I think the fourth would be "lie to those who want you to tell the truth".
His father's saying may have been: "There are three honest ways to make a living".
The fourth option is where scams and fraud live.
Some might argue that lying to those who want to be lied to is still usually dishonest.
It's not really a rule of thumb that "Tell others the truth, tell yourself the truth" means you have to barely scrape by. Plenty of people make good money that way.
Re:Three Ways to Get Paid (2018)
by badgersnake on Tuesday June 02, 2026 @01:58PM
(#48373749)
It pays to be suspicious of those who tell you you can’t make an honest living.
Huh, I've always been suspicious of folks claiming the opposite.
For the downvoters, have you ever tried to explicitly map your externalities?
What does mapping your externalities have to do with honesty? Is this a poor attempt to suggest that no one can actually be honest because no one has a full understanding of the entire universe? Because that's just a lazy excuse for not trying to be honest and not really worth being in the debate.
Having externalities does not mean you are dishonest. Hell, you can even ignore your externalities and still be honest. You can even outright steal from people and still be honest.
Re:Three Ways to Get Paid (2018)
by mock-possum on Wednesday June 03, 2026 @03:18AM
(#48380939)
Yeah on the contrary, it’s been my experience that finding other truth tellers tends to lead to a supportive community, where everyone is relieved they don’t have to put up with bullshitters.
Re:Three Ways to Get Paid (2018)
by sidewndr46 on Tuesday June 02, 2026 @01:50PM
(#48373647)
oh god it's the Rumsfeld quadrants for truth....
Re:Three Ways to Get Paid (2018)
by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday June 02, 2026 @03:00PM
(#48374655)
The missing quadrant on that one is interesting too:
> "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know."
The fourth corner is unknown knowns, things that we don't know that we know. Bureaucracies have that one in spades.
Lie to others, lie to yourself (spiral together; either fantastically poor or spectacularly rich)
Lie to others, tell yourself the truth (manipulation, morally broke, but materially rich)
Tell others the truth, tell yourself the truth (integrity, barely scrape by)
Tell others the truth, lie to yourself (be used by the system, usually end up poorly)