Is empathy required for lying?

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I ask because, in general, I have a fairly easy time lying, but I don't feel like (for me) it's really anything to do with empathy. It's just simple black box/knowledge tracking. If the person does not have knowledge or is not likely to (they had no opportunity to acquire it), then if you want to give them the wrong knowledge, all you do is mention the wrong knowledge the same way you would the correct knowledge. As long as the logic with all their other assumed/known knowledge is correct, it shouldn't be recognizable as different from the true knowledge - that is, there is no logical test the black box can perform on the known inputs to discern falsehood.

Theory of mind is required for lying. Empathy, liars can do without just fine.

A falsehood is a fallacy is it not?

Unhappy to say I lie a lot too. I don't know if it has anything to do with "lacking empathy". I tend to rationalize a lie somehow though and it's never over anything I consider really serious. This would mean I lack empathy for the person I am lying to.

Hmmm... I can lie quite easily but they are always just white lies or exaggerations to make a story sound more interesting. This kind of lying really has nothing to do with empathy though. I used to exaggerate all the time as a kid and didn't really care if people didn't believe me.

I don’t have the capacity to lie in order to cover something up. I hate the idea of having to keep track of what I’ve said to whom. I don’t like living with secrets either. Too much anxiety! Way easier just to tell the truth even if it means facing the music.

I don’t get people who lie all the time, get caught 90 percent of the time, but still keep right on telling them. The most idiotic thing that people do is lie to the cop that pulls them over with a radar gun about the speed they were going. Seriously.

Last edited by marshall on 24 Jul 2008, 12:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can't lie to anyone I like/admire/respect. I detest lies in general.

I don't like to lie to anyone.
Sometimes I am too honest and upfront.

No it's not.

All that needs to happen, is someone can figure out by random chance that if they say certain things they get the results they want. They don't have to at all understand the mechanism behind getting those results, they just have to figure out how to reproduce them.

Also, a person can lie to themselves, which doesn't require understanding anyone else.

I always wondered what it means to lie to yourself. Doesn't feel like something that can be done willfully. At least I don't have that particular talent. A lot of people seem to have it though. It would certainly make life a lot easier and cure a lot of my depression.

I mean I can tell myself to believe something but as long as I'm in the cognitive act of telling myself to believe something it's impossible to make the jump to actually believing what I want myself to believe because I'm too aware of the voice that's telling me to believe and I see the conflict of interest between what I want to believe and what is reality.

Also, if you lie to yourself you have to somehow be unaware that you are lying to yourself because if you were aware of the untruthfulness you were telling yourself you wouldn’t have succeeded in lying to yourself. Yet how is it possible to lie and be unaware that you are lying?

<goes cross eyed>

Damn. Did that make any sense?

Self-delusion is... well... interesting. I've never been able to completely shut off that voice that tells me what's really happening either. But I've been able to attempt to act completely contrary to that voice. I used to torment myself because I'd heard that life is what you believe, so I thought that if I believed things then they'd happen, and that the problem was that I wasn't trying hard enough to believe them. But I never could because they weren't real (and would never have come true in a million years even if I did believe them).

I think most of the time "lying to oneself" means believing something false, that you could know was false if you thought it through, but deliberately not thinking it through too hard.

I think orwell meant:

Theory of mind is required for lying SUCCESSFULLY.

As I understand "theory of mind", it really is required. You have to use what they know, and give only a little info to convey the lie. The more you give to support it, the more they can discount. ALSO, if you convey a fact wrong, and they happen to know it, your lie could seen as a lie.

Of course, I hate lying also.

To tell a lie topic

Lying successfully requires rationalizing the data involved in order to create a lie. And some people say what they think others want to hear. I guess this would envolve theory of mind.

I would say empathy makes it easier to judge how the lie is going down and might allow for adjusting accordingly, may judging the gullibility of the person too. I don't think it's necessary but helps.

For me it's difficult to lie to someone. But it makes you very vulnerable, too. What I sometimes do is not telling things, but it's always difficult for me if someone asks me a straight question. Now someone told me (she is NT and knows I'm autistic and she helps me a lot) if someone asks me something where I don't want them to know it, instead of giving a straight answer to say that I don't feel like talking about it.

If I do mistakes in writing or in structure of the sentences or words it's because English is not my motherlanguage

In the NT world, one of the functions of lying is to avoid being socially offensive (which is considerered less socially acceptable than lying) which is sometimes a result of telling the truth

I find lying all too easy too , infact i tell loads of lies , i have already lied a couple of times this week to my parents. I can lie to my mum and dad now which feels awful.

To me, lying is a skill just like anything else, and can be learned and practiced. Especially if you're higher functioning and somehow need this skill very much. I learned it very early, due to growing up in a competitive environment where lying was a basic survival skill. My mom would make me lie (usually say how nice other people look or other things sucking up to people), and tell them "See? Little kids don't lie".

I have moved to a completely different culture after I grew up. I think people here are a lot more honest, but "little white lies" are rampant and socially expected as well. If you have enough practice, you don't need empathy or theory of mind.