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I doubt it’s news to anyone reading here that there are varying levels of socially acceptable lying.

What this doesn’t address and what I think parent comment is about it becoming more socially acceptable, even celebrated by some, to lie at a level that previously would trigger a shaming.

> This is just one example.

Of lying.

We even have a name for that category of lie-- the white lie, or fib-- where the cost of the lie is sufficiently small and self-contained.

Right, but my parent comment said

> My personal moral code is that lying is bad; this is an article of faith for me, a central tenet of my religion

To which I say it's a big simplification. Rules like this have all sorts of exceptions. If you say you never lie, it's highly likely you're lying or just have weak introspective skills.

By the way, I don't say I never lie, just something that I aspire to.

The classic test case is: what if the Nazis are at the door, asking whether you're harboring a Jewish refugee in your attic. I personally would lie in this case, and I believe most Quakers would as well.

A more subtle example: exaggerating the effects of climate change to motivate people to take action, for example claiming that Miami will be underwater in our lifetimes if we don't act. A lot of people I know do fudge the truth in this way, even if it isn't a conscious act of lying. I personally am not in favor, partly as a matter of faith, partly because I don't think it's an effective longer term strategy, but at the same time I think the argument for it is defensible.

BTW, a very good inquiry using that particular example is Dan Ariely's interview on Amanpour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLheBtBpZQw ; this example comes up at about 14:10. I can really recommend watching it, as Ariely is really trying to understand human behavior, not just retconning principles to justify his personal positions.

Your Miami example is a very politically charged statement that the left makes in this country while the right makes an opposite statement that there is no global warming at all.

Both lies are used to gain political power by Politicians.

Both lies cause real harm. Saying the lie about Miami while simultaneously saying you can lie about it due to your faith is as wrong as the right saying there is no chance global warming is real.

Right. It is politically charged, and I also think climate change is an important problem which humanity needs to solve. Competing lies is not a good way to do it, but increasingly it seems like that's how a lot of people are approaching it.

For every example you gave, the parent's dogma is feasible. In fact I'd say it's easier to do and has fewer social downsides than Richard Stallman's refusal to carry around a cell phone. (And he seems to get around without one.)

In fact, I'd say it's instructive to go back through your examples and apply the parent's dogma. For example, if the dogma is heartfelt, then parent is going around signalling this trait to any potential love interest. That narrows the field, but it's narrowing it to those who find that trait desirable.

I'm not endorsing the dogma-- e.g., it filters out those who would find it desirable if only OP could break the ice first. But that's no reason to find it social unfeasible.

What is lying? You are overcomplicating things.

Insinuating that Obama was born in Kenya was a lie. It's nowhere as hard as you are making it out to be.

That a politician can launch a national campaign on such a lie is proof of the disfunction of our system.

Those are the surface level lies. How about the more fundamental narrative lies like the American dream, American exceptionalism. Is it a lie to justify something with a technically true reason but hiding your real motivation?

Yes, the Obama example is a lie. But it doesn't tell us what the moral rule is. What are the white lies that can be allowed to keep society peaceful, to avoid panic or public discontent?

My point is that you are being far too abstract about things.

Everything is complicated if you wax philosophical. That's not useful right now.

The lies being perpetrated today: Hydroxychloroquine, COVID hoax, the election was stolen, Obama is from Kenya.

These are lies. These are not little white lies to make society work. These are blatant shameless power grabs.

These lies are destabilizing our country, and numerous leaders are shameless about it.

Those are the easy targets,its not intellectually interesting to me. It's like when atheists were obsessed with debating creationists online some years ago.

My point was that people don't have a clear view of what lying precisely is when they say they would never lie due to their morals. Your answer was to bring in Trump stuff. I don't care about Trump stuff.

Sure there are overt lies.

My point is everyone lies, but defines socially acceptable lines differently. People who are pathological truth tellers don't get far in life.

