Why Honesty Is Becoming So Hard | Christian Miller | The Art of Charm

Although we care about accuracy, and we care about honesty, normally, when we enter into the social media space, we often turn off the accuracy and honesty part of our brains, and we start to care a lot more about other things. We care about about our reputation, our standing, our number of followers, our tribe, and our group, both boosting that and denigrating or, you know, detracting from the other tribe, the other group. >> [music] >> Today, we're talking with Christian Miller, ethics professor and author of the honesty crisis. Christian has spent a decade studying why dishonesty is more tempting and harder to detect than at any point in history. You're going to learn why bullshitting is often more dangerous than lying, how social media turns off the accuracy part of your brain, and why being 100% honest is not actually the goal. Welcome to the show, Christian. It's great to have you. >> It's great to be with you. I really look forward to our conversation together. >> Likewise, and I love to just jump in. What is the honesty crisis? >> So, I'm thinking of as actually really honesty crises, there are areas of society where honesty is under threat, and in particular in two ways. One feature of an honesty crisis is that dishonesty is becoming more appealing, more tempting, than it has been in the past, so that's not a good thing. But the other feature is that it's also easier to get away with dishonesty. It's harder to catch people for being dishonest. So, when you put those two together, more tempting to be dishonest, and at the same time, harder to catch people for their dishonesty, and people know that, that's a bad recipe for protecting what I think is our most cherished and and important virtue. >> Well, let's unpack the first one. Why is it more tempting now than ever to be dishonest? >> There's the general societal reasons, and then there are the particular cases. So, in the book I go through six particular case studies, and I think we'd have to kind of dive into the the weeds of each, but as a general observation, it's technological developments. So, it's not that dishonesty is new. I mean, it's been around for thousands and thousands of years, maybe back to the beginning of human beings. It's that something has changed to make it more incentivized, and that thing that I focus on at least is technological development. So, to make it a little bit more concrete, my students, alas, have cheated for a long time. The internet comes along, that facilitates greater cheating, but of course, these days AI comes along, and now they have available to them a tool which please hear me, I don't think is inherently bad or wrong, and I don't want to come across as somebody who's really down on it, but in this context, a tool which they realize they can use to cheat in such a way that it's extremely efficient, they can cheat quickly, it's extremely effective, they can probably get a better grade from using AI than they would by writing writing the paper themselves, and it's largely undetectable. There are no detection algorithms right now which would allow professors like myself to to catch them. So, with that kind of new fancy tool at their disposal, they don't have to use it. Nobody's requiring them to, but it's there, it's available. Everyone else is doing it, too, so they're going to feel like if they don't, they're going to be behind. So, the temptation is extremely strong. That's going to facilitate an honesty crisis in education, and that's just one illustration of a variety of ones I see popping up over society. >> Many of us are seeing it rewarded publicly. So, we're we're catching people who are being dishonest, but there are no consequences that are happening in catching them, so that makes it further tempting to feel like, well, I I have to if everyone else is. >> There are two parts to it. One is, I think we're catching people but we're not realizing the people we're not catching. So some of you are just getting away with it and we don't know because we don't catch them. I think that's you know illustrated in the student case. I try as best as I can to tell whether they've used AI or not but often times I can't tell or we can you know shift to other examples. But yes, you're right. When we do catch them, what happens? Well, in a student case I can't prove for sure so there's no like great penalty but in other context too I'd often I talk about celebrities and influencers and and fame and so forth and often it serves to just enhance their celebrity status. It boosts their fame. It's a it's a means to augmenting something that they want in the first place. So honesty can and fame are interestingly interrelated. Dishonesty can increase fame. Fame can increase dishonesty. They're in a mutual relationship with each other. Sadly, I fear. This might not be the most uplifting conversation in the world. >> Yeah, well, I mean we've even felt it from our seat. Obviously, there's follower accounts, there's view numbers, there are things that are publicly available that you would think hold you a bit accountable and honest around okay, well this is how many people are interested in you, this is how many people are watching you. But we get inundated with agencies and people who will help us get more followers, get more views, enhance that number. Again, and it's very tempting to then yeah, lean into it because we know that gets us more money and that gets us more fame. >> Yeah, that's that's a nice illustration. So I think as a general matter celebrity and dishonesty are related in all kinds of interesting ways whereby I the one I focus on particular is um if you become a celebrity and I think we all are to some extent or another, you're obviously much more than one that than me but that can lead to some natural psychological tendencies which can motivate dishonesty. What do I mean by that? Um Celebrity is appealing. It's tempting. It is something that when you get some, you want more. It's kind of insatiable. Uh Robin Williams called it like a drug. Um It'd be even more stronger than than normal drugs. So, if you want more of it, well, what's one way to get it? By being dishonest. It's a path to greater celebrity. But also, I mean, it is true that when you're a celebrity, you want to protect it, too. Um So, it's not just promoting, it's also protecting. And since we all mess up, we're all flawed beings, we're going to make mistakes. When we're in the public eye, it's easier for those mistakes to be exposed because so many people are looking at us. So, we want to cover it up so that we don't damage our celebrity status. How do we cover it up? By being dishonest, by lying, uh or misleading, or or like BSing um to cover up the dishonesty. And then the last thing I'll I'll mention in this context is that um as a celebrity, the kind of moral safeguards are uh loosened that most people feel in their lives. Most people feel like they're under a kind of moral weight, more obligation. Um Others hold them accountable. But celebrities are in a different position often. Everyone else is affirming them, celebrating them, liking them, as you said, wanting to follow them. Um And so, there is kind of a yes-man phenomena um where they're validated all the time, but no one's saying, "Hold on. Should you really be this?" Um You have to have courage to step up to a celebrity and hold them in check when they're crossing moral lines. And the easier thing is Justin Bieber actually talked about this quite quite uh philosophically profoundly. He sounded like a really deep philosopher. He He said, "All my life, I've been having people tell me that I'm great and I've been throwing lots of money at me. And that's a really dangerous moral position to be in." >> Yeah, and it makes it even more enticing to to keep the gravy train going. So, that deception