I understand sometimes people lie to avoid hurting someone, but a lot of the time it seems unnecessary. When something really important happens and honesty matters, people still choose to lie instead of just telling the truth.

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[–] 7 points 23 hours ago (1 child)

So many great answers, and they are all different yet accurate!

Another contradiction I've found (and is reflected in a lot of the answers) is that everyone SAYS that they want people to tell them the truth, but when we actually do tell them the truth, they turn into a tiger and devour us, or a similar negative reaction. We request the truth, but at the same time, we psychologically train everyone around us to lie to us.

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  • [–] 5 points 22 hours ago*

    the problem is we want other people to tell us the lies we tell ourselves. and when we don't get that, we get very upset because it hurts our self-worth or self-image.

    also the lies we tell are much more simple than the truth. a lie is 'you always look pretty'. the truth is much more complex, and we generally dislike complexity.

    also a lot of value judgements are entirely relative/subjective and human beings are terrible at being objective and generally find objective measurements emotionally unappealing compared to the subjective approve or rejection of our peers.

    like objective I know where I stand economically, but subjectively, to other people, I can either very wealthy, or very poor, because those value judgements are primarily formed from their frame of personal reference, not national statistics.

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