> Those are the easy targets

If they were easy targets, then my sister, my mother, my sister's husband, my sister's father in law, my uncles, and well over half my family wouldn't believe in those lies.

Half my coworkers and over half of my family believes in these lies. I'm not interested in the philosophical, because I'm literally living in the pit of lies with no way to convince my family or coworkers that they've been mislead.

I'm having to explain to my own mother, why having 20+ people (including people who were on flights from across the country) over for Thanksgiving is a bad idea. I'm having to explain to my sister why we shouldn't go out and eat at restaurants right now. I'm having to explain to my mom why its important to tell everyone at the Thanksgiving party about a certain partygoer's postive Test Result, and that my mom should help contact trace out of duty to this country alone.

And I'm making the calculus of whether or not to expose myself to my own family, who fails to take precautions in this COVID19 era, because they believe in the misinformation. This is my life, and it has been for months.

And now I learn my Sister is leaning anti-vax in addition to this whole shebang, because she doesn't seem to take the COVID19 threat on her own health seriously.

Maybe your situation is different. Maybe you have time to wax philosophical. But I don't. I'm dealing with the surface level, because that's where the problem is.

Maybe you should let go of the feeling that you are responsible for what these other people believe or chose to do. If you don't want to go to Thanksgiving with 20 people, simply don't go.

If my mother is no longer competent to reason on her own, it is my responsibility as the eldest male in the family to take responsibility. Is it not? This is the job of the middle-age: the turnover point where the children begin to take care of their parents (instead of parents taking care of children). As the elderly lose their mental capacity, it falls upon the shoulders of my generation to take care of them.

> If my mother is no longer competent to reason on her own, it is my responsibility as the eldest male in the family to take responsibility. Is it not?

Believing this particular set of lies is not, however, a reliable market for mental competence. You yourself note how widespread these ideas are among your family, most of whom are presumptively mentally competent adults.

Any chain of reasoning that leads to a conclusion like "half of the country is mentally incompetent" should be suspect.

In a way, this whole situation is where a whole suite of ideas like postmodernism, epistemological/cultural/moral relativism etc., come home to roost. After all, these are just alternative facts, and what we hear from so-called experts is just, like, their opinion, man.

I never claimed that.

What I'm saying is: my mother's wellbeing will soon be my direct responsibility.

Obviously I'd rather have my mom take care of herself... Less work for me. But her ability to handle money has appreciably degenerated, and now this COVID thing is proving to me that she is unable to fully analyze the news on her own.

What I am saying is that since mentally competent adults also believe these lies, you mustn't use that belief as evidence one way or another.

Doing so is basically falling victim to confirmation bias.

I suggest you try to base your decision on other evidence (such as the ability to handle money you mentioned) only.

Your problem here is not "lies" per se. Your problem is that you trust different sources of information from your family (or your coworkers). You believe all four of the claims you listed are lies because you were told it by sources of information you trust. Your family has the opposite belief about COVID because they were told it by sources of information they trust, and the sources they trust are different from the ones you trust. (Note, btw, that I personally agree with your "lie" judgment on only two of the four claims--the COVID claim is one of them, so I evidently have a different set of information sources I trust than either you or your family.)

Your counter argument would probably be that the sources of information you trust are obviously more reliable than the sources of information your family trusts. But my response would be that, if we actually look at track records, no source of information available to any of us is all that trustworthy; all of them will purvey lies and misinformation if it serves their interests. While I suppose one could describe that problem as "lies", it's actually much worse than that simple term suggests: as I have just shown above, not only are we being told lies, but we can't even agree on which things we are being told are lies and which are not, because there are no sources of information that have maintained a good enough track record of trustworthiness to serve as arbiters to such disputes.

I chose specific examples because this is no longer abstract to me.

* Is COVID19 a hoax?

* Is Obama a Muslim from Kenya?

* Will Hydroxychloroquine save you from COVID?

