the truth, white lies, hypocrisy, and feigned sincerity

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I hate liars and I get really angry if I found out that someone had lied to me. However, in SOME situations a white lie is necessary just to spare someone's feelings... but that is just how I feel, in all other respects telling lies is just plain wrong. I am going to ask you something. You had a female friend that is about to go out on a date and anyone can see how excited she is. She puts on a dress that she loves and after she puts it on, in your opinion she looks awful. If she asks you "how do I look?" with a huge grin that anyone can tell that she is extremely happy, how would you respond? Would you bring yourself to tell the white lie and say "well you look good", or would you simply be completely honest and tell her that she looks awful? Or would you just simply say something like "it doesn't matter how I think you look, what matters is, you are happy and go out and enjoy your date".

lulz. Well I know that now....I wonder if people honestly ARE busy when they say that sometimes...

Wow the busy thing surprises me. It does explain how some people react to me though. When I say I'm busy I mean I'm busy, not that I'm not interested. So how do I indicate that I'm truly busy then?

What I often wonder is how people are so sure they know what the truth is to begin with.

I mean yes, some things a person can know reasonably well to be true.

But the human mind is a strange thing. It has biases, and it seems built in such a way that the majority of people are unaware of the biases that pervade our thinking. Even if we make a study of them, we can't ever be certain that we're not accidentally distorting things through the normal processes that thought takes as short-cuts to understanding things. (These are necessary shortcuts but not without disadvantages.)

Autistic people may be, as a whole, less prone to some of these, but that's a tendency, not an absolute, and even in people who are less prone, it doesn't mean they can't be prone to them at some times more than others. And I've noticed the easiest way to fall into some of these traps, is to deny the possibility that you're capable of falling into them. If you acknowledge them, then you might not be able to catch all of them, but you can at least look out for these problems and be willing to acknowledge an error.

And that's just what's inside a person's head.

Outside the person's head, you get a lot of other things going on.

When the information is from other people, then their own biases and limitations creep subtly in like a long game of Telephone.

When the information is not from other people, the circumstances you've done your learning in (which includes the effects of many, many other people) color which parts you notice more readily, this also being usually something people are unaware of doing.

And of course you're a finite being in a finite situation and can't take in all information about everything.

This doesn't mean there is no truth. There has to be a truth. But even our best perceptions of the world don't come close to a full understanding of it. We may be only a little wrong -- so little as for the difference between what we say and the truth to be a nitpicky little thing -- and we may be a lot wrong. And being a little wrong and a lot wrong can feel exactly the same, which makes it hard to discern which is which sometimes.

Not that I'm saying people shouldn't say what they believe to be true. If a person followed that to its logical conclusion, then nobody would say anything, and that would be a problem.

What I am saying is more like... the longer I've thought about something, the more complicated it gets, and the more I'm aware of the limitations of having a single human brain in a very complex world. Thinking I know the truth about something is a surefire way not to be open to new information. At the same time, there's such a thing as being too uncertain.

And when it comes to telling the truth, I know that I do my best with what I've got, and that I very rarely lie (tried it, it didn't work out for me, at all -- too much work, too much harm done). There are places for lying, though, like the classic one where someone wants to kill someone, and wants to know where that person is, it's good to pretend not to know if you're capable of it, so that the person neither turns on you nor finds the other person. To save someone's life it's generally worth it, there are priorities in the world.

But I've run into a lot of people who think that telling the truth is the same thing as stating every opinion that crosses their mind. Even if the opinion is just any little random opinion. And opinions aren't the same thing as facts, no matter how strongly held they are. (But the strongly-held bit can masquerade as "feeling like the truth", I'm very familiar with that one from experience. ) (That becomes especially apparent to me, in other people, when they say that they're just telling the truth, when they're actually claiming to know, in detail, what's inside my mind. I can be almost completely sure that the stuff they are talking about never crossed my mind until they said it, and I can tell the truth about what I'm thinking (which is the sort of thing that's easier to know the truth about than some external phenomenon), but it still doesn't matter, to them I'm thinking whatever they've already decided "the truth" is.)

As for hypocrisy, I guess in some manner someone could call most people hypocrites, because people in general fall short of our own ethical preferences. I've so far never met anyone who truly lived up to their own ethics, although I have met people who have come close, and I have also met people (usually a totally separate group, interestingly enough) who sincerely believe that they fully and totally live up to their own ethics (but who actually fall short in areas they are not even aware of). Being imperfect is part of the human condition -- this doesn't excuse doing something wrong, but it explains why even people who really try hard are always missing in one way or another. It's still worth the struggle of trying, though.

And as far as truth goes, sometimes it's easy to know what's basically the truth about something, but so often it's either a subjective judgment (as in, "does this dress look good on me?"), or else a situation where you're running into the fact that any one person's knowledge only goes so far, and where even when it feels like you know the truth, you quite often don't.

