Lies, truth, and radical honesty are all that get in the way in understanding what is going on here.
You are communicating with someone, several of the many constantly changing layers (in addition to status signaling, empathy broadcasting, and performatives) of this communication are the transfer of information from you to that someone. The effectiveness of the communication of this information and its accuracy when received is something we can talk about fairly easily in terms of both instrumental (effectiveness) and epistemic (accurate) rationality.
To classify that communication as a lie or as truth or as honest (from your own perspective) involves unpacking social signals, conscious and unconscious intent, and is entirely irrelevant to any rational goal.
Considering that our societies place value on the signals shown by these terms, it may matter how our signals are received. This is an instrumental rationality question about increasing the likelihood of being seen as honest or as telling a lie.
It is essential not to confuse these two very different things. One of the first clues is to realize that when we talk about truth in rationality we mean something closely related to accuracy, but in communication it may be the same word, but it means something entirely different. This means that we should ban ourselves from using the word until we are quite sure we know what we mean by it.
Lies, truth, and radical honesty are all that get in the way in understanding what is going on here.
You are communicating with someone, several of the many constantly changing layers (in addition to status signaling, empathy broadcasting, and performatives) of this communication are the transfer of information from you to that someone. The effectiveness of the communication of this information and its accuracy when received is something we can talk about fairly easily in terms of both instrumental (effectiveness) and epistemic (accurate) rationality.
To classify that communication as a lie or as truth or as honest (from your own perspective) involves unpacking social signals, conscious and unconscious intent, and is entirely irrelevant to any rational goal.
Considering that our societies place value on the signals shown by these terms, it may matter how our signals are received. This is an instrumental rationality question about increasing the likelihood of being seen as honest or as telling a lie.
It is essential not to confuse these two very different things. One of the first clues is to realize that when we talk about truth in rationality we mean something closely related to accuracy, but in communication it may be the same word, but it means something entirely different. This means that we should ban ourselves from using the word until we are quite sure we know what we mean by it.