becomes more likely. >> This is uh why they're mutual reinforcing. Uh disingenuity is a celebrity, celebrity can lead lead to disingenuity, and and they they kind of uh feed off of each other. So, this is one another one of the honesty crises I'm worried about. Uh again, there have been celebrities in the past, uh you know, for thousands of years have been. But, now what's the difference? Well, again, a technological change, social media and the like has made it easier to be a celebrity, more tempting to be a celebrity. Um and there are now over 3,000 accounts on Tik Tok with over a million followers, same thing with Instagram. Um so, the path to celebrity is easier than it's been before, and it's also monetized and incentivized and all kinds of ways that we haven't seen. So, alas, um uh because of that path and that temptation, many young people today think of this as their prime career goal. This is what they want out of life. Um but, they don't want to appreciate, and I'm trying to bring attention to some of the dangers that might come along with that in the moral realm. I'm an ethics professor, in particular the danger of increased disingenuity. >> Well, I think for many of us we think of honesty as telling the truth. And that's actually not as accurate as we can be when we talk about honesty. >> I'm glad you pivoted to a philosophy question. I love that. Um so, you should you should take my class. Um so, yeah, I'd be to it Now, don't hear me wrong. I think that is where we go first and foremost in our thinking about honesty for good reason. I mean, it honesty has to do with telling the truth. Our paradigms in society of honesty are truth-tellers. Um but, that's only a sliver of this very rich and nuanced virtue. So, if I can expand a little bit more, uh honesty is outward-facing, and it's also inward-looking. So, outwardly, behaviorally, yeah, and telling the truth is important. So, that's the opposite of lying. An honest person doesn't lie. But, an honest person also does not mislead. They do not steal. They do not cheat. They do not BS if I'm allowed to say that. Um and they they're not they're not hypocrites. Um Uh and they don't commit fraud, break promises, self-deceive. Think about how long that list is and there's more and how different that list is. These are very different behaviors and yet they all fall under the purview or the scope of uh honesty on the behavioral side. And yet um that's not all there is either. Because you could be that kind of person. I mean, I again I just I sorry because it's it's cool. I mean, I this is the world I live in and it's cool to see the the richness of something that might seem so banal and and straightforward. Um you could do all these things, not cheat, not steal, not lie, etc. and not be a dishonest person. How? Well, what's your heart? What's your disposition? What's your psychology? What's your motivation behind those actions? That matters a heck of a lot, too. So, if you if you're talking to the boss and boss asks you a question and you say the the truthful answer, but you're doing it just to angle for the boss's position or try to get a promotion or raise in the company or not feel guilty. I'm going to give you a different variety of different answers or you know, because you want to get rewards in the afterlife or because you want to look good in front of your fellow colleagues. Those are different answers, but they have one thing in common. They're self-serving. They're about me. They're about benefiting myself, making me better off. Virtue doesn't allow that. For better or for worse, if you want to be a good person in a really deep sense of a virtuous person, you have to have the right heart behind the action as well as the behavior. So, to end um what does that heart look like in the case of honesty? Well, it can look like a variety of things, too. It just had better be larger than yourself. It had better be focused on something bigger, like I'm telling the truth to the boss because it's the right thing. Or because I care about the boss. I don't know if that happens very much, but or because they're my friends. You know, again, I don't know about that, but you know, you can generalize, you know, because I care about the other person, because they're my friends, because it's the right thing to do, because I have a moral obligation to do it. These hands of answers are bigger, they're larger than adjust ourselves. They're perfectly fine. We get the heart in the right place. We get the behavior in the right place. Now we're in the ballpark of honesty. >> Yeah, I think that can be hard for us to wrestle with at times. It feels just a lot easier to say, "Hey, just tell the truth." But in all of those scenarios, the truth can be self-serving. It could be, honestly, to get ahead versus from a virtuous position. >> Please don't hear me wrong in saying I'm somehow disappointed or judging people if they tell the truth, but for ways of serving reasons. Look, I'll take that any day over rampant lying or regular cheating or whatever. Yeah, truth, big thumbs up. It's just that there's another step one could take that goes beyond just the mere behavior, which is having the right kind of motivation behind it. And here's another thing to make it a little bit more nuanced. You can still benefit when you tell the truth or don't cheat or don't steal or whatnot from a virtuous heart. So, this is a little bit of a philosophical subtlety. So, I tell the truth to my friends because I care about my friends, but as a byproduct or side effect, not my goal, I'm not my goal is not to benefit myself, but as a byproduct or side effect of that, I can benefit. You know, our relationship is stronger. We trust each other more. Um, I get additional pleasure from making friends with that person. All those things are true, but I'm not aiming for them. I'm aiming for telling the truth to my friend because I care about my friends, because I value my friend, because I respect my friend. But a nice byproduct or side effect could have been all these nice things for me um, and our relationship. That's good. Um, it's not an either or like I have to make a monastically cut myself off from all benefits. No, it just can't be the goal. >> Right, what is the driving force? But I think the other side of the coin, so many of us are conditioned to share the white lie, to placate our friends' feelings, to try to not create a conflict with that person that we care about. So that feels easier. That dishonesty feels easier to keep the peace in those relationships. >> White lies are tricky. Um, so here's a thing that I think it's also an important to introduce in the conversation, which is I care a lot about honesty, but I don't care about it to the bitter end. Um, so honesty is one virtue among many, and there are going to be cases where it's going to come come into conflict with other values and other virtues we have in life. And sometimes it's going to I think have to give way. The most dramatic case that we can talk about later if you want are ones where innocent lives are at stake. And so it's either honesty but lives are lost or dishonesty but lives are saved. Um, I think in those cases, and then there's some famous ones, we have to go with dishonesty. White lies are little bits more ambiguous to me. Um, now I think we're we it is true we are have these days in society quite used to them. They come quite natural to us. Like, "How's the tie look? How's the dress look? How's the dessert? How's my new book How the Honesty Crisis?" You know, um, "How do I look on the on the podcast?" Um, you know, this kind of thing. Or "How do I sound on the podcast? Um, we're we're used to just greasing the social wheels by telling something, which hopefully is true, but always we're not guaran- not guaranteed to be true. Um, because we may dislike the dessert, we may think the tie looks ugly, we