I'd say that one unmentioned reason for telling the truth is that the world is a complicated place. As such, it's impossible to fit all of it in your head at once, and it's impossible to constantly keep close tabs on everything going on around you. Therefore, it is essential to your sanity and ability to function that you can trust that certain things are as they seem without having to constantly verify that for yourself.
It's a tragedy of the commons thing: if everyone tells the truth, we can all trust each other and get on with doing interesting stuff. But if someone lies, they can abuse said trust to acheive their own ends that not everyone may agree on. And this comes at little cost to them; the external cost of them lying is that everyone else must expend more effort double-checking others and thus less effort doing interesting stuff.
Science (not the practice but the philosophy) depends on this: we assume that things in reality hold even if we aren't observing them right this instant. Sure, observations may affect reality, but it's not like the particle-wave duality of light stops existing if nobody's running a two-slit experiment.
Ultimately, lies prevent us from being able to effectively work towards change.
The plural of "anecdote" is "anecdotes" and "self-reported data" is not data. Asking people on Twitter what they think is a terrible way to determine what they'd do which is why actual psychological research isn't done this way. I recognize that this is a 'thought experiment' but it's being done in a way as to shape stuff outside of that thought. Dan Ariely, on the other hand, wrote an entire book about this, based on 30,000 research subjects:Because the plural of “anecdote” is “anecdata,” I asked an abbreviated form of this question on Twitter.
I think this is true as a thought experiment, but it suggests that people who lie always do so both self-consciously and because of their self-interest. The post states: But what if we believe something that happens to be factually untrue? Are we still lying? If so, should we be castigated for our lies? It's a tragedy of the commons thing: if everyone tells the truth, we can all trust each other and get on with doing interesting stuff. But if someone lies, they can abuse said trust to acheive their own ends that not everyone may agree on.
A less-conservative definition [of telling the truth] might be, “saying things that are consistent with what we believe.”
For me, this is different from a moral standpoint: being wrong isn't the same as saying something one knows to be untrue. Blurring those is societally dicey, and we've already seen why. When politicians are terrified of being lambasted for being wrong, the irony is that it makes them more likely to lie.
Sure. They'd rather lie and risk being caught in that (because everyone knows politicians lie) than be caught in a mistake. We allow politicians to use their opponents' mistakes as a bludgeon all the time, and for years.
Hm, I've never really thought about it that way. I guess there's a fine line between holding politicians accountable for their mistakes and lambasting them for those mistakes.Sure. They'd rather lie and risk being caught in that (because everyone knows politicians lie) than be caught in a mistake. We allow politicians to use their opponents' mistakes as a bludgeon all the time, and for years.
No, lies allow us to set the boundary on the truth; without lies and the recognition of things as lies, we would have no basis from which to establish what is real and common. Just think about unintentional lies; are they detrimental as you claim or are they essential because our phenomenological experiences can't be totally shared.