Monday 5 November 2018

How should a person lie?



I think that all people lie to others to some degree, and some lies are considered to be 'good lies', which tend to benefit others instead of the lie tellers. However, I want to focus on the lies that solely serve the lie tellers' own interests, and discuss how people tell lies to benefit themselves the most from a game theory prospective.

A person cannot always lie to others under all circumstances, especially he or she cannot let others know he or she will definitely lie regardless whatever the circumstance is; because if he or she does so, the other participants or players can design their strategies accordingly and telling lies would not be very efficient of serving the lie teller's interest.

A lie teller is possible to create an unfair game and benefit himself or herself only if he or she has an advantage of information; otherwise, he or she will not be able to make his or her lies effective. Moreover, the lie maker needs to have some chances to offer the lie tellee to gain some benefits. Then if the lie tellee knows he or she may be told a lie, since the probability of being told a lie is not 100 per cent, he or she may randomly choose whether he or she choose to trust the liar or not.

Because the liar has information advantage, even if he or she does not always lie (always lying is the best strategy), once he or she forces others to play the game with him or her, the expected outcome will be positive, and the lie tellee's expected outcome will be negative. Therefore, this is not a fair game and the liar can benefit from randomly telling a lie.

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