* Are the November 2020 election's results under question?

Quit hiding behind the "unreliable sources" excuse. We have actual issues at play here and ultimately determines the course of my family.

Lets put it this way: do I go to New Years celebration or not with my family? Do I follow them to Disney World next month? How much should I work to convince my family that flying on an airplane is a bad idea? Do I just watch them recklessly endanger their lives to see Mickey Mouse?

What I'm finding is that cutting myself off is counterproductive: they'll continue to perform recklessly and I simply lose my ability to communicate with them. A degree of balance is needed. But the lies perpetrated in the media are not helping me at all.

"Shamelessness as a strategy". The lies perpetrated by those in power have an effect on my family. Politicians are shameless about it: they don't care about the personal effects its having.

> We have actual issues at play here

The only actual issue in play for you personally is COVID, and I've already said I agree with your judgment about the "COVID is a hoax" belief being a lie. My point about "unreliable sources" was not that your particular judgment about COVID was wrong; it was to try to get at the root cause of why your belief is so dramatically different from your family's, and why I think it will be so difficult to get them to change.

However, I am perfectly willing to give specific answers to the specific questions you ask:

> do I go to New Years celebration or not with my family?

Based on what you have described, I wouldn't go if I were in your place. My wife and I have refused to participate in some gatherings with her family for much the same reasons (their belief is not as extreme as "COVID is a hoax", but we are not confident enough in them taking the proper precautions to risk it, particularly as my wife already has some chronic health issues).

> Do I follow them to Disney World next month?

Same answer as above. (Note that in this case, you also have to worry about how reliable other people at Disney World are at taking proper precautions.)

> How much should I work to convince my family that flying on an airplane is a bad idea?

Based on what you've described, unfortunately I think you have very little chance of succeeding between now and next month, so to me it's more a matter of how much risk of permanently alienating your family you are willing to take in an attempt that will almost certainly be futile.

Why do I think you have very little chance of succeeding? Well, that's what my discussion about sources of information was about. You think the problem is to convince your family that "COVID is a hoax" is a lie. But I think your problem is much harder: to convince your family that the sources of information they trust are so unreliable that they should stop trusting them and start trusting the sources of information that you trust instead. Which is going to be a very heavy lift since the sources of information you trust have also told lies.

It's possible that you refusing to go, and explaining why, will move the needle some.

> Do I just watch them recklessly endanger their lives to see Mickey Mouse?

I'm very sorry that you find yourself in such a position, and I'm also very sorry that I don't have any good ideas for how you could stop them between now and next month. Unfortunately, for the reasons I have given above, I don't have any such ideas, other than refusing to go yourself and making sure to explain to them why you are refusing.

> the lies perpetrated in the media are not helping me at all.

I'm responding to this separately because I want to keep this more general point separate from my responses to your more specific questions.

I agree that lies perpetrated in the media are not helping anyone; but my point is that the lies are on all sides--every media source perpetrates lies. To take just the COVID example, even the simple number of how many people have died "of COVID", which is trumpeted in the media all the time, is a lie. The fact is that nobody knows what that number is; it's impossible to find out because the relevant data is not even available for every case. And even if it were, judgment calls would be involved in individual cases as to whether COVID was really the primary cause of death.

One could argue that the number used in the media should be close to the "real" number, because the various errors involved should to some extent offset each other. But nobody makes that argument. The number is simply asserted as fact and no argument is allowed. What's more, if the argument were made, it would be a weak one: once we admit that there are sources of error in the reported "COVID death" number, the best way to allow for them is to estimate excess deaths due to COVID--the deaths that would not have occurred had the person not caught COVID. Nobody has a reliable estimate of that number; the excess death estimates that are available (e.g., the one on the CDC's website [1]) explicitly say that they can't pick out the excess deaths due to COVID from the excess deaths due to other causes, and that they also can't estimate whether some jurisdictions had fewer deaths than expected--which of course would lower the overall excess death count for the country. What information we do have indicates to me that the reported COVID death number for the US, at least, is probably a substantial overestimate. But that's a judgment call about which reasonable people can differ--which in itself is enough to make the media insistence on that number a lie.

