Pants On Fire

I hate liars. Honestly HATE them. What people who lie to me are saying is that I wasn't worth the truth.

My father, of blessed memory, told me all the time that I had the "curse of being his daughter." Which meant being "unable to lie or being governed by the truth." He got that right. I can't lie even when it would be in my best interest. I was a good actor but in real life I am a terrible liar. I just can't keep things straight if I lie. So why bother?

And my Nana, of blessed memory told me, "no one likes a truth teller." Right again.

Judaism has a lot to say about truth and lying:

...Dishonesty and deception are serious crimes in Jewish law. The Torah explicitly demands that one should "Distance himself from a false matter." There are, however, situations in which Jewish law permits or even demands that one engage in deception...

Recently, a psychology study found that the average person lies about 150 to 200 times per day. At first blush, such numbers seem to stagger rather than inform. Most people would be offended if they were told that they tell an average of eight to twelve untruths every waking hour. Nonetheless, after additional reflection and careful consideration of true day-to-day social interactions, we almost intuit that lying is not only more common than we expect, it is more necessary as well.

The Torah seems to be unequivocal with regard to lying:

"Thou shall not bear false witness" (Exodus 20:16),

"Thou shall not steal, thou shall not deny falsely, and thou shall not lie one to another" (Leviticus 19: 11),

and "Distance yourself from a false matter" (Exodus 23:7).

The first verse clearly applies to witnesses in a court; the second has been defined as a prohibition against swearing in order to avoid returning someone else’s property (see Sefer HaChinuch 226)...

According to the Talmud, the verse "a just hin" teaches us that an individual’s "yes" should be just as should be his "no."

...therefore requires the following five conditions before allowing the honest person to "act perversely":

(1) The antagonist’s record of general conduct is negative.

(2) There is adequate motivation and testimony to justify one’s anticipated concern in the immediate and specific condition.

(3) The intended victim is acting only in self-defense and after the attack has been initiated.

(4) There appears to be no alternative to one’s present course of action. Other options have been tried or are judged not to be viable.

(5) That which is at stake has tremendous seriousness to the intended victim involving a high investment of one’s person or property.


... even when prevaricating is permissible, habitual lying will still be forbidden.

Jewish law does not take an absolutist approach to prevaricating and, indeed, will obligate the individual to lie in various circumstances, for instance, lying to save a life or to bring peace. This, by no means, makes light of the seriousness of lying. The Talmud is replete with statements that stress the importance of truth-telling and remarks that "the seal of God is emeth [truth]" (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 55a); "God hates one who speaks one thing with his mouth and another thing in his heart" (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 113b); "Whoever breaks his word is regarded as though he has worshipped idols" (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 92a); and "liars will not receive the Divine Presence (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 42a)."

The extreme importance of honesty is appropriately summed up by the Talmudic belief that the first question a person is asked in the hereafter at the final judgment is (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a): "Have you been honest in your dealings?" Despite all this, the Talmud recognizes that there are situations where one may be untruthful.

SOURCE

Now this article was sent to me the other day - how far humanity has fallen from truthfulness -- even with itself:

Study: Gossip Trumps Truth
Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience.com

People are influenced by gossip about others, even when it contradicts what they see with their own eyes, suggests a new study.

Past research has found that gossip—those juicy tidbits of supposed fact we share about a third party—serves many purposes, including strengthening social ties, spreading social norms and helping others avoid double-crossers and other risky partners.

Hearsay can be the most reliable source of information about situations for which you have no experience. But when you hear gossip that's incongruent with a person or incident you are familiar with, you'd be smart to throw that chitchat out the window in favor of your own direct knowledge, right?

The new study, published this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals individuals sometimes place so much stock in gossip that they accept it as true even if their own observations and experiences suggest otherwise.

"Gossip has a strong manipulative potential that could be used by cheaters to change the reputation of others or even change their own," lead author Ralf Sommerfeld of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology and his colleagues write. "This finding suggests that humans are used to basing their decisions on gossip, rumors or other spoken information."

Gossip game
Sommerfeld and his colleagues examined how gossip transmitted information and how it affected another person's behavior.

In the study, 126 undergraduate biology students played a computer-based game in which each student was paired up with another student (via their computers) and had to decide whether to give a certain amount of their starting money to the partner. By dishing out 1.25 Euros, the receiver got 2 Euros, so being on the receiving end was a must. The assumption was that in later rounds, your generosity would be rewarded with generosity toward you.

Over a series of rounds, students switched their partners and received that partner's track record—how many times the person had given money and not given money. Students were more likely to give money to cooperative partners who had previously given money to others.

Then, they had to write a snippet of gossip about the other players they had virtually-interacted with. Sommerfeld noted some gossip examples: "He's a generous player" or "He's a scrooge, watch out."

No surprise: Players who read a positive comment about another individual, having no knowledge of that person's past generosity record, were more likely to hand over cash to that individual. The opposite was true for negative gossip, where players held tight to their money.

Golden gossip
In another set of rounds, it got more interesting: Players received information on each partner's track record (how often they said "yes" and "no" to doling out money) as well as the gossip blurb.

Without any added gossip information, students cooperated 62 percent of the time. That number increased to 75 percent when students had positive gossip in addition to the partner's track record. Even in instances where the partner had a track record of no giving, positive gossip won out and the other individual handed over money to their partner.

The weirder outcome is that negative gossip decreased cooperation to just 50 percent, regardless of the players' track records.

"If people would act rationally, they would only base their decisions on what they really see because they know exactly the past behavior of these people," Sommerfeld told LiveScience. "But they were still influenced by this gossip."

Gossip also showed this persuasive power in light of any information marring the reputation of the actual gossip monger. For instance, participants acted on gossip even when a blurb (also considered gossip) described the actual source as a "nasty miser" or other uncooperative description.

The scientists suggest the added information might be an overload for participants, or perhaps people don't link cooperative behavior with gossip honesty.

SOURCE


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