This seems to me like the technique that is already employed by Israeli airport security agents. They have a normally-flowing inquisitive conversation with every passenger boarding flights to or from the country, and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable.
> and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable. Considering several horror stories and uneeded questioning (of students etc) entering the country, not that "good" really.
Better and worse ways to spot a liar
121–130 of 152 posts
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#122This seems to me like the technique that is already employed by Israeli airport security agents. They have a normally-flowing inquisitive conversation with every passenger boarding flights to or from the country, and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable.
I do wonder, and this is a serious question. Why would someone trying to be deceitful because they have something very serious to hide even take the chance on speaking with a security agent? I'm not suggesting they "plead the fifth," but rather carry a card explaining that they are mute. Doctors papers are easy to forge. If the incident leading to the condition happened recently, then that would be an excuse for not…
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flying to UK from where? When flying to the UK from Europe or USA nobody has ever asked me about the address where I would be spending the first night. USA does ask that.
Every time I've flown to the UK from the USA, the entry card has asked for an address in England. The first time (in 2005) I left it blank and they wouldn't let me pass immigration until I filled it out.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#124I grew up very deaf. I went to mainstream schools, I did everything everyone else would do... except hear much at all. I wore hearing aids which helped somewhat, but that just makes all that jumbled noise louder, which isn't that helpful. I was deaf since birth. So at a very early age I picked up body-language, micro-expressions and of course lip-reading which were rather an integral way for me to communicate! > "The…
I asked someone who was studying ASL about the differences between sign languages. She pointed out that they do commonly have different signs which might be very abstract and non-literal, often because they arose in different schools for deaf people (or different regions with a very high incidence of deafness) in earlier eras.
However, some of the sign languages have some etymological relationship with one another, especially French Sign Language (LSF)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Sign_Language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language#Classification
Those relationships might be something that reinforces the impression that all sign languages are inherently related, but there are also sign language isolates that don't have an etymological relationship to other sign languages (although if they've had later contact with other sign languages, they could have loan vocabulary or other contact influences).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sign_language_isolate...
Edit: I don't mean to suggest that people who know different sign languages couldn't communicate at all, but I expect that someone who knows one wouldn't be able to understand a signed conversation between native signers of an unrelated one.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean nowadays? 20 years ago if you wanted to drive from Poland to Germany, the Policeman would spend no less than 20 minutes interviewing you and everyone in your car about every single detail of your journey. In some cases they would order you out so they could unpack all of your luggage and look around the car for any contraband. Nowadays? Nowadays you get in the car and drive through the border, passin…
Certainly your experience of a journey from communist Poland to Germany was full of Brave New World experiences. Now that that regime is gone, your travel is easier. The GP is pointing out that the rest of the world appears to be adopting the tactics that you encountered 20 years ago. Traveling to the US or Israel, for example.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#126One thing's certain. The U.S. Government wasted billions of taxpayer money training TSA agents--often recruited from ads on pizza boxes--in useless behavior analysis techniques.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have border guards not always asked those questions? I'm pretty sure it's been like that since before the 20th century.
Border guards and passports as we conceive them didn't really exist until the 20th century. The historian Paul Fussell wrote in his book Abroad : "[B]efore 1915 His Majesty's Government did not require a passport for departure, nor did any European state require one for admittance except the two notoriously backward and neurotic countries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire." And it wasn't until 1945 that Americans were…
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think questions at a border don't really fall under the fifth, as you're submitting to them voluntarily because you want to get in the country. You can refuse to answer any question, of course, but then the border agents can refuse to let you into the country. I'm not sure if the goal is solely to stop "truly bad guys" who want to bring down a plane from getting on it, but rather make a note of anyone who might be…
>I'm not sure if the goal is solely to stop "truly bad guys" who want to bring down a plane from getting on it, but rather make a note of anyone who might be traveling under false pretenses for any number of reasons. This is what I'm afraid of. Is travel on a plane now squarely reserved for the honest or those with nothing to hide? There are plenty of very legitimate reasons to travel under false pretenses, including…
Not at all. They'll still let you on the plane after grilling you. They just want to know that you're hiding something. For future reference.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#129This seems to me like the technique that is already employed by Israeli airport security agents. They have a normally-flowing inquisitive conversation with every passenger boarding flights to or from the country, and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable.
> and they are very good at detecting when the details don't add up or when the person is acting too uncomfortable. Considering several horror stories and uneeded questioning (of students etc) entering the country, not that "good" really.
...which doesn't imply that a "just question 100% of the people" strategy would work—they need to question few enough people that the planes still leave on time and the airlines stay in business. But within that limit, it's in their best interest to be as trigger-happy with the detainments as possible.
Re: Better and worse ways to spot a liar
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think poker is another area where people think that the ability to identify "tells" or read people's body language is what matters most, but are mistaken. When really you are rarely going to have played enough with a person to identify a tell, know what an identified tell implies (lie or truth) exactly, or experience an identified tell and its truth value in a spot where it would have changed the outcome.
I believe you are quite wrong. Tells are real and they work, although they do differ from person to person, and expert opponents might deliberately give deceitful tells. Source: used to play a lot of live poker.
That's fine if you believe that, but it is possible to be a winning live player and not use tells. Tells being used are more anecdotes than typical situations that come up.
At live poker, the number of hands ranges from 15 to 30 per hour. Most hands don't go to showdown, so you simply never get the information you need. Unless you are playing higher stakes with a smaller player pool, or a small home game, you may not have the same opponent at your table for a long time even if they're a regular.
Giving off tells assumes that opponents are perceptive enough to notice, or naive enough to fall for overly obviously tells. This is asking too much for a lot of weaker opponents. And most people won't be involved in the hand and paying attention.
The most useful "tells" may not even qualify as such. They're usually weak or bad players trying their hand at bad acting in a way that tends to be obvious after you've played enough.
You also run into the problem that even amateurs can familiarize themselves with tells and try giving off "reverse tells" which reduces it to a game of "leveling".
Most of the time the best decision is irrelevant of whatever behavior an opponent is perceived to be exhibiting. If I'm following through on a bluff against an opponent on a flush draw (comes 35% of the time if they see the turn and river), and their draw comes in and they sigh "guess I'm beat" and shove into me on the river, I can't call with ten-high.