Ask HN: Everybody lies. How do you deal with it though?

Personally I don't think a "more efficient use of time" is more important to me than how I feel in my day to day life. It's better to be late to work than to miss a once in a life time conversation with a stranger as I pass an interesting scene on the way to work.

To be fully truthful, I've found it helpful to consider myself capable of fault and not fully informed to make absolute assertions, but rather I opt for statements of confidence with narrowed scope. Therefore, there is no truth or lie but only your perception, which is limited. (flashback to Stats 101, confidence intervals)

It also depends on the kind of person you are. I think the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the less likely you are to be affected by the judgements of others. If I ask a good friend something, I don't want them to lie, even if I don't like the answer. Extending this, I will do for them what I expect in return.

I know this all sounds very vague and kind of like baloney, but I've met a person who has always been a straight shooter with me, and I've since tried to emulate it. The above is what I've learnt from him.

"I love your new haircut!" is a very different lie from "I used to be pen pals with Barack Obama".

Telling a creepy stranger at a bar "I have a boyfriend" is a different sort of lie than saying the same thing to your friend who lives across the country.

And "I've got food poisoning" is a very different "I can't come into work today" excuse/lie than "my grandmother just died".

In each of these juxtapositions, people will judge you less harshly (and you should probably judge yourself less harshly) for the former lie than the latter.

The difference basically boils down to the fact that it's normal, it's not especially harmful, and to a degree it's expected that people sometimes tell transient untruths to grease the wheels of social interaction or get out of an uncomfortable situation.

What's not OK or accepted is to tell lies that misrepresent yourself, your history, or your life situation to someone with whom you have an ongoing personal or professional relationship.

If you're telling the former type of lies, I suggest you find a way to live with the fact that you and everyone else tell them and probably always will.

If you're telling the latter type, you may want to engage in some self-examination as to why. It's the sort of choice that can get you into major difficulties, and it's the sort of problem you can even get professional help for.

The question is really what magnitude of lying are you talking about?

The way I think about it is something like this: what ethical obligation do you have to be truthful? I usually assume that the obligation is to be truthful, but recognize there are some scenarios where the situation or other person's request of information from you is unethical, and so in those situation I feel under no obligation to reciprocate.

My in-laws, for example, routinely inquire about my spouse and me in ways that are inappropriate and cross boundaries. To me, we should not be in the position of having to refuse to give that information; I have tried, but they ignore that, and escalate things. So now I lie, and feel no guilt because to me they violated basic social contract to begin with.

That's an extreme example, but I think it extends to other more mild situations as well. I think there's some situations where the likely consequence of telling the truth or refusing to give that information is unfair or unreasonable, so I see lying as ethical.

I guess I see the assumption that you should always tell the truth as being based on an assumption, in turn, that the elicitation of information itself is being done in good faith. I don't see that assumption as necessarily true.

Some cultures have a greater degree of bluntness. This society makes great use of lies to smooth over social transactions and it's something that can seem alien depending on where you came from. Social lies and soft lies can be difficult to work with early on in life because lies will make you question your assessment of reality and the severity of situations that could affect you adversely. The fact that everyone peddles the same sorts of lies in this culture doesn't make things any easier.

In this society, I think the correct approach is to trust the judgment nature put in you instinctively to sort out the truth from fiction. Moreover, if lies are a sort of social currency, then there's no reason you can't be a fiction monger yourself -- especially if you think the consequences of such lies will be a wash in the grand scheme of things. (In particular, you have to balance soft lies with your sense of what you consider ethical behavior.) In particular, I think you have to be more selective about who you actually owe the truth to rather than commit to framing yourself as a liar.

As you lie it'll only beget more lying. E.g. Pretending to be friends with someone which will only get you more pretend friends and so forth.

What exactly is the end goal of lying? Financial gain? Prestige? Power?

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Anyway, it's pretty easy to tell when someone lies consistently. When you do so the honest people will begin to limit interactions with the liar. And so your interactions will be consist of a higher and higher percentage of liars. Eventually you'll have to lie to keep up with the other liars. It's almost like the "keeping up with the joneses" effect, but with lying.

I've found that most vices are committed in pursuit of others. Identifying those and eliminating all of them (not necessarily entirely, but together) is the solution, if you that's what you want.

Question is right, I did not understand other commenters saying that it started with a false premise. People lie, people cheat, people kill and they corrupt. That is why we have police, that is why we have prisons, etc.

My personal solution is to interact with as less people as I can in my daily life. I have friends which I know and chose to be my friends; other than that, although I know not everyone is a bad person; I choose to interact as minimum as possible.

The first job I ever had I watched my boss take credit for things I designed several times while I was standing right there listening to them.

At first I was stunned, then I got pissed, then I realized they were just insecure and selfish but I still couldn't recover any respect for them and that lesson stuck with me. I didn't want anyone to think of me the way I thought of them.

There have been a few times when I was sure someone was telling me a lie and I was wrong, so I try not to jump to the conclusion that someone is lying even when what they're telling me sounds a bit far fetched, but I reserve the right to not take it for the truth. There have been times I'm really glad I did that.

As to telling a lie to get out of an uncomfortable situation I can't really think of many times I've done that. I just don't find telling a lie to be easier because I don't want to worry about that coming back to bite me in the ass and that worry is the minimum wage we must pay for a lie.

There are times I know lying could be convenient and potentially beneficial. For example, I quit school in the 10th grade and that doesn't look good on a résumé. But I've learned not to worry about that because the truth is if the person or company doing the hiring cannot see past that one bit than the odds are I probably won't want to work with them.

And if I lied and they hired me and then found out I lied I must expect they should fire me. How could everything else I've told them not be suspect? That would really suck if I found I loved working with them.

No, when you think it through and consider the cost vs benefits it's far easier to not lie and there is no necessity at all to lie and in the end growing old with a clean conscious is what becomes the most valuable think you can possess.

So, I disagree. Not everybody lies.

Thats a terrible habit to have developed. The old idea ideas of honor, of character, of moral strength, of reputation grew because they were based in innate principals of human trust. We live now in a transient place where people switch groups at the drop of the hat so some people think these ideas no longer apply. These people are wrong and the old ideas will be back with a vengeance. Be someone you would want to do business with. Have as a friend, as a lover. Otherwise you are in for a long, lonely and difficult road moving from place to place as you burn one set of people after another. Because cultures that lie as a habit ultimately can't out-compete those where honer is an important attribute. Don't be very clever. Just as in code, it catches up with one soon enough and it's just not worth it.

Guess what? I no longer have to care about it because I played it the other way: I don't have to adjust my way of life for you, so only friends that can adjust to your way of life sticks around.