i think there probably is a genuine norm for truth-telling in some contexts, and we punish people who don’t tell the truth, but not in others.
so we throw someone in jail for perjury but we don’t punish someone for lying about liking the dinner they were just served.
there’s a value in deception and a value in truth, i suppose, and for our benefit, it makes sense to use both at times, i suspect.
knowing when lying and truth-telling are valuable does seem to require some commitment to looking into what is the truth of a matter.
i’m inclined to replace self-deception with a lethargy to investigate some possible leads to the truth with great energy, presumably because such behavior was self-protective and rewarded by evolutionary processes.
my feeling about a sort of absolute commitment to expressing the truth is that the instinct to be a truth-teller despite social costs does have some value—‘this guy tells the truth even when it hurts him. we want the unvarnished truth, we go to him. we should make sure he sticks around to cut through the nonsense.’
there’s a danger in everyone being that way in a interdependent group though, it seems to me, because when you’re at war with another group, you don’t want everyone expressing the battle plans to the enemy, or being unable to deceive and reap its strategic benefits.
interesting post eliezer!
i think there probably is a genuine norm for truth-telling in some contexts, and we punish people who don’t tell the truth, but not in others.
so we throw someone in jail for perjury but we don’t punish someone for lying about liking the dinner they were just served.
there’s a value in deception and a value in truth, i suppose, and for our benefit, it makes sense to use both at times, i suspect.
knowing when lying and truth-telling are valuable does seem to require some commitment to looking into what is the truth of a matter.
i’m inclined to replace self-deception with a lethargy to investigate some possible leads to the truth with great energy, presumably because such behavior was self-protective and rewarded by evolutionary processes.
my feeling about a sort of absolute commitment to expressing the truth is that the instinct to be a truth-teller despite social costs does have some value—‘this guy tells the truth even when it hurts him. we want the unvarnished truth, we go to him. we should make sure he sticks around to cut through the nonsense.’
there’s a danger in everyone being that way in a interdependent group though, it seems to me, because when you’re at war with another group, you don’t want everyone expressing the battle plans to the enemy, or being unable to deceive and reap its strategic benefits.