Reporting the Truth about Lying

 

Moreover, she says, liars underestimate the harm they do to themselves and the harm done the general level of trust and responsibility.  Once public servants especially "lose their bearing in this way," she wrote just a few years after Watergate, all manner of "shabby deceits" become possible.  As Bok says, "Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain.  They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity."

Which is a completely different thing that making the rules because you're an empire builder, but I digress - confident, aggressive people exploit resources after all - they don't pay for them. 

If I told you I knew it was just a matter of time before the psychology and moral failings of Rob Ford (especially given the broader cynicism and system-rocking scandals out there right now) became a conduit for the media and through them, the general public, into the biology and psychology behind integrity and collaboration, would you believe me?

You shouldn't - at least, not just because I say so.  Not even if I say so with great confidence and never waver in my defense of my cleverness.  Bluster is not the same thing as sincerity.

If you were to believe me - and I can't counsel you on what to believe, that's for you to decide - you should do so based on the track I have laid down in this blog over the course of a couple years. 

Truth, judgment, sociology, context and the behavioural economics behind cognitive labour are all areas of great interest to me that I spend an ungodly amount of time thinking about.  As I tend not to expend vast portions of my cognitive energy on self-promotion and defense, I like to think I've got a bit more perspective scope with which to identify trends and patters emerging around me.

Which isn't to say I could be wrong - absolutely I could; I'm not precognitive after all.  In fact, I can't be all that good at what I do, because if the world works the way we're told it does, that value would have been recognized and gobbled up by monied people looking to maximize their own interests; I'd be spending my time on the talking head circuit or some such.  Which I'm not.

 

If, however, I suggest that all this stuff is going to grow in importance and seriously start influencing how we do things like training and motivating people in and out of politics, you might now be slightly more inclined to give my musings some thought.

 

But all the same, I wonder if Jim Coyle is familiar with Dan Ariely?  I bet he'd find his bits and bobs on our buggy morale code interesting.