may hate the Honesty Crisis book. Alas, um, some people in the world might be like that. Um, so what do you do? We often just bypass the truth for the social cohesion. I think the following about that, um, which is a little bit uh, more controversial. I think a lot of times that's a mistake. Um, that morally speaking, um, that we shouldn't do that. I don't say all times, um, especially if someone's in a fragile emotional state or fragile mental state where coming out with the truth could tip them over the edge or really send them into a spiral or or ruin their day or whatnot. So, okay, I'm okay with that. Um, but in the ordinary course of the day on relatively trivial matters, here here are just a couple reasons to be cautious. Um, I know I'll be pushed back. People disagree with me about this, but let me just say it anyway. Uh, so, um, you know, take take the dessert. Um, so my wife, um, this is not a true story because she's she's amazing. Um, uh, but uh, you know, let's let's So, this is this is fabricated. Please everyone hear that, including my wife. Um, she makes a dessert. Um, I taste it. Uh, I don't like it. Um, she asks me, "What do you think?" Um, I tell a lie. Cuz a white lie, cuz I want to, you know, make things easy in our marriage. I think, "Oh, it's great. You know, thanks so much for for for doing this." Okay. Now, think about what some of the implications might be. Um, she's probably going to make the dessert again. So, that's not so great from my perspective, right? Um, I have to remember next time to say the same thing I did the first time. Because otherwise she could detect that I lied the first time. Um, I have to be really careful around the kids to not disclose what I really think cuz they could rat me out as or third parties could rat me out and tell her that that the what I really feel. Uh, it's likely in the long run that these things do come out. It's hard to keep them a secret and about despite our best attempts. And so down the road trust could be broken. Like, all these years you've been telling me it's great and you actually didn't think that. You know, how can I trust you on other things? Like, why would I ask your opinion about other stuff, too? Because now I don't know whether you're going to tell me the truth or not. Uh, so the the relationship could take a hit in more serious way. So, again, not saying it's always wrong, just exercise caution. Um, there's more to it than might meet the eye. >> Yeah, I think it's often times hard for us to realize the longer term effects, the compounding. But in this example, let's say your wife next year for your birthday says, "Hey, I'm going to make your favorite dessert for the party." And now all of the guests have to suffer through that dessert while you pretend to love it. And [laughter] now the consequences are outside of just your relationship. You know, your wife is shown as a terrible dessert uh, chef to all of your friends. >> The birthday party is tainted or the That's cuz it could be Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, I I And that additional reason I actually forgot to mention that. Um, again, you should really be a philosopher. Um, so yeah, it's like another nice another nice uh, philosophical reason. So, the consequences for third parties of things that are not good, but we don't want to point out they're good. They're not good, I'm sorry. Uh, could be damaging. And it's not damaging in a really serious way, but still negative. Um, and so that's another reason for for being cautious here. Yeah, I I completely agree. >> Now, when we think about lying, I I think many of us think, "Well, the people who lie do it all the time. They do it habitually." But as we talked about honesty as a virtue, there are many situations where I might stray. I might say the wrong thing based on something that was the white lie, for example, but that doesn't make me a liar. That doesn't make me someone who's habitual in lying, but we see these examples in the media where someone is labeled a liar and then that discredits everything they say thereafter, and we're kind of quick to jump to that label and hold on to it even when most people are honest by default. >> Let's uh pack both of those. So, you're honest by default, I think it's it's really worth calling attention to because it may not be how most people assume our psychology works, but this is actually a good thing. So, some some of this discussion could be quite depressing after all it's called the honesty crisis. Uh but here's a really good piece of uh news. Recent empirical research has revealed that most people tell the truth most of the time. This is called truth default theory. Uh this is a kind of dominant paradigm in communication theory at the moment. And so, to say again, most people by the psychological default, um tell the truth most of the time. And reciprocally, we expect when we're talking to others that they will tell us the truth most of the time. So, we have an expectation about our interactions with others and what they'll say to us. I think this is all for the good. I mean, imagine if it was the opposite if our default was to lie, um or if our default was to cheat or to steal. I mean, that would be a kind of miserable world. So, we would great if it was not this. It could be neutral, of course, we could just switch back and forth and however we feel felt at the moment, but it's not. Um it actually takes psychological resources. It's costly from a from a psychological processing perspective to tell a lie. Now, that doesn't mean we we can't do it, of course, um but we have to have kind of good reason and effort to put effort into it and energy into do it for it to happen. Now, um the phenomena you note is quite uh empirically accurate. We quickly jump from one action to labeling a person. And this does not just apply to honesty, this applies to all character traits. Someone doesn't help one time, we think that they are cold-hearted or cruel. It also works in a reverse. Someone helps one time, we think that they're compassionate, a compassionate person. This is just fraught with mistakes. This is going to lead us down bad paths in the both in the positive way and in the negative way. So in the negative case, we see someone tell a lie, oh they're dishonest. Not necessarily at all. Um one lie, even if it's a severe lie, does not make a person dishonest thereby automatically. So both virtue and vice are cross-situational. They have to manifest, they have to show up in a variety of situations across the board as stably over time. This might be a one-off for the person. This might be out of out of character day that they're having. That doesn't make them a dishonest person. And also though, keep them in mind the flip side. You see this person tell the truth maybe in a public way like on the stand in the courtroom or in front of the media during an interview. Oh, they're an honest person. No, no, no, no, hold on. Wait a minute. You know, this could be out of character for them too. They could just be performative, they could just be acting. And you know, in other behavioral contexts, they don't tell the truth. Also, we don't know what their underlying motivation is. So we don't know where their heart is. We can't we you know. So what's the what's the upshot? Be very cautious about making character descriptions to other people. You can evaluate one-off acts. I think we can do that with some reliability. But we had need a lot of data to make character descriptions reliably. Think of that kind of data that might accumulate over time with a friend, for example. I know this person because we've been together a long time and I've seen how he or she acts in a variety of situations or a partner or significant other. Those kinds of or or children, those kinds of ascriptions, uh yeah, those are pretty reliable. But the one-off, I see you on the news