How would such civilization even survive to discover a wheel if it can't recognize lie or misinformation. Even animals are able to lie - that's what mimicry and camouflage is all about.

Imagination is also form of a lie. You are making stuff up in your head. Without imagination you don't have innovation. Without innovation you are stuck in cave scavenging whatever you can find.

Trisolarans did evolve under much different selection pressure that requires effective mass coordination to dehydrate when deemed necessary for civilization's survival. That would probably select for rigid adherence to rules of communication vs critically evaluating every interaction. Or else you'd get a lot of "But am I being tricked into dehydrating to steal my belongings and take my job at the sophon factory? No thanks, I'll pass."

But how would progress work like that? If you are essentially an ant colony adhering to rules, how do you want to invent anything at all? The moment when you start being different through innovation, you are not following the rigid rule system and other members of your species will kill you.

They could have evolved with lies, developed the tech, then branched off into honesty later.

That makes no sense either. Evolution means that this change happened gradually over the time. However the moment you have a group which is always honest and believes you and group which is allowed to lie, then the lying group will take over the honest group. To lie and manipulate is a massive advantage.

In general, self defense is evolutionarily necessary or you'll get wiped out. Recall the stable state of the prisoners dilemma