Yeah, I remember reading this possibly even earlier than that -- I am in the same position (sort of) so obviously it resonated with me. I can't understand why people would lie on their resume; but then again, I usually don't understand lying at all.
You cannot live without lying. We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotional (to varying degrees, ofc) - we, as humans, are simply incapable of comunicating the "truth", at least beyond very formal systems.
The only thing for us to decide is how much to lie on any given topic. Or what story to tell - it's really the same thing worded differently.
We do not value the truth. We value narrative, stories. Don't do yourself a disservice and don't make your story sound pathetic and uninteresting for the sake of the "truth".
In my country not too long ago there was a public debate about some very famous journalist (after his death) who used to (as his biographer insisted) put factually incorrect sentences and paragraphs in his reportages. He lied! There is evidence of this, and much of it. But there's a catch here: fragments of his works were lies, yet read as a whole they conveyed the truth in a stunning, poetic way which many hoped to copy but failed. The debate I mentioned was something along the lines: do those lies invalidate the truth he told? I'm very, very strongly convinced that that's not the case. Through his lies he almost touched the truth.
I'm talking about Ryszard Kapuścinski biography, if anyone is interested, BTW.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say, "Lying is good." but I also wouldn't go so far as to say "Always tell the truth." simply because it is not possible. It is literally impossible to tell people the 100% truth about your life, for the simple reason that all telling is choosing information to tell, which always omits something.
You MUST omit something, because otherwise you'd be telling your unabridged autobiography to every single person who asked you a question about anything. Obviously everything short of that is an information choice.
I think it's worth aiming at truth and not invention, but I think it's also wise to think about what information is going to be effective when sharing.
Sam Harris wrote an interesting essay [1] putting the case for the opposite position - that you should just never, ever lie. I don't necessarily agree with him, but its an interesting and thought-provoking read. Its about $3 for the PDF or kindle ebook.
I know it's controversial - the debate I mentioned in my edit was really heated in my country :)
To clarify: I don't think that lying for the sake of lying is any good, of course. It's just that we are incapable of not lying, so we can as well do it well and to achieve something good :)
> It's just that we are incapable of not lying ...
You seem to be removing our ability to choose from the equation. Clearly, perceived short-term self-interest has its lure, but please don't frame this as if we must lie, or that the ends justify the means.
Not at all, we can choose! It's just that we choose between different lies, that's all.
I think we use different definitions of a 'lie'. I call everything that is not a truth, that is it's not 100% factually correct and 100% complete, a 'lie'. Are you confident that - outside of very narrow formalisms - you can describe anything 100% accurately? I'm quite sure it's just impossible.
EDIT: it seems I can't reply to jd and davidhollander just yet; I'll do it later, when I get home. I just wanted to say that I upvoted you guys, because your criticism of my posts is very good :)
You recognize that the accuracy of a statement is a scalar, and that every statement is part truth and part lie (but often not in equal proportion). So then why obfuscate language by using the same word for a statement that's 95% true and 5% lie as for a statement that's 5% true and 95% lie?
You could do the same for morality. Nearly all actions have good as well as bad consequences and nearly all actions have benefits and downsides. You could then decide that every action must be called evil, because the downside of the action is nonzero. You'd also have to defend that position by stating that "Doing evil is good" (for otherwise we'd be paralyzed by inaction). Another person might bend language in the exact opposite way and call nearly every action good. Those people probably would use opposite language to describe the exact same ideas. How convenient!
You started the previous post with "Lying is good.". We, of course, have no reason to assume you have a private definition of lying that classifies statements we would consider true (or half-truth at most) a lie. Okay, now we know.
But hold on a second! If nearly every statement is a lie, then therefore we should interpret your statement "Lying is good." as "It's okay to speak if you're not 100% certain you're 100% factually correct". Which makes absolutely no sense as a reply to somebody who says "I don't understand lying", because that person clearly uses a more regular definition of lying. Something like "stating falsehood with intent to deceive". We know this, because if the other person also believed that nearly every statement is a lie then, of course lying makes sense (for otherwise we would not be able to speak at all except in mathematics).
