Here’s What Might Happen If Nobody Could Lie
In many ways, life would be a lot simpler if everyone told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But so help us, this just isn't how humans tend to interact with one another.
While a world in which lies are a thing of the past is just a fantasy, it's a fun thought experiment to imagine what it might look like. Redditors weighed in on the topic of what industries wouldn't collapse if truth was universal.
News would feel different.
"Journalism would be a lot more impactful. ... or everyone would just refuse to say anything and there would be no quotes."
"While we aim to represent the truth as much as possible, sometimes we can't always fully corroborate the facts."
Farming is absolutely critical.
"Agriculture. People need to eat regardless."
"The agriculture industry would significantly be altered and prices would change. Elevators and farm suppliers couldn't lie anymore to maximize their 'buy low, sell high' profit strategies, but farmers couldn’t lie that every employee is legally able to work in the US."
Safe in the skies.
"Aviation would largely be fine. Engineers and mechanics have a huge paper trail ensuring honesty, and pilots/flight attendants/controllers/dispatchers are constantly communicating; a lie from any of them just turns into a problem pretty quickly."
"Maybe the management or airport operations would be impacted, but the 'frontline' part of flying would be largely unaffected"
Would it be good or bad for comedy?
"Comedy would survive somehow because awkward truths are still funny."
"Although, as a former standup, most stories are edited and sweetened (or entirely fabricated) in service of the timing/entertainment factor of said jokes."
Numbers don't lie.
"Maths will survive. Engineering will be better!"
"I think all of STEM would be great. No stealing credit, no exaggerating your results. It would be pure science as it's meant to be. Plus maybe people would trust scientists again once other people couldn't lie about it for their own political or economic gain."
Librarians unite!
"Since I work in this field, the children's educational publishing industry, AKA people who make library books!"
"Editing to say that NON-FICTION books are what I am leaning on here. All books I work to create are diligently fact-checked before publishing."
Lawyering up might change.
"Lawyers / the justice system would still exist."
"People think lawyers wouldn't exist, but very few lawyers actually lie. They are masters at interpretation of wording, but they'd lose their license to practice if they were ever caught lying."
An honest mechanic is worth their weight in gold.
"Our family has been going to the same mechanic for over 25 years. All of our vehicles are Toyota's and so are his, which is why he wanted to work on our truck for the first time all those years ago."
"Skip to today. He now owns the garage and it is one of the most sought after garages by customers in town. However, regardless of how busy they are, if we call him with a problem he says 'bring her by tomorrow.'"
Teachers would be brutally honest.
"Teaching would be great. I would pay to see that show. My wife's class would be crying before lunch."
"I don't lie as a teacher, but my students lie to me, parents lie to me, admin lies to me, (Counselors don’t for the most part), curriculum sales people lie all the darn time. My life would be 100% better."
Doctor-patient relationships would be drastically different.
"Would make the doctor's lives 100 times easier when patients can't lie to them."
"This is one thing I don't get. Tell your doctor EVERYTHING that might be slightly related. Even if you do meth. Tell your doctor. The only thing he can do about it is make better decisions about your health when you tell them the truth."
Coroners would have a very difficult job.
"Maybe coroners."
"It might make a lot of disclosures more emotionally upsetting. A lot of death workers who talk to surviving loved ones will say someone who died suddenly did so peacefully and with no pain. That's not always true, especially when the COD is an accident of some kind."
No more shady accounting.
"Accounting has to be honest. Financial analysts, however, would disappear in a second."
"Really fun to think about the ripple effects of this one. Lower taxes because less fraud. Stock gains hovering at 2% because no funny accounting. Actors getting paid because Hollywood accounting doesn't exist anymore, and etc."
ER guessing games.
"As an ER doc I'd breathe a sigh of relief as the diagnostic burden of my patients become quartered."
"Everyone lies. About how much it hurts. About what they took. About what they didn't take. About adherence to a regimen. About whether they actually have a family member willing to drive them home. It may be from pride, altered consciousness or malingering, but everyone lies."
