The Truth About the Truth About Lying

Dan Ariely's new book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone -- Especially Ourselves explains that people are more honest than we should rationally be . . . according to the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) we should compute the cost/ benefit of cheating and act accordingly -- but we don't do this, in fact, people cheat and rob blind people less, despite the fact that it's much less likely that you will be caught; it's not all good news, however . . . pretty much everyone cheats, but most of us only cheat a little bit -- unless you are truly pathological, you cheat just enough so that you can still confabulate stories about what a wonderful person you are . . . so we cheat more if others around us are cheating or if we are indignant and seeking revenge; we cheat more if we are creative and we cheat more if we think no one is looking, and we cheat for altruistic purposes, but we cheat less if we are reminded that it is our choice or if we are sign our name or take an oath or review morality before we commit an act . . . and while we will never eliminate cheating and lying completely, we can become morally less corrupt by using the convenient "reset" options in our world: confession and Yom Kippur and Ramadan, New Year's Resolutions, taking a new job, turning over a new leaf, and even self-flagellating (the method used by the members of Opus Dei) and while the book isn't going to scare you straight about cheating and lying, the experiments that Ariely conducted are worth the admission price; I promise you'll enjoy the book . . .  but, of course, I could be lying, and not even aware of it, as I wouldn't want to admit that I wasted my precious time reading this, and so if I can convince you to read it as well, then I'll feel like a fabulous person, despite the lie.