Stop Lying (2020 Rerun)

0:00So, Burdo, do you ever lie? Never. Come on, you gotta lie sometime. I have been told that I have lied sometimes. What do you mean? What are some of the lies you're willing to tell us that you've committed? Alright, so I mean obviously as a kid I did tell lies. In fact, I told there are three memorable lies that I told that sort of define my childhood and my upbringing and made me loathe to tell lies later on in life. What about a lie recently? Like tell us about lies that you've done in the past. I was supposed to have a document done for work and I knew I was going to be able to get it done that evening but I hadn't technically finished it. And so I lied and I said, yeah, yeah, it's done. I'll send it in the morning but really I knew it was like, man, most of the work is ahead of me. But I did like the mental calculus and so I did in fact I did not spend it in the morning and it was fine. But it was a lie.

1:00Yeah, so you know that counts. Okay, so let's drill down on that one. Why did you lie? Well, because let's see, I didn't want it to sound like I wasn't making it an important priority or that it wasn't important to me. Why? Why did you not want it that? Because I didn't want them to feel like I wasn't taking it seriously I had other priorities that were more important than this thing. And I know this sounds repetitive but why didn't you want that? Because that would make it make me look bad in their eyes as a worker, as a coworker. And why didn't you want that? Because then they wouldn't trust me as much next time. Ironically. I know this is stupid for me to keep asking but I am genuinely curious why wouldn't you want them to not trust you? Well, because then, well, first of all, this could be a snowball, right? At first they don't trust me with a small thing but then over time it's like, yeah, let's not work with them.

2:02Because I don't know, it's kind of hard to rely on him. And then pretty soon I might be out of a job. And then if I'm out of a job, I might not have food. And then I might start, I might end up on the streets begging, I might die. Death. I lied because I'm afraid of death. I mean, you wanted to know why. That is why. Well, I mean, I learned it from watching you. Is it accurate? I mean, if you follow the trail of thought, yes. Yeah, I think we could have ended with they would think bad thoughts about me. Sure. The tribe might kick me out. Yeah. Well, and you have rejection traumas. Oh, right, that's true. I mean, which could have led to you lying as a third grader as well because your mom literally abandoned you. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we've talked about this before that. It could have been because, you know, like we talked about this. My dad didn't beat me. So I wasn't physically afraid of telling him something. Why was I so afraid? He did raise his voice.

3:02And you know what, when he raised his voice, and he made his scrunchy scary face, it's like this kind of like you see it with a little, that was scary. But I don't know. Like my fear was so much greater than that. And so we've talked about how maybe it was in fact that I subconsciously was afraid that if I did something wrong, I would lose my dad as well. Yeah. When we're rejected or we feel rejected, you know, sometimes just divorce can do that because you're one of your parents becomes less involved in your life. We blame ourselves. We think if I was a better boy, this wouldn't have happened. It's self-centered, but that's the way children think. And so to be a bad boy means rejection. It's happened before and it could happen again. So I'm going to head that off of the past and I'm going to lie. I'm going to trick. And you know, that will solve my anxiety and it will make me feel more secure. But as you said, it's ironic because lying actually will jeopardize your standing and your acceptance from the other person.

4:10Yeah. And to drill down on this a little bit, we've talked about this before and I'm reticent to bring it up again. But you did this exact same lie to me a few years ago when we were going to a Halloween party. You remember that? Yeah, yeah. When I was on the way. But so that one, that one is, or was, I guess, I don't know if it's so much recently, but that was a very common lie that I would tell, which was about how close I was to leaving or being at a place. Right. So that was, if it makes you feel any better, it wasn't just you. Oh no, I know it's not me. I knew Berto was like that. I knew that Berto has a complex around disappointing people such that he will lie to avoid disappointing people and thus disappoint people with his lies. And Berto invited me to this Halloween party and it was like an hour drive away. It was, you know, pretty far up north and it was an amazing Halloween party in the end. But I did not want to arrive at the Halloween party before you because I don't know these people.

