I think this falls under the realm of philosophy, but if the mods disagree, feel free to send this to Shitpost Central.

I consider myself to be a relatively virtuous person. Among other things, I am courteous, I am loyal, I am responsible, and I am accountable. I also never lie.

But what do I mean by that last bit? To me, a lie is when you steal money, and then later claim that you did not. In worse cases, you'll end up blaming someone else for your misdeed. Another lie is exaggerating your capabilities to achieve something, like a job. Lying about your qualifications on your resume. And for a third example, a lie is when you fail to take accounting for something that has happened due to your incompetence, or otherwise. Spilling milk all over the kitchen floor and blaming it on the cat--that's a lie.

What all these three things have in common is that some prior truth-laden event must have taken place first in order to make the truth statement. The truth statement being made is contingent upon the truth event. You can't claim that the cat spilled the milk before the milk was even spilled.

So, here's the question--do broken promises count as lies?

Though I've already made the claim that I never lie, I have broken a fair amount of promises in my life. All of them due to incompetence on my part. I wasn't mindful enough, I wasn't strong enough, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't prepared enough, I didn't care enough, I didn't know enough--either which way, the promise that I had given was not fulfilled, often leaving the individual highly disappointed with me.

Does this make me a liar? If I say, "I'll do better next time," and I fail, is that a lie?

To me, it seems like the word "lie" implies that some prior event must have taken place first. A broken promise is an event taking place after the promise was made--it took place in the deterministic future, something that I can't feasibly change. I can make the strongest effort I could possibly make at some task, and still fail--we often call this an "honest effort". "Honest". Does that honesty nullify the deceptive nature of the broken promise? Or is it all ultimately still a lie?

Anyway, I think you get the gist of my query. For the sake of brevity, I'll stop here.

Am I a liar?

I consider a lie to be "knowingly saying something untrue;" so no, I wouldn't consider breaking a promise to be a lie.

Spoiler

I also have difficulty telling lies outside of obvious sarcastic remarks and jokes. Unless it's life or death or something that could substantially affect my life (basically self-preservation), I never lie.

whats your passowrd

I believe your intention determines whether it's a lie or not.  If you promise to be to a friend's house at a certain time and on your way there you get hit by a semi and put in the hospital, it's not your fault you broke the promise.

I'd say it counts if you can answer yes to the following questions.

Did you know you would not be able to fulfill the promise prior to making it?
Did you purposefully set up events to prevent you from fulfilling the promise?
Are you lying or creating excuses to get out of fulfilling the promise?
Did you have zero interest in upholding the promise from the start?

I like that, however... sometimes, these things can be difficult to measure. Sometimes, I'm 70% sure that I'll be able to carry out the task with no issues. That's... high-ish, but not quite high enough to be ideal. But if I say something like, "I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that," that isn't being completely honest, either. See what I mean?

It's already been determined, and you're making a claim with a truth value about it. If you're wrong, your statement is false, therefore untrue, therefore a lie.

Only if you have perfect precognition, though. Or an otherwise means of perfectly predicting the future. Which, as you stated, we will never have. This is why, even though I'm a determinist, I would say that our own ignorance of the future's events makes the broken promise... I don't know. Palatable. Depends on how you look at it.

I actually do. A persons word is their bond, if you fail to keep your word it makes you a cheat and a liar.

Only if you had no intention of keeping the promise to begin with.

If you know you can't uphold the promise in the first place, but say you will anyway, then I suppose that'd be a lie.

What I consider a lie would be purposely saying something that's not true. Obviously a mistake's not a lie, since you believe it to be true, you're just misinformed. If you know it's false, though, then yeah, you're lying.

Same as making promises. If you think you're capable and promise you will, then I don't think you're lying. If you know full well that it's beyond you, then making that promise is not really any different to telling someone a fib.

So you're saying that if I walk up to you and say "I'll give you 100 dollars." but I have no intention of giving you money, then I'm not a liar?