Page 3 of 4 [ 58 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next


What Are Your Thoughts On All The Lying?
Meh. I guess it's all good if it makes people feel better about themselves. 9%  9%  [ 12 ]
I don't like it, but most people do, so I do it even though it conflicts with my instincts. 15%  15%  [ 19 ]
I try to do the white lie thing, but I just suck at it. 22%  22%  [ 29 ]
I'm so bad at lying that the mere thought of trying it makes me anxious. I prefer honesty. 26%  26%  [ 34 ]
NO WHITE LIES! Give me the truth even if it hurts, and I'll do the same for you. 28%  28%  [ 37 ]
Total votes : 131

merr
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Oct 2007
Age: 37
Gender: Female
Posts: 515

18 Dec 2007, 8:32 pm

kclark wrote:
I hate white lies. By the words of Thumper: If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.
I don't want someone to lie to me to soften a blow or avoid embarrassment. I want them to use tact and say things in a way that is less harsh, but not a lie. That is the difference between tact and white lies.


I would not feel saying thank you is a lie, because you are thanking them for thinking enough of you to give you a gift.
But saying "This is a nice sweater, thanks." is a lie. If you don't think it is a nice sweater, then why say so? A simple "thanks for the sweater" or "it looks like a warm sweater, thanks" conveys your appreciation of the gift without resorting to lies.
Knowing when to say your honest opinion or not is use of tact. Being nice to someone does not require telling a lie.
True, but sometmes, the way things are said when a perosn is being honest comes off as hurtful and may not be considered very nice. For example, if fivecents had told her friend the truth: "Your fat is showing. It's not a good dress," that may have shocked, embarassed, and hurt her friend. I can see what you are saying, and I think we agree that it's good to use tact.



Jayutimestwo
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 65

19 Dec 2007, 5:58 am

I've worked out when and how to lie about stuff (mostly) like: "wow this meal is great", "thanks for the pyjamas", "you look very nice" but I still get really confused about when people are lying to me and why - if I know that they lie and I know I can't tell when they're lying how can I trust anything they say. It really confuses me when people tell obvious lies - I know to do it to keep people happy but I don't really know why it works and when other people do it I get irrationally angry and I can't look at them



kclark
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 10 May 2007
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 314
Location: NE Illinois

20 Dec 2007, 9:30 am

merr wrote:
True, but sometmes, the way things are said when a perosn is being honest comes off as hurtful and may not be considered very nice. For example, if fivecents had told her friend the truth: "Your fat is showing. It's not a good dress," that may have shocked, embarassed, and hurt her friend. I can see what you are saying, and I think we agree that it's good to use tact.


Maybe I am just picking at semantics, but that is how my brain works. The question was is this a nice dress. The way I see it is you can have a nice looking dress or an ugly dress. It is a completely subjective question as I personally think a lot of fashionable clothes are hideous looking. That is completely separate from the issue of does it look good on her or if she looks good in it.

Maybe the difficulty I have is that others don't see these two questions as being different or assume that I know which one they are really asking.

To me trying to disassemble the question and figure out what is really being asked would be very unlikely at coming up with the right guess. It would also take me much too long to do so and I think would look like I was trying to come up with a good white lie. As it is I often have to ask if people are really asking the question they actually said or the one I would assume they are really asking.

To me I would rather be told that another outfit is more my "thing" or "works" for me better, if they want to be gentle about it, or that is fits me better if they want to be direct. You don't have to come out and say this one makes you look fat and lumpy, but rather you can say that it is a nice color and style, but that a different one looks better on you. In the middle of a group of people is not really the right time to be asking or answering those kind of questions though.