5:13I don't know anyone at this party and I was like, no rush. I'm not me and my friends were at, you know, we're having fun at my house. No big deal. But can you let me know when you're there or almost there? And I don't mind, I don't mind getting there at 11 p.m. Like it's no big deal. Because I knew if I put pressure on you, you would interpret it as I was getting increasingly disappointed that you weren't leaving. Right. You're like, oh yeah, you know, and we went back and forth a few times and then you texted me, I'm on my way. We're rolling up on the house. And we don't know what chastity is. We have an address. And I start to text you and I'm like, I'm like, so you're there, right? Because you left an hour and 45 minutes ago and it only takes you 45 minutes ago. And you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're parking. We're parking. And I'm like, you're parking? Because we were parking. And I was like, I don't see you. So we park and we get out and I'm texting you and I'm like, so where are I don't see you?

6:18And you're like, oh, you know, we're there. We're there. We're totally, we're parking. And I'm like, well, where? Yeah, I'm just so confused. And then after, I don't know, half an hour standing on the curb, I just said, oh, he did it. He lied to me. You are exaggerating, by the way. That's a huge exaggeration. I never, ever, ever say I'm parking. If I'm not like mentally like, I'm almost about to be parking. I would never say I'm parking and like be like half an hour away. Like I would never do that. So like, for example, I've done this like countless times going to Seattle, which by the way, is the worst. And a lot of times I'm actually seriously parking and it takes me half an hour to park. But regardless, you admit it. And the point is, is that because I know you, it's not a malicious lie. It is a lie of desperation and has nothing to do with me and has everything to do with your something in your history.

7:24Well, and I, so I should have told you upfront because what was happening, and you're absolutely right about the psychology of it, because what was happening is Eric was late. And when they got there, we were still not ready to go. And I'm trying to play both sides like, because I don't want you not to show up. So I'm like, if I tell it like he might not go and then I don't want him to not go. And so you're absolutely right about that. But I should have just been like, hey man, we're running late. Eric just got here. Yeah. And I would have been like, no, effing problem, man. We're having fun here. I don't have to go to this party, you know, but part of actually what I do professionally is I have to ride a fine line between what might be possible. And what people say is possible because in my line of work, it's like, if you, if you just go by what is on paper, like what we can maybe do, like you're just never going to accomplish anything big because people tend to be either way to conservative or way to overest.

8:24Yeah, like, like, like, Theranos. Yeah, exactly. So, so part of, yeah, sure. But like, so part of what you have to do is like, you have to basically draw a mythical line in the middle line. You could call it lie, but it's really like, as I'm not telling the truth, I have a bone to pick with society, not you, but with society drifting away from the virtue that we all learned when we were five years old in kindergarten that you do not lie. Conspiracy theories are based on this assumption that people are lying and they're not wrong. People are lying. The government is lying. Just not about that, but they are lying and they are liars. And if we're going to have a society, one-on-one, you and me, Berto, if I'm going to trust you, you know, if I'm going to say, well, he says he's doing this, and I trust him. It's got to stop people. Try to gravitate towards the truth and in business because our capitalistic society rewards, N-RON, Theranos, all these other people, the liars get the money, the liar gets elected, then society looks up to these people and says, well, that's just what you do.

9:37And if you're going to get ahead, you have to lie. Why? Because we do not punish people for lying. We only punish very few individuals. People who lie need to have, now I don't know what sort of consequences, but at the very least we should like say, oh, that person lies, I can never trust anything they say. As a person who considers the truth to be very important and I, from the day that I was, I lied when I, one of the very first lies I can remember saying was, as four years old, and I stole my friend's matchbox car, which was totally stupid because I had the exact same one. In fact, my name is newer and it looked better. And I'm sitting in my hallway staring at this matchbox car and I feel so guilty. And I don't know what to do. I'm sort of stuck. I'm like, I stole it. I don't know what to do. My mom walks by and she just asks, she just sees me kind of staring at this matchbox car and she's like, what's going on? And I burst out crying. I stole this matchbox car. And I'm thinking, I'm going to be strung up because, you know, lying is bad. It's wrong. And my mom says, we'll just give it back.

10:43And I was like, okay. So I gave it back to my friend and my friend was like, oh, thanks. And like nothing ever happened. But the point was was, I learned that the guilt of lying is not worth the lie. Whatever consequence the truth has, it's lesser. It's not as painful as the pain one can have from having a grey zone of lies in your life. We have to, as a society, return to revert you of truthfulness. And in the past, religion of God would punish you, if you send, right? And so as a society, we're moving away from those kinds of thoughts, which is fine. But we haven't replaced it with another constitution, if you will, of human behavior. And I feel like lies have become so normalized that it's like, well, you know, it's not that big of a deal. Like they won't find out. It's, you know, it's for their own good that I'm lying to them. And I just don't think that's a good way to live.

