The Definition of Lying and Deception

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/

by infinity • 11 years ago

35 2 11 years ago

plato.stanford.edu

What I've seen on several fora is that US citizens use the word 'lying' when someone expresses an opinion that contains a mistake or an error but certainly has no "intention to deceive".

pixelglow• 11 years ago

It's probably an informal use of the word "lying" prevalent in tech culture. When I was working in a moderately sized software company in Australia, engineers would often say, "xyz. Oops, I lied. It was abc." It's a shorthand for "I made a mistake, what I said before was false, although I believed it true at the time." No actual intention to deceive here.

I suspect this originated with autistic individuals finding it hard to actually lie, i.e deceive. This relates to their shallow theory of mind, or difficulty believing other people have different thoughts and ideas from them or the absolute "truth". This idea has subtly spread through science and tech culture since many practitioners are on the spectrum, where some absolute truth is held up for admiration and significant deviation is uncomfortable.

For example, "code never lies." So if I say "xyz" about the code and it is false, I am "lying".

The Definition of Lying and Deception

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