An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I'll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. --- You wrote about lying as an example of a "bad trait". I'd like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds them to impossible standards that hurts oneself in the long run by creating judgmental emotions and decreasing your ability to influence people who are hurting you. A perspective I find more helpful is that we, like all animals, communicate to influence others to help us in our goals. All animals communicate and all animals deceive…