A bonfire of secrets

Our relationship with truth is, by its very nature, complicated. On the one hand, correct information is essential to produce informed assessments: when trying to jump over a gap between two rocks you had better be quite sure that you are able to before you make an attempt, because otherwise it might be your last. This is a clear case were the truth is extremely useful, so much so that you survival depends on it. However, it is also true that sometimes looking that the truth squarely in the face might be unbearable and one might choose not to investigate it in too much depth and instead delude themselves into thinking something else. If you find yourself in a seemingly deserted island without any chance of swimming away, it might be hard to explore the island to confirm that you are completely alone and likely to die there. Instead, you might wait some days hoping (almost without hope) that someone will come walking out of the jungle. Only after some time has passed and the "optimistic" assumption proves to be unfounded will you finally feel compelled to explore the island and confirm your worst fears.

The situation is completely different when the widespread communication of the truth, a truth that you know and other do not, is at odd with your present or future interests. In that case one might choose to propagate something different than the truth and profit from this misinformation. It is remarkable that this circumstance only happens through the interaction of two people. If you have a handful of seashells for sale it does not make sense to lie to yourself about their rarity: you probably know where you found them or bought them and are able enough to assess if more shells would be available or not. But even if you have a small pile of them, it does not prevent you from presenting one of them as a "unique specimen" to a potential buyer and try to get a better sale price for them. It is clear that this only works as long as you have an "information advantage" over the buyer, because if they know that those seashells are rather common they are not going to agree to pay a high price for them. In fact, this information asymmetry can also work in reverse if the buyer proposes to pay you in "currency of a faraway country" pretending that it is highly appreciated when it is little more than scrap metal.

Photo: Jin

The problem with lies is that they can damage the social fabric irreversibly, undermining the trust in the institutions and in the others, and reducing the probability of mutually beneficial cooperation, boosting instead exploitative relationships with a typical zero-sum result. The problems that the act of lying induces in the society and to the individuals are wonderfully summarized in the nursery rhyme "liar, liar, pants of fire", of uncertain origin but still visual enough for its meaning to be easily grasped: if you keep lying, your lies are soon going to catch up with you and, when you feel the heat in your backside there will be nowhere to hide.

Surprisingly, there are situations where lies are not only allowed, but even welcome and celebrated. Just think of the last time you saw an optical illusion on a book or a magician on TV: we know well enough that the woman is not cut in half, that the lines are straight and not curved, but our senses are tricked in a different direction and this dissonance between the appearances and what we know to be (not) happening is exhilarating. But illusions are not the only type of lies that we commonly accept. Fictions of every kind (books, movies, theater plays) are only loosely connected to reality at best, but we all agree to appreciate them and even to examine them for internal consistency. But they are still not true.

Halfway between the lies and the truth we can find the secrets. They can be seen as truthful, since the keeper of the secret is not propagating any false information; but they can also be considered deceitful, since they fail to spread information known to the keeper, something like a "lie by omission". Some secrets just hide in plain sight: pieces of information that the keeper is known to possess, but that he is not at liberty to disclose. This is the case of legal professional privilege, between an attorney and their client, or source protection, between a journalist and their informant. In these cases and many more we know that the lawyer or the journalist know the whole truth, but they are bound by their professional ethics not to divulge certain aspects. However, the big majority of secrets live in the dark for most of their lives: if you see a colleague having dinner with someone who is not their spouse, probably nobody will realize that you know. Even if your colleague sees you and asks you to be discreet, it is fairly easy to comply since nobody else will expect you to have this information and therefore they will not ask.

However, secrets are not completely innocuous. Even if we do not divulge the content of the secret we cannot stop knowing it, and this knowledge can affect our behavior in a noticeable way. One might become more cautious around the unfaithful colleague, or perhaps make a joke that can only be understood if you possess that piece of information. And, all of a sudden, someone might be questioning you why your attitude towards the colleague has changed and you will be faced with the dilemma of spilling the beans or concocting a lie to cover it up further. Unfortunately, there is in general only one truth but many lies, and the more lies you weave around this secret the harder it becomes to keep it consistent. And even if you succeed, the amount of mental work required to maintain the edifice of lies is huge, as accurately reported in this episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain. To observe this effect in first person, just remember the time your children or your younger siblings started questioning Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy: the amount of rhetorical acrobatics needed to keep the illusion in place is beyond description.

This rambling about the daily labyrinth of truths, lies and secrets has come about because a slip of the tongue that my father suffered during our last conversation over the weekend. He pointed out that David, my youngest brother, kept him appraised of the progress of the new-born granddaughter through regular updates on a WhatsApp group of which, by its name, I should have been part all along. I decided not to investigate under which circumstances it was formed and simply asked to be added, but it was obviously an example of a not-so-well-kept "secret".

Everyone has secrets, and that is an unavoidable reality, but carrying them can become a heavy burden. Sometimes choosing the right moment for disclosure can be very empowering. Otherwise, it might be better to forget that inconvenient secret and never reveal it, if it cannot bring any good to the world and only hurt everyone around it. Here is to wish that all of you are able to keep you lies at bay and do not get burnt in a bonfire of secrets. Have a nice evening.