More truth, more therapy.
"Therapists would be in demand."
"I suspect the work would be much more productive due to changes in clients, too."
Tech would be supported.
"Without a shadow of a doubt tech support! I spent a couple of years doing this (now onto bigger and better things thank God!) Firstly, you often get rated on how quickly you resolve an issue, so it makes sense to give the client the right information."
"Second, if you overpromise what the system can do or underquote repair times you're letting yourself in for a ton of bad feedback. Sadly after say three or four weeks in the business you lose the will to live let alone lie. Good talk."
We'd know when projects would be finished.
"Unironically, construction would improve because everyone would be forced to be operating on realistic timelines."
"Instead of I WANT IT DOWN TOMORROW!!!! Then 5 angry phone calls past the deadline its done"
Lies are everywhere.
"A lot of industries would just need to change their approach. I'm sure there are people who lie in every industry, but it doesn't mean that lying causes those industries to be successful."
"In fact, a lot of people do the whole "office politics" thing, lying their way up the corporate ladder, and causing the company to be less efficient."
Church might feel a lot different.
"Religion and politics would implode. Science is literally the only thing that would survive."
"Politics, yes. But religion, no. It's hard to define that as a 'lie.' A lie is knowingly saying something you know isn’t true. If you fully believe what you’re saying, it’ll never be a lie. Even if it isn’t the truth."
Is it really a lie, though?
"Weather forecasting. They've been professionally saying "maybe" for decades, honesty would just improve their brand."
"They would just add the word 'allegedly' like everyone looking to make up whatever they want without being sued."
Fewer smoke and mirrors in the tech world.
"Tech. Not Silicon Valley Tech Bro tech, the rest of us who produce actual useful products and services that the world depends on and aren't focused on get rich quick schemes."
"The end of lies would have a massive impact initially, but I think it would benefit everyone in the end. The worst hit people would be the MBAs."
Shady salespeople would be obsolete.
"Sales. Good salespeople don't lie."
"If you are doing sales right you are leading people to a decision they want to make. You go to the car dealership to buy a car. Selling someone a car isn't lying to them, its literally what they came to do."
The right people for the task.
"Engineering. The program managers who run the show in engineering would quickly lose their jobs but when engineers lie people typically die (looking at you the half a dozen bridge collapses in the last year) so it would honestly get better."
"Engineering industry probably would be fine, if fact would likely improve."
Facts are facts are facts.
"Professors/educators."
"They largely teach (hopefully) how to research and interpret research which is based on methods, theories, and hopefully facts."
Transparency on all sides.
"A lot of medical care/mental health services would get a lot better if for no other reason patients would be honest about their issues and habits."
"On a related note, no one in history has fallen and ended up with a banana in their butt."
If nobody listens anyway...
"IT services would become far less popular but probably wouldn't suffer a significant loss."
"Sysadmins. They always tell the truth and then no one listens to them, so really nothing would change."
Tough questions might get brutal answers.
"I scanned a patient last week and he kept asking me jokingly if he had a couple more days left in him, some more tread on the tyres, if his MOT was coming up clean."
"The honest answer would have been mate I don't know how you walked in here and I don’t know if you’ll make it back up to the assessment unit. But of course I told him he looked great for his age and sent him on his merry way."
Psychologists wouldn't have to guess.
"Psychology."
"It would make the process run much smoother if patients and psychologists could openly communicate necessary truths to progress in the individual's mental health aid and completely understand what is wrong and the root of their problems."
Wild card candidate.
"Professional wrestling."
"They've been 'lying' about being real for decades, and fans know it. Nothing would change."
They're called hard sciences, not easy sciences.
"Gotta be the hard sciences. Physics doesn't care about your sales pitch. The numbers are what they are. You can't lie to gravity."
"Marketing, on the other hand? Poof. Gone overnight."
Would criminal trials even be a thing?
"You'd think the Justice system would collapse (due to lawyers, etc)."
"But really if you could just say 'Did you murder this person? Tell me exactly what happened' and they had to tell the truth, then that makes everything easy."
