# 11. Lying (Deceit) ## 11.1. Definition Deceit is the deliberate exploitation of a victim's rational ignorance. In the case of manipulative untruth, it is done with a view to promoting an exploiter's interests or damaging the interests of a victim. ## 11.2. Persistence Short to long, depending on the deceit. ## 11.3. Accessibility High - Deceit is available to everyone. ## 11.4. Conditions/Opportunity/Effectiveness Apart from the fact that a victim must be ignorant of the knowledge possessed by the manipulator, deceit works when the cost of discovering and assessing the truth is too great for the victim. **The cost of truth:** The ratio of the cost of truth versus the value of establishing the facts by an alternative method must be high for deceit to work, the higher the better for the manipulator. When we discuss the cost of truth here, we are referring to the time and resources which must be expended by a victim to research an issue in sufficient depth for both a complete range of alternatives to be formulated and to prove deception. Except in very simple cases of deceit, the cost of establishing the truth tends to be very significant and prohibitive. The benefits are measurable only in terms of how much accepting a manipulator's assertion will damage the victim's interests. Generally speaking, when a victim is presented with some fact which is difficult to verify or disclaim, he will simply accept it or wait for someone else to challenge it. Naturally everyone waits for someone else to check out the facts, and, of course, in the end usually no one does anything. The manipulator relies upon this phenomenon. From a "normal", cautious deceiver's point of view, a lie should generally be kept small and simple if it is not to be discovered. Information being communicated to a victim must be difficult to verify. This, therefore, limits the use of deceit as a method of manipulation in its simplest form. **Small lies and proxies:** An obvious way to avoid being caught telling a lie is for the manipulator to use a proxy to carry out the deceit. This is a very economical policy for the deceiver because they must only lie to one individual, who is then charged with the dissemination of the lie to others. Thus, if the deceit is discovered, the manipulator can disclaim any involvement and only has to deal with the proxy, who is now publicly recognized and discredited as a deceiver. ## 11.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species *See Child Pages:* - [[Big Lies]] - [[Disinformation]] - [[False Dichotomy]] - [[Fitting Lies]] - [[Illusions]] - [[Plausible Deniability]] - [[Potemkin Village]] ## 11.6 Avoidance and Counteraction Deceit is a very flexible manipulative technique and it comes in an infinite number of forms. It can be difficult to detect. A manipulator's greatest fear is that his deceits will be exposed, leading to loss of credibility. Once detected, deceit can be avoided by proving that the manipulator's assertions are lies. Counteracting a deceit comes when a majority of victims stop believing in a particular set of lies and challenge their owner in public.