Monday, December 1, 2008

Deception, a Few Notes

As I just mentioned on Enigman's blog, it's trivially easy to deceive without lying, especially if you really commit to not lying. (Except, as per usual, in self-defence.)

For personal growth; if you really insist on not lying, your brain eventually learns and adapts. The urge to lie disappears, but is replaced by self-deception; it activates your hypocrisy circuits and simply prevents you from thinking what you actually believe. Hence, I sometimes say some very stupid but very self-serving things.

Deception is wrong because it's hypocritical. Unless you want to be deceived, you cannot morally deceive others. Moreover, since you want your values respected, if they value not being deceived, you cannot deceive them, even if you personally do value being deceived.

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