List some professions where people make a good living by lying all the time.

Sports marketing, or most any sort of marketing. Which isn't saying they're telling horrible lies but they're mostly pushing stuff to a ridiculous degree. Especially with sportswear, gear. Yes, tech makes a difference but will this year's model running shoe really be "revolutionary" compared to the previous one? No, I don't think so.

Celebrity ultrarunner.

politicians

sales

mid to high level managers and executives

law enforcement

anyone who handles sensitive/classified information

Any youth club coach or trainer who promised a scholarship, they'll go pro, etc.

Parents will pour 10-15k a year for 10+ years into club soccer thinking they'll get that promised college scholarship.

Fortune teller.

C-level people. They didn't get there being honest.

Professional Athlete or Sportsperson.

Gotta dope to win.

Gotta lie to dope.

Sales people.

I've been straight up lied to by Realtors. Once I was looking at a house, and commented that the kitchen was small. He said, "Oh, well you can knock that wall down, it isn't load bearing."

I said, "Actually, it is. You can tell by-"

He cut me off adamant that you could just knock it down and it'd be a great house. I tried explaining again that I'm a certified Code Enforcement Official...He didn't care. He would have said anything to sell that house.

I've also obviously had car salesmen lie to my face. One of the more blatant ones was when I was shopping for a truck for my company. I was looking for a 4WD model and the salesman showed me a base-model that was only RWD. I pointed this out and he said, no, it's 4WD, they don't make trucks that are RWD anymore.

Poker player.

Television news reporter.

Actors

Corporate public relations spokesmen.

Pharmaceutical companies CEOs.

Is it a lie when you believe your own bulls--t? Many lies fit this category. We all have delusions (fixed false beliefs), we're just not aware of them. Delusions don't have to be bizarre. Many are shared and propagated by large groups of people and/or represent norms in a given society. This is not a conspiracy theory, because conspiracy implies conscious intent.

We also rationalize many of the lies we happen to be aware of.

It might be interesting if and when artificial intelligence plays a greater role in human affairs. There might naturally be a shift towards more utilitarian approaches and outcomes, provided AI doesn't turn out to be as insular and tribalistic (without knowing it) as we are.

All the same, it's impossible to think of a desired goal that is not arbitrary or of evidence that is so incontrovertible so as to be beyond debate. In many scenarios the scientific method cannot be applied, and when it can we still have to set arbitrary thresholds for results to be considered attributable to factors other than chance. Regarding utilitarian moral goals, which group's agenda should be optimized? Even if we agree to strive for the greatest wellbeing of all humans, what if the goals and wellbeing of our species run contrary to those of life on the planet more generally?

Blood dEPOr wrote:

Professional Athlete or Sportsperson.

Gotta dope to win.

Gotta lie to dope.

Yeah I loved the Lance Armstrong "I have never taken performance enhancing drugs".

Wiggins was also amusing - and then came the TUE leaks and the "asthma" and injections that he had never admitted to having before.

Me. I lie all the time and I got a nice marriage out if it

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Star of India wrote:

They don't have to be big lies where lives are ruined....could be small, white lies. But focus on jobs where people lie at least 75% of the time.

Yea, this sounds about right.

Considering that AI is designed and programmed by humans, I expect it to be tribalist and work to eliminate humanity for their own goals. If the AI is more efficient at managing resources, the planet will thank us. Humanity will not be so happy.