logo
episode-header-image
Sep 23
58m 9s

The Truth About Honesty, Lies, and Decep...

Brain in a Vat
About this episode

Christian Miller, author of The Honesty Crisis, joins to explore the nature and ethics of honesty. He examines what it means to be honest, when lying can be morally justified, and the difference between honesty and simply telling the truth. Miller considers these questions through cases involving deepfakes, delusion, infidelity, and our obligations to tell the truth.


Chapters:

[00:00] Introducing Christian Miller

[00:29] The Nazi at the Door

[07:17] Honesty or Compassion

[14:24] The Importance of Honesty

[18:26] Deepfakes and the Erosion of Trust

[23:03] Honest Falsehoods and Dishonest Truths

[32:30] The “Honest Liar”

[37:22] Delusion, The Matrix, and Honesty

[41:40] Relationships and Infidelity

[52:38] Duties to Disclose Affairs

Up next
Oct 6
Decoding Reactions: Signal and Noise in Personal Interactions | Mark Schroeder
Mark Schroeder discusses When Things Get Personal, his account of how we interpret one another and why those interpretations so often go wrong. Our interactions are filled with noise, factors that don’t reflect the person themselves, complicating what we can infer about an indivi ... Show More
59m 53s
Aug 25
The Costs of Open Borders | Lionel Shriver
Lionel Shriver returns to discuss her new novel, 'A Better Life,' and the philosophical debate over immigration and open borders.Inspired by a proposed New York City program to pay residents to house migrants, the novel turns one family's home into a thought experiment about immi ... Show More
56m 23s
Aug 10
The Man Who Exposed Jason Arday: Cancelled at Cambridge | Nathan Cofnas
Nathan Cofnas, the academic who recently drew widespread attention for exposing plagiarism allegations against Cambridge professor Jason Arday, returns to Brain in a Vat to discuss academic freedom, institutional conformity, and his own controversial departure from Cambridge.Cofn ... Show More
58m 58s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2022
Impossible (?) Conversations: The Best and Worst of "Woke Culture"
Psychologists Dr. Hector Garcia and Dr. Valerie Tarico join us for a complex, nuanced, and thoughtful conversation about the dying of discourse in a hyper-divided world. When should we speak, and when should we shout? Are we picking the right battles? When should we declare war o ... Show More
56m 35s
Nov 2017
Mind Games
How to make people like you, why you should lick rocks, and what an awkward person is really thinking. Angela Duckworth (Grit author) is co-host; Mike Maughan (Qualtrics) is live fact-checker. 
47m 46s
Aug 2022
how to start a new chapter: omw to my "???" era
tail spinning
57m 45s
Jun 2023
Gut instinct
The Skeptic Editor Michael Marshall talks to Matthew Sweet about how we judge actions and truth. They're joined by New Generation Thinkers Elsa Richardson, who is a historian of the emotions at the University of Strathclyde working on a popular history of the gut-brain connection ... Show More
45m 58s
May 2025
can friends survive a political divide?: new enemy unlocked
podmothers sephy & wing enter the chat: spiralling on opinions, morals, and political differences, managing expectations for yourself and others, failure, redirection, and knowing when to change course. ✷see more ✷ youtube @sephyandwing ✷ instagram @sephyandwing ✷ tiktok @sephyan ... Show More
52m 37s
Feb 2025
407: Concepts of a Bubble
Is it socially appropriate to cover my ears and go “ahhhhhh?” Where did all the water on Mars go? How do I deal with friends who disrespect my favorite singer? Why are there perfectly uniform bubbles in my soap? Why don’t people just take the bribe and not do the corruption? Shou ... Show More
48m 58s
Jun 2022
Gay Son or Thot Daughter?
<span>The girlies answer the tough questions: has Google created sentient AI? Can you romanticize your way out of a shitty job? How can you tell if the vibes are off? Digressions include everything. It's all digressions this week.</span><br /> <br /> Advertising Inquiries: <a hre ... Show More
1h 6m
Apr 2025
You’re Fine WIth That?
We are back getting Ros and Eric weighing in on some headlines that have caught their eye. In true He Said, Ella Dijo fashion, these two don’t always have the same opinion on these topics. What bathroom should a parent be taking their child of the opposite sex into, would you be ... Show More
19m 49s