Robots make great liars

Good lying depends on accurately replicating your appearance when speaking the truth. That is, if you want to appear hurt, and you normally get angry when hurt, then looking sad and dejected is not a good idea. This requires you to be a good actor in order to be a good liar, so that you can replicate disturbed emotional states when necessary. This is well-known, I think, even if people don't think about it in such terms -- it's too simple for that.

But the interesting thing to consider is that if your normal response is to appear detached and without emotion, as a robot or myself, then lying/acting simply involves doing the same thing. Thus the only requirement for a robot or me to lie well is to be speak the lie unemotionally -- which is, obviously, significantly easier than replicating a more energetic emotional response.

But while being mechanical in your emotions make you a good liar, as I am, it causes many problems as well. Empathy or sympathy, even when felt, may not be noticed by other people. People see you as aloof, distant, arrogant, isolated. (Often times they're right.) And connecting to people is... difficult, to say the least.

I'm of course getting autobiographical here. I'm a fucking robot most of the time, and I really wish I wasn't. I forge emotional responses like a blacksmith does horse shoes, with time and effort and raw materials acquired from somewhere else. I like to think I understand people's reactions and emotions, but I really do only in the way that a biologist understands why a rat runs through a maze. I'm an observer, not a participator, on the outside looking in, always. Everything I say here is hypothetical or theoretical with little practical utility or evidence behind it. I talk of love like I know anything but of course I don't. I talk of faith and mercy and divinity and I know nothing. I'm a farce.

I want to learn what it means to be human, because I really don't know -- even if no one else does either. They do it instinctively, without thinking. I have trouble even accepting an invitation to hang out.

Where I am going with this? I'm rambling tonight, worse than normal. It's too late. I'm tired.