What is a lie?

[Saracen]

Context of the thread .... politicians.

I'm aware of dictionary definitions, which vary, but the broad thrust is as per Chambers ...

1 a false statement made with the intention of deceiving.
2 anything misleading; a fraud.


So .... obviously, an outright falsehood is a lie. If I'm selling you a hard drive and I tell you it's a 1TB drive when I know full well it's 500MB, its a lie. If I tell you I drive a red car because I don't want you to know it's really green, then it's a lie.

But what about more subtle deceptions?

1) If you say something knowing that the impression you give is false, is it a lie?

2) If you say something that is technically true,. knowing full well that the way you say it and the impression you give is deceiving, and is intended to be, is it a lie?


Suppose a bloke arrives home one late one night and staggers in smelling of beer and smoke, and the wife says "Where the hell have you been", and he says "Giving my girlfriend a good seeing to", and she says "Don't give me that rubbish, you've been in the pub with those reprobates you call friends haven't you" is that a lie?

And in that last case, what if he really was seeing his girlfriend and swallowed the beer and smoked a couple of fags to make it look like he'd been in the pub. He told the literal, stone cold truth, but set it up to deceive by not being believed. Is that a lie?


So ..... if our politicians tell us something that is true, but either by omission or by deliberately giving a false impression, is it a lie? And if they do it to get elected, how much of a mandate do they have for their program?

An example. I use a Labour "lie2 merely because they've been in power for 13 years. A claim they've parroted for that entire time is "we will not increase the standard or higher rate of income tax". Yet still, 13 years later, I come across a lot of people that think they promised not to increase income tax. They didn't. They didn't promise not to increase National Insurance either, and they didn't promise not to abolish the 10p band, and they didn't promise to increase personal allowances in line with inflation.

So ... if you set out to give the impression that you wont increase taxes on people's income, and succeed pretty well in doing that, is it a lie if that impression was deliberately false?

Expand that out to cover all the other very carefully worded promises politicians of ALL parties make, and what we have in a week is a choice of which bunch of serial liars to elect.

For instance, Labour claim the Tories will put up VAT (and they're probably right) because the Tories won't rule it out, but the inference is "they will and we won't". In fact, Labour (and LibDems) won't rule it out either.

One of my favourite political lies is "we have no plans to ....". All that means is that you might or will do it, but haven't planned it yet, perhaps because you want to be able to say "We have no plans".

I'm a great fan out the Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn "Yes Minister" school of interpreting politico-speak (and civil service speak for that matter). "Yes, Minister" ought to be required study material in politics/current affairs classes at school. At least then our kids would have some understanding of the political system.




Cynic? Moi?

[GheeTsar]

Politicians don't lie they "misspeak"

[Terbinator]

A lie is when the national lottery draw numbers don't match with mine.

[GheeTsar]

[jim]

To be honest, I'd go with the second dictionary definition, with a slight alteration. "Intent to mislead".

It's a bit like the old:

"Did you kill that man?"
"No."
"So you're holding a pistol pointing at him, he's got a bullet in him, and he's dead. But it didn't kill him?"
"Oh, right! No, I didn't kill him, the bullet did though."

Take 2:

"Did your bullet kill that man?"
"No."
"So a bullet from your gun went into his chest and he's dead. But you didn't kill him?"
"Oh right! No, the bullet didn't kill him, heart failure did though."

I don't like it at all to be honest. To draw another comparison, it's a bit like when people were saying "If your lender can't find the physical credit agreement you signed, then you aren't liable for the debt." Now, we can argue semantics all we like, but the point stands - they knew they were liable for the debt, they were just finding silly technicalities.

If we could all stop doing that, and talk straight for once, life would be a heck of a lot simpler.

[chuckskull]

I doesn't matter how you try to sugar coat, justify or wriggle around the moral implications. An attempt to deliberately mislead in any fashion is a lie in my book and yup all politicians do it. One of the reasons I've given up on using what they say and promise to swing my vote. I'm going lib dem for no other reason than all 3 will lie to get in, and I've already I've seen the other 2 have a go at running the country in my lifetime, and as I remember both ended up with high unemployment, unnecessary wars and a recession. Guess Cleggy cant do much worse. Guess after that I'll stick with who messed up the least or go find a clock-tower. I'm not jaded... honest.

Yes minister was excellent. In that vein, with election season coming;

"A good political speech is not one in which you can prove that the man is telling the truth; it is one where no one else can prove he is lying."

"The three most unreliable things in public life: Political Memoirs, Official Denials and Manifesto Promises."

[finlay666]

The biggest lie I have spotted so far:

Labour promising to deliver 16 megabit internet by 2012
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04...ur_manifesto1/

At least to their credit it will be superfast.... but not compared to other developed nations such as Japan

[Lucio]

Strictly speaking, most political statements are truthful because they're very precise, more so than people are used to using in day to day society. The fact that we choose to interept them in favourable ways I belive is a very common trait of human psychology and social interaction.

For example, someone says "oh you look nice today", you chose to interpet it as a postive statement, when in fact it could also mean "you don't look nice every other day".

[TooNice]

@finlay666: Well, Japan is probably in the Top 5 (which I'd classify as 'super fast' relative to the rest), yet national average is probably not considerably faster. My scepticism would be the feasibility of having 16Mbit everywhere in the UK by 2012. I'd say it's impossible.

2) If you say something that is technically true,. knowing full well that the way you say it and the impression you give is deceiving, and is intended to be, is it a lie?

If it is intended to deceive, it's a lie, but what if some of them actually believe their lies?

I think that I have been taught a valuable lesson back in middle school. Our headmaster would make a speech every year about building a new gym. Some of us thought it was clever to sarcastically point out (in his absence) that he is probably not lying to us, and to take it as a lesson to promise to do things, but never saying when. And to generally pay close attention to every word someone use, because a fair number of people may find it immoral to outright lie to you, and yet acceptable to deceive on the basis that you should not have misunderstood them in the first place. So when they someone say 'We have no plan to...' it basically mean 'We are telling you we might not, but we didn't say we definitely won't'.

[jim]

For example, someone says "oh you look nice today", you chose to interpet it as a postive statement, when in fact it could also mean "you don't look nice every other day".

You haven't met my girlfriend

[MadduckUK]

not sure, great thread though

[Dareos]

You haven't met my girlfriend

ok, to follow the original intent of this thread, lets analyze this statement, is it a lie?


Well, first of all Snootyjim is implying that he has a girlfriend.... (not that I don't believe him.....)

secondly, he claims none of us have met her, now this could be true if she never leaves her house for any reason or if she in fact doesn't exist and therefore we can't have met her.

Or thirdly, some of us may well know Snootyjim's girlfriend, possibly even on first name terms, but he does or doesn't know about this and either way is lying, either through lack of research into his girlfriends acquaintances or completely deliberately as he is too embarrrased to admit who he is going out with.


Any which way, Snooty comes across as a bit of a fibber

[jim]

[TheAnimus]

This is why they have to lie:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10091952.stm

And they know it

[mightymouse]

politicians dont lie hehehehe, its just people willing to see pass their make believe. every election they spew out the same crap and yet we still eat it all up.

but to be honest i would rather have the old politicians who are fat and fed than new ones who are hungry with empty pockets hehehehe just a thought

[ik9000]

This sentence is a lie.