What If there was no such thing as Lying?

[Kajin]

In any case, it would be terrible. Lying is ultimately a creative process, arguably at the heart of the whole thing, and it's hard to imagine how you could alter the human mind is such a way that it couldn't lie without taking away a lot of what makes life and people interesting. It's the same problem one is presented with when people ask 'What if there was no religion.' The answer is 'There wouldn't be human beings anymore, or at least anything that would be remotely human as we knew it.'

Depends on what the conditions for what constitutes a lie count. Leading someone to false conclusions while still telling the absolute truth is definitely possible and by far more difficult than simply telling an outright falsehood. As such it's a very good exercise in creativity and imagination as well as communication and people skills.

 

[mad825]

Humanity would destroy itself inside of a decade. We NEED to be able to lie to each other; most of us can't handle the truth. (Just for example: How many marriages would survive more than a few rounds of "Was it good for you?" "Not really."?)

Funny enough, we have mechanisms to ignore the truth. It's called Willful ignorance.

Worst case scenario is that society becomes a dull, clock work existence as the creativity and competitiveness dwindles. If we could triple the technological state that we're currently in then it may be more advantageous for humanity.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

Humanity would destroy itself inside of a decade. We NEED to be able to lie to each other; most of us can't handle the truth. (Just for example: How many marriages would survive more than a few rounds of "Was it good for you?" "Not really."?)

Eh, if anything, I think people would just learn not to ask questions to which they didn't want to know the honest answers.

I'm not saying it'd be a magical utopia, but I'm pretty certain the world would be a heck of a lot better than it is now.

 

[barbzilla]

Ultimately it wouldn't make much of an impact on the world. Even if people didn't lie, there are plenty of ways around answering a question directly anyway. If it suddenly happened there would be mass chaos for a little while, but ultimately it would have very little impact on the world. Aside from that, how does one define a lie. Do you mean telling an untruth, or knowingly and willingly speaking a falsehood. Sometimes people speak untruths without knowing so, and you could achieve the same effect as speaking a falsehood by using misdirection and confusing words. I rarely ever lie in my day to day life as I don't need to. That isn't to say I am always an honest person though. Many times it is as much about what I don't say as it is about what I do.

 

[MoltenSilver]

If you had some blank-slate society upon with the impose this, it might be able to work (or it might descend into an arms race of who can subvert the definition of 'lie' the most)

If it were to suddenly magically be foist upon our society? Either it wouldn't alter the ability for people to warp the truth and therefore accomplish nothing, or we're apocalypse-level screwed: It would take about a day for nearly every single relationship (familial, romantic, and professional) to completely implode as being confronted undeniably that your significant others lied to you, even for the best of reasons, is going to destroy your ability to trust any of them again (Even if you know intellectually they can't lie that's not going to salve over the anger felt from the perceived insult so easily).
This would also happen in a macro-scale; the progress of legislation would likely slam to a halt when each representative is now coerced to state what lobby purchased their vote. From there I don't know what would happen next, but there will definitely be a lot of fighting and grabbing for power.

In other words, magically having it imposing it on us would have the same effect as if a net had all its connections spontaneously combustion.