> We, of course, have no reason to assume you have a private definition of lying that classifies statements we would consider true (or half-truth at most) a lie.
I am aware that it's my personal definition, but I thought I gave it right away:
> We all lie, everytime we open our mouths to say something. Whatever we say it's always biased, subjective, emotional (to varying degrees, ofc)
Sorry if that was not clear. Also, I think I have to admit the obvious: "Lying is good" was of course meant to be something akin to "linkbait", something which can kickstart discussion. Which it did, so I'm happy it worked.
(Before proceeding, please note that English is not my first language! It's hard to discuss these concepts even in my native language.)
Your "morality example" is almost exactly what I wrote a couple years ago in some essay :) But it's not really the same argument, the problem is that the "good" and the "bad" are indeed fuzzy, they mix, they're on the continuum, it makes perfect sense to say that something was more than 50% good and therefore it was good overall. This is not the case when talking about truth. If a sentence is half-and-then-some true and half untrue (@davidhollander, I'll try to avoid the term 'lie' outside of it's original meaning:)) we cannot say that the sentence as a whole is true. It is not 100% untrue, but it cannot be said to be the truth just because of that. At least I think so, am I wrong on this?
If I'm right, then "telling the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth" is impossible, which some of the commenters seem to agree with. And this is where it gets interesting, because I want to tell the truth! Or at least I'd like to transfer the truth I think I know to someone else's head, which is even more of an impossibility. I have basically two choices here: either struggle to maximize the amount of true (like in 100% true) statements in what I say, but this a) still won't make what I'm saying the truth, b) could be counterproductive, because while struggling to tell the truth I'll fail to actually communicate.
The second option I see is to lie. Given some knowledge about a person I'm trying to communicate with and some imagination I can craft a lie, that will communicate the truth I know to this person to the greater extent, than the previous option would. Moreover, I think that both options are really similar, in that they are not truth anyway and there is the same intent behind them.
So, when I say "lying is good" I mean that often a lie, deliberate untruth, comes closer to the truth than something you struggle to make as true as you can.
And this is a response I wanted to give to the person who "doesn't understand lying". In the face of inability to express truth directly lying can be the most effective way of communicating as much truth as possible.
I hope that this time I expressed myself clearly, at least as much as possible :)
> I call everything that is not a truth, that is it's not 100% factually correct and 100% complete, a 'lie'. Are you confident that - outside of very narrow formalisms - you can describe anything 100% accurately?
This is an unworkable definition.
A lie is defined as a 'deliberate untruth', not an 'incidental untruth'. To tell an untruth deliberately requires the preexistence of knowledge of what is true.
If someone knows nothing, they are incapable of telling a lie.
You're right and I apologize, I was sloppy in wording and left much of my usual argument out. Please read my response to jd if you're interested in clarification.
Well then I redefine the truth to be anything that is not 100% false, therefore I can always tell the truth even when I am lying according to 99.9% of the population.
I think "100% factually correct" is reasonable, but "100% complete" is not. Is "2 + 2 = 4" a lie, because it does not also mention (for example) that 2 + 3 = 5?
My point was that you can't, even in mathematics; for example. the (ludicrously simple) mathematical statement "2 + 2 = 4" is, in some sense, incomplete, because it does not also state all the other true facts about addition (let alone other true facts such as, say, the current temperature). I think of Douglas Adams's description of the problem with someone who took utterly literally the injunction to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" (and so was still going at it, years later).
My wife works for a recruitment agency and lying in the resume (especially about work experience) happens sometimes. Why people do it? Because if you are not an expert on anything and want to break into sales or lower management, for example, your CV might compete with another 100-150 CV's. So you need to have some good-looking work experience in there, otherwise you are not considered for interview.
But it usually doesn't work, since she gives the interviewee very specific questions about his work experience, so the laying is quickly discovered.