11:52There are lies that are consequential. And I think because of my own childhood trauma, like, I can't lie about consequential stuff. So like, that's why I am such an open book when it comes to like stuff because I'm like, I'm just going to tell you. But at the same time, like human, the human brain operates way too fast and randomly for us to constantly be saying everything that's in our brain. Right? So like the extreme would be like your fat, you're ugly. I don't think you're, you're good. I think you're like, if we actually operated this way because we felt that if we don't express everything in our head, it would be a lie. Like, that would dissolve society. We can't handle the truth, so to speak. Well, there is a thing called radical honesty. And if you live in those circles, you learn to deal with the truth because someone says like, no, I don't want to hang out with you because you've been annoying me lately. The truth is relative sometimes, right? Like, meaning how you feel in your head about something isn't actually always finite or constant, right?

12:54We have a device that measures these things in your blood versus we're trying to develop it. One is a lie, absolutely. And one is the truth. And that's consequential. There are examples where you could make an argument the fact that you don't tell your wife that her butt looks big in those jeans. Or even something bigger. Like, let's say you're being interviewed about how you feel about a senator who just died. Do you say, well, I still think you was a coward? Do you have to say that? Yeah. So, so there, but most of us can agree on certain things. Like saying that you have a device that can measure things in blood when you don't have a device that can measure things in blood. Most of us, if not all of us can agree, though, that's just a flat out lie. But we have normalized those lies among many others in our society that it distresses me. Again, you see the consequences in our society. There are so many people who don't even believe scientists when they say that the earth is a sphere.

13:54And that's consequential. The scientists lied to me before. And they have scientists have lied to them before. Sigurites don't cause cancer. They have lied in the past. It's wrong. It's wrong. And it destroys democracy. If we want to have a democracy, we have to work together. And we have to trust institutions like science, like journalism, like politicians, like your neighbor. We have to be able to trust each other. There has to be an assumption of truth. It's not okay. Now, if you end up lying on accident in the moment, as Berto was kind of alluding to, fine. Followed up with the fact, I'm sorry, I just lied. It was a knee-jerk reaction. It's a problem of mine. Here's the truth. Dada, Dada, Dada. You can always say that. And if someone did that to me, my trust points in them would skyrocket. I'd be like, oh my God, that person just admitted they lied to me without me catching them.

14:55I now trust them a lot more. It's okay. We make mistakes sometimes. So anyway, I'm just ranting. But let's take a break. Get back. Let's go into this research that I want to go over with you, Berto. What do you say? Let's do it. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. And if you sign up, please use the link below because it really helps us out. So first off, let's look at that name BetterHelp. Let's think about that first word, Better. As a thought exercise, take a second to think about what you'd like to be better in your life, things that relate to therapy anyway. Like a better marriage or better self-esteem or better boundaries or just feeling better. And if you're not in therapy, maybe think about how therapy could help with that. You know, we all deserve to be given the time to make those things better in our lives. Well, one place you could find a therapist is at BetterHelp. And just chime in here on this live read ad. The rest of what I'm about to say is what BetterHelp wrote. I actually don't really comprehend what they're trying to say with this. So I'll just read it. Better is a feeling defined by you. And for BetterHelp, it's a BetterHelp therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries.

16:05So sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash Kirk. That's better H-E-L-P.com slash Kirk. Alright, we're back from the break. I'm trying to figure out what I would have you do, Berto, in this situation to convince people to become a podge. What if a radically honest person were to try to get the listeners to become a patient of the podcast? What would that sound like? Listen, we have this thing that we're just now after 12 years sort of comfortable doing where one of us is an expert in one field and has sort of crammed themselves into the other field to talk on a microphone. And the other one of us doesn't know almost anything about this field, but we are here to tell you our random thoughts about stuff that sort of has something to do with your mental health maybe. But the great news is if you support us via Patreon, all of this is a lie and we're actually the best thing ever and we're true experts in all fields.

17:15We're going to get emails about me yelling at you, Berto. You know what I love you. What you yelled at me? Well, I mean, when Daddy... When Daddy and Daddy fight listeners get uncomfortable. But we're cool with each other, people out there. There's nothing at stake. Well, there's a lot at stake, but there's nothing in jeopardy. There's vegan stake. So experiments done in a team of researchers in Spain, they did two experiments. Okay, so this first experiment, this is all online. They told participants to flip a coin, a virtual coin, and then report what happened. If it was heads, they got $5. And you can only flip the coin once. If it was tails, they got nothing. So you're on your computer and you click this virtual coin.

