Yep. Seriously. Santa, tooth fairy, oontsie-tah, detachable fingers, they're not everyday stuff, and parents usually explain it was a joke sometime in elementary school. Religion is the opposite from what I can tell, which is why I think it's a poor analogy.
It seems to me like you're still grasping at straws, even after having it explained to you what is the actual analogy. The core of the analogy is the
belief in Santa vs belief in God, and what they promise you, not in whether the figure of authority telling you about it is lying or not, nor if they plan to tell you later that your trust in them was misplaced.
I'm worried that you're projecting
I'm not sure I understand your examples. Do you mean there's a discrepancy between values and
action? That's hypocrisy, but it's not lying.
No, I'm saying that most of those don't even really believe the kind of stuff they tell kids.
Plus, while it is hypocrisy, telling falsehoods is a part of the very definition of
hypocrisy. Because, frankly, if someone professes to have some principles and standards and beliefs, yet they consistently do something else, then they don't really have them. They may be some ideals, but they're not their principles or beliefs.
Belief really just mean believing something is true, and the same areas on the brain light up on MRI for any kind of beliefs, from "I have my keys" to "Jesus died and raised." And if you believe you lost your keys, you search for them. If you believe there's poison in a bottle, you don't drink it. Etc. The notion that someone actually believes X, but somehow just fails to act as if X were factored in in their choices of what to do, is kinda not making much sense.
For example, I think drinking is unhealthy and should be avoided and this is what I tell my kids. I also drink. The second sentence does not mean the first sentence was a lie. Both are true.
Unless you're an alcoholic, as in physiological dependence, or someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to finish that glass
or else, then you have a choice whether to act on that belief or not. The fact you do not, tells me you actually don't really believe it's to be avoided.
That conflation is actually a fallacy called Tu Coque.
I'm not sure how you even jumped to that conclusion, but whatever rationalization helps you
Or do you mean people lack insight and will be sure they're valuing something for a good reason, when the real reason may be very different and morally questionable or selfish? I would still submit that this is an example of sincerely providing incorrect information rather than lying.
I'm more like talking about when they only value it in other people, because that offers some advantages over those people, but yeah, there are also some that do just lack insight.
At any rate, while finely slicing what is really a lie, and what is self-deception, and what is just hypocrisy, and what is just spectacularly failing to notice the obvious in one's own behaviour, etc, may serve a point, in all those cases it still boils down to it not being usually true that, I quote, "
What a person personally believes usually aligns with what they tell their children, because they want their children to share their values and beliefs." My point is really that no, "usually" it's the other way around.
Yes, but as somebody who has had to design these surveys, I think you're assuming deception when the more mundane answer is that framing changes the way people interpret questions and in most cases they are answering sincerely. Discepant responses are not proof of falsification. Also: there is fudge-checking, but one set of surveys indicates that lying in surveys declines dramatically if there is any chance of followup or consequences. As you point out: people lie a lot in anonymous surveys. People lie less when their identity is attached to a survey. I'm going to speculate that people lie less to their kids whom they love and expect to care for them in old age, than to anonymous surveyors they probably don't like and will never meet again.
So again: a poor analogy due to critical and material differences.
I could go in to the extent it happens in surveys, but let's just say in another study a remarkable number of people lied to people they knew, and with their identity attached to the email, just to shave a couple of dollars off a shared restaurant bill at someone else's expense. So whatever safeguard that known identity is, it can't be very strong.
Also, people's propensity to tell a lie, even in an out-of-character situation, went up when you told them to roleplay a manager position. Given that that kinda does apply to one's kids, yeah, I'm not so sure.
No, I mean like my Mennonite relatives in Lithuania who pretended to be atheist when the Stalinist government was arresting Mennonites because of their religious adherence back in the 1940s. They did not, however, carry this deception to their children, as they wanted to pass on their values and beliefs.
Yes, I understand. I'm just saying that people pretend to be more pious for a lot less than actual persecution.
