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Dealing with lying and contradicting adults as a young person profoundly disorganizes your sense of reality.

Also, from context, I believe that's really focused on observable patterns in the forum. If someone is lying and contradicting themselves so plainly on the forum (with relatively low stakes) it's quite likely that they do so elsewhere.

Agree that they're doing it elsewhere, but not that these are low stakes social situations just because they're online forums. They may be very important social scenes in the lives of the participants.

Is that actually a good example of what you mean? There is no contradiction? The first statement does not say that Joe drove drunk?

Playing on people's inferences (which is different from implying) is a common tactic of the abusive.

That’s also just what “lying” means. If you make a claim with the intention of deceiving someone that claim is a lie. It’s not like English is a formal language where you can say “ah but my statement technically passed the ‘Truth compiler’ so it’s not technically a lie.”

The recent season 1 of the Wheel of Time television show reminded me of how the Aes Sedai are magically bound "To speak no word that is not true".

Of course, they're all master manipulators, ironically able to lie better than the common people because they can leverage that apparent veneer of truthfulness to deceive even more completely.

Similarly, I like to say something along the lines of "lies by omission are still lies".

It's funny how this is actually how laws and official paperwork works. It is very important to look at every single word. And I don't think you are correct in saying that it is lying. It actually objectively isn't. And whether you'd argue it is or isn't very likely depends on which side of it you are on.

Of course when reading over it in the regular fast way of reading through the comments, one might think there is a contradiction, because you said there would be one and so we read it that way. But there really isn't. It's an evasive manoeuvre. Of course they know what you're asking and they specifically do not want to lie and so they choose words you are going to very likely parse in a particular way.

If you think about it, is the "there's a contradiction in the following sentence" way of stating this any different/worse/better than the original? I would argue it isn't. Same level just on opposite sides of the argument.

Conversations are not legal contracts; if you knowingly and selectively choose your words to give the wrong impression (and abusers are skilled at doing) you are lying.

I don't agree. Deceiving and lying are two different things. You are describing somebody being deceptive.

You can deceive somebody and still be 100 % truthful.

Conversations can be legal contracts. A verbal contract is a contract. It might be hard to prove that the contract exists, but that doesn't mean that there was no agreement.

FWIW, there are actually two definitions of lie listed in most dictionaries. The first is to present false information with the intent to deceive, but the second is just to deceive. I think perhaps people arguing about whether or not my example is strictly "a lie" are not working with the same definition. I intentionally avoided the word "lie" because of this confusion.

I've had people argue that answering a question with an intentionally misleading non-sequitur is not lying. e.g. "Did you reaearch your topic?" "I went to the library"; they didn't say when they went to the library nor that they did any research at the library. Or more recently: "Have you been vaccinated?" "Yeah, I've been immunized".

To me such non-answers are clearly a lie because it's not really any different than saying "Yes" and then claiming you were talking about the popular rock band from the 70s for no particular reason. I can see how some people would disagree and I'm not interested in arguing semantics, so I try to avoid the word "lie" in general when "deception" seems less contentious.

Reminds me of the NSA dude claiming under oath 'not knowingly'. Apparently he had plausible deniability.

Spies seem masters in this, applying it for the good (of whomever they serve).

Bill Clinton's famous 'never had sex with that woman, miss Lewinsky' also comes to mind.

I think it could also be trained (including with humor, even when obviously a lie), as its basically a subset of social engineering or confidence game. When people succesfully lie, they are telling a truth from a certain PoV (one which benefits them). And, it can be a useful trait, too, depending on your where you stand (also a PoV).

Side note: the word lie is indeed not preferred, a better one is deceptive or manipative.

That being said, BPD was hyped in 90s where a lot of women got the diagnosis, while they were underrepresented in autism diagnoses.

On the contrary, you can’t deliberately deceive someone in the wording of a contract, and you can’t even induce someone to enter a contract by deliberately deceiving them.

This will always be a question of interpretation. There are a lot of situations (contract or otherwise) where you can say something that might imply something else but you chose your words wisely and 'mean them'. Marketing is full of this for example as well. And it extends to contracts.

