Recently, I was in a tricky social situation that challenged one of my core principles: “Avoid lying at all costs.” It was a situation that made me reconsider the harshness of this principle.

However after giving it more thought, I’m again confident:

You should always avoid lying and default to honesty at all costs, and here’s why.

Making Decisions

Doing things well—whether it’s a physical skill or a mental or social ability—requires making good decisions.

Each decision you make can be thought of as a math equation, and each situation adds its own constraints and boundary conditions to the equation which makes finding a solution more difficult.

These constraints on top of our pre-existing mental biases, environment and considerations add complexity to our decision-making processes.

Take for example a social situation. When you observe something, there’s a sort of processing layer in which that event goes through to come up with a decision on how you’d like to act next.

This layer considers the context of the situation, logic, strategy, social norms, etiquette, relevance, and much more.

It’s a mental exercise that demands significant power, while some people have a large capacity to juggle many different constraints, we’re all ultimately limited to some level of cognitive capacity.

The Burden of Lies

Everyone develops their own philosophy to prioritize these constraints, focusing on what matters most to them.

I believe maintaining a lie consumes an unworthy portion of mental energy. While it might be easy to keep track of a single lie in one situation, social interactions are rarely so simple. Multiple people are involved, each with their own perspectives and truths, and the complexity of maintaining a web of lies grows exponentially the more lies you carry.

As these lies accumulate, you find yourself constructing stories, detached from reality, that are inherently fragile. This not only consumes your cognitive resources but also distracts you from more valuable functions. The mental effort required to sustain a lie is far greater than that needed to uphold the truth.

This is why I choose to avoid lying at all costs.

The Simplicity of Truth

By committing to truth, I free up mental energy for things that truly matter.

This choice comes with sacrifices, and sometimes stretching the truth seems necessary for social norms or empathy.

However, I’ve decided to have little tolerance for dishonesty. I’d rather be blamed for honesty than caught in a harmful lie.

This value helps me focus on what deserves my attention.

In a complex world, the simplicity of truth provides me clarity and peace of mind.