TED Community » Jean-Charles Longuet

More About Me

My TED Story

A love story :)

Comments

• TEDCred score: +6.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Dec 4 2012: Thank you for sharing your story.
  
  Do not misread me : I am convinced that honesty is an important value, and as you say, that it is the best policy on a daily basis. But there are some cases when doubt is legitimate. I found out that the question was already analyzed ages ago, but that the answer is not absolute : ie, there are some (extreme) cases where lying is legitimate. Your message is a good reminder that such situation is very rare and should be handle on a case to case basis.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 27 2012: I guess that during WWII, hiding people to avoid them being shot required a good amount of lying, and truth or silence would have triggered immediate suspicion. So the "truth or silence is far above lying" seems an overrated statement to me.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 27 2012: Interesting parallel, and more suitable for discussion as laziness is less taboo that lies.
  
  However, there seem to be slight differences between both :
  - lying is a deliberate act, while being lazy is more inaction than action
  - lies outcomes are not accidental, but usually chosen (and explaining the lying action).
  This passiveness and unplanned consequences may explain that laziness is perceived as less "evil" than a lie.
  
  Now, lies (usually asserted as evil) may be done while positive consequences as a target : hiding someone from being hurt, for example. I was trying to point out the moral dilemma between the wrongness of lying compared to the goodness of the outcome. I do not see cases where that apply to laziness to extend your parallel in this rare case, however... Any idea ?

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 27 2012: 'Some people associate "truth" with negativity, which, in itself demonstrates the negativity of those who believe that.'
  
  That argument seems quite flawed to me : you claim that "Truth is neutral", so associating "truth" to positivity is as flawed as associating it with negativity. Why should one opinion be better than the other ? You could apply the same positive/negative people distinction based on any belief then.
  
  And "Honesty" is not "Truth". Truth is not only expressed by facts : our perception is involved, our communication too, or way to represent the world... The sentence "Green is a beautiful color" is true for some people and false for other.

• A comment on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 26 2012: If you're curious about implicit/explicit language, the link provided by Arkady (thanks to him) is definitely worth a look :
  
  http://wordyenglish.com/lit/language_and_human_nature.html
  
  Feel free to comment it.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 26 2012: Dan Ariely is very good at pointing such irrationnal behaviour. I guess we are all lying to ourself, especially when pretending to not lying... I adde this talk to the ones relatedd to this conversation.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 25 2012: Colleen, you are right when stating that lying or, more generally, misinforming is a way to control the reaction of people. However, people have great consideration about not being lied to, but are perfectly ok when being convinced by apparent logic. And I want to point out "apparent" because when you look more carefully, people are not convinced only by logic, but also by their own biases, by storytelling, by rhetoric, etc. So a manipulative intent is not always a lie, and trying to control or change someone's beliefs can be done while speaking the truth.
  
  I won't tell a dying woman that her son was just killed in an accident, if asked, I would blatantly lie to her saying he's ok, because I want her to be in peace for her last minutes. I may stay silent about some facts when the one who committed them shows repentance.That is my point of view, and I can understand that people can disagree. I just consider that following basic rules is not adapted to all situations, and that choices are required in such cases. At times, governments themselves had dark times and speaking the truth made dramas occur. So I care more about outcomes than on rules to feel ok with my conscience.

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 25 2012: The current topic is quite open, so your input is welcome.
  
  Truth is indeed not that objective : facts are subject to our perception flaws, and things are even worse when we enter the field of our thoughts, feelings, etc. And thereafter, the fact of hiding/distorting our perception of Truth is another point : it it is done with a positive intent, is it morally acceptable or not ?

• A reply on Conversation: Telling the truth: are there limits?

  Nov 25 2012: Why is it that "telling the Truth" is perceived as something "Good" for you ? For example "helping Others" is something as important from a social point of view. Is "telling the Truth" preferred because it costs nothing ?

• A comment on Conversation: Passwords can become 70% more Effective

  Nov 24 2012: Well, something similar to your suggestion is already in place on most systems for years. Prime number are not used, but when a password is provided the first time, what is stored is not the password by itself , but a hash : a kind of "fingerprint" of it. Afterwards, every time you log in, the same computation is done on what you just typed and compared to the fingerprint of the original password. It they match, it means the password is correct.
  
  So, the critical part is the choice of the password : dictionary attacks can find out all common passwords (from "123456" to any known language word), and brute-force attacks can find out all short passwords. So just use long enough passwords, as pointed out by Kitty...