The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.
Why? Best case scenario is she keeps taking you to unenjoyable plays until you find you have to end the relationship yourself anyway or finally tell her the truth. Out of all the things in a relationship whose end was “a good thing for other reasons”, one argument about whether a play was any good seems like a trivial thing to regret.
I can’t favour lies as such. I am however on board with people honestly communicating the connotation that they care how you feel at the expense of the denotational literal meaning of their words.
In lies, the intention is not to soften but to deceive. So I don’t even like the phrase “white lie”. It’s like, if you’re going to stab me in the back, is it better if it’s with a white knife?
To clarify: regardless of whether you’ll get something out of someone later, all else equal it’s better to do things that satisfy their preferences than things that don’t.
Which is why I said it was kind. It’s still not necessarily a reasonable expectation.
Anyway, the hypothetical preference to be lied to is a bit suspicious, epistemologically. Let’s distinguish it from a preference to never hear of anything you don’t like, which is on its face unrealistic.
How would you experience getting your preference to be lied to without thereby knowing the unpleasant truth that you wanted to avoid? You want to know but you want to pretend the other person doesn’t know that you know? It’s a bit crazy.
How would you safely determine that someone prefers to be lied to, without exposing them to the truth they might not want? This isn’t trivial: if you lie to someone who doesn’t prefer it, I hope we can agree that’s worse than the other way round.
How would you experience getting your preference to be lied to without thereby knowing the unpleasant truth that you wanted to avoid?
It’s not usually (though it is sometimes) a preference to be lied to in this particular instance—it’s a preference to be told a nice thing regardless of whether that nice thing is factually true. Being told nice things can feel good even if it doesn’t cause you to update your beliefs—and sometimes even if you believe the nice statement is false.
How would you safely determine that someone prefers to be lied to, without exposing them to the truth they might not want?
There are a few ways someone can express that preference.
1) In some circumstances this is the normal expected social default. “How did you like my play?” to a friend is usually not a question that gets answered with perfect honesty if the play was not good. People who want an unusual answer from normal people need to ask the question in an unusual way (which is not very hard—you can say something like “If I were to work on doing something better next time, what would you recommend?” or “do you think it’s ready to bring to off-Broadway, or should I spend some time improving it?”, or “could you honestly recommend this to your friends?”, or some other question that implies that an honest adverse answer would be valuable, or makes a lie more costly).
2) If you’re friends with someone, you already have a track record. If they’ve said things you wish they hadn’t said, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell them so. If they want to be a good friend to you, they will pay attention and try to change their behavior.
3) Just like in situations where a white lie would be expected there are ways to ask that get around that, in a situation where a white lie would not be expected there are ways to imply that you expect a nice answer. “Don’t you think that was great?” or “I’m so happy my play came off well! What did you think?” is asking for affirmation, not objective evaluation. This feels harder than the unusual asking in (1), but that might just be because I’ve never had occasion to develop this social skill.
if you lie to someone who doesn’t prefer it, I hope we can agree that’s worse than the other way round.
I personally dislike the former more than the latter, but I am not sure this is true in literally every case. For example, if someone has an ugly baby I don’t think I harm them very much by saying “aww how cute!”, but I am reasonably likely to harm the friendship if I state my honest opinion. However I do think it’s best to err on the side of honesty if you’re not sure which way is best, and it’s valuable to develop an ability to give polite evasions when necessary instead of lying. That might just be my personal aesthetic preference for truth-telling, though—I couldn’t give you a lot of examples where everyone was better off when I gave a polite evasion than if I’d just told a white lie instead.
‘It’s like, if you’re going to stab me in the back, is it better if it’s with a white knife?’
It’s not like that at all! ‘Deceive’ isn’t a dirty word—i.e. it doesn’t automatically mean something that is bad to do. ‘Stabbing in the back’, on the other hand, seems to. ‘He kindly deceived me’ may sound odd, but not at all self-contradictory like ‘He kindly stabbed me in the back’ (metaphorical meaning intended, of course). It seems perfectly reasonable to me to think that deception is sometimes a very decent, kind, considerate practice to engage in. The idea that it’s automatically bad seems childish to me.
It’s automatically hazardous to give someone a false map of the world. If you do it knowingly you have the responsibility to make sure no harm comes of it. Even if you take that responsibility seriously, and are competent to do so, taking it secretly without consent is an ethical problem.
My take on this:
Few people take that responsibility seriously or are competent to do so, or are even aware that it exists.
Most of the time people’s intuitions about minor well-intended deceptions are sufficient to avoid trouble.
If you call someone a liar, that has a strong negative connotation and social implications for good reason. We didn’t evolve the capacity for deception primarily to hold surprise birthday parties for each other.
There are no dirty words, but there are inaccurate ones. Use with care.