18:19If you get heads, you get $5. If you get tails, you get nothing. And you can only flip it once. But you reported what you got. So there's a little field that said, which one did you get? Did you get heads, or did you get tails? And so if you got it self-reporting. Right, so if you got tails, you could say head heads and you would get $5. Unmannounced to the participants, the researchers were keeping track of the actual coin flip that you did. They made it seem like, look, it's an honor system. You tell us what you got. Okay, so for those people, so half the people got heads. And so we're not going to talk about them because they all told the truth. But of those who didn't, of those who got tails, what percentage flipped tails and were honest about it? They got tails and they're like, oh, I got tails. I get $0.

19:19What percentage of the people who flipped tails were honest about it? We're honest 60%. Lower. 40%. Yeah, about 37%. Yeah, that's surprising. So by the way, about a third of people. So that's an example of a lie I would never tell. Like I would never cheat at anything like that. Like I don't cheat at games. Like if we're playing monopoly and I see like an extra $5. I'm not grabbing that bill. I don't cheat at anything that's like, the same reason I don't like spoilers. Like I like things like we have rules we've agreed on when we're going to play by the frickin rules. Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that. Right? But there is the person, and you know, and I wouldn't fault like someone who's starving, their kid is starving and then they took the bread. Like that's a thing that's existing sadly in our world. But there is, there are sadly a lot of people clearly by this percentage is that they don't care. Like if it's... Yeah, so even though no one would know if you're being honest about the $500 playing monopoly or not,

20:24why do you care about telling the truth? That's a good question. I mean, oh, actually I know one of the reasons for me when I was little, like I constantly heard from my dad about all these examples about how the world was unfair and about how you know certain groups were being treated unfairly. And I saw it in the news constantly. I also saw it around my family and stuff. And so I developed this like hyperbolic notion of like the need for fairness. Like that to me is very important. We need to be fair. And so I think that when you have an agreed upon set of rules and you're like lying or you're breaking those rules without agreeing, that to me is unfair for the other people and for everyone involved. Yeah, so 30-some percent were honest. About a third of people flipped tails, knew they weren't going to get any money and said, you know what?

21:24I got tails, I get nothing. So there are four different categories. Let me tell you all four. So there's people that flipped tails and were honest. And there's people that flipped tails and just said they got heads. Then there were people who flipped until they got heads. So because you could keep flipping technically, but the instructions were clearly like flip it once and tell us what you got. I see. But there were people who flipped it until they got heads and then they said I got heads. And then there were people that didn't even flip it at all and just said they got heads. Wow, okay. So there's the people that flipped it once didn't get heads and lied about it. Right. There's the people that flipped it multiple times until they were not lying about getting heads, even though they lied about only flipping once. Right. And then there were the people that didn't even bother flipping. They're just, they just lied. Right. So what percentage flipped tails and just flat out lied? Let's go with 15%. 7%.

22:24Okay. So what percentage of people flipped until they got heads and reported the outheads? 25%. 7%. So I'm surprised. I would have thought that that was the, the librationalization that won the day for the liars. Like, well, I technically got heads. Right. Yeah. So probably. Right. Yeah. So, because that's kind of, yeah, they call those the cheating non-liars. Yeah. So they're not lying, but they cheated. The people that flipped tails and lie, they're just called liars. And then we have the radical liars. What percentage? That's like 50% or something? Yeah. 49%. Oh my God. They didn't even bother. Yeah. Okay. See, this is the other thing. I would never feel good about winning at anything where I had cheated. Yeah. Unless it's like a completely, like if we're literally just goofing around, like, let's say we're, you know what I'm saying? Like if it's totally, like we're cheating on purpose kind of thing. Like, because to me, it's like when I'm playing a video game, if I turn on the cheats, I only

23:29do it for fun and it quickly gets old. Right. So I never like that. Yeah. So, but we all know people that love the cheats and will even go online and do PVP and cheat and cheat, you know? And there's a whole, there's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a rampant problem. There are servers that have to spend a lot of time booting people who are using exploits. Right. Okay. And so I'm, I know I'm not going to win the day with you on this, but there is a, there is a fundamental difference where I believe this and I'm not trying to justify myself because I still agree with you ultimately. It's just what is the purpose of the lie? If the purpose of the lie, it misguidingly so is to try to help someone other than yourself. Like we can maybe have a conversation about how to deal with it better. When the purpose of the lie is to just help yourself, now we have to like understand, well, is this person in dire straits or is this person literally just cheat, trying to cheat life? Well, give me an example.