"Up to 100MBit" in the marketing material as well as the contract. When you complain that you only get 0.5MBit it's basically "buyer beware" because you bought "up to" not "always exactly" 100MBit of connectivity on a shared medium (cable). As long as it's true that the medium actually supports 100MBit there's nothing wrong with this except for it being very deceptive. This kind of thing is all over the place and a lot of people fall for it all the time. And then complain loudly but mostly toothlessly. The internet itself I guess has changed some of this as it's easier for companies to get bad enough publicity out of such things than back in the day but it's doesn't change the underlying facts and mechanics.

> Playing on people's inferences (which is different from implying)

No, it's not. Making an utterance with the intent of someone else inferring a particular thing from it is implying that thing.

It's certainly different than logical implication, but "imply" in common English does not mean logical implication.

This one is more "distorted reality" rather than a contradiction.

They present information in a way to get you to assume things that aren't true to either paint their desired victim in a bad light or them in a good light. And when presented with clarifying data, will try to act like its your fault that you misinterpreted what they said. Even though it's what they wanted.

One tell is someone who seems to collect bad relationships. Who has a never-ending stream of stories of people just being awful to them. And their only admission of having done anything wrong is just some sort of vague platitude. It's always of the variety "I'm not perfect either" never "I shouldn't have cheated".

Obviously, it strongly implies that Joe drove drunk. That's the point of the hypothetical.

If you state two facts of equal import, they aren't necessarily linked. But if they are of different levels, and one happens before the other, only people who are implying a connection or who have a clinical condition lump those together.

    Yesterday my uncle died and my dog got hit by a car.

versus:

    Yesterday my shoelace broke and my dog got hit by a car.

Why am I bringing up the shoelace? And why first? For want of a nail the kingdom was lost? There are people who can't filter events by intensity. That's a separate diagnosis from BPD or NPD, but it's still something to keep an eye on. You either don't know you are saying something salacious, you do and you don't care, or you do and you are enjoying the buzz it creates.

There's really just no amount of message board writing you're going to be able to do to make "Joe drank too much last night and we got in a car crash" not imply, to a reasonable audience, that Joe drove drunk. I get that you can have a lot of fun making a sport out of ever-more-elaborate arguments saying it doesn't imply that at all, or that we can't really know whether an intent to imply it was present, but none of that matters.

Here's one thing to consider:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_theory#The_two_princ...

Ordinary humans can predict what inferences their interlocutors will make. Their interlocutors know this. Therefore, both parties use this to communicate just as much as they do overt utterances. This being so, they can mislead with inferences as well as they can with overt utterances. This is not called lying, but ordinary users of language do not consider it less morally inculpating. In fact, they may consider it worse inasmuch as it leaves them less recourse when it is discovered.

Thanks for the link.

In reading about neurodiversity I’ve encountered several groups of people who struggle with relevance theory. Not understanding how this works can drive a pretty big wedge between you and the people you’re trying to bond with, especially if you don’t know you’re doing it.

The only fair assumption from hearing either of those two statements is that yesterday contained two events. Either "uncle died and dog hit by car" or "shoelace broke and dog got hit by car".

It's a common tendency to link related subjects together. So people infer that sharing a sentence/utterance means the two are directly related.

Causing inferences like, "Oh, did he have a heart attack and run over your dog??".

It is true that some people prey on these inferences and use them to lie/manipulate but it is also very possible that they are just two things that happened on the same day - related only by their traumatic impact. TLDR: Yesterday sucked because these two separate things happened...

To a person who experienced these events, it's completely possible that you don't know people think your uncle ran over your dog. When he actually died in his sleep and your dog was run over by the neighbor.

> it is also very possible that

Yes, speaking strictly grammatically. But that's not how people communicate.

It is how many people communicate.

No. Your argument is a linguistic work-to-rules strike.

"How was your weekend?"

"Yesterday my uncle died and my dog got hit by a car"

A lot of people communicate this way.

I get the sense that you're on some vendetta against all of my comments for some reason, but I'm not on a weird strike against anything except poor assumptions.

