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Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

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Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#71

Post by whatshisface »

wolfgke wrote: post #55
whatshisface wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first few examples aren't lies, they're just expressions of the undocumented wide definition of "fine," "great," and "wonderful" in natural English language. "Fine" means "not dead or suffering from fatal problems," and "great" and "wonderful" both mean "anything better than average or my expectations." Your last two are closer to lies, though.

Society trains you right from the cradle to become a pathological liar.

Nobody reads the dictionary, they get the definitions of words by copying other people. If a child hears "I'm fine," from someone with a headache, they will say "I'm fine" when they have a headache, truthfully communicating that they feel the same as the last person they heard say "I'm fine."

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#72

Post by archi42 »

tdons wrote: post #6

I've made a conscious effort to stop lying after reading https://samharris.org/books/lying/ Can recommend, it feels great.

Seems like an interesting read, and I thought about getting it (though I'm kind of biased since I agree with Harris' premise). But the top review on Amazon mentions that the author simply "dismisses him [Kant] by saying that he [Harris] has no reason to take Kant seriously.", especially after Kant's extensive work on the topic. (And the reviewer mentions that this seems to be common to Harris work).

This is a huge vice in itself. Yes, sometimes arguments are weak, or there is a new idea, or the argument doesn't work anymore because the world changed so much, or whatever - but then just ignoring them feels pretty similar to the occasional white lie, and an entry to "my argument is superior because I gave it".

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#73

Post by qmmmur »

elwell wrote: post #67
qmmmur wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it's not the truth it's a lie.

Communication is about shared meaning. The shared meaning here is truthful; it's not so much about the words themselves. If your hearer grew up being taught to hear "How are you?" as a meaningless introduction, and you really wanted to know how they were, you would probably say "How are you really?". Isn't that redundant? Why not just say "How are you?"? Because you are aiming for shared meaning, not accuracy in abso…

I understand nuance in communication, but its so obviously a lie when a business says they care about you, you are their most priviledged customer etc, etc. They are literally baseless claims that dress up awkward scenarios. They are lies, but people accept them as part of the process.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#74

Post by elwell »

ppg677 wrote: post #31

Obvious to many: After working for 13+ years at wildly successful silicon valley companies and seeing who climbs the latter, it is those who are good at lying. There is a spectrum ranging from blatant lying to manipulative, selective withholding of information.

"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit his very self?" - Jesus of Nazareth

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#78

Post by quercusa »

exhilaration wrote: post #2

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

When raising our kids, we always made the punishment for lying about 'X' far worse than that for doing 'X'. The son was so incompetent at lying that he quickly figured out he was better of telling the truth right away. The daughter had to test things before she came around to that realization.

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#79

Post by whatshisface »

wittyreference wrote: post #38
exhilaration wrote: post #2

Dear parents: never let your kids lie, at any age. It might be cute when they're 3 or 4 or 5, but if you don't gently tell them that "we don't tell lies, we always tell the truth" it will become a habit they will carry into adulthood.

Uhm... good? A basic facility with lying is a fundamental social skill. Unless you intend for your children to be socially awkward / socially ineffective, lying is necessary. The point, much like physical strength or any other sort of double-edged human ability, is to plug it into their broader moral framework, to guide when and for what purposes and to what degree.

>lying is necessary.

I hear this a lot but do you have any examples?

Re: Pathological Lying: Theoretical and Empirical Support for a Diagnostic Entity

#80

Post by phaedrus »

exhilaration wrote: post #46
ashtonkem wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is actually a pretty well known psychological milestone, since deception requires that you hold two concepts in your head at once. Trying to stop that completely is a fool’s errand. Do you have any evidence to back up the assertion that lying too much at 4/5 is how one becomes a pathological liar?

Just reports from other parents who regret not stopping it early on. Their children would make fantastic stories about who was to blame for their mistakes, the parents would laugh and let it go, but the behavior didn't stop and only got worse. I kept that in mind when my kids reached those ages and did the same.

That might not be lying per se but rather an inability to take responsibility. I have two nephews-in-law, there's a dynamic there that sometimes happens between brothers where the younger feels it's unfair if he doesn't get to do / be allowed all the same things as his older brother, but he isn't mature enough, inserts himself anyway, and gets mad and acts out when it doesn't go well for him. The older brother, unable to get the younger to just chill, settles instead for goading the younger one until he melts down.

Anyway there've been instances where after losing at football or Minecraft or whatever, the younger nephew has launched on a long monologue to us about how the contest was unfair, that really he should have won, that actually if you look at it a certain way he did win, yes he won and his older brother lost and... on to increasingly fantastic made up story about what happened.

It's not so much lying as a "revisionist history" with a magical realism element. It's almost like... grit gone wrong. I.e. grit would be, "I failed once but I won't accept failure permanently and next time I'll try a new tack" versus this is, "I can't accept failure therefore I must justify and explain why I actually was perfect."

I find this behavioral tendency worrying.

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