful or untrue.
I am not some insane Machiavellian who goes around imagining what other people might think and then plotting to deceive them on the basis of my IMAGINATION of what they might do (guess what, some people would actually listen to what they are being told, and query it if they didn’t believe it, you know, the adults capable of speech). I am not some insane paranoiac who goes around imagining that everyone, particularly people who HAVE TOLD ME THE TRUTH are, in actual fact, dishonest, deceitful people who have plotted to deceive me.
Nobody is “convincing” you of anything by giving you true information. Nobody is plotting to deceive you in insane ways. For a start, if you weren’t busy wondering about plots against you, and who imagined what about whom and what they imagine might happen YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY ACCEPT WHAT YOU ARE TOLD. Plot foiled! Foiling the plot is entirely up to you. Just listen and accept what you are being told.
Seriously, have you gone up to this person and gone “A-HA! You deceived me when you told me the truth! HOW DARE YOU!” It’s nuts.
You are making yourself sound like a very dishonest person. I think you have simply misled yourself about someone’s truthful statement because you considered that person to be deceitful already, but in trying to redirect the blame for your misjudgement you are creating a twisted knot of excuses and splattering yourself in your attempt to paint that statement as a lie.
Wow, what? Let me rephrase my question:
In my above hypothetical scenario, where I formed a plan to intentionally deceive you, then successfully executed the plan such that you were deceived, you’re saying that no deception has taken place?!
Can you give a more concrete example? Because I’m personally still on the side of if you told the truth and the receiving party didn’t believe it, well, tough cookies. I really can’t imagine a situation in which I’d call it lying or deception. Even the Gross Pointe Blank example.
Steve MB’s contribution, Sarcastic Confession, deserves to be stated explicitly in this thread. It sounds like it refers to something so unbelievable that it isn’t heeded. Just like the OP. False Reassurance also qualifies.
Paltering is a good word but a little different: I suspect it utilizes the Exact Words trope.
A war general is captured by the enemy. The war general, captured many times before, has a legendary reputation for never divulging secrets to the enemy.
The enemy asks him, “will your army be attacking from the south?”.
Aware of his reputation for never divulging secrets, the war general answers truthfully with a “Yes”, taking a calculated gamble the enemy will not believe him.
It works. The enemy begin evacuating their southern defences, instead fortifying to the west. A wry grin falls across the face of the captive general. His deception has worked!
Still on the tough cookies side, here.
The general did not decieve the enemy. His strategy worked, the strategy to be truthful, to not be deceptive. The enemy deceived themselves.
I think we’re arguing semantics now.
If your best friend told you the truth, not in spite of whether you believed it, but told you the truth because you wouldn’t believe it, I find it hard to imagine you would have no ill-feeling towards your friend when they’re shouting “Haha! I knew you wouldn’t believe the truth, that’s why I said it!” in your face while you suffer the consequences of not believing them.
This is one of the most head-exploding threads I’ve ever encountered. Your interaction with this person began with you asking them a question. Unless you were not asking that question in good faith, an honest answer is what you hoped you would, and did, in fact receive. What was your motivation in asking this question? Did it have an ulterior motive?