But, agree to disagree I suppose.

I have taken employment (probably IQ in disguise) tests that specifically look for people making this association (and mark them down for it). I imagine they thought it had some association with logical skills and success in computer programming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy

The conjunction fallacy has to do with evaluation of likelihood. It's completely unrelated to the conversation so far, which has to do with interpreting whether a conjunction is meaningful in itself.

Sorry to distract, then.

> > It is how many people communicate.

> No. Your argument is a linguistic work-to-rules strike.

It's both.

No, that’s not absolutely not an assumption you can make. Neurotypical people don’t think that way. Fair has nothing to do with it. If you believe that’s normal, you might want to talk to a professional about whether you’re on the autism spectrum, or if you were raised in an abusive household (ie, by narcissists).

Getting a diagnosis might make the rest of your life easier.

It was not an example of a contradiction (I figured that's well enough understood to not mean an example). It was an example of selectively presenting facts in a way to distort reality.

My father with NPD would completely lie, not just lie by omission. He'd change the story even as it was happening.

> I've dealt with someone with eBPD who was unable to get through a 45 minute therapy session without contradicting themselves. They also habitually selectively report facts to distort reality[1].

> 1: Here's an example with details changed...

How is this not supposed to be an example of a contradiction? You pre-empted your "they distort reality" comment with the presumption that there are contradictions, then go on to give an example that doesn't contain any.

It just contains lazy details, which justly lead to incorrect inferences. Whether this is indicative of intentional manipulative behavior or distorted views of reality is hard to say without more context.

I believe the word "also" should indicate that the behavior in the second sentence is distinct from the behavior in the first sentence. There are two behaviors here:

- They contradict themselves.

- They habitually selectively report facts to distort reality

The footnote belongs with the second behavior which is why the [1] was on the second sentence.

You are using a supposed contradiction as evidence that they have a distorted view of reality. Without the contradiction (which I see none), the argument that they are distorting reality lacks premise.

It banks on inferring, "Joe drank too much last night and we got in a car crash." to explicitly mean "Joe was driving drunk". It isn't a completely off-base interpretation, but it isn't rock solid either. More context is necessary before this conversation has any real value.

Once again: I never claimed there was a contradiction in the example given. It may have been unclear in my original comment, but I have clarified this twice now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29719559

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29720636

> 1: Here's an example with details changed: "Joe drank too much last night and we got in a car crash." Reality, Joe was in the passenger seat, and the driver hit a deer that jumped out in front of them. On confrontation: "I never said Joe drove drunk!"

Continued:

"It was Joe's birthday he got a bit tipsy. He was feeling a bit full of himself and hit on my girlfriend all night. Afterwards I still decide to drive him home so he didn't die. I mean, what kind of friend would let his friend drive himself home after drinking on his birthday? And even then he continued to be a complete ass. I was so enraged that I didn't even see the deer jump out in front of my car"

Hence: "Joe drank too much last night and we got in a car crash" could very well be a valid interpretation of the evening if you consider all possible context. Especially if you are trying not to throw Joe under the bus as a sleazy friend to your therapist.

But also, it could definitely be the drivers fault in this hypothetical scenario. Hard to say.

The problem here is that humans have a tendency to believe they have all the information they need to pass correct judgment (source: life experience, and if I'm wrong about this, that means I'm probably right, right?). Usually, they don't. In my experience, everyone embroiders details to make themselves look innocent, and often without even noticing. It's very difficult to parse truth from people's tendency to simplify and exaggerate based on personal bias.

If there is a conflict there usually is a good reason - but sometimes that "good reason" is based on a misinterpretation that others won't understand.

I can't place fault on Joe or the driver in this situation because: I wasn't there and I don't know all of the context.

The comment you're responding to starts by saying these aren't the actual details; they're trying to illustrate a pattern of abusive arguments that provide misleading narratives, and, when contradicted by evidence, proceed to lawyer out from under the deception. That's obviously a real phenomenon; the example is just meant as an illustration of it. I'm not sure what the point of litigating it is.