Furthermore, even if we have established that some particular death or set of deaths had COVID as a primary cause, that still doesn't tell us why it happened. Did that person not take precautions? Did someone else close to them not take precautions and they didn't allow for that? Was it just bad luck--someone who did take reasonable precautions but got COVID anyway because no precaution is perfect? Or were they, say, in a nursing home which was forced by a state governor to accept COVID infected patients from hospitals even though the nursing home had no way to quarantine those people and keep them separate from the other residents? We have some estimates of how many deaths were due to the latter cause, and they're not small numbers--yet that same state governor got an Emmy award. And for most cases in the US, we don't have that information at all. Which means the overall numbers tell us nothing useful about what to do to prevent further deaths. Certainly lockdowns don't seem to be helping: the areas with the strictest lockdowns also seem to be having the worst spikes in case numbers (although much the same caveats that apply to the death numbers also apply to the case numbers). Yet we are told constantly by the media and public health authorities that lockdowns are necessary.

In short, while it is true that "COVID is a hoax" is a lie, so are many other claims about COVID made by politicians and in the media. And, as you say, the politicians and the media do not care about the impact their lies have on everyone. They only care about the benefit to themselves. Not a good situation.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

And your problem is going in circles and not listening to the person you're replying to. You are guilty of doing the exact same philosophical run-around that he's complaining about.

The fact is, this person is watching his close family commit a slow-motion trainwreck, and he's asking for ways to prevent it or mitigate it. If they do nothing, it's quite likely that his family or friends will suffer serious health consequences. Theoretical exercises about whether COVID this-or-that is really a lie or not, aren't of any help.

Imagine berating a someone who got lost in the woods and has been lost for days and is starving, for not having the right map or not following the trail, or debating the legitimacy of hiking for recreation at all, instead of feeding him or giving him water.

> this person is watching his close family commit a slow-motion trainwreck, and he's asking for ways to prevent it or mitigate it

And my point is that talking about "lies" will not do that. In order to prevent or mitigate the trainwreck, he would have to convince his family to fundamentally change which sources of information they trust. That's a very, very hard thing to do, but telling people that their beliefs are "lies" doesn't help at all; in fact it makes it even harder.

> Imagine berating a someone who got lost in the woods and has been lost for days and is starving, for not having the right map or not following the trail, or debating the legitimacy of hiking for recreation at all, instead of feeding him or giving him water.

False analogy. The person who is lost for days and is starving knows he is starving and needs help; he doesn't have to be convinced to eat. So of course there's no need to change anything fundamental about his beliefs.

The family in question, however, does not know they have a problem. Imagine a person who has been lost for days and is starving, but says they are perfectly fine and refuses to accept food or water, no matter how hard you try, and won't even let you force food or water down their throat but violently attacks you when you try. Now what do you do?

> And my point is that talking about "lies" will not do that. In order to prevent or mitigate the trainwreck, he would have to convince his family to fundamentally change which sources of information they trust. That's a very, very hard thing to do, but telling people that their beliefs are "lies" doesn't help at all; in fact it makes it even harder.

Oh, I'm telling YOU GUYS that these lies are around. Because apparently, unless I bring it up, people forget what's going on in our lives.

I don't talk to my parents through the contexts of lies and misinformation. I'm not that stupid. But when I'm complaining about issues online, I think its more clear if I just point out the lies directly.

> I don't talk to my parents through the contexts of lies and misinformation. I'm not that stupid.

You might not say it directly, but if you're trying to convince them, for example, not to celebrate New Year's or not to go to Disney World, you're going to have to say things that amount to telling them that their beliefs are lies. If they were open to any gentler kind of persuasion, you would already have succeeded in talking them out of it. Even if they don't consciously realize that you're telling them their beliefs are lies, subconsciously they will. At least, that's been my experience in situations of this kind.

