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Notes -
I’m inclined to give him a little more slack than that. Just the other day I had the experience of reminiscing about a friend I had 10+ years ago who I knew for a fact was an incurable bullshitter. He lied about the most inane things and I knew this at the time.
He ran a store when I met him and it closed after a year or so and it only occurred to me now, more than a decade later, that he probably lied to me about why he had to close.
I think there are two pieces here that I’ve experienced firsthand: one is it’s very difficult to retro-actively scrub for lies. I also experienced this after leaving Mormonism in college. For years after I was uncovering random new things I’d been taught that were easily seen to not be true.
The second is it’s difficult to spot a lie if it is about something it would never occur to you to lie about. It’s like if someone always lies to you about what he had for lunch that day. Then over time lies get built on that. It can be very hard when a major lie is uncovered to realize it goes back to what was for lunch.
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