I think the way fivecents handled it was good in that she made sure that the person knew it was not flattering shortly afterwards when it would be less embarrassing. Maybe I just dread no one ever telling me something like that so I would end up continuing to wear the hideous thing that everyone pretends looks good on me.



twoshots
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,731
Location: Boötes void

20 Dec 2007, 9:48 am

I never lie. It's a pain and does very little to benefit me; it's just pandering to some ape's ego. The world would be better if 1) we stopped lying and 2) we stopped caring so much about what others think about us. The need to be lied to is just the twisted NT reinterpretation of facts as being a product of interpersonal interactions, filtering their "world" through their peers.
Except when it come to myself. I am a pathological lier about myself, always distorting personal details so that others can't get a firm grasp on me.


_________________
* here for the nachos.


ToadOfSteel
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,157
Location: New Jersey

20 Dec 2007, 12:14 pm

RudolfsDad wrote:
No aspie has ever massacred 6 million people because of a fictional belief that his race was better than some other race.


Which isn't to say that an aspie (me) doesn't have a fictional belief that his race (aspie) was better than some other race (NT)... it's just that no one deserves to die over it... NT's didn't choose to have their mob disorder, after all, so who are we to kill them for their less evolved traits...

:twisted:



Jayutimestwo
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 18 Dec 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 65

27 Dec 2007, 5:22 am

Greentea wrote:
Nobody likes to lie. We all lie because most people want to be lied to, and we'd find ourselves in difficult situations if we didn't lie. This kind of "I lie to them because they want me to" is called "white lies". I'd rather not be lied to, so when someone assumes I prefer to be lied to and does the white lie thing on me, they're doing me a disservice. I don't have time or energy to invite you 5 times only to realize on the 6th that you've been lying to me about being busy all along.

People lie, then get angry at you for not getting the hint that it was a lie and that there's not a chance in hell they'll ever accept dinner. So if you give and take lies, you'd better be quite good at picking hidden meaning, or you'll piss people off big time.


I HATE this. I can never tell if people are genuinely busy or trying to be nice about telling me to f**k off. It works both ways as well, often I assume people want me to f**k off only to have them get all mad at me for not calling again.

I now call people 3 times and stop if they don't call back. I think the basic rule is if you call them 3 times and they don't call they're the jerk, call four times and you're the jerk.



whitedragon
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 7 Dec 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 114
Location: Aspie Middle Earth?

27 Dec 2007, 9:41 am

siuan wrote:
If I ask a question, I want an honest answer. . . . [omitted] . . . It seems SO counter-intuitive to me to send my kids off to therapy because society wants them to learn to lie to make other people feel good. I don't want to feel good based on lies. To me, it's like building a house on a shoddy foundation.

Ditto. The trouble is I can’t really tell whether they are telling me the truth when they praise me, or just being nice to me, and my solution to this is to take them as flat-out compliments and just say, “Thank you but I’m really not” (The interesting side effect is that they think I’m being modest). If the same comment is repeated by different ppl, you get enough evidence that they do indeed like you on that point. . . . Ah, I see many other later posts point to this issue.

Now I look back I think my family have always been great because they taught me explicitly some things I needed to know. Like when my granny asked for a piece of snacks I had in my hands and I gave her one. She said, “Now whitedragon, when ppl ask you for one, they mean some.” This is such a simple formula. Ever since then I’ve never made the same mistake (though I sometimes get confused whether they really mean one). However, this example is a bit of digression as it is not about a white lie.



whitedragon
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 7 Dec 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 114
Location: Aspie Middle Earth?

27 Dec 2007, 10:23 am

RudolfsDad wrote:
Most NT, to varying degrees, tend to believe what they want to believe, rather than what is actually true. Some NT don't even think about truth very much. It's just not very important to some people to know how things really are. Some NT care only about believing something that makes them happy -- regardless of whether or not it is true. I don't think that people that are like that usually really know that they are believing fictions -- it is more of an unconscious process.

This reminds me of a piece of information I read some time ago on a Japanese web site run by an AS lady, a section of which tells you how NT ppl think. It says they do not worry about logical consistency, instead they worry about something else that had to do with society or relationship (I’ve just checked; it’s ‘showing sympathy’). This was a revelation.

