I don't think it's that hard to steelman the surface-level premise of the movie; it's not actually imagining that people *don't lie*, it's imagining that they *are honest*. (It doesn't go nearly far enough in imagining what sorts of institutions that world would have, but that's what makes it a comedy instead of a speculative fiction movie.) Liar Liar had approximately the same premise, applied magically to one person.
The obvious view shared by the writers of the two movies is that intentional lies of omission - where you know some information you have is of interest to someone, but you withhold it in order to mislead them - have more in common with lies than with other non-lying behavior.
Lying is bad when social norms are good. But there have been lots of very bad societies where lying is a necessary survival skill and needed for basic functioning. Communism is a rather extreme example of this, where people often lie about their activities so that they could do productive work for themselves, but any society where politicians suddenly are held to their promises would turn out the same way. You wrote "ADHD Shall Save Us" about how politicians actually being forced to stick by their words would lead to disaster. Things like that far outweigh the costs of fraud, at least with current society (like, if populists actually behaved as warmongering as they promised they'd be when elected, we'd be well into WW3).
Ending lies might still be a net positive, of course. If power-hungry sadistic politicians had to be honest about their reasons for running for office or leading the revolution, they would be much less likely to get power in the first place, and if people were more trustworthy then beliefs would be more accurate. But I am not confident in this.
I don't think it's that hard to steelman the surface-level premise of the movie; it's not actually imagining that people *don't lie*, it's imagining that they *are honest*. (It doesn't go nearly far enough in imagining what sorts of institutions that world would have, but that's what makes it a comedy instead of a speculative fiction movie.) Liar Liar had approximately the same premise, applied magically to one person.
The obvious view shared by the writers of the two movies is that intentional lies of omission - where you know some information you have is of interest to someone, but you withhold it in order to mislead them - have more in common with lies than with other non-lying behavior.
"Much of the humor The Invention of Lying is more about ..."
IS THERE a (two-letter) preposition MISSING in here? in? of? I hate this. WHAT is going on?
Lying is bad when social norms are good. But there have been lots of very bad societies where lying is a necessary survival skill and needed for basic functioning. Communism is a rather extreme example of this, where people often lie about their activities so that they could do productive work for themselves, but any society where politicians suddenly are held to their promises would turn out the same way. You wrote "ADHD Shall Save Us" about how politicians actually being forced to stick by their words would lead to disaster. Things like that far outweigh the costs of fraud, at least with current society (like, if populists actually behaved as warmongering as they promised they'd be when elected, we'd be well into WW3).
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/02/adhd_shall_save_1.html
Ending lies might still be a net positive, of course. If power-hungry sadistic politicians had to be honest about their reasons for running for office or leading the revolution, they would be much less likely to get power in the first place, and if people were more trustworthy then beliefs would be more accurate. But I am not confident in this.