Why don't we care about the truth?

 Why don't we care about the truth?

The key element in "Nietzsche's Thesis" is that if another person can give something to us, we want to believe in that person. Because it brings gifts to our lives.

We select people whose lies we want to hear. When somebody can give a gift to us, that justifies lies. This is why we listen to lies from our boss. But if our henchman tells lies, we hand over those persons very easily. 

Many times in our lives, we face situations where social pressure forces us to "believe" things that are not true. In those situations, we know that something is based on lies. But we don't care about the truth. We just follow those lies because it's easier for us. In the so-called "Nietzsche Thesis," philosopher Joseph Sieber wrote that the true reason for conversations is to reach social positions, not seek the truth. And maybe Sieber is right. When we are in conversation with our boss, we accept almost every lie that those people tell. Because we don't react to those lies, we accept them. 

"The notion of "epistemic vigilance" argues that humans are naturally equipped to detect lies and gauge the reliability of others. Studies and philosophers like Joseph Shieber challenge this idea, indicating humans are not as adept at deception detection as once thought. Shieber's "Nietzsche Thesis" posits that our true aim in conversation is self-presentation and social standing, not necessarily truth-seeking." (https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-nietzsche-thesis/)

But when our henchmen tell lies, we are saying that very easily. When we have authority over other people, it's easy to say that other people tell lies. But when we are henchmen and another person is in a higher position, it's socially accepted that we hear lies, but we don't react to them. Sometimes that thing is called "social skills". We can avoid trouble if we don't react to lies. We don't tell our higher-ranking opponent that superior lies; that flatters that person. And because of human hereditary behavior, we need to flatter our leaders. 

If somebody is higher in the hierarchy. We accept almost everything that person says. But if our henchman tells lies. We are eager to address them. The reason for that is simple, we don't have a reason to listen to lies from the person who cannot give anything to us. But if we flatter our boss, we can get even promotion. Because the boss can give a gift to us, we can listen to almost anything from them. But henchmen cannot give those things to us, and we don't have to listen to lies from people who don't bring us social benefits. 

When somebody is in a higher place in the hierarchy, we accept almost everything from those people. But if somebody is our henchman, we don't hesitate to say that our henchman tells lies. And the reason for that is simple. Even if we listen to lies from our henchmen and flatter them, that will not bring social benefit to us. But if we listen to lies from our boss and flatter that person, that can bring us new positions.

Philosophers introduced that humans are naturally equipped to detect lies. That is one of the biggest ideas that philosophers ever introduced. 

The question is why we don't use that equipment.  But now we face the fact that maybe humans are not as good at that as we think. 

The question about lie detection is always, "Do we accept lies because we don't want to tell that opponent who is telling lies? For opponents and other people is the same, do we detect lies, or don't we just react to them? In both cases, the opponent believes that we believe those lies. 

Maybe we fear consequences if we tell our boss that he or she lies to us. Maybe, we detect lies, but we don't see a reason to tell others that the person in a superior position lies to us. This is one of the things in social psychology. Many times, we detect lies, but without authority, we don't say that we detect them. And that thing boosts the authority's image as more intelligent than henchmen. 

https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-nietzsche-thesis/