Lying

by Sam Harris

The boundary between lying and deception is often vague.

To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.

People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions—the more consequential the lie.

But it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born.

Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. Knowing that we told the truth in the past leaves us with nothing to keep track of. We can simply be ourselves in every moment.

Ethical transgressions are generally divided into two categories: the bad things we do (acts of commission) and the good things we fail to do (acts of omission).

One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts you at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless.

What does it mean to have integrity? Integrity consists of many things, but it generally requires us to avoid behavior that readily leads to shame or remorse.

Our public discourse appears permanently riven by conspiracy theories.15 Consider the widespread fear of childhood vaccinations.

Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

It seems that there are situations in which one must admit at the outset that one is not in the presence of an ethical intelligence that can be reasoned with.

Lying is not a crime unless it’s part of a fraud.

Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all—and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature. Now, clearly many things may have been adaptive for our ancestors—such as tribal warfare, rape, xenophobia—that we now deem unethical and would never want to defend.

As parents, we must maintain our children’s trust—and it seems to me that the easiest way to lose it is by lying to them. Of course, we should communicate the truth in ways that they can handle—and this often demands that we suppress details that would be confusing or needlessly disturbing.