But…but…surely you’re not serious.
I mean, it’d be nice if we could all learn not to fight too, but that doesn’t mean you should never fight authority.

Sometimes, when institutions try to oppress or kill people, the victims have to do Not So Nice things to protect themselves and others. It sucks, but consider it a form of self-defense. Not learning self defense is an abdication of your responsibility to help yourself and those around you stay safe.

I’m lucky. I’m white and male and grew up in a time and place where I could always tell the truth without having to face any real consequences. That’s true privilege. The opportunity to be honest, to be yourself without reprisal is the most fundamental human right, and the one that is most denied. I’m grateful for the privilege of honesty that I’ve enjoyed. That’s why I’m unwilling to condemn others for doing what they need to do.

I’m entirely serious. Just because you shouldn’t lie to authority doesn’t mean one should willfully submit to everything. Oh no. You should stand up for your rights. And one of the ways to do this is to value your own ethics and not do it. Another way is to simply say nothing at all.

The latter is pragmatic…if you lie, you have a far greater chance of getting caught than not saying anything.

The worst part is this is, as I was reminded multiple times yesterday, a book for young adults. I would not want a book in my libraries teaching my kids that lying it right. I’m not saying I’ve never done it…I might be doing it right now…I’m stating it is pretty irresponsible to teach children that lying is an acceptable means to an end, when it never is.

And sometimes it relies on neither of these things, but which is best for everyone to believe.

“There’s a sucker born every minute.” – P.T. Barnum

Saving you’re immune to deception is like saying you’re immune to being mugged.

That quote from P.T. Barnum has been widely refuted.

Key lies:

‘I’ll be sure to go straight home, officer.’

‘I only had a few drinks, it’s probably the allergy medication.’

‘I did, in fact, lose them in a poker game.’

‘Reports of someone being a public nuisance? Oh yeah, I saw that guy, he looked nothing like me, and went that way.’

‘I have no idea why it smells like urine.’

-George Costanza

It’s such ‘a well known fact’ that people who are lying break eye contact that people who are lying try not to break eye contact.

People who are not lying often break eye contact in normal conversation.

The very lack of breaks in eye contact suggests the person IS lying!

Taking it one step further back, is it really more honest? How is “No” more honest than “No, thank you” or “No, I won’t” or “No, I didn’t”?

I think the reason that Chiarella got the negative responses he did from his girlfriend and other intimates is that in this culture, at least, an unadorned “No” is brusque and borderline unfriendly. Getting a response of “No” feels like having a door slammed in one’s face.

I think it’s possible to make one’s “No” clear and unequivocal, without being so brusque as to seem rude or uncaring. “No, I won’t do that.” “No, I didn’t enjoy it.”

As Miss Manners says, the gears of civilization mesh precariously enough without us going around chucking handfuls of sand into them.

One of Derren Brown’s skills seems to be to be able to tell when people are lying. There is a whole science behind where people look when accessing real memories and where they look when fabricating what they are saying.

If someone is going to be arrogant enough to post an instructable, you’d expect them to take some time to get it right.

If I was talking to someone looking at me straight in the eyes and never breaking eye contact to the point of wanting to blink but obviously trying hard not to, I’d tick.

But if they didn’t break eye contact, save for when they’re laughing, coughing, or otherwise geetting away from the storytelling, I wouldn’t say they’re lying.

It’s also about keeping a natural eye contact–rather than look like having the mechanical device used in Clockwork Orange when the main character is strapped in front of a violent film.

Best advice: don’t even think about it, and be natural. That’s easier once you’ve established to yourself that you’re not lying.

So the best way to make eye contact is… to not make eye contact. Genius!

(I did think the rest of the instructable was rather more useful- particularly the bit about believing the lie yourself).

An ex-flatmate of mine used to have the habit of using the word ‘honestly’ only when he lied (which was often)- it made it very easy to tell he was lying, even over the ‘phone.

OK this confuses me.

You mean the left side of their face as I am looking at them – or, what they would consider their own left side of their face?

COP: Have you been smoking anything tonight?
YOU: What?

or

PROCESS SERVER: Are you Mr. Johnson?
YOU: What?

or

HER/HIM: Whose panties/jockey shorts are these?
YOU: What?

I used to serve court papers, and everyone always always does this when they’re about to lie. They pretend sudden-onset deafness and ransack their mental apparatus for a story while the question is repeated.

If you don’t have a good lie handy, at least come up with a snappy but totally random answer if you need to buy time (“It’s 3 o’clock” would be a great answer to any of the questions above).

Now deontologically, an act is good or bad in itself, regardless of its consequences. So, for instance, Kant argued that it was always Wrong to lie, even if some good comes of it. Of course, Kant never lived to see fascism.

Teleological ethics decides the moral basis for an act in its consequences; if the consequence is Good, then the act is Good. So lie, for instance, by all means if the Nazis knock at your door, and the Rosenblum’s are sitting down to dinner upstairs.

Of course, for me, I don’t think people think a great deal about what they do, so it’s largely irrelevant. You can have all the morality you want, you’re still going to do whatever suits you best.

Also, Xopher re: ‘apparently’, maybe it’s a sort of evolution that happens as the night goes on. With my friends, well like to talk about the news, without actually having to read it, so when someone says something like ‘Yea, so, apparently George Bush came right out and said he was a Nazi!’ it will very likely become the evening’s point of discussion.

There are also, of course, multiple levels of meaning and symbolism embedded in different kinds of communication. When your wife, for example, asks, “Do you like my new haircut?” she is not asking, “What is your aesthetic opinion of the shape, color and length of my hair?” She is asking, “Do you love me enough to support my decision to cut my hair, regardless of whether or not you think it makes me look like Prince Valiant?”

Answer the question you want to, not the one being asked.

All that being said, the best way I’ve found to lie directly, in terms of an efficient scheme, is to stammer very, very badly. Not the kind of tripping over your tongue that everyone does when nervous and/or lying. But the kind of thing that makes it clear that you have a real problem communicating, under any circumstances, and that talking to authority figures just makes it worse.

This won’t work for formal situations, such as in a courtroom. But for “street lies” and speeding tickets, most authority figures do not want to wait around while you take 5 minutes to stammer your way through a six word answer to their first question. It embarrasses most people to have to stand and wait politely for someone with a bad stammer, and they don’t know what to do to help, or if they should, and it messes with their ability to decode “normal” cues like eye contact, etc. Also, there’s an incorrect assumption that anyone with a bad stammer must be slightly slow, and that slow people are inherently less likely to be up-to-no-good.

Police officer: What are you up to out here, all alone at this time of night?

You: I w… w… w… was g… g… g… going to… g… going to s… to s… to see… to to to… g… going to s… s… see m… m… my my my…

You get the picture. Practice it first, though. Badly done (like Porky Pig), and it’s obvious as hell. Also, based on having grown up with friends who stammer badly, there should be almost no eye contact. This is a nervous condition. Play it as if you are very, very nervous even about answering questions like, “What time is it?” What you’re doing is adding noise to the signal-to-noise ratio, not trying to change the signal as much.

Is this evil? Maybe. Sure. But we’re talking about how to do something effectively that’s probably sinful in the first place, eh?

The other issue, of course, is that there is no objective truth outside of physics and math. Born again Christians, Islamic fundamentalists and other religious fanatics try to stick to their truth at all times. The moderates in every religion, the ones that we always hold up as an example of reason, are the ones who are prepared to sacrifice some of their truth in order to keep the world from going up in flames.

“somewhere to the left of their head around their RIGHT ear.”