or I see you on the court drama, be very careful. >> Yeah, well, let's unpack that further because I think many of us have been in situations where we felt the other person deceived us. Maybe it was uh a photo they posted on their online dating profile. Maybe it was embellishment of what they accomplished at work on their LinkedIn profile to get that interview. And then we're fast to label them as dishonest. We cut them out. We don't want to go on a second date. We don't want to hire them. That has serious implications. >> Although I'm kind of advocating caution in ascribing someone with a certain kind of virtue or vice trait, uh because that is a big deal. Like if you label someone honest or dishonest, that is that's a that is a a label that is often likely to stick um with you and your thinking. It's also likely to stick in third party's thinking when they hear that. Um and they're going to label the the person going forward. So, it's a big deal to put that label onto a person. Now, having said that, um in a particular situation, when someone acts dishonestly towards you, it's entirely reasonable to be cautious going forward with respect to that subject matter. Like the dating, um you know, they they they they didn't know you. They already started off on a bad foot by saying they're like a couple inches taller or 50 lb, you know, lighter or something like that. Um it doesn't mean that they're dishonest in general or that you can have a great relationship, but they're already like setting the bar pretty low as far as honesty is concerned. So, I think they have to, going forward, demonstrate to you that this is not symptomatic of a deeper underlying character issue. Um it need not be, but the bar or the burden of proof is now placed on them to say, "You kind of broke my trust uh or this little trust I was willing to put in you, I think you have to earn it back now." And that that's a reasonable position to adopt. >> So, for those of us who are following along with this, being virtuous 100% of the time sounds next to impossible. What we are we are talking about here is quite idealistic. How do you wrestle with that personally and then and what do you share to the audience who's like, "Well, I feel this is almost impossible for me to be that honest." >> I will say two things. Um first of all, I don't think you should be honest all the time. Uh let's let's come back to that in a in a little bit. Um I think it's a mistake is actually morally wrong to always be honest. That's that that might sound jarring and alarming and like, "What is he talking about? I thought he was an ethics professor." Um but I I I can explain that. So, uh but let's take you know, situations where honesty is a good thing. Uh it comes in degrees. Here's the good news. Um it's not a matter, it's not a binary, it's not an either-or. Uh you could have somebody who's moderately honest, strongly honest, uh perfectly honest, but I don't think any actual human being is going to get to be perfectly honest. And I I got to apply this to all the virtues. Honesty is not unique here. There's no perfectly kind person, no perfectly forgiving person, no perfectly um gracious person. That's just that's a an ideal to work towards, but not attainable in this life. And so, does that mean we should not care anymore um or give up on it? No, I don't think so at all. I think it means that um we can make incremental progress over the course of our lives. Um we can go from what I think many of us are in, and myself included, which is a kind of mixed bag, uh you know, good and bad. Some areas of our lives are good, some areas of our lives are bad. We can kind of work on enhancing the good and pushing back against the bad. And we're not going to flip a switch and make ourselves perfect overnight, but we can slowly build, slowly build. It's like like any skill. You don't become a perfect chess player or tennis pro or anything like that or golf experts um overnight. You've got to practice. You've got to work at it. You've got to hone your abilities. And the same is true for honesty. Now, if I if I may um make let me make good on the point about perfect honesty might be a mistake. >> Let's just double click on on working on your honesty. And what are some practical ways maybe you've shared with your students or even in your own personal life where where you have strengthened that muscle if many of us are are wrestling with this in our day-to-day lives. >> It's one thing to say you should do it in general theory and it's another thing to actually like make it concrete and and what can we practically do? The first thing I would say is actually it's very much context-dependent. And so we need to think about these honesty crises in in their nitty-gritty, in their details, like what should I do on social media? What should I do in a classroom? What should I do in my romantic life? And this kind of thing. But I can I can at least say some some broad general things. Um One thing is to right off the bat be clear about what is honesty and what is dishonesty. Uh and own up to areas of your life where you're being dishonest. Um this might sound easy and like what let's skip to the second one right away, but it's actually surprisingly hard because we often rationalize. Um we tell ourselves this isn't a big deal or I'm I'm just fudging the truth a little bit. Um we don't confront, especially in cases of self-deception, which is a real and genuine phenomenon. We don't confront our own dishonesty. So that's step one. We got to recognize it and own up to it. Step two I think is um >> [clears throat] >> we can go with now in a of variety of different paths. One is to look to people who are in our world or in our space who have done better than us. Um instead of going into like philosophical arguments or abstract stuff, find a concrete person who's living the life that you're not. At least with respect to honesty. Now, some of these exemplars, these moral heroes and saints, we can label them like this. Uh we don't want to follow them in every respect. They're going to have some areas of their lives which we probably don't want to admire. They might be ugly, morally speaking. But in this one respect, they're doing better than us. So we can actually look to them, we can admire their lives, we can be inspired by their lives and want to become more like them, not dragging them down to us, but elevating us up to them. And the third thing I'll say, um is to have practical reminders of honesty in our lives. Uh because it's one thing to intellectually know, yeah, honesty is important, telling the truth is important, we shouldn't steal or cheat or something something like that. Yeah, I know that when I'm stopping and contemplating these things. But when I'm in the moment, when I'm on the internet, um when I'm when I'm uh you know, uh taking the the test, you know, whatever context it might be, it we can get sidetracked by self-interest or convenience or efficiency, uh cutting corners, making our lives easier, and honesty can go by the wayside. So, the point being, more reminders can help us in our daily lives get us back on track. To give a a path to go down, I'll stop with this. A practical example of that, um in the education context, honor codes have been more reminders for a long time. Um I I assume most listeners are familiar with, but uh you know, most schools in the US uh have honor codes which students have to sign when they take an exam and when they write a paper and turn it in, they're supposed to write it out and sign the honor code and pledging their honor that you did not lie to you know whenever uh in the performance of this academic task. It's not a foolproof, it's not a guarantee of no cheating. In fact, I think AI trumps it these days unfortunately, but for a long time it was demonstrably empirically quite effective in curbing cheating because it was a moral