unintentional fakery

In a recent article from Scientific American Mind, David Livingstone Smith argues that lying is essential to survival of the fittest.

The mirror orchid, for example, displays beautiful blue blossoms that are dead ringers for female wasps. The flower also manufactures a chemical cocktail that simulates the pheromones released by females to attract mates. These visual and olfactory cues keep hapless male wasps on the flower long enough to ensure that a hefty load of pollen is clinging to their bodies by the time they fly off to try their luck with another orchid in disguise. Of course, the orchid does not "intend" to deceive the wasp. Its fakery is built into its physical design, because over the course of history plants that had this capability were more readily able to pass on their genes than those that did not. Other creatures deploy equally deceptive strategies. When approached by an erstwhile predator, the harmless hog-nosed snake flattens its head, spreads out a cobralike hood and, hissing menacingly, pretends to strike with maniacal aggression, all the while keeping its mouth discreetly closed.

Of course, falsehood is not restricted to the animal and flora kingdoms, and Livingstone believes humans have an added dimension to our deception because we can deceive ourselves. boing boing posted this link within days of another link to an APA release that explains that people lacking certain cognitive skills have an inability to recognize irony, and therefore, sarcasm.

The Israeli psychologists who conducted the research explain that for sarcasm to score, listeners must grasp the speaker’s intentions in the context of the situation. This calls for sophisticated social thinking and “theory of mind,” or whether we understand that everyone thinks different thoughts. As an example of what happens when “theory of mind” is limited or missing, autistic children have problems interpreting irony, the more general category of social communication into which sarcasm falls.

The misunderstood sarcasm becomes an unintentional lie in itself. If you add the complexity of language to the mix, truth appears to be just as elusive as philosophers have always claimed it to be. Or maybe I just made this all up.