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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

Your first few examples aren't lies, they're just expressions of the undocumented wide definition of "fine," "great," and "wonderful" in natural English language. "Fine" means "not dead or suffering from fatal problems," and "great" and "wonderful" both mean "anything better than average or my expectations." Your last two are closer to lies, though.

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I struggled with this for a long time, for example if someone asked what time it was instead of saying "it's 4pm" I'd say, "It's 3:57... no wait now it's 3:58" because I felt like saying 4:00 would be not exactly true. Similarly my answers to other things could become so convoluted with included details that ironically people would assume I was lying (snowing them)!

What allowed me to adapt my brain to the imprecision people expect was to realize that anything you say necessarily leaves out more details than it includes. You can't get all of your mental state or the state of the world into words even your listener had the patience.

Society trains you right from the cradle to become a pathological liar.

I think this is dramatic. Society trains you that there is a lie/consequence spectrum.

What? Every language/society has its own version of social cues, conversational filler phrases, and general etiquette for various situations. People can argue its pointless or whatever, but it definitely has established roles in business, networking, or even just making basic conversation with strangers.

Nobody reads the dictionary, they get the definitions of words by copying other people. If a child hears "I'm fine," from someone with a headache, they will say "I'm fine" when they have a headache, truthfully communicating that they feel the same as the last person they heard say "I'm fine."

Well, "fine" is unlikely to cause harm. Even if it is not true, the intention is not to take advantage of someone.

Tricking your client that you care about privacy when you don't give a damn, is.

What's worse, it is pretty much normalized that in business, dating, politics etc people lie. Even if they are caught red-handed, it is considered a minor thing.

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