reminder. It reminded students of their values, what they cared about, being an honest person, their integrity, their authenticity um and kept them curbed kept them from cheating and curbed their motivation to cheat uh by sometimes 20, 30% compared to uh schools or groups of students which did not engage in with an honor code. So, that's that's a pretty tangible moral reminder. >> Yeah, I think when we contemplate our own honesty before submitting something, before pledging something, that actually ties deeper to our character and makes us more likely to act in that virtuous way. And on the practical side, I I think a simple stretch for many in our audience is sharing with friends and family, "Hey, I I value honesty. I want to bring more honesty to this relationship and in turn I want you to be more honest with me." And that reflection of honesty back so that we're not trading white lies, but you can be forthright with me. "Hey, I didn't like when you behaved that way. I I hated that dessert." Um really wasn't a fan. And open that honesty and surround yourself with that, it starts to help you strengthen that muscle just like you would go to the gym and find a trainer and work out with other people in a group exercise class, allowing people in your life to know, "Hey, I'm working on this area. I want to be more honest in our relationship to build deeper trust." I think that is a practical way that many of us can have that reflected back in our life in a meaningful way. >> Two uh follow-ups on that. Um one is I would just wanted to be done carefully and tactfully. Um so, there are different ways of saying that you don't like the dessert. Um, some of which I would not recommend because it turns out actually that um, for honesty, Aristotle told us a long time ago, there's one way of failing, which is dishonesty. There's another way of failing, which is the opposite, which is brutal honesty or uh, yeah, so we're oversharing or lack of tact and so forth. And that is not virtuous in in this picture either. Um, that is a failure, too. So, you know, there are ways of saying yes without coming out and brutally saying it, bluntly saying it. So, I would just recommend that. Um, and then yeah, and secondly, um, I I I think this, you know, fosters what you talked about, fosters trust. Um, a big thing for me is accountability, too. So, you know, the the other person or the group of people become accountability partners with me. Um, so I can be open with them um, and share with them knowing that they'll hold me accountable. They can do the reciprocally or likewise with me and I can hold them accountable. So, we have now we have a mutual web of accountability. Doesn't mean we're going to be perfect and one of the things you have to do is share, if you're really doing this, share areas where you fell short. You're like, "Actually, I yesterday, I'm sorry, I told I lied to you." or, you know, "Yesterday, I I misled you or deceived you." That's part of being accountable and being forthcoming in that relationship. It's going to be hard. It's going to be painful sometimes, but um, when you do that, I think it's certainly going to be advantageous in growing that muscle, as you said, cultivating that skill of honesty. >> And I feel like there's a a time window there, right? If if I tell you, "Hey, 7 years ago we first started dating, I was lying to you." right? I I built our relationship on distrust. That has a a much stronger impact than, "Hey, yesterday I misled you." So, I think being open and honest and catching yourself, maybe not in the moment, but the the closer to the act, I think allows that honest, that virtuous side of you to shine through. Whereas, if we've gone 7 years dating or you've graduated with honors and now you come back and say, "Oh, I actually cheated my way through." That has a much more serious impact. >> Yes, I I agree with you. Unless the thing you did yesterday was itself massively deceptive. So, unless yesterday you're on Ash- Ashley Madison trying to arrange a you know, a rendezvous or or that's something like that. Well, then I don't think that person's going to give you any kind of credit that you told them that it was yesterday versus 7 years ago. But, other things being equal, put it that way. Philosophers like to say, "Other things being equal." Yeah, the longer ones that were or significance. That so, it's not just that there was some dishonesty back then. It's the layers of dishonesty piled on top of it to keep it a secret. >> keep the deception. >> Yeah, so it's this is dishonesty on top of the dishonesty on top of the dishonesty. So, you have to peel back so many layers. And then, you just worry about, you know, given this, how can I trust the person today? Because they they've they've layered so much deception into our relationship. Today, am I actually married to the person I think I am? Or you know, friends with the person I think I am? Or is this really somebody who's crafted a public image that doesn't correspond to their private self? >> So, now I want to be your accountability buddy and hold you into account. What do you mean >> [clears throat] >> you don't say we should always be 100% honest? What what were you getting at there? >> These are rare cases. So, I don't want anyone to think, "Oh, now he's giving us kind of blank- blanket license to go out there and lie as much as we want." So, first of all, rare cases. Where a lot's at stake. So, it's got to be you're not you're not going to count that encounter these in your normal day-to-day life. And there's going to be a lot at stake. But, Um, a very vivid famous example. Um, the philosopher Immanuel Kant came up with this hundreds of years ago. He talked about an axe murderer. Uh, the updated 20th century version is the Nazi at the door example. Um, I think probably everyone's heard this, but I'll just go through it real quickly. Um, so [clears throat] you're it's World War II and Nazi occupied town. Um, you're a homeowner. You're definitely unsympathetic to the Nazis. You're hiding a Jewish family in the basement. You know that the Nazis do a routine patrol at this time of day going through the neighborhood asking, you know, "Do you know where any Jews are? Do you know where any Jews are?" It's just performative. It's just perfunctory. Um, and so you know that if you say, "I don't know where any Jews are," they're just going to go to the next house. Well, here's the knock at the door. You open the door. There's the Nazi. The Nazi says, "Do you know where any Jews are?" You are now confronted with a Nazi situation. Um, don't give me any kind of uh, uh, third options. You're not going to like overthrow the Nazi, like tackle him or anything like that. Um, you're not going to like invite him in for cookies and like get him sidetracked to forget what he was asking about. You're not going to responding with silence isn't going to make him uh, unsuspicious. Um, so your only options are tell the truth, "Yeah, there is a Jewish family in the basement." He comes in, arrests you, takes the family away to concentration camp, or uh, you say, "I don't know where any Jews are." He goes to the next house. Well, I think overwhelmingly students in my experience, people in general, and I say the same thing. Uh, we all say the morally right thing to do is to lie to the Nazi at the door. Um, so notice that that is still dishonest. It's not like you're going to get past this. Like, oh, it's some kind of version of honesty. It's still dishonest. It's a lie. But it's being outweighed. Honesty is being outweighed by something that's more important. I would say compassion towards the Jewish family. And so all things considered, when you put all the moral variables in place, um, uh what's the verdict? It's morally required to be dishonest. That might sound paradoxical or weird. Uh how could that be? But it has to say it again, it's morally