However, some NT’s might like honesty too. A friend once told me that they liked it when I praised them because they knew it was never a white lie. Ah, it’s already mentioned by Icarus_Falling and by Shale:
Shale wrote:
Off on a tangent - many of you will notice that some NTs really like Aspergian honesty. We actually find it...refreshing.

Thank you; I like the way you put it. Also:
RudolfsDad wrote:
I think that is an admirable trait. Just as there are lots of things NT are good at, there are also lots of ways that we totally suck. Lack of respect for the truth is one NT trait that I seriously wish someone would find a way to cure. Many (most?) wars are at least partly attributable to the fact that we often are more interested in believing what we want to believe than trying to determine what is actually true. No aspie has ever massacred 6 million people because of a fictional belief that his race was better than some other race.

Thank you about our respect for the truth. However, respect for the truth should not be confused with perfect grasp of the truth. Otherwise, ‘aspies’ should by now know everything there is to know in the universe.


Shale wrote:
So if you want to eat lunch with someone and they don't want to, which would you prefer to hear?
1) Sorry mate I'm just finishing up...maybe tomorrow?
2) Hell no I ain’t eating lunch with you, I reckon you’re a bloody freak! Get away!

I prefer 2) because if I hear 1) I would continue inviting to lunch the very ppl who think like 2) of me, which would be even sadder than hearing 2). “[M]aybe tomorrow” bit is totally unnecessary.
RudolfsDad wrote:
Now, of course, we all know about white lies -- we all know that people sometimes say "You look great" when they are really thinking "Oh my God, you're so ugly you make flowers die when you walk past them".

No I don’t. I do know that it’s a probable possibility that a “that’s not bad” means “I don’t really like it that much”, but to the extent in this example? I will never choose this person as a friend.
. . . awwww, maybe now I'm getting it; is this an exageration? It's taken me 2 hours to figure that one! Or was it not????
insomniakat wrote:
I don't get this either, and it's frustrating as hell when you ask someone for a straight answer and you know they are feeding you bull.

Ditto. It’s one of the few moments when I have to work hard to keep my temper, even though I’ve had my temper problem largely sorted long time ago.
Shale wrote:
PS: The ‘Do I look fat in this?’ trap.

This is NOT A GRNUINE QUESTION, lads.

I repeat.

SHE DOES NOT MEAN WHAT SHE IS ASKING.

SHE IS NOT ASKING IF SHE IS FAT.

What she REALLY means:

1) ‘I’m really insecure about my body.’
2) ‘I respect your opinion.’ Alternatively ‘I think you’re awesome and value your view/’
3) ‘I need you to make me feel better and give me confidence, tell me I’m not as terrible as I think I am, because of 2) up there.’

Arrrrrrrrrgh. Excuse me but this is too much. Too confusing. Sorry but I cannot read the rest.

Conclusion:
siuan wrote:
I guess I know all the reasons people want to hear white lies, I just fail to understand the reasons.

Story of my life. I understand the theory, but just don’t ‘feel it in the guts’. I do try not to say things that might hurt people’s feelings, or what is none of my business, and this occasionally leads to the situation where I don’t say some things that I personally would prefer to hear myself.

MysteryFan3, and mmaestro, you sound like very mature people, but I don’t think I’ll ever match up. Perhaps I’m lucky I’m a gal not guy. I also perfectly agree with Angelus-Mortis,
Angelus-Mortis wrote:
You can tell the truth in a way that doesn't hurt. Or you can let it out at the right time. But you don't have to lie. There is always going to be a viable solution to these problems (ie, irrational people) that don't involve lying. Besides, lying complicates things unnecessarily.

AliceinOz, and kclark. Well said.

Waaaaaaaa, it's well past my beddy time.