I mean, you've taken the analogy to mean something other than what I intended: in my mind, the lost hiker is equivalent to the person asking for help to save his family (i.e. he is starving for methods to convince them/save them). I understand what you mean though (i.e. that the hiker is the delirious family member who doesn't know they are in danger), and that's fine, it's a different and worthy analogy all the same.

But identifying what won't work is only marginally better than doing nothing, because we're still no closer to suggesting what will/might work.

> in my mind, the lost hiker is equivalent to the person asking for help to save his family (i.e. he is starving for methods to convince them/save them)

Ah, I see. Interesting that the same analogy could have two opposite interpretations!

I just wanted to say that regardless of how anyone defines a lie, I personally know what your going through and it really sucks. And for what it’s worth your not alone.

I don't know if this will actually help, but I do think it's important to keep in mind two underlying principles:

- People generally cannot be argued out of positions using facts/logic/science, if they didn't use facts/logic/science to come to that belief in the first place

- As cold/brutal as it may seem, do not set yourself on fire to keep others warm: if the rest of your extended family is beyond saving and won't listen to reason, you must prioritize yourself, your partner, your children, etc.

Now, with that being said, I think it's worth having a final "come to Jesus" type of talk, and adopting a very frank/blunt attitude. I would try something like this: "Mom, I'm not going to argue with you about whether COVID is real or not, how serious the risk is or not. What I want to do, is discuss how to handle your affairs, should you go into the ICU or die. Is your will in order? Which hospital do you want me to take you to (knowing that some are filling/full)? Do you have a burial plot picked out?". Make a last-ditch effort to shock them with the realities of how seriously you are taking things, how matter-of-factly you are preparing to deal with their likely illness or death. Don't make it a political debate, and just tell them, if you do things your way, I want to know how you want me to deal with the aftermath.

It probably won't work, but I would say do your best to make them confront the likely consequences of their choices. And you could also try to show them more articles like these [1], [2], or [3], though I'm sure you've probably already tried.

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/im-doctor-tried-plan-extremely-204117...

[2] https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/31/judging-patients-covid-1...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/how-talk-your-f...

Fortunately, I'm still just a single male. So I only have myself to worry about. Given COVID's characteristics, I obviously don't want to get it... but its more important for my parents to not get it.

The good news is I'm not entirely alone: only about half my family are on that thinking. I can lean with my younger-sister, who is a medical doctor, for the shock-and-awe strategy. She's seen the issues first hand and can describe them in more detail than I ever could.

But these family COVID19 talks are non-trivial to talk about, and require strategy and preparation. Maybe others don't care what happens to their family and just ignore it, but I lack that level of apathy.

A philosophical conversation will accomplish much more in this environment than a listing of political ills.

No, because a philosophical conversation generally doesn't accomplish much.

Especially on HN where its basically a either tedious restating of opinions or a way for the idle to trade barbs instead of do anything.

I want to list the lies you omit, not because of my own partisan position, but because of yours.

Hillary Clinton wasn't sick (in 2016). (Noone wants to enjoy this but it clearly wasn't the truth.)

There's no conflict of interest in Bill getting $75 million/year from speaking engagements, at least some of it from foreigners, while his wife is Secretary of State.[1]

Using a private email server for Secretary of State official business is fine.

Deleting 33,000 emails deemed private only by Clinton's staff, after subpoena, is fine.[2]

James Comey is non-partisan; editing "Grossly negligent" for "Extremely careless." The behavor of FBI agents after the 2016 election results further demonstrates their independence (FBI Agents against Trump SMS messages, "Crossfire Hurricane"?).

