Readers Digest asks the question "Are men or women more honest?"

So what is the point of time and subject reference? Honest in regard to past facts? Past feelings? Present facts? Present feelings? Future?

You get the drift. I would submit to you that women are more honest than men in regard to their present and past intentions. "Aha" you say, "women are more honest."

Not so. Not so if you calculate useful honesty. If a man deceives someone, he deceives someone. It happens.

But women, the unfathomable mysteries, can be telling the absolute truth but still be lying by men's standards. It's simple, women do change their mind at an alarmingly fast rate (yes, it's a gross generalization. I admit it, and I admit that gross generalizations are often wrong in specific instances. That's why they are gross generalizations). Today's truth is anybody's guess tomorrow.

I submit that truth should also be judged by it's utility. So, women are more honest than men. But if a man says that he has the future intention of doing such and such, there is a very small probability that he will change his mind (telling the truth at the time) plus the chance that he is lying. But a woman, on the other hand, could be deceiving (less likely than for a man) but very well could change her mind (leaving to the widespread speculation that her mind was disposeable in the first place. But your blogger vocally disagrees with such spec in order to be more egalitarian and possibly receive more cookies) meaning that the utility of what is being asserted is less than what it would be for man (even though he is more likely to be lying).

Following me?

I'm hearing a distant echo here.

Is anyone there?