alt Hacker NewsThat's not right; you're conflating dishonesty with lying. Why do people get weird when it comes to grokking what it means to lie?
Mere deception is not lying. (Though it is dishonest.)
A mere untrue statement is not a lie. (Though it is conterfactual.)
But to lie is to (a) state an untruth (b) that is intended to deceive. Absent both conditions being satisfied, you're not dealing with a lie.
There are other forms of dishonesty, but not all of them are lies.
For what it's worth (to whomever was upset by this): this is not apologetics—there's nothing here in my comment to give anyone cover for being dishonest. It is sufficient for something to be dishonest in order for to it to be deserving of all the judgement that people have for liars. It is the dishonesty that is bad, whether it takes form of a lie or not.
But conflating dishonesty with lying is harmful, because once you do that, you give ammunition to people who employ dishonesty in instances that don't involve lying, because if everyone is taking it as a given that dishonesty and lying are the same, and they can show that they weren't lying, then they can argue they weren't being dishonest. But that's wrong since dishonesty and lying are not synonymous—people can still be dishonest without lying—and, again, it is the dishonesty that is bad.