By the time you’re three or four years old, you’ve already learned the tremendous value of dishonesty.

Even if you were the one who unrolled all the toilet paper onto the floor, you know it’s possible for your parents to believe it was someone else, and that’s a better outcome for you. So you say you didn’t do it, hoping they adopt this false version of reality and never know the difference.

The truth is a useful and beautiful thing, but it easily comes in conflict with other interests, namely feeling safe from unwanted forms of attention, or getting others to do things for you.

Deception – or at least, putting truth second to other interests — is instinctive. I have a clear memory of being six years old, playing in the town pool with one of my friends. We were talking about how deep the water was, and he said that his dad could touch the bottom because he was seven feet tall. I said my dad could too, because he was eight feet tall.

Now, I didn’t actually know how tall my dad was, but I knew he probably wasn’t a whole foot taller than Wilt Chamberlain. Why did I say that? I guess felt I was being challenged in some way, and that it was important to counter my friend’s aggressive claim of father-height superiority. I didn’t feel like I was lying exactly. The accuracy of what I was saying just didn’t seem particularly important.