RudolfsDad
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 157

07 Jan 2008, 12:55 pm

whitedragon wrote:
RudolfsDad wrote:
Now, of course, we all know about white lies -- we all know that people sometimes say "You look great" when they are really thinking "Oh my God, you're so ugly you make flowers die when you walk past them".

No I don’t. I do know that it’s a probable possibility that a “that’s not bad” means “I don’t really like it that much”, but to the extent in this example? I will never choose this person as a friend.
. . . awwww, maybe now I'm getting it; is this an exageration? It's taken me 2 hours to figure that one! Or was it not????


Well, it may be an exaggeration in the sense that really big white lies like that one are rare.

I think it depends on the circumstances. I don't know if people with Aspergers do this or not, but sometimes NT ask questions that they don't really want the answer to. Sometimes, the point of the question is really to seek information, but sometimes people really just want to be told something that makes them feel good. I am pretty good at knowing what someone really wants when they ask me a question, so I will be truthful if I think they are seeking information. I will tell them what I think they want to hear if I think they just want a compliment.

Really big white lies like the one I mentioned in my earlier post aren't very common, in my experience. Generally, they occur only in fairly extreme circumstances. I mean, if I had a friend that was so depressed about her appearance that she couldn't function in life, I might tell her she is beautiful, even if I really did think she was ugly -- but only if I was pretty confident that she would believe my lie. What is more common is telling someone "You look ok in that dress, but it's not really the best for you" when one is thinking "That dress looks terrible on you".

Most compliments really are sincere, though. I don't think that white lies are common enough to worry about too much.



ouinon
Supporting Member
Supporting Member

User avatar

Joined: 10 Jul 2007
Age: 60
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,939
Location: Europe

07 Jan 2008, 1:56 pm

Given the situation with the dress at the restaurant I don't think i have the kind of friend anylonger who would ask me that, either cos they would know me well enough not to risk it, or they would, like me, not go out in something they need to ask others about.

So if a friend did ask me i would treat it as a serious request for feedback requiring the truth. And if a non-friend asked i would be seriously embarrassed because i'd know what was supposed to do, but hate doing it. It would be faking it.

About white lieing in general i can do it when tipsy ( tho i get tipsy very rarely nowadays) if there is any truth to go on as foundation, in order to please someone.

But in work situations i found it almost intolerable. After all why should i do that when they did not bother to think through their constant pronouncements of shattering banality, illogicality, inaccuracy, stupefying second-handedness, and irrelevancy to subjects under discussion, with no respect for ideas at all? ( tho i suspect i may sometimes/often (?) seem like that to people with even greater passion for ideas than me!! :lol: :oops: )

Why should i respect priorities ( "people are more interesting than things or ideas") if they do not respect mine? ( my passion for things and ideas)! ! Other than their being in the majority, having most of the power, and having declared my priorities a sign of dysfunction/disorder.

8)



Last edited by ouinon on 08 Jan 2008, 9:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

whitedragon
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 7 Dec 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 114
Location: Aspie Middle Earth?

08 Jan 2008, 9:35 am

Thank you, RudolfsDad, for replying because this has been bugging me.

RudolfsDad wrote:
whitedragon wrote:
RudolfsDad wrote:
Now, of course, we all know about white lies -- we all know that people sometimes say "You look great" when they are really thinking "Oh my God, you're so ugly you make flowers die when you walk past them".

No I don’t. I do know that it’s a probable possibility that a “that’s not bad” means “I don’t really like it that much”, but to the extent in this example? I will never choose this person as a friend.
. . . awwww, maybe now I'm getting it; is this an exageration? It's taken me 2 hours to figure that one! Or was it not????

Well, it may be an exaggeration in the sense that really big white lies like that one are rare.

I've come to realise part of the reason why white lies make me very uncomfortable. It’s because the existence of white lies opens too many possible interpretations for statements.

