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How can you tell if someone is lying?

theatlantic.com

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Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#181

Post by [deleted] »

intricatedetail wrote: post #172
Veen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article shows neurotypical people should have the same concerns. Interogators who think they know how to spot lying are usually wrong, regardless of whether they are interviewing neurotypical people or people on the spectrum. I'm not on the spectrum, but I was a rebellious kid who didn't like to take shit from teachers. My defiant and sarcastic reactions to accusations were often considered evidence that I'd done…

It's more like people wanting to be done with it using any excuse. I don't think jobsworths would particularly care who did what, they wanted things to go away. They were probably paid so little it made no sense to play a detective.

[deleted]

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#182

Post by frereubu »

nosianu wrote: post #169
frereubu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave aside the art metaphor if that's not to your taste, and perhaps a less metaphorical way of looking at it is that Gladwell is a storyteller, not a scientist. He creates coherent narratives, but they obey the logic of stories, not science. Other people have written detailed criticisms of his scientific writing - if you want to read them they're pretty easy to find. I genuinely think it's worth your time. I listen…

Thank you for making my point. Your comment is as vague and nebulous as you say Gladwell's stories are. Neither does he claim to publish scientific papers, last time I checked those were "popular science" category books like millions of others. I'm not sure what value there is in singling out one guy, or to point out the gigantic discrepancy between a scientific paper and a popular book, especially when it's done wor…

Your characterisation of my arguments is not fair. I specifically said I appreciated his historical podcast, so I'm certainly not a zealot. And to remove doubt, I'm not an artist critiquing science from a point of ignorance, I have a scientific background too, indluding a masters in neuroscience. Gladwell's mischaracterisations of science are widely distributed, and I think that's why he comes up so often - if he was a relatively unknown blogger nobody would care. It's frustrating to see this kind of scienciness get so much attention when the people who do the science he writes narratives about, and whose work he piggybacks on, are much more circumspect about how widely their work generalises.

Again, I have said there are multiple critiques which go into detail about what is wrong with Gladwell's writing, so if your problem is the "nebulousness" of a comment on Hacker News (which is no place for a detailed critiqe), then I suggest you look for them if you're genuinely interested in why people have a low opinion of his science writing.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#183

Post by Sebb767 »

jacquesm wrote: post #148
zakember wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this would unsettle innocent people as well. Sounds like this would unsettle some non-suspects too

You are operating on the principle that finding the truth is the purpose of an interrogation. This belief may be false.

I'd also recommend watching this quite famous talk about the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Well worth the time.

EDIT: Seems I wasn't the first to make that recommendation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26608636 ;)

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#184

Post by cycomanic »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #162
Nitramp wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article linked explicitly cites a study that disproves that assumption. People cannot tell liars apart better than chance even when watching videos of murderers' interrogations.

Scenarios in the article may be cherry picked and videos are not the same as being in the same situation in real life. Also in article they didn't have a chance to provoke subject into verbal contradictions as they were only looking at visual cues. Even in the article they mentioned 85% success rate after some training.

I don't quite understand what point you're making. The article explicitly says that "spotting" a liar, that is detecting lies based on non-verbal clues does not work. However, other interrogation techniques, such as getting the subject to talk more freely to give them chance to make contradictive statements does work. That's what the 85% rate is about, don't use nonverbal cues, use verbal techniques.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#185

Post by Sebb767 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #168
sillysaurusx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to watch this in full before gambling on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE In summary, you lose the moment you agree to talk.

I had few issues with that video while it was extremely entertaining and captivating. Yes, there are innocent people getting a guilty verdict. But the actual question is, statistically how often? It's easy to cherrypick few examples, because law of large numbers means that if there's 0.0001% chance of getting wrongfully prosecuted if you talk as an innocent person, there's bound to be some famous examples. But maybe…

He talks about this at ~9 minutes. Even if you said something good for your case, it won't be heard in court because its hearsay. And if you're in a spot when the police wants to interview you, the decision for your arrest was already made; you can only make the situation worse.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#186

Post by arbitrage »

Liars and abusers are emotionally invested in what they're trying to convince you of. They try to sell you their story.

That's the best common theme I've found in reality. If someone is trying to convince you to believe them, they don't have your interests as their primary concern. It's all about them.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#187

Post by arbitrage »

sriku wrote: post #123

"As a Homeland Security official told congressional investigators, “common sense” behavioral indicators are worth including in a “rational and defensible security program” even if they don’t meet academic standards of scientific evidence." What does that even mean? ... like there is a separate standard of evidence and there is a "we can get by without evidence" standard of evidence?

It means it feels right, so they want it to be right. They will attempt to convince themselves AND you that this is the right choice.

Hence, it's a pretty easy tell that this person is lying to you.

Ironic.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#189

Post by Sebb767 »

throwaway744678 wrote: post #93
Clewza313 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most real life lies are also pretty low stakes. "Oh, I'd love to come to Aunt Mabel's party but I can't." "We should totally do lunch sometime."

"Does this dress make me look fat?" It looks low stake, but it is definitely not. Be careful out there.

And, like in a police interrogation, anything you state now can and will be used against you later ;)

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#190

Post by varjag »

antibuddy wrote: post #167
doubleunplussed wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious that there are useful truths that don't yet meet rigorous scientific standards of evidence. Like masks being useful in a pandemic or parachutes working. Non-serious "randomised trials" have been done with parachutes, and found no measurable effect - because for safety reasons the participants only jumped from an altitude of 2 metres or something. In sports medicine there are loads of things where…

To be fair, the last wave suggests that wearing masks has no effect in this pandemic[0][1]. Comparing Sweden and Germany (which have at least similar health systems and count similarly) the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is about the same, where Swedes rarely wear any masks and in Germany it is mandatory indoors (accessible to the public) and even mandatory in some zones outdoors. Also when you think about it, the perm…

I'm impressed to see spring 2020 WHO mask denialism persist all way into this season.

Virtually all countries that stuck to mask regimen a year ago despite the misguided advice regurgulated here have the epidemic under control for a long long while.

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