Ends and Means

[andrewducker]

I occasionally think about deceit and how worthwhile it is. It's one of those things I love in roleplaying games (hence my Scorpion Courtier in Legend of the 5 Rings), but avoid thoroughly in real life.

Experience has taught me that secrets cannot be kept by multiple people, the truth will come out and no matter how good your intentions were in lying to them, no matter how positive the outcome, people will hate you for not telling them the truth.

Can anyone think of situations where lies did, in fact work out for the best in the long run? (excepting things like counter-intelligence against enemy nations).

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I only tell significant lies to people I do not respect and only when it is useful to me. In general, this means that I mostly lie to my parents. I don't know how useful they have been (I suspect very) but while I have been caught in a few, I have maintained a rather impressive tapestry of lies over several decades with them.

According to what they believe:

I make significantly more money than I actually do, am not pagan, have never had a handfasting with imester, etc...

As for counter-intelligence, I talked to a friend who recently did a great deal of reading about Cold War spying and he largely came to the conclusion that the net benefit of all of the spying by all sides was nothing. By and large, it seemed that the various secrets that were revealed would have gotten out in a month or two anyway. His claim was that the entire endeavor was nothing more than a game played by people who assumed that it would be useful and who enjoyed doing it. This accords well with your idea that large-scale lying is largely useless.

[andrewducker]

he largely came to the conclusion that the net benefit of all of the spying by all sides was nothing.

There are of course the counter-examples of both the enigma machine giving the locations of the german fleet and the incorrect information leaked as to the allied reinvasion which caused the tank battalions to sit at Calais rather than repelling allied troops.

But I'm sure that largely the counter-intelligence wasn't hugely useful.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I think that intelligence can be vital during wartime, because timing and exact & immediate knowledge are vital. OTOH, during peacetime, even during the Cold War, nothing was ever lost by having information come out a month later. I could easily see only having intelligence agencies active during and immediately prior to wars.

[andrewducker]

Aah. One of the things that came out after 9/11 was that the incoming Bush regime had shut down their Middle East intelligence networks as being unecessary, as they were slowly pulling out of other country's affairs.

And then found it impossible to just restart them instantly...