April 2, 2026
Truth or just good PR?
Good ideas do not need lots of lies in order to gain public acceptance (2008)
Old quote, new fight: Is “no lies” a truth test or just a PR fantasy
TLDR: A classic line—“Good ideas don’t need lies”—resurfaced, sparking a fight over whether it’s a sharp moral compass or wishful thinking. Commenters clash with stock-options counterexamples, AI hype parallels, and ad-world cynicism about persuasion, turning a simple maxim into a spicy debate about truth vs. marketing power.
An old zinger—“Good ideas don’t need lots of lies”—is back, dragging the internet into a brawl over truth, hype, and who gets to say “I told you so.” The essay’s author aimed his MBA-flavored maxim at pre-Iraq-War spin and a stock-options accounting fight. Commenters immediately split into camps: the truth-purists and the marketing-realists.
One camp, led by a time-stamping commenter, cheers the rule as a reliable gut-check: if leaders have to fib, the idea’s rotten. Another crowd fires back: not so fast. A top-voted retort points out the quote started with stock options—then notes options became standard pay in tech and helped winners win. Translation: sometimes the “blag” wasn’t a blag at all. Cue a second slap: another commenter calls the essay’s “if they lie, ignore them” approach a “very poor heuristic,” especially when messy facts and bad messengers collide.
Then the conversation swerves into today’s arena: AI hype and academic puffery. One voice says the quote screams at papers and press releases that oversell every minor breakthrough. A veteran of advocacy ads delivers the cold shower: public acceptance isn’t truth—it’s incentives and storytelling. The mood? Popcorn out, pitchforks up, and a cameo of “Hullo Krugman readers” for vintage flair. Is the line a moral compass—or a meme you wield when it suits you? The crowd can’t decide, but the drama is delicious.
Key Points
- •The author articulates a heuristic: good ideas do not require many lies to gain public acceptance.
- •The post was originally written during a period when prominent commentators were retreating from support for the Iraq War.
- •In a 2008 update, the author addresses Paul Krugman’s readers, endorses Krugman’s book, and declines to take a position on applying the maxim to the Paulson bailout plan.
- •A classroom debate is recounted on whether technology companies should expense stock options, contrasting policy arguments against expensing with Warren Buffett’s view favoring expensing.
- •The lecturer’s takeaway: if stock options were truly beneficial, companies would welcome expensing them to highlight innovation, reinforcing skepticism toward ideas needing misleading claims.