24:30Well, so for example, like the, the lie where you're like, so what did you think of my play? Oh, it was good. Yeah, totally. I lied to you. But I'm not hurting you. I mean, I'm trying not to hurt you. Now someone might say that that actually hurts you so we could have that conversation and say, maybe I can give you a different kind of feedback. I get it. But I'm not malicious. I'm trying to, trying to like not bring you down or something. So it depends on some level. So I just think for myself, if someone's play sucked and I've been there before and they asked me how things went and I, I would not say, wow, that's, if I thought that they thought it went well or they were hoping it went well, I would say like, wow, you know, went well. It's cool. But I'll tell you, this would be that perhaps the cheating non-liar part is I would find something that was true and I would say that. I would say that. And that's actually what I usually do too when these situations are like, I just couldn't believe how much effort was spent on the lighting. Really amazing.

25:30Amazing. Yeah. Your costume was amazing. That's amazing. That's just my clothing. Oh, wow, geez. Even better. It's amazing. You have a great sense of style. No, I would find something like, wow, you know, it was, it was very believable or I don't know, I would find something that I could say that was true. You know, you could say that that's not being honest, honest. But I guess my point with it was, look, there are times where you might fudge the truth or maybe even flat out lie. But your intention wasn't for you to get away with something and cheat like you. Well, but it was the kind of art. So say, Berto, you're, well, let's make it real personal. You have a performance with your band. And I would go to your show as a lot of the times. And you come out off the stage and you come up to me and you're like, you're like, how do you think it went? And I'm like, there are all sorts of problems that I could observe.

26:34The sound was off. Couldn't hear your voice. It seemed like you're, you didn't warm up your voice enough. You seem nervous. There were some parts where you and Eric weren't really in sync. You know, I don't know, I'm just sort of, you know, making stuff up. But would you want me to say that? Or would you want... And I know that you'd couch it a little bit, but that would be super useful. But that's my personal. So, so if I said something like, oh my God, it was amazing. You guys are great. Which one would you rather, I say? Well, the first one with... Right. So what are we trying to avoid? Are we trying to avoid someone else's feelings being hurt? Or am I trying to avoid my own anxiety about someone else disapproving me for what I really believe and think? Absolutely, but you know, this isn't... This is the thing. I know you're not trying to make it black and white because I can envision a billion hypothetical scenarios where...

27:34A lot of times we make excuses for white lies. That's fair. That's fair for the other person, but for our... We're lying for our sake, not for their sake. But you could imagine like, you know, a relative passes away and like, tell us a memory you had. Well, so I have no good memories with this relative. They were really not an important person in my life. So I've been here before. So I had... So this is actually... You know, this is just one of your examples. But I actually hated at funerals when everyone talks 100% positive about the person you died. I mean, everyone is free to grieve in the way that they went to. But for me, I'm like, so the funerals that I go to, the memorials I go to, where people will give some of those nuanced stories, maybe even a negative one. And then they will say something nice. I trust those people so much greater than the person who just gets up there and says all nice things. Now maybe... And you can make that argument and we can debate that. And we could see which one is actually ultimately better for which...

28:35I love it. But you have to. You have to come with me on the realization that the person that flat out constantly cheats at their taxes, goes and steals whatever they can. Like, the actual truly malicious liar. There's gotta be a difference. Yeah. Well, there's a difference, but I call it a culture of lying that we've created. I'm not saying we're supposed to be radically honest. When we do lie, we have to have a critical analysis of what is happening in that moment. And you have to acknowledge right now I am lying. And there is a potential consequence to that. It is an untruth. It is a flat out lie. I am deceiving this other person. Is it worth it? Am I doing it for the right reasons? Instead of...

