On lying

Double standards, virtue stack ranking, lying to children

One thing that always takes me by surprise is the transparency and some times pride with which people admit to lying: I always considered lying to be shameful, and while I know most people lie quite often, I still haven’t internalised that it’s something people openly discuss doing.

What’s funny though is that the same people who have no compunction about lying are affronted if they’re being lied to. Look at Musk: he has no qualms bending the truth, often just for lols:

But this does not stop him from using claims of dishonesty as a cudgel to beat down legacy media: they are liars and slanderers and report fake news to further their agendas.

Having double-standards is not unique or special; when I mentioned the contradiction in people’s attitudes towards lying (‘it’s fine to lie when it’s expedient’ / ‘lying to me is wrong’) my wife said it’s the same as when people complain that others cut in front of them in traffic, even though they themselves do it.

But lying feels different, because unlike other, more nuanced concepts like justice and fairness, honesty is an absolute principle: someone has either lied or they have not, and whether or not they have is not a function of the specific situation. Whether lying is justified or not is a different question, and I’ll return to it in a moment; but the point is that if you claim honesty is a virtue in itself, and dishonesty is a vice, then it’s strange to happily lie yourself, but beat down others when they do it. In contrast, other double-standards can be rationalised away: I’m justified in cutting in front of other drivers, because I drive faster and better and if I go in front of them, I’m easing traffic; if they cut in front of me, I’ll just be stuck behind them. Cutting traffic isn’t inherently wrong, it’s only wrong when bad drivers do it. More generally, fairness can only really be judged on a case by case basis: what’s fair in one scenario is unfair in another (for example, it’s fair to ask my older and stronger son to do more chores than his little sister; it’d be unfair to do the same if they were the same age (of course, your sense of justice might be that there should be an equal allocation of responsibilities regardless of ability — which is fine, but that also requires you to net justice on a case by case basis to determine levels of ability and difficulty of task)). And so, it’s easy to twist a situation so that fairness happens to coincide with your interests (which is why I always say you should be particularly introspective when your interests and your alleged principles of justice happen to align).

But again, honesty is not like that. Musk isn’t saying ‘the NYT lies, and they lie in support of a bad cause, and that’s what makes them bad’; he doesn’t argue that it’d be fine if they lied in pursuit of nobler means. His argument is that lying is bad in itself. And so it’s bewildering that he’ll openly lie (and at times admit to doing so) when it suits his needs.

I’m only using Musk as a high-profile example of a behaviour I’ve noticed in everyday situations. Many people I know have admitted to lying to recruiters when asked their current salaries; but presumably, they’d be extremely upset if prospective employers lied to them in return (imagine if a recruiter approaches you promising a £200k salary, but after you go 6 rounds of interviews, you’re offered £100k; or if your manager dangled a promotion which is never given). Or, many parents often lie about the age of their children to secure cheaper tickets, but they will also complain when airlines use deceptive pricing (adding taxes and tons of extra fees at checkout, for instance). I think the attitude to lying is the purest form of double-standards in the world.

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As I mentioned above, you could argue that lying isn’t inherently bad, and can be justified as a means to an end. So, what ends rank above honesty as a good in itself?

I think that honesty with one’s self is the highest virtue, because without it it is impossible to hold any principles. If you are not honest with yourself, you cannot judge whether your actions are motivated by justice or self-interest.

Beyond that, there are clearly cases where lying is justified: I think everyone would agree that you should lie to save a life. To put it in more general terms, you could argue that pursuing one’s sense of justice is more important than honesty. However, I believe that one cannot pursue justice by lying consistently: lying is ultimately corrosive to any justice system. In any society of more than a handful of people, disagreements on fairness are bound to arise, and if everyone in that society accepts that it’s OK to lie to pursue their own ideals, this will result in low trust, corruption, and chaos. So, with the exception of truly gross injustices (murderous or blatantly corrupt regimes, for instance), even the pursuit of justice does not justify dishonesty. If you think it’s OK to lie because you’re operating in an unfair system, and lying is a way to correct injustices (which is how you might rationalise exaggerating your salary when negotiating with a new prospective employer), you should also accept that others will do the same; and you should have a hard think about whether that is a good thing.

(People often seem to think it’s fine to do bad things until they attain power, the idea being that they’ll then switch to being good and benevolent for the benefit of all. For instance, no-one likes politics, yet a lot of people have told me ‘play the game until you’re the decision maker, then run things they way you think is best’. But if you reach the top by playing politics, you can’t then flip a switch to reinstate honesty and transparency. First, your embrace of politics will have changed you; you won’t find it easy having hard conversations just because you have more power. Second, in playing politics for so long, you’ll have reinforced a political culture that you won’t be able to reverse.)

What about lying to be kind? Again, I think the bar for this needs to be really high. Many people say white lies are fine because they make people feel better, but the reality is that we don’t tell white lies out of genuine kindness, but out of fear of a difficult conversation. If I ask someone to review this blog post and they tell me ‘it’s great!’ when they don’t really believe it, they’re not doing me a favour; they are not doing it for my benefit; they are not helping me improve. They just want to avoid the awkwardness of disappointing me. Their alleged kindness is motivated by selfishness.

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The most disappointing thing is when parents lie to their children, or instruct their children to lie, for extremely petty reasons. Here is a list of actual lies I’ve seen parents tell:

• ‘The park/fair/store is closed’ when it’s not, to stop their kids from asking to go

• ‘The iPad is broken’ to stop them asking to watch stuff

• ‘It’s been 10 minutes’ when it’s only been five to get them to go

• ‘Say you’re under four years old’ to get free admission

• ‘Say you’ve been ill’ to go away for a long weekend without school complaining that the child missed class.

This is incredibly harmful, more so than it seems at first glance (even though it sounds awful from the get-go when you articulate it fully). Despite everything I’ve written so far, despite the fact people lie habitually and openly, honesty is very much still praised as a virtue. So what message are you giving a child when you show them that it’s fine to practice vice when it suits you? You are not just teaching them that it’s ok to tell (what you may think are) minor and inconsequential lies, but that grown up morality in general is a facade, something to which we pay lip service, but which we drop at the first inconvenience. What you are doing is killing their belief in virtue altogether.

And for what? To avoid a tough discussion or a tantrum when they ask to watch Paw Patrol? Is that really worth your child’s morality? And beyond grand concepts of virtue and vice, how will you explain to them that lying to you is wrong, when it suits them? On what high ground will you stand when they lie to you about having brushed their teeth or done their homework?

Ultimately, as my wife puts it, lying to someone is (beyond being inherently wrong) a sign of disrespect. It’s the same as being late: the underlying belief is that your convenience or your purpose is more important than other people’s. I think the cornerstone of good parenting is treating your children with respect. Not as your equals: but as people who deserve to be taken seriously. Don’t lie to them.

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Candour is not the same as honesty. I don’t lie, but I don’t always offer my opinion. Confronting people about their lying is an example of this; perhaps I should: perhaps when I hear parents lying to their children I should ask them how they justify it to themselves, and whether they’ve thought about the consequences down the road. It’s hard asking that question without being sanctimonious (this post is very sanctimonious!). But if you have lied in the past for what’s primarily a selfish reason, I would genuinely like to understand your justification. Am I wrong when I think that honesty is widely considered a virtue? Is that just not true, is it more like etiquette than a case of morality? Is it a case of the ends justifying the means, and if so, have you considered that other people will also apply the same principle?