Monday 20 August 2012

Pot(ai)to Pot(A)to

..of course, honesty has its appeals, and is even more appealing if it's the more difficult choice, if not the most. But Lying has its own charm too, in a situation where honesty is much easier and brings pride, like when someone is asked about their achievements, or if the good deed is done by them(which is). Besides, it's unfair not to appreciate an artistic deception.

According to the Information theory: If a bit of information, say a 0, is lost on its way to a destination, and instead, another bit is randomly being generated and transmitted, be it also a 0, we cannot say that the signal has been delivered. The received data is just noise.

Suppose someone doesn't like you (merely hypothetically), and they pretend otherwise, that's like the signal is a 0 and the noise is a 1, and you might be bright, they might not be good at pretending, or vice versa, that either leads into your detecting the lie or not. Now, suppose that someone doesn't like you, but instead of pretending otherwise, they "pretend" they don't like you, in an obvious way(so that their pretension is detected, and it makes you think they like you). This is like the signal is a 0 and the noise is also a 0. Now it takes more than just smarts to spot the truth in this case. The question is, if the receiver is not smart enough to discern the pretense, is the action still a lie? or merely a complicated game in which the opponent failed to participate?