29:38Well, everyone lies. You know, white lies. It just happens. As if it's just commonplace to just flat out lie to someone's face. I'm not saying you don't do it sometimes for legitimate reasons, but we frame it as it's part of life. And when you talk to a five-year-old, they're like, but it's a lie. So when I have something in my head about someone, like some value judgment, that may or may not be a lie. Like, or me saying it may or me. Because there are so many gray areas with what we think about our own cognition and what we think is true enough. As an example, it's like, you have always told me that you would never drink at a party. And here you are drinking at a party. Were you lying to me all those years? Probably not. Maybe not. But now they're drinking. Like, why? Psychology is crazy, right? But there is definitely a difference when you are maliciously, constantly lying. So like, it's a matter of degrees. It's not a slippery slope. I think it is a slippery slope.

30:38I mean, I have no data. But I don't know if this is just me getting old. That's my argument is that it is a slippery slope. And that we have, as a society, slipped so far, normalizing little lies and bigger lies, excusing lies, so much so that we have now just accepted that you just can't trust people. Now I don't know. What is the past you think? Are you trying to make the world great again? No. But like I said, it could just be just because I'm old now and I wasn't aware of things when I was, it's not like politicians and still the truth necessarily. Yeah, I don't think humans have ever operated from 100% honesty. But and who knows, there's no way to measure this. But I would suspect that in the 70s, the common person in Seattle, because that's all I know about. And the daily count of deceptions that they have committed were less.

31:42Jimmy Carter, when the country was experiencing troubles, if you don't know, he was a president, United States and such, the United States was going through an economic crisis. And experts were saying that they didn't know if we were going to get out of it. And they didn't know how long it was going to take. And if we were going to get out of it, sacrifices are going to have to be made. People were going to have to lose jobs, you know, like you to get out of the deficit, to get the economy back in line. We were going to have to cut programs. Bad things were going to have to happen. Jimmy Carter, because he was so religious and this sort of guy, and is still that guy, he's still alive, right? Think so, yeah. He gave us speech to the American public and said, here's the deal. We are in a crisis right now. And if we're going to get out of it, here's what we have to do. And there's no easy way to say that. There's going to be problems. People hated him for that. They thought he was a joke that he would, and then who did we elect after that?

32:45An actor, Ronald Reagan, who frequently lied to us about the state of things, so much so that Iran contraaffair. And most people conclude he was absolutely a part of that lie and knew absolutely what was going on in all of North. Absolutely. Took the bullet for that. Was that progress? Was that a good thing? I argue no. And so as a society, we would rather have Ronald Reagan than Jimmy Carter. We would rather be lied to than being told the hard truth. And where are we today? Now, there's been another experiment that just popped into my head. Mark Rober? Mark Rober, you know him? He's big. Oh, I know the one about stealing boxes, though. I've never seen that video. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, okay. So he did an experiment where he planted across the United States a bunch of wallets, just

33:45left them in public places. And in the wallet was an instruction of like, if you find this wallet, please mail it back to me at this address. So not only did they mail it back, but people had to get an envelope and pay for shipping themselves. And I can't remember the exact stat, but like the majority were sent back to him. Even though it was just a wallet sitting there. And maybe that was more personalized, a personified because there's a human being on the other side of that wallet, you know. So what does this all mean? You know, this coin flip thing. It's easy and what is being reported in the news is that, you know, people are liars. But it's context dependent, of course, to this experiment. Yeah. For this particular action, apparently most people are totally okay lying. But in other contexts, they're, they're almost, it's a pain in the butt to be truthful.

34:46It's a pain in the butt to do the right thing. And yet most people will actually do the right thing. So we want to be careful about how we read these research projects and what point they're probably trying to get across. Because to the researchers, what they would love is that people get up on arms and they did. There's a New York Times article about this. As a researcher, you become in research circles. You become famous. You get better, you know, professor jobs. You get accepted into journals more. Like it's a real thing to be, to be get into the news. So the scandal helps them. Yeah. The scandalized point, which is that humans are liars. And so we just have to read these things with some, but clearly some people lie. Other reasons are psychopathy. They have any social personality sort of. They don't care about other people's feelings and they lie. Another reason is pathological lying out of either psychopathy or because they learned if they didn't lie, knee-jerk reaction, they, something really bad is going to happen

35:50to it. And if someone or you abandon them when they're growing up and they learn early in life that they need to lie to get out of it, you will find people will have pathological lying behaviors. And you can listen to the other podcast where we talk about that. Another reason is we've been talking about this in the past is to lie about the coin flip is poverty. There were times in my life where $5 would have gone a long way for me. I mean, no joke. When I was in my early 20s, pretty much until I was probably like 26 or 7. $5 was no joke. I mean, there was a point in my life where I literally had $5 in my wallet and I didn't have a job. And I had like a gallon of gas in my car. And I didn't know what to do. I just started driving around Ballard looking in despair for just to find a job.

