Don't know why, but I've often thought about lying.
Not a specific act, but the concept itself. In particular, one question has percolated in my head over the years; What is the most effective kind of lie.
I've come up with many answers, lies that contain a hint of truth, lies that are mostly true, lies that are 100% true, but imply falsehood... (you may notice a pattern, lol)
All good answers, but there's one particular genre of lie that beats them all:
The lie you tell yourself.
Think about it folks, who can lie to you more effectively, more enticingly, who knows what you want to hear to believe something better than you yourself?
Obviously self deception is dangerous in and of itself, but once you've convinced yourself of a falsehood, it becomes easier to convince others, because the sincerity of your words compels others to believe what you say is true.
Something to chew on.
This would still to some extent need to resonate with the other lies already told, take the flat earth conspiracy and theory, sure you could wholeheartedly believe in it, but in order to convince other they need to start with not having any idea, or a very poor theory of their own idea, or the classic cult tactic of having their theory not being reinforced in their own surroundings.
Which is why I would argue the best lies are not the individual ones, but the ones you get an entire group to agree, since once that has been entrenched the computation to change is very low, and too costly to be done.
Or am just answering the wrong queries, haha