So I always wonder how people are so sure of themselves that they know the truth about so many things. Not that I've never been in that position myself, but even if I don't show it all the time, I'm often extremely aware of fact that there's a lot more stuff that I don't know, than there is stuff that I do.

(And now this long ramble has to end. I hope, somewhere in there, the connections between things I said made sense, because I can't read well enough to tell right now.)

Actually, Anbuend, I'm skeptic towards a whole lot of things, including truth (in general, as well as my own truth). But truth is another matter entirely, and probably an enormously more complex one; for the sake of this discussion, I was willing to consider truth a “fixed”, non-arguable thing.

But yes, apart from conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious truthfulness, there's the little, naggin' thing of what really is “the truth”.

you can try to phrase it differently; e.g. "I'm doing something else" or "Sorry, I'm overwhelmed" or something similar. I think that euphemism/meaning only applies if you say "I'm busy". It might also apply to other stuff...ehh

She's asking for it, give it to her. Don't be a dick about it and try to phrase it nicely but hey she asked for it..



Screw that, I'd say 'yes'...I remember examples of people asking me questions and complaining about the answers..your fault you asked if I'd do xyz and then b***h about me answering




lulz.......so true in that regard




Say it tastes weird then and you should say have someone else try it or eat some of it, because it tastes weird..



well yes, the police and the like..



Nah.....80% tops



lol so true...also don't forget their intentional sarcasm by turning their voices in a certain way, etc.



she needs to do x,y,z to improve herself as she looks weird. and the part of the quote i bolded

I would consider whether my dislike of her dress is a matter of my own taste, or something that would be true of almost anyone--particularly her date. If it's only my opinion I stay silent, if anyone with eyes would dislike it I'd try to point that out gently.

When and how to tell the unvarnished truth is a hard thing to learn. I don't mind little white lies so much as martyrdom. If I ask someone to do something for me I expect them to tell the truth, not say yes when they really don't want to. It always bites me in the end. Martyrs deserve whatever they get.

I am truthful most of the time. I don't particularly care what incidental strangers think, but any one who is close to me needs to know that if they don't want the truth they shouldn't ask.

Everyone defends and supports the importance of so-called white lies - until they find out someone has white-lied to them. Then they don't see white lies as such a wonderful thing. Try telling someone that you lied to them to spare them bad feelings - even if it's years after the event, they won't be pleased, to say the least.

Everyone defends and supports the importance of so-called white lies - until they find out someone has white-lied to them. Then they don't see white lies as such a wonderful thing. Try telling someone that you lied to them to spare them bad feelings - even if it's years after the event, they won't be pleased, to say the least.

That Aint no freggen joke, and the worst of them is Ex-Partners whom you once felt you can trust.

I hate shopping, always have. But a few times in my life I got roped into tagging along with recreational shoppers. The inevitable question arose of "how does this make me look?". My knee-jerk response would be "why do you friggin' care what I think? YOU have to wear that piece of crap!" But I realized that would be inappropriate. I finally learned to say "well, how does it make you feel?" That would open the door for some long-winded indication of what they thought about it, to which I would reply "there's your answer". Nobody really wants my opinion, I know that, it's all about stroking egos and reassurance. I am soooo happy not to inhabit that world (just visit from time to time)!

Then the best kind of response in a situation like the one I had presented yesterday would be "it doesn't matter how I think you look, what matters is, you are happy and go out and enjoy your date". And as for martyrdom, I feel the same way. If I don't want to do anyone a favor, I will simply tell them "No, I am sorry I cannot". And I expect the same from others.. If I ask someone to do me a favor but they agree to do it and deep down they wish they had said no, I wish they had said how they felt in the first place.

BTW, I didn't really mean all that in an abstract philosophical sense. Just that so often when I hear people say they "always say what's really true," what they really mean is that they say whatever they're thinking, whether it happens to be true or not, they just believe it's true. When quite often it's the product of cognitive biases or limited information. (I say a whole lot of what I think, too, but I'm aware that there's a possibility that I'm mistaken, especially in areas I'm not well-versed in or not in a position to know anything about.) I was half-asleep when I wrote it, though, so maybe that wasn't clear.

Very well said. I know most people really do not want to hear what I honestly have to say. I tend to be rather quiet and answer questions with questions.

p.s. Liars make me want to poke them in the eye.

Just look at everything in the world in terms of "enlightened self-interest"

People will lie if it benefits them, and will also lie if it benefits the other person without harming themselves. A lot of people (aspies included) will often resent having to give specific details.

These are white lies.

I'm busy.
Yes, that article of clothing looks good on you.
No, things aren't really that bad.
So-and-so is a bad person. We are in agreement about this, which strengthens our bond.
I'm having a good day.