I suppose in that situation the skilled politician looks ahead by a few more moves and answers "no comment" to all the questions, on the basis that at least that gives less detailed information to their enemies.
More generally, I'd imagine that a strong culture of refusing to answer would be a natural consequence of a visible indication of lying.
In the story, has this watery effect always existed, or has it come into existence only recently? In the latter case, you could certainly imagine a lot of people committing the kinds of dishonesty common in our own society and getting amusingly caught out, and then a difficult adjustment process while people gradually figured out what the sensible strategies were, but in the former case you'd expect society to have evolved all along with the right defence mechanisms (perhaps, for instance, a greatly strengthened culture of no obligation to answer to give people a fighting chance at privacy) and the interest would be less to have a laugh at the expense of (analogues of) real-world liars and more to imagine what such a very different society might end up looking like.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-10 03:43 pm (UTC)More generally, I'd imagine that a strong culture of refusing to answer would be a natural consequence of a visible indication of lying.
In the story, has this watery effect always existed, or has it come into existence only recently? In the latter case, you could certainly imagine a lot of people committing the kinds of dishonesty common in our own society and getting amusingly caught out, and then a difficult adjustment process while people gradually figured out what the sensible strategies were, but in the former case you'd expect society to have evolved all along with the right defence mechanisms (perhaps, for instance, a greatly strengthened culture of no obligation to answer to give people a fighting chance at privacy) and the interest would be less to have a laugh at the expense of (analogues of) real-world liars and more to imagine what such a very different society might end up looking like.