I also gather from your explanation that many ppl categorised here as NT’s can do some kind of fine tuning in ‘weighing up’ white lies so that they can deicide for themselves ‘their approximate weights’, while to me they're either true or false, 1 or 0, digits of information to compute on. The borderlines of concepts are (perhaps too) well defined.

Another thing I now realise is that I will never have the grasp of some of these things many ppl say they can do. Although I cannot say I feel sad, probably because I don't know what I'm missing, I take comfort in this:

RudolfsDad wrote:
I am pretty good at knowing what someone really wants when they ask me a question, so I will be truthful if I think they are seeking information.


You must be a great dad to Rudolf.



someguy
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 72

08 Jan 2008, 10:07 am

Quote:
PS: The ‘Do I look fat in this?’ trap.

This is NOT A GRNUINE QUESTION, lads.

I repeat.

SHE DOES NOT MEAN WHAT SHE IS ASKING.

SHE IS NOT ASKING IF SHE IS FAT.

What she REALLY means:

1) ‘I’m really insecure about my body.’
2) ‘I respect your opinion.’ Alternatively ‘I think you’re awesome and value your view/’
3) ‘I need you to make me feel better and give me confidence, tell me I’m not as terrible as I think I am, because of 2) up there.’


I've never understood how someone lying to you, when you know that's what's going on, can help your self esteem. Personally I feel worse after getting compliments when I know they are insincere.



RudolfsDad
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 157

08 Jan 2008, 2:34 pm

someguy wrote:
I've never understood how someone lying to you, when you know that's what's going on, can help your self esteem. Personally I feel worse after getting compliments when I know they are insincere.


I think that an obviously insincere compliment doesn't help anyone's self esteem. Quite the contrary, it often hurts someone's self esteem because it makes them think that they must really be terrible if their friends can't find a way to make an honest compliment.

White lies are tricky in that respect, though. In many cases, a person isn't sure if a compliment is sincere or not. There are varying degrees of certainty, from feeling like there is a 100% chance of it being a lie to a 100% chance of it being the truth, or anything in between. Most people don't consciously assign a probability value to lie-vs-truth, of course, but their emotional reactions tend to be as if they do. The more plausible the white lie is, the more positive the person's reaction will tend to be.

whitedragon wrote:
I also gather from your explanation that many ppl categorised here as NT’s can do some kind of fine tuning in ‘weighing up’ white lies so that they can deicide for themselves ‘their approximate weights’, while to me they're either true or false, 1 or 0, digits of information to compute on. The borderlines of concepts are (perhaps too) well defined.


Often, when someone gives me a compliment, I am not 100% sure whether it is sincere or not. It may, in fact, be an exaggeration of the truth. In that sense, it may be partially true and partially false. It is that uncertainty that makes a white lie effective as a way of making someone feel good. Even if the person knows that you aren't being completely honest, he or she may think that you are exaggerating the truth. If you have a friend that is afraid that he might be considered ugly and you tell him that he is very good looking, he may still feel better even if he knows you aren't being completely honest. He may think, "well, I know my friend is just trying to make me feel better, but she wouldn't tell me I was great looking unless I at least looked average. So, maybe I am average looking! Hey, that's not so bad!"

On the other hand, of course, he may be so convinced that he is ugly that he will think you are being completely dishonest and that you really think is ugly. If he thinks that, he may be insulted and you may lose credibility when it comes to future compliments.

White lies are tricky, and even the most socially skilled people make mistakes. So, don't feel bad if you find them confusing. Everyone else does too -- maybe NT are just more willing to live with the uncertainty?

With white lies, there are varying degrees of sincerity on the part of the person telling the lie and varying degrees of certainty on the part of the person being lied to about the degree of sincerity. There are shades of gray on both ends and that makes it confusing for everyone.

whitedragon wrote:
You must be a great dad to Rudolf.


Thanks! I've never given my son an insincere compliment. He has enough virtues that I just tell him honestly when he isn't good at something and then I remind him that there are lots of things that he can do better than the NT kids.