Despite being mostly unusually honest, my dad used to respond to this with “can’t complain” which meant you knew he was a lying liar. I assure you, he can complain.
What he can’t do, easily, is break social convention or do slightly socially awkward things, even when the costs of not doing so are very high. When I see this pattern of obvious lying (as opposed to saying something content-free when it’s plausible there’s no content to share), I presume that such a person is terrified of being slightly socially awkward.
I don’t see what’s so hard about finding a socially acceptable set of Exact Words that is both true and fails to give evidence for false things given the circumstances.
Not only won’t I lie in response to such questions, my responses contain information. The whole point of this pattern is to break the pattern when called for, exactly as much as is called for.
Despite being mostly unusually honest, my dad used to respond to this with “can’t complain” which meant you knew he was a lying liar. I assure you, he can complain.
What he can’t do, easily, is break social convention or do slightly socially awkward things, even when the costs of not doing so are very high. When I see this pattern of obvious lying (as opposed to saying something content-free when it’s plausible there’s no content to share), I presume that such a person is terrified of being slightly socially awkward.
I don’t see what’s so hard about finding a socially acceptable set of Exact Words that is both true and fails to give evidence for false things given the circumstances.
Not only won’t I lie in response to such questions, my responses contain information. The whole point of this pattern is to break the pattern when called for, exactly as much as is called for.
It sounds like “can’t complain” was, if construed locally rather than globally, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I assure you the prophecy was rarely fulfilled.