Hacker News Reader

Comment by typhonic | Hacker News Reader

About 30 years ago I was being asked by some guy I barely knew to do something over the weekend. I didn't know how to tell him that I would rather just be at home with my family. Eventually and without thinking it through, I just said "It's my weekend with the kids." He instantly became apologetic and said he understood completely. And I instantly felt like a heel for pretending to be someone I'm not. I had accidentally identified with a group that suffers in a way I did not. It worked, but the experience has stuck with me. I don't like myself when I'm too afraid to be truthful and while I don't think I hurt the other guy, it was a close call. One that I try to avoid.

edit:spelling

View on HN

It’s not your fault that the listener assumed you were divorced; you implied it (accidentally) but did not state it. You were not untruthful-what you said was literally and exactly correct.

The assumptions made by a listener as a result of intentionally limited data are not your responsibility in any way, indeed even if you were able to predict them with any reasonable level of accuracy, which you are not.

I have an essay pending on this exact topic.

Being deceptive might not mean being "untruthful" as you put it, but it's still deception.

> I have an essay pending on this exact topic.

We all look forward to reaching a conclusion you didn't intend us to due to our assumptions.

I already made the conclusion!

You may feel this way, but the society you live in does not.

http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Gricean_maxims

I find it unlikely that you really abide by this stated disregard of implicit assumptions - it would make communication impossible. The amount of information required to convey even basic facts is encyclopedic if you and your conversational partner don’t make use of assumptions about what the other already knows.

And indeed, reasonable people can disagree on the extent of what is safe to assume and what is not, and can discuss the nature of their belief in the reasonability of those various levels of assumption.

It turns out that if you abide by those linked rules, casual friendly discussions (things that are nonessential, for the most part) are pretty much ruled out. I find myself more often communicating with people who I have no explicit business or goal with, in social settings, and abiding by rules for cooperation on a team/task would make me a very boring person to speak to, indeed.

Thinking about fault and responsibility is maybe misleading? If I'm trying to communicate a thing to another person and I fail, I've failed. Totally failed. Whether that bothers me or not depends on the context, sometimes it does. And it seems like at those points just saying "Well I made noises, it's the others persons fault they couldn't understand me, nothing to do with me" is an attitude that isn't going to get me far in life. Basically, if you want to achieve your task of "communicate a thing" you HAVE to think about the listener.

You also have to ignore the listener that don't listen or that don't understand, despite others did or have never put themselves in the condition of needing an explanation.

Basically communication is bidirectional, if the listener don't understand anything, it's probably their fault too.

Understanding is not a right or a gift, it's a process.

You can't force people to understand and no matter how you think about the listener, the listener have to do their part: listen.

> Basically communication is bidirectional, if the listener don't understand anything, it's probably their fault too.

I wouldn't say "probably". It might be. It might be the fault of the speaker. Or maybe both. Basically, my point was that it's not ONLY the listener's fault.

I would say that responsibility for success in communication depends mainly on intentional aspects of the communication and may fall on either speaker or listener (or both).

I.e., both sides have some level of expected interest/gain in successful communication and that makes each of them implicitly responsible (at least to themselves) for their part of gain from communication.

> may fall on either speaker or listener (or both).

I fully agree. :-) My point was it does not fall only on the listener.

This is called a lie by omission.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Types

> Lying by omission includes the failure to correct pre-existing misconceptions.

By this logic, one can lie by remaining entirely silent. I don't buy it.

> One can lie by remaining entirely silent.

Yup. An example would be listening to someone reach the wrong conclusion, and by staying silent and not correcting them, implying that they were correct.

Do you also find trolley problem non-lever-pullers to be murderers?

I'm no longer sure this is a good-faith discussion we're having.

Lie by omission is more problematic concept than explicit lie. IMHO one has almost always moral duty to not explicitly lie, but just rarely duty to not 'lie' by omission, depends mainly on whether the person has duty to communicate that information or whether one actively tries to deceive.

No. "It's my weekend with my kids" is well understood to mean divorce. It was clearly a lie. Good on OP to recognize it.

No, it can imply divorce, but it does not specify; it is ambiguous. You are assigning explicit communication where there is none, objectively.

The listener's assumptions (or lack thereof), which happen after the speaker speaks, cannot retroactively cause the statement to be or not be a lie.

Please provide an example that is not divorce where this phrase applies.

Someone can have kids without marrying the mother? There are also other edge cases, such as adoption, surrogacy, etc.

Good point about not having married the mother. I guess I should have said "custody or visitation rights issues".

However, the original point still applies. He does not suffer from these issues, and directly communicated that he did. That is a lie.

> He does not suffer from these issues, and directly communicated that he did

At no point did he directly communicate anything about custody in his statement.

You are confusing implication with direct statements.

The one in question in this thread is a good example. He spent his weekend with his kids.

Not at all. "It's my weekend with my kids" clearly conveys that he does not get to spend other weekends with his kids.

Objectively, it does not: it implies that, but does not denote it. You are reading your own implicit assumptions about the statement as fact. He simply never said that.

The impetus is not on the listener to "read through" the deception, the impetus is on the speaker to not purposefully deceive.

Whether you deceive by purposefully implying a falsehood or by purposefully denoting a falsehood it is still a lie.

Seriously, how far are you willing to go in your attempts to justify lying? You are basically saying "If I define my lie this way, it isn't a lie"

It's far easier and better for all involved if you simply tell the truth.

At no point in the events described did he do anything other than “simply tell the truth”. The words he quoted himself as saying were factually accurate.

You are basically using lawyer-speak. You can be legally right, while still being morally wrong.

I am speaking in terms of objective truth, which is independent of any nation’s laws or legal system, or subjective morals.

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com