required. Morality obligates us in certain unusual situations to be dishonest. And I think that's just just a a function of the messiness of our lives. If in a world in which there were no Nazis and other tough situations like this uh never arose, we would not have these conflicts and we would always be honest or at least should always be honest. But given existence of evil in this world, we have to sometimes compromise some of our values. >> Yeah, and I I mean, I feel fortunate that I didn't go to school during an AI boom, but I even feel for the students who are in this situation where AI is at their fingertips. And we've seen study after study that shows college education leads to so much more earnings over the course of your life. Now we're talking seven figures plus earnings that that are right at your fingertips if you can just get the good grade, get through this class, survive your ethics class, and move on and and then go to law school, right? And and these are things that people are actually facing now students. And the stakes do feel higher than ever. And then, when you're also surrounded by a bunch of other students who are clearly using AI and not getting detected and getting good scores and moving on, that pressure can feel insurmountable. >> That's right. Yes, you you diagnosed the current situation quite accurately. Uh what do what do we make of that? I mean, there are different ways to go. So, one way is to say, are they doing anything morally wrong? Or does this these considerations give them a moral pass? Another thing to say is, um what's as a professor should I do going forward knowing all this? Cuz I know all this about what's go the students are going through. So, what what should be my plan be moving forward? So, maybe I'll say something about both of those points. Um uh on the first point, even despite those challenges and those understandable considerations, it's still morally wrong to use AI in completing an academic assignment for a grade when the professor has prohibited that use. Um and I don't and let me add the really important caveat, too. They don't disclose this. Um so, there are ways in which it's not problematic from from a education perspective uh as far as morality is concerned. Like, if the professor allows it, okay. Well, look, I mean, how could it be morally wrong? Um or if the student uh it's prohibited, but the student discloses it to me, well, okay. That that's fine, too. Um at least from a moral perspective. What's problematic here from from honesty, from a plagiarism uh angle is when they submit the work as if it were their own. Like, this paper is given to me as if it were the student's own, you know, intellectual investigation and discovery. And yet it was not. Someone or something else did it for them. Now, that first of all is plagiarism. Plagiarism from AI, just like it would have been plagiarism from the internet before there was AI, or plagiarism from a book before there was the internet. Um plagiarism is a form of dishonesty, and dishonesty is morally wrong, you know, uh in most cases. So, there's that side of it. Now, what do we do? Well, what what do I do as a professor moving forward? Um it would be nice if some of the strategies in the past to curb cheating would work, like the honor code, um like uh you know, really uh trying to call out to them to remember the deeper purpose of education, why they're here, what they're foregoing or missing out on if they don't do the work themselves. Those would be nice things, and in some students they do move the needle, but not enough. So, I'm a I'm a pessimist here, alas. Um you know, educators are listening to this like, "Oh, give me the solution. Give me the the fix. How can I solve this?" There's only one fix, which is take the AI out of their hands. Um which is which is what overwhelmingly professors are doing today. Um graded assignments are all in class or for the most part in class because that at least we can just control the environment. Um so, we we we go back to the blue books. I don't know if you had blue book exams back in the day, but in situations that I was in school, we were proctored exams in the room together where cheating and being caught cheating in a room full of other people had a a much stronger reputational hit than I what I'm assuming a lot of students are facing now where you submit the paper online, you do the work online, you you some of us have gone to school completely online and and never interacted with anyone else, and that has lowered that reputational that social contract that we all feel of being called out publicly as a cheater in a room full of other people who are taking the exam honestly. So, that I guess even increases the stakes in the classroom and puts extra pressure on the importance of honesty way we're doing it we're going to have to do it going forward. Um because that's what you know, at least for in-person classes, that's the way we have to do it. So, we're we're bringing back the blue books, we're bringing back people into the classroom. And you know, if I catch someone, which I did uh a year ago, looking at their neighbor's notes, I saw them doing it in class, I called them out on this. Everyone in class turned around and looked at them. That person was embarrassed in front of, you know, 29 other peers. That has psychological impact. Um maybe it you know, like I don't know but damaging psychological impact, but nevertheless you cheated like transparently. Um so, what has say is we're doing blue books, we're doing pop quizzes, we're doing oral exams are making a big comeback like just, you know, explain the material to us or walk me through it in your own terms in my office. All these kinds of things are basically our only resource um, that we have to rely on in the age of AI as educators. >> Well, I think thankfully many of us are not in the Nazi at the door scenario, but many of us are wrestling with honesty versus compassion, especially with people that we have to work with, co-workers, maybe people who are a station or two below us at work where we see they're underperforming. We we want to save them, but at the same time it takes honesty and that's what we're wrestling with. So, what do you say in those situations where compassion feels a lot easier than honesty? >> Here's the the weaselly philosophy answer. Um, it depends a lot on the situation. It's hard to make blanket recommendations because there's so many compound confounding or complexifying if that's the word I just made up um, features of particular situations. You know, what is the mental health situation of the person who's under you? Um, how long have they been with you worked together? How much trust do you have already built up? Um, you know, what is there kind of disparity in salary and so forth? Um, how big of a performance gap is there between what you expect of them and what they're actually doing? So, I would I would be reticent to make any um, really kind of confident recommendations. Um, but uh, at the end of the day, I mean, here are at least a couple things. One, um, I'm hoping that it's not a matter of either or it's a matter of both ands. Um, you know, honesty but with compassion infused through and through. Um, I'd never ever recommend uh, you know, just [clears throat] cold here are the facts. You were supposed to do this, you didn't do this. Therefore, here's the the consequence. Uh, I would I would hope that uh again, it depends on the situation, but I would hope that, you know, we have a long history of working together. You've done great work in the past. Seems like maybe you're going through some things recently. Um you know, uh can we what what can we do to try and get you back on track? Um or say, you know, here's where we're we're we're trying to get to. Um let's talk through some ways in which we can, you know, collaboratively work together to