36:53And I drove by Godfather's Pizza and they said hiring drivers. And even though I had a bachelor's degree from the foster school of business at the University of Washington, one of the most prestigious universities in the world and business universities at that, I am driving into a Godfather's Pizza and applying for a driver's job which was really applying to be a dishwasher in the... Dishwasher. You know, they lie and they say hiring drivers. But what they're really doing is they're hiring dishwashers and people to make the pizzas and maybe ever once in a while you can drive. And so $5, there were times when I would have gone a long way. If I was given this test, I'd be like, I better get heads because I need that $5. That's doubling my wealth. Yeah, that'll last me. I don't have to find a job another day anyway.

37:56That literally happened to be so I graduated and with the business degree and had a really hard time getting a job. I was stupid. No one mentored me. No one told me, here's how you get a job. You get an internship. I just thought like you get a degree and you get a job. You get that job. Also destructive entitlement without going in. You can listen to my full deep dive on nausea and contextual family therapy. But there's this notion that when you get ripped off in life, you're abandoned, you're abused, you are fired from a job that you didn't deserve to be fired from. You develop what we call destructive entitlement meaning you feel entitled because you didn't get what you deserved in the past. It means that you will take from in the future. Your ledger is off balance and you feel like you're owed things. Some of you out there might know people in your family that are like this. They seem to never give as much as they get and they seem to be very expected that they're

38:59going to get things. I imagine I'd speculate that would lead to more lying on this thing. The next experiment and then we'll end with this is instead of a coin flip, it was a six-sided die and it was virtual and you would roll it. If you roll the one you got one dollar and all the way up to five, you get five dollars. If you roll the six, you got nothing. This is different. It's not binary. It's not one or zero. It's like there's a gradient. For you to claim, for example, if it was, hey, if you get a 500,000 out of a million, you win five bucks. You really got 500,000? Really? What do you think happened? I'm betting that there was a small change in the percentages. Maybe it was not that small but there was a change in the percentages because more people feared being caught in a lie because the odds are not quite as easy.

40:05You think like meaning mean like it's probably a little less likely they actually are telling the truth. Interesting. I would say that if it was 38% where the only ones that told the truth, maybe that went up to like 45% or something. No. The percentages were pretty much the same. The only difference was for those that lied, many people lied not that they got a five but they got a three. If they rolled out six or a one, they would say, I got a three. They would lie but not all the way to five. They would average out the lie. Why would they do that? If you're going to lie, why not just go for five? Did they get any money partially? If you roll a one, you get one dollar up to five. You get five dollars. It's the line from Tombstone. Doc Hollywood says, what's his name?

41:06Holiday? Holiday, not Hollywood. Doc Hollywood says, my hypocrisy goes only so far because like, okay, I'm lying but I'm not going to lie that much. It's, I got a three. Right. Apparently, if we're going to lie, somehow it feels like less of a lie if we don't lie as much. Right. It's like, there's a guilt there. It's like, well, I want to lie because I feel like I deserve it. But I feel like I shouldn't go full lie. You know? It's like, did you finish all your beans? Yeah. Now, there were three beans left. But I ate most of them. Right. You know, instead of like, did you finish your beans and you haven't touched them? Yeah, exactly. Or, or, or I guess an analogy would be, did you finish your beans and then you haven't touched the beans but you quickly scoop some beans into your mouth and you're like,

42:08rough. Yeah, like, yeah, I finished. Rough. So, okay, so that's an interesting one. In high school and not high school in junior high, we had to do an assignment that was, you had to keep a journal for six months. So six months worth of journaling. So this amounted to, I don't know how many pages but it was not a little bit like you had to do it. Okay. I didn't do it. I didn't do it because I was terrible at homework. And I didn't know that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I could never do homework well. Like, I was so good at classes. Like I could, I could pass the tests and I'll probably need your homework. I think it was, I don't, I wouldn't call it officially ADD but I couldn't sit down and concentrate. I would just, you know, you could, I would, yeah, you could. I mean, with your, with your computer, with your, yeah, with, no, no, what stuff I cared about for sure, right? The, the school stuff I didn't care about. Like math, absolutely. Computers, absolutely. Geography. What? I got to sit down and memorize these things. So you don't want to do it?