Bhengazi was not her responsibility. It was really about a YouTube video and not terrorism.[3]

[1] https://bernardgoldberg.com/bill-clintons-million-dollar-spe... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/t... [3] https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-role-benghazi-know-19...

Look, the 2016 election was a lot of fun from the gallery. Neither Trump nor Clinton is a saint. You've got to get over this partisan view of the world. Neither major party will ever deliver to the people on their top issues: health care (D) and fixing immigration (R). Both will constantly agitate their base with baseless outrage: socialism! (R) and racism! (D). If you're deeply engaged on either side you're stuck.

My mom never believed in those issues. And even if she did, I have severe doubts that those issues would have had an effect on my personal family life.

I've got creationist family members. I've got cousins who believe that washing their hair is unhealthy and have greasy, smelly hair. Vegetarian cousins. Etc. etc. Lots of silly issues I don't agree with but frankly, have no effect on our lives aside from maybe an idle curiosity. So I really don't care that they disagree with me.

This COVID thing, it affects us all.

It's amusing. If one were to actually follow your links and start fact-checking, they would see some pretty obvious factual errors in the sources, or cases where the actual source doesn't support the argument made here.

If your mission was to be a false flag to reinforce the notion that conservatives just lie, lie, lie to support their positions, because they are incapable of supporting them with facts and reason, then: well done sir! Very good job.

In any case, I hope you have a happy new year and stay safe.

>American exceptionalism

People truly believe that though, it's why the coronavirus is particularly bad in the US.

It's possible for both to be true. America can be exceptional and value individualism, and that strength (if one agrees it is a strength, separate discussion...) can be a weakness during COVID. Another country could have a weakness (if one agrees it's a weakness, separate discussion) such as authoritarianism or valuing conformity, which is a strength during COVID.

Isn't that just another point for shameless lying tho? I mean China just pretends it's over and is done with it for example. Other countries did the same and I kinda see the point, while not exactly agreeing with the approach.

The only thing you win with authoritarianism is that you can make the lie true in the public image.

Authoritarianism imho is pretty much always bad. I'm mostly pointing out that IN THEORY :) if a country was authoritarian AND benevolent, then it could be a strength during COVID.

Individualism does not have to be a weakness during a situation like COVID. Refusing to take obvious common sense precautions simply because you don't like the fact that the government is telling you to do it is not individualism, it's stupidity. In fact, individualists would have been taking precautions against COVID well before the government was telling anyone to do it (see further comments below).

Nor is authoritarianism or valuing conformity necessarily a strength during a situation like COVID. South Korea and China both took authoritarian approaches, but they were very different authoritarian approaches with very different human costs. South Korea wasn't welding people inside their homes.

As for valuing conformity, people who valued conformity in the US, for example, were waiting until the government told them to take precautions before they took precautions--which was too late. My wife and I started taking precautions at the end of February, at which time the government and other authorities were still saying that things weren't going to get that bad and everyone should keep traveling and not worry so much. By the time the government started telling people to take precautions, we were already weeks into exponential growth. And then, of course, things swung to the other extreme and we started slamming barn doors shut and barring them after the horses had already left.

Great points. I guess I meant they could be strengths IF the govt acted correctly. And of course as you're saying, that in itself... everyone has different definitions. I guess I meant as a cultural mechanism for handling a situation.

> he said he'll be in town next week for a conference and they could grab lunch together one day. The conference was a lie

This seems a totally pointless lie. Based on this story, I no longer trust this speaker. And, whatever advantage they thought they were hedging with this lie could have been achieved without it.

I find the choice to lie here to indicate a kind of sociopathy - by the literal definition. Or, at least a complete lack of self-confidence.

I've tried white lies like that and had them immediately backfire, plus they make me feel dishonest. "How is the conference going? Oh, great. I thought about going myself but didn't see any when I googled it. What was it called again?"

With a little thought you can almost always avoid dishonesty. "Hey, I'm thinking of visiting your town next week. Could we get lunch?".

Reputation matters.