get you there. You see what I'm saying? I'm saying it at a very general level. Um that's both kind and compassionate, but honest. Um you I don't think you want to just um gloss over it uh or avoid the honest truth, either. Because often that will have long-term negative consequences for the company or for your team um or for even your own status if your status is uh bound up with the performance of others who are under you. So, you want to you want to Don't shirk Don't avoid the truth, but at the same time, don't make it brutal, either. >> Let's unpack the digital world, because I think many of our listeners are just inundated with information online, news sources. Even Johnny 9, our conversations back and forth, we'll say, "What was your source for that? Where did you read that? Where did you hear that?" It just feels like disinformation and propaganda's at an all-time high online. And when many people think of the internet, they think of it as a place where honesty goes to die and and is not found at all. >> That is a natural temptation, so I'm going to say, "Yes and no." Um here's the I think the really interesting part of this. Uh I came across this several years before I wrote this book and I ended up doing a New York Times piece on it. Um there are big chunks of the internet where you can find lots of honesty. Um more so than you would expect. Now, don't hear me wrong. I'm going to get to the bad side in a moment, but the here here's the good news. Um when it comes to and this is it will stretch the meaning of internet a bit, but um when it comes to email, um text messaging, uh Facebook, LinkedIn resumes, and even some dating websites, um all of these are remarkably uh more honest than you might think. And the level of dishonesty is no higher than in face-to-face verbal communication. Um so, you take someone's Yeah, you take someone's more concrete You take someone's LinkedIn resume, and you compare it to the old days where you might have mailed in a paper resume. Remarkably comparable. Um so, what's going on here? And then this is not me just like pontificating as a philosopher, it's you know, I'm backing it up with studies. Um what's going on here is that in these cases your name's attached to it. Um and there's a record. So, you know, LinkedIn, your obviously your name's attached to it, but it's it's it's it's it's diachronic over time. Um it can be recorded, and you can be held accountable to it, something that was posted in the past as well as today. So, there's all this uh accountability structure built into it such that um you better be honest, or come come back and bite you in the rear end. Um so, that's some good news. At the same time, you're right, that this feeling we have about the internet doesn't come from nowhere. Um here are two sources of it that I highlight uh when I can talk about honesty crisis. One is deepfakes. Um so, the problems of deepfake audio and and video is more common than ever before thanks to AI-generated uh you know, uh outputs that are you know, AI tools are used to generate these outputs. And then the other that I highlight, which is by no means exhaustive, is um political misinformation and fake news. Um so, uh we all know that that that is prevalence as well. Um One observation I'll make about this is it's still true we often care about the accuracy of our sources. So, we don't like the situation when we're confronted with this fake news and misinformation and and deep fakery. We we we we we still value honesty. We still value accuracy. And yes, not only are we confronted with it, we're often willing to share it despite recognizing that it's fake. Now, that is disturbing. It's one thing to say I'm I have a sense I'm confronted with this last a lot of stuff, but it's so subtly done that I can't recognize it. Like I can't tell whether this is deep fake or not or this headline, you know, is kind of it could be real or could not. What you know, in those kind of cases, if you share it, that is compatible with honesty. Actually, I have no no honesty qualms at all because you didn't realize. You didn't know that was fake. It's not honesty has to do with your subjective sense that it's wrong and still doing the sharing. Um But what is alarming especially for me is not only of course the production of this stuff, the generating of it, so the manufacturing of it, but also our willingness to share it even though we might recognize that it's fake. That's not good. Um that's not compatible with honesty. Um I can give a concrete example if you like. Um So, I know I know this is a little bit abstract. Um so, you know, in the political realm, there were suddenly there were studies done where people brought into the lab, they're given clearly fake headlines. Um they're asked, do you think this is accurate?" They say no. They're asked, "Would you be open to or willing to share this on social media?" The majority of them say yes. Um that that's not encouraging. Um I'll even read you one um uh to make it uh even more tangible. Um so this was done by by favorite researcher Pennycook uh in 2021. Participants were given this headline. Um "Over 500 migrant caravaners arrested with suicide vests." So imagine you saw that head- that headline. "Over 500 migrant caravaners arrested with suicide vests." Um turned out that when Republicans, and don't get caught caught up on the Republicans cuz I'll I'll come on that a second, were presented with this, only 15% thought it was accurate. Rightly so. Why? I mean, I wonder about that 15% like you know, what what what were they thinking, you know? Uh but only 15% thought it was accurate. But 51% said they would consider sharing it. 15% versus 51%. That's the Republicans, but don't get excited Democrats because there are other variations where the Democrats in the in the groups uh did the same thing. >> So what's the why behind sharing it? Like how did they square that explanation? >> Although we care about accuracy and we care about honesty normally, when we enter into, and this is me presenting their explanation, um it may not be the true one, but it's the best one I've seen. When we when we enter into the social media space, we often turn off the accuracy and honesty part of our brains, and we start to care a lot more about other things. We care about about uh our reputation, um our standing, our number of followers, um our tribe, and our group. Both boosting that and denigrating or, you know, detracting from the other tribe, the other group. And so, oh, here's something I now see I'm I'm I'm in the social media you know, they call it a social media mindset. I'm so now I'm thinking about all these kind of considerations. This is something that would definitely give me a boost if I'm a Republican maybe in my group. It would denigrate the other group. It would probably give me some more followers and some likes and some you know, good traction on social media so more clients to share. Um that's yeah, that's the that's the explanation that they provide. >> Yeah, and I I think the entertainment fusion with politics now where it's like, oh, well, we can laugh at that headline like we are entertained by that knowing that it's fake on both sides has created the incentives online that make it feel like it's full of disinformation anytime you're scrolling on any of the platforms. You you name it that you're confronted with this. >> And that could be true that like you're you you think it's pretty innocuous. This is just entertainment. And you share it. Alas, not everyone is going to think the same way or just discern it that to be fake in the first place. >> we got to be really worried about. >> Yeah, exactly. You think it's you know, clearly false and you're sharing it for a laugh or for entertainment. The next person who gets it thinks, oh my gosh, we've got a problem here. We need to change our immigration policy like we got crack