Emma Levine

You tell the lie and we think that lying is the right thing to do because it's sparing the listener from unnecessary harm.

It's protecting their feelings when there's nothing they could learn or do with this information.

And that's what we think is benevolent.

That really promotes or people believe that it promotes the target's best interests to protect them from that unnecessary harm.

We certainly mean don't tell selfish lies.

I think it's still quite complicated.

In some ways, we really do mean don't tell lies because we're afraid of the risk of allowing people to tell some lies.

So these situations are really robust.

We reflect on them.

We think in this given situation, when a person can't change or the information is trivial, we should lie.

At the same time, we think if we tell people they can lie sometimes, they're also going to get it wrong sometimes and they're going to end up telling selfish lies or telling well-meaning lies that actually do harm.

And we're very, very worried about that error.

And so we'd rather live in a world where people tell truths in the wrong circumstances instead of lies in the wrong circumstances.

So it's complicated.

They can.

They can increase trust.

So in these types of situations, when both parties recognize that telling the lie prevents unnecessary harm,

the listener will increase in their belief that the communicator has their best interests in mind.

And so that's a certain form of trust.

I'm now willing to be emotionally vulnerable to you, to seek you out for support.