Why? Best case scenario is she keeps taking you to unenjoyable plays until you find you have to end the relationship yourself anyway or finally tell her the truth. Out of all the things in a relationship whose end was “a good thing for other reasons”, one argument about whether a play was any good seems like a trivial thing to regret.
I can’t favour lies as such. I am however on board with people honestly communicating the connotation that they care how you feel at the expense of the denotational literal meaning of their words.
In lies, the intention is not to soften but to deceive. So I don’t even like the phrase “white lie”. It’s like, if you’re going to stab me in the back, is it better if it’s with a white knife?
You’re mixing metaphors. A stab in the back is better with a smaller knife, deliberately aimed at a non-vital area.
It’s a dodgy metaphor at best anyway, but ‘point’ taken. :)
Because she would have preferred to be lied to, I guess.
That’s kind. But not all our preferences are reasonable expectations.
Anyway, maybe I weight things differently or it was a very short sucky play, but the downsides are still pretty compelling.
To clarify: regardless of whether you’ll get something out of someone later, all else equal it’s better to do things that satisfy their preferences than things that don’t.
Which is why I said it was kind. It’s still not necessarily a reasonable expectation.
Anyway, the hypothetical preference to be lied to is a bit suspicious, epistemologically. Let’s distinguish it from a preference to never hear of anything you don’t like, which is on its face unrealistic.
How would you experience getting your preference to be lied to without thereby knowing the unpleasant truth that you wanted to avoid? You want to know but you want to pretend the other person doesn’t know that you know? It’s a bit crazy.
How would you safely determine that someone prefers to be lied to, without exposing them to the truth they might not want? This isn’t trivial: if you lie to someone who doesn’t prefer it, I hope we can agree that’s worse than the other way round.
It’s not usually (though it is sometimes) a preference to be lied to in this particular instance—it’s a preference to be told a nice thing regardless of whether that nice thing is factually true. Being told nice things can feel good even if it doesn’t cause you to update your beliefs—and sometimes even if you believe the nice statement is false.
There are a few ways someone can express that preference.
1) In some circumstances this is the normal expected social default. “How did you like my play?” to a friend is usually not a question that gets answered with perfect honesty if the play was not good. People who want an unusual answer from normal people need to ask the question in an unusual way (which is not very hard—you can say something like “If I were to work on doing something better next time, what would you recommend?” or “do you think it’s ready to bring to off-Broadway, or should I spend some time improving it?”, or “could you honestly recommend this to your friends?”, or some other question that implies that an honest adverse answer would be valuable, or makes a lie more costly).
2) If you’re friends with someone, you already have a track record. If they’ve said things you wish they hadn’t said, you’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell them so. If they want to be a good friend to you, they will pay attention and try to change their behavior.
3) Just like in situations where a white lie would be expected there are ways to ask that get around that, in a situation where a white lie would not be expected there are ways to imply that you expect a nice answer. “Don’t you think that was great?” or “I’m so happy my play came off well! What did you think?” is asking for affirmation, not objective evaluation. This feels harder than the unusual asking in (1), but that might just be because I’ve never had occasion to develop this social skill.
I personally dislike the former more than the latter, but I am not sure this is true in literally every case. For example, if someone has an ugly baby I don’t think I harm them very much by saying “aww how cute!”, but I am reasonably likely to harm the friendship if I state my honest opinion. However I do think it’s best to err on the side of honesty if you’re not sure which way is best, and it’s valuable to develop an ability to give polite evasions when necessary instead of lying. That might just be my personal aesthetic preference for truth-telling, though—I couldn’t give you a lot of examples where everyone was better off when I gave a polite evasion than if I’d just told a white lie instead.
‘It’s like, if you’re going to stab me in the back, is it better if it’s with a white knife?’
It’s not like that at all! ‘Deceive’ isn’t a dirty word—i.e. it doesn’t automatically mean something that is bad to do. ‘Stabbing in the back’, on the other hand, seems to. ‘He kindly deceived me’ may sound odd, but not at all self-contradictory like ‘He kindly stabbed me in the back’ (metaphorical meaning intended, of course). It seems perfectly reasonable to me to think that deception is sometimes a very decent, kind, considerate practice to engage in. The idea that it’s automatically bad seems childish to me.
It’s automatically hazardous to give someone a false map of the world. If you do it knowingly you have the responsibility to make sure no harm comes of it. Even if you take that responsibility seriously, and are competent to do so, taking it secretly without consent is an ethical problem.
My take on this:
Few people take that responsibility seriously or are competent to do so, or are even aware that it exists.
Most of the time people’s intuitions about minor well-intended deceptions are sufficient to avoid trouble.
If you call someone a liar, that has a strong negative connotation and social implications for good reason. We didn’t evolve the capacity for deception primarily to hold surprise birthday parties for each other.
There are no dirty words, but there are inaccurate ones. Use with care.