down or whatever because they don't they don't see it. They don't recognize it. And so we're we're in a this is unintentional and inadvertent. So maybe it's not even blameworthy, but still has bad consequences and increasing the amount of false information in the world. >> Now, there's one last point I want to touch on that I found interesting and I'm sure many of our listeners might have a really good friend who's great at bullshitting or maybe they are themselves incredibly skilled at bullshitting, but you suggested is actually often more dangerous than lying. >> Yeah, and so I I I didn't know if I was allowed to say that, so but you've given me permission now to say it. So then these algorithms, who knows what they what these algorithms are going to do with that. >> Deep fake, yep. >> Yeah, so I mean they they might they might penalize this episode because we got that that that word in there. So you're supposed to talk about this and this is not the my understanding of this phenomena of is not unique to me, so I should be honest and you know, as it seems appropriate. There's a philosopher, very very famous philosopher named Harry Frankfurt, who wrote a best-selling book. It was really literally a philosopher writing a best-selling book is not is not a very common in our world, but it was called on And he he kind of gave us the the now classic understanding of this. It's worth saying quickly what it this is. It's when you in your communication say something because you don't care about the truth or falsity of it. Just because it advances some of your interests. So it's not that you're lying. You're not saying something which you know to be false. It's you're saying something which you don't have a clue whether it's true or false. You you don't care whether it's true or false. You're just making it up. Yeah, you're indifferent. Because but but you do care about something else, which is it might serve your cause. It might help your self-interest. It might get you a sale. It might promote your your status. It might get you more followers. So that's different from lying. It's yet another type of dishonesty. And I think you know, we I'm hesitant to make you know, blanket statements as you've heard this entire time. You know, is it always worse? Is it you know, than than lying or is lying always worse? I would be hesitant to make those blanket statements, but I think it's clearly true that there can be some cases where it's very harmful [snorts] and and severe and yes, worse than lying. I mean, because think about what you're doing. Um someone's asked you a question. It could be on a really important subject matter. Um There have been political examples of this. Uh for example, um where you don't know the answer and you just fabricate a response that could be so far from the truth. But the other person believes it and acts and lives their life because of this that the downstream negative consequences could be horrendous. So, yeah, we I mean we need you know, if we're honest people, we need to be on guard against lying of course, but also this too. It cannot be part of our psychology. >> All right. One last question to put you under the spotlight now. >> Oh, no. >> You've studied honesty for 10 years and yet you admit that your wife has to call you out. What's the most common way that you accidentally deceive yourself? >> [clears throat] >> Well, there's always a sense in which I can't answer that question. Um because there's if I'm really good at deceiving myself, I don't know that I'm deceiving myself. And so there are pockets of my minds that are so richly dishonest that I'm not even aware of them and I can't tell you what they are. Be honestly, I can't tell you what they are. Because I don't even know them myself. >> So, where have you grown in those areas where they they were brought into the spotlight? >> I mean there there are clearly areas of my life where it's transparent that I'm dishonest um or I fall short of virtue or I'm not a good person. The harder question here is what areas of my life was I actually deceiving myself about? And where I thought I might have been doing pretty good or I thought I was being dishonest, but actually I was you know, BS rationalizing. I was uh telling myself a myth so I didn't confront the truth. Um Yeah. I I think it I also think about that. Um cuz I mean part of it is like there's so many which one do I pick? Um Uh You know, one one clear one is not a super sexy answer, but um was that when I started this whole discussion of character and virtue and and honesty, I thought I was a lot better person than I really am. I I got told myself a story that I would you know I'm I'm doing pretty good. I'm heck I'm an ethics professor, you know, like and and a you know, top university. Um you know, like uh I haven't like been arrested for anything and etc. etc. Um so I thought I was doing pretty good. And then as time went on and I read a lot of the empirical literature and I I kind of got into some of the unconscious stuff and the ways in which we fall short, I realized those things about myself. They were present in my life. And my my self-evaluation started ticking down and down and down and down and down. Not not to where I'm like like miserable and like groveling I'm like a wretched person. Maybe I should be. I don't know. Maybe that's Maybe you can ask my wife about that. Maybe I am a a awful person. >> She knows better than you. >> Yeah, she knows. She knows. And but that's often true though. Because they they Yeah, yeah, yeah, people like that often do know better than the the self-deceptive individual themselves. So now I I think at least give you some answer. Um I think of myself as much more of a mixed bag and much less of a virtuous person um that I self-deceived into thinking early on. >> And I think in turn paradoxically that actually makes you a more virtuous person. I think to act as if you are virtuous and self-deceive by saying I am already virtuous you take from your ability to be virtuous. >> Yeah, good. That's that's very nice. Um at least it can hopefully set me on a better path to become more virtuous. Um I you You maybe there are rare instances of people who are virtuous and they would be telling the truth if they said they were virtuous. Although, does that make them not humble? For example, they a humble person probably can't say that they're humble, right? That's a a nice paradox right there. But, yeah, in my case, it is true that it it discloses more about my character and then probably sets me on a better path to work on that character and become more virtuous. Whether I'll ever get there or not, it's a lifelong endeavor for all of us. You know, I can go back on the podcast in 20 years and we could check in and see where we are. But, but yeah, you're right. I think it it doesn't hurt and it certainly helps. >> Well, hopefully in 20 years there's fewer honesty crises. >> [laughter] >> I hope so, too, but I'm not going to bet on it. Well, well, well, we we can always keep the hope alive, but if you want me to wage your money, I'm not going to take the bet. >> Well, that's better for you to have a sequel then. >> [laughter] >> Very good. Very good. At least something can come out of it, but yeah, it'd be nice if I didn't have to write the honesty crisis 2.0. >> And where can our audience find out more about the book? >> The book's available at all the usual places. It's published by Oxford University University Press. Yeah, their website you can get 30% off, but you can also go to Amazon or local booksellers. That might be more more virtuous in fact. And then I have a website called christianbmiller.com, christianbmiller.com, where you can find more about the book, interviews, and all that kind of stuff if you want. >> Thank you for joining me. Loved our discussion. >> Great. Great to be with you. Really enjoyed it as well. >> [music]