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Comment by badconvincer | Hacker News Reader

Yeah but that’s honorless and if I ever find out you’re going to lose respect and credibility.

Part of the art of lying is choosing the right level of specificity so that the story sounds plausible but is unverifiable. Like this:

I had Fugu in 2009, in Tokyo, in some high-end sushi restaurant in the Ginza district (I don't remember the name). It was crazy expensive and not particularly good. I wouldn't have it again. I mainly did it so I could say I've been-there-done-that.

(In point of actual fact, I really was in Tokyo in 2009, and I really did have some crazy-expensive sushi in the Ginza. But I did not have fugu. Never have, never will. The thing that will make you lose respect and credibility in my eyes is being the kind of person who thinks there is value in bragging about having had fugu.)

The first telling is not usually when you get caught in a lie. It’s subsequent references to it that are just different enough that people catch the lie and silently judge you for it. With someone you seldom meet you’ll probably get away with it but behavior like that tends to also bleed into your long term relationships where it actually matters. You have to be very, very smart to be able to maintain many lies and is out of the reach of most people, at least anecdotally.

Memory is unreliable, so changes in subsequent re-tellings are possible even if you originally told the truth. Part of the art of lying well is lying only about things whose details are plausibly forgotten in the fullness of time. So lying about eating fugu works, especially if you really have been to a place where it is served.

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