43:09Probably. But I try, I mean, I did try like my dad's like, go upstairs, you got to do a thing before you can't watch TV. And I would sit there and my desk and I have these painful memories of just sitting there and just like staring at the book and like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And then I should probably go get a glass of water first, you know what? Like that would happen a lot. Right. But anyway, so let alone keeping a journal for, like, forget about it. But I wasn't the only one. A couple of my friends didn't do it either. Here's the difference. The night before, the two of them crammed to put together some half-ass pretend journal. Yeah. I don't even know what they did. I think I've done that. Specifically, I remember having an assignment, maybe even in graduate school. Or you had to do it. I couldn't do it. I could not get myself. Why? My hypocrisy goes only so far. So I didn't turn in anything and I got the failing grade. My hypocrisy goes only so far.

44:10Well, it's not hypocritical. You just didn't want to do it. So you didn't do it. Right. But I bet you, if I had started a week earlier and I had crammed, I might have lied and said, yeah, I kept the journal. Oh. So if you say, in one night, did seven, I wasn't going to do that. But still, I'd rather live with you than your friends, honestly. Yes. Me too. Me too. Well, because when he told me, I was like, what? Now I'm impressed that he was able to cram that much in. Of course, he got a super bad grade. I'm sure the teacher could tell. Like, come on. These are not dumb people. Yeah. Well, I don't know how to conclude this other than to say that for me, I value telling the truth. I like to live that way. I find tremendous gratification in having a virtue, literal virtue of telling the truth.

45:10Am I have I lied? Yeah. Do I say whitelys? Yes. But I try to, in my head, acknowledge, what are you doing right now and why? And I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. And I have, do a full inventory of what I can remember. I get the cold sweats just thinking about like, oh, there was that one. That was pretty bad, you know. I'm not proud of it. It's not good. And I am hurt by the lies that have been told to me. It hurt, it deeply hurts me, you know, hurts me emotionally. Like saying that essentially is a message of like, I don't matter. I don't matter enough for me to be truthful with you. I don't matter. And I matter as much as the way a politician feels about their constituents to be lied to is just so hurtful. I guess is the conclusion that I have for this episode is that I don't think I've ever

46:12really framed it this way, but lies traumatize. What do you think about that? It rhymes. Yeah, I think there is a sad reality, which is like what I was saying, which is that the world is sort of full of lies. I don't know if it's gotten worse. Certainly feels like right now politically things have gotten worse, but maybe it was always like this or worse, who knows. I am a thousand percent with you on the big stuff. I have certainly been guilty of what I consider the non- I don't know, lethal lies anyways. But I do believe that you're onto something when I do, let me put it this way. I do think, although I don't agree that everything's a slippery slope. I do think that the more we practice lying, the more comfortable we get with lies, the more we will not have a functioning society.

47:14Or relationships. Yeah. I mean, the distance that we feel from each other, I wonder if it has at least in part one of the factors is that we don't trust each other and part of the reason why we don't trust each other is because we've all been lied to so freaking much. So many times we've just been lied to and or we haven't been told the flat out truth. One of the, when I think back to the people that I really like and really respect, and you're one of these people, Bert, oh, because you'll tell the truth under circumstances that, you know, you're not afraid to tell the truth under circumstances where other people would shy away from those difficulties. And I think about those people and I think, you know what? I think one of the things I really like about those people, I feel good around them is that they tell it like it is, they tell the truth. They will, even if it hurts, you know, they'll say, Kirk, I need to tell you some.

48:19I didn't like that or you look stupid in that thing or, you know, whatever it is, whatever sort of negative feeling I get from the insults or whatever is far offset by like, oh my God, I can trust this person. They're telling the truth. They're likely to tell me the truth in the future. How wonderful is that? So people out there like think about that in your own life, you know, what gift can you give to people by insulting them? Honestly, you know, you give people a gift of truthfulness. Well, that does it for that episode of Psychology and Seattle. Thanks for joining us out there truly. Because you enjoy it, because you deserve it and you enjoy it, you better enjoy it. Wait, what in the world? How do we end these podcasts? Everyone out there, please take care of yourself because you deserve it.