Lie big, lie colossally. I earned a million. I ran six marathons in as many days. If you get caught, just say you're a victim of racism, sexism, autism etc. Or that you just have the latest universal disease ADHD. Unfortunately, there is nothing new under the sun.

Criminals and lawyers have always lied. I lied to you, star attorney Monika Mägi told a journalist. I've also lied numerous times in court, she added with effortless audacity. It used to be believed that the Prosecutor's Office doesn't lie. Today, we've read plenty about its lies, too.

Politicians lie without batting an eye. Let us recall Kaja Kallas and her "read my lips" ... Trump has taken the practice to astronomical heights, which no one can match. Yet.

The church has always lied; for example, so that a saint's thumb bone is housed in ten different churches simultaneously. Some of these saints never even existed. This led people to doubt whether the clergy was simply lying about God, too, some time ago.

Journalism is a factory of half-lies. Misleading headlines, facts and opinions mixed together, not to mention content marketing. Advertising is a factory of full lies, even though the people involved in it make efforts to shake off the burden.

The world of sports, of measurable results, at least should be free of lies. But no. Doping is a banal lie, but I had to pick my chin off the floor after reading about the tricks being pulled to fight drag in women's cycling.

It is claimed that science is looking for the truth and does not lie. It has rules to avoid lies. Transparency in research procedures, reproducibility of studies, blind peer review and so on. In truth, a lot of half-lies and outright lies have been found there, too, including in very highly respected journals. Writing dissertations has been a relatively public small business for some time. Some have even boasted in the media of how their works have always gotten maximum marks.

We might ask how has this pyramid of lies continued to stand? One reason, of course, is that not everybody lies. Secondly, big lies are a privilege of the privileged and getting caught often does not leave the room. And then there were those who unmasked lies. Some did it to expose their competition, others were simply ethical people.

Then came social media, which helped lying go global and birthed an army of online fraudsters. But it also brought the lies of ordinary people to millions. This wretched place is full of people lying to make themselves seem prettier, wealthier, happier and more famous. Faking a more complimentary countenance on passport photos seems to be the latest trend. When necessary, people lie about having a disease to justify their lying.

Finally, we made AI, which lies with complete abandon. We affectionately refer to it as hallucinating. Watching this device invade every corner of human society at the speed of light is scary. Its use is promoted shamelessly.

I still cannot believe the proponents of AI are foolish enough to believe their own pitch, according to which people who attend their seminars will use AI responsibly. There used to be a saying that if you beat a rabbit long enough, it will eventually learn how to strike a match. But beating is not allowed these days, we can only gently stroke. The results are beginning to became evident in universities. People writing their theses tell newspapers how AI helped them do a much faster and better job. AI will soon simply replace those who write for money.

What lies behind the lies? Some still believe it to be Soviet rule, and creating a world permeated by lies was indeed one of its more disgusting achievements. But that's a lie. In truth, people are driven by Vanity, Envy, Fame, Convenience, Money and Power. Unfortunately, we cannot make any of them disappear. Besides, Soviet authorities were small fry compared to social media and the AI lies factory the output of which keeps growing in perfect keeping with capitalism. We can only hope that the growth of lying will be linear and not exponential in the age of AI.

PS. I wanted to write about something nice, but nothing came of it. Well, maybe next time.

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