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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?

#271

Post by swayvil »

anon_tor_12345 wrote: post #48
judge2020 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

To be precise: a lot of people (even on hn, especially on hn) are personally and practically invested in authoritarian practices being legitimate.

To vehemently support the policy of the hour as moral and correct, and then to be later shown to be wrong. At best a fool and at worst a criminal. Is more than many can tolerate. They would rather maintain the lie in the face of all evidence.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#272

Post by GavinMcG »

nosianu wrote: post #113
frereubu wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When studying sculpture a tutor talked to me about people making “things that look like art”, which really stuck with me - they made objects that mimicked what they thought art should be like, but had a kind of conceptual hollowness. I think Malcolm Gladwell is similar in that he produces content that has the appearance of science, but once you start digging it doesn’t hold up. A bit like a version of “truthiness”, e…

Oh right, art elitism as counter example, great. Who gets to define what I see as art? "conceptual hollowness" - that sounds nothing but esoteric to begin with. Reminds me of the (German) "Hurz"... event ( https://youtu.be/MJ7jbQJXF68 ). I hate posting anything negative but sorry, this was just too much. Oh and I admit I actually didn't dislike the third of one Gladwell's book I once read, as well as a presentation h…

"Remained exceedingly vague" isn't exactly fair. How much do you expect from a comment on a discussion board? If you want more specifics, ask for them! You're in attack mode here right out the gate.

He has admitted to "mak[ing] trouble" rather than believing everything he writes.[0] He acknowledges that his books are not "ends in themselves."[1] He cherry-picks supporting studies and leaves out their failure to replicate.[2] He throws around scientific terms but uses them incorrectly. [3] He offers ill-considered off-the-cuff "solutions."[3]

One reason HN comments might be "exceedingly vague" is because the specific criticisms have been laid out extensively over the past decade.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/29/malcolm-gladwe...

[1] https://www.thecrimson.com/column/behavioral-economist/artic...

[2] https://archives.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_deb...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.htm...

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#273

Post by BurningFrog »

johnsmith4739 wrote: post #257

>> Psychologists have long known how hard it is to spot a liar. Absolutely this. Lying is a loose concept. Is it lying if I believe it is true? Is it lying if it's just an omission of truth? You can spot nervousness, you can spot defiance. I work in a field where people deceive almost 80% of the time, and less than 1 in 10 where caught. The way we approach this is by flanking. Using falsifiable questions the subject…

Our brains are complex things, with many independent actors.

There are pragmatic parts that determine what actions would best serve your interest. These parts mostly make the decisions.

There are other "press secretary" parts that come up with good sounding motivations for these decisions. You will believe those reasons, and state them with conviction.

You may then be lying, if the press secretary lied to "you", but you don't consciously know that. Apparently evolution has favored that model, and here we are.

I learned this reading "The Elephant in the Brain" (https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda...)

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#274

Post by r0rshrk »

johnsmith4739 wrote: post #257

>> Psychologists have long known how hard it is to spot a liar. Absolutely this. Lying is a loose concept. Is it lying if I believe it is true? Is it lying if it's just an omission of truth? You can spot nervousness, you can spot defiance. I work in a field where people deceive almost 80% of the time, and less than 1 in 10 where caught. The way we approach this is by flanking. Using falsifiable questions the subject…

Is the field law?

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#275

Post by BurningFrog »

addicted wrote: post #140
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…

Your examples of parachutes and masks are not examples of useful truths that don’t meet standards of scientific evidence. They are examples of useful truths that have not been tested through double blind randomized control experiments. But they both have scientific evidence behind them, and by any reasonable definition of meeting standards of scientific evidence, they do. The efficacy of parachutes can be derived fro…

Sure, but in a legal regulatory context, "scientific evidence" means different things than your "reasonable definition".

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#276

Post by jopsen »

adrianmonk wrote: post #263

> U.K. police, who regularly use sketching interviews and work with psychology researchers as part of the nation’s switch to non-guilt-assumptive questioning, which officially replaced accusation-style interrogations in the 1980s and 1990s after scandals involving wrongful conviction and abuse. I wonder if this explains a trope I notice in British detective TV shows but not in American ones. Writers have the fictiona…

I don't think we should confuse a technique for drama in TV with reality.

If British detective shows were realistic, Midsummer county would be dangerous murder hotspot, hehe

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#277

Post by SMAAART »

You can't.

When I was younger I had both severe case of Anxiety and I had mastered the art of covering it up very well.

Too many times I have been accused of things I didn't do or lying because of my counterintuitive behaviors.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#278

Post by jvanderbot »

Robin_Message wrote: post #91
GavinMcG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a book, by Malcolm Gladwell. The comment said the audiobook is like a good podcast.

If it's a book by Malcolm Gladwell, I can't anti-recommend it enough. All of the Malcolm Gladwell books I've read have been tripe. Unless he has radically improved his writing and grasp of nuance in the last decade (and published retractions of his earlier books), his books are dangerous anti-knowledge which will make you feel smarter but actually be dumber. Gladwell takes an obvious, folksy thing, adds a bit of a tw…

Good counterarguments, thank you. Some caution should be exercised when reading pop sci-like books.

The parts of the book that were meaningful to me were the summaries of other foundational studies and generalized beliefs based on lots of research. His conclusions were sometimes a bit of a stretch, but I accept a little 'dressing up' of results with additional opinion as part of writing to a broad audience

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#279

Post by meowface »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #134
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'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…

In the field of psychology and trying to determine what's going on in some particular person's mind, "common sense" doesn't really work, even if it may sometimes work in more objective scientific fields.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#280

Post by tehwebguy »

treis wrote: post #260
tehwebguy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but the police level of suspicion is not relevant. Never, ever agree to be interviewed by police without your attorney. There is no reason not to have someone who knows the game play for you. You have no clue what the police know or think they know already and your innocuous answer about something that seems unrelated may seem to confirm some wrong information they already have. Again, your word cannot exonerat…

>Fine, but the police level of suspicion is not relevant. Of course it is. The police aren't the sole decision maker in the process, but as a rule if they don't think you did it you won't get arrested. Conversely if they think they can prove you did it you probably will end up getting arrested. >Again, your word cannot exonerate you but it can absolutely get you charged or even convicted. Sure it can. Juries and the…

Extremely wrong. If you don’t agree to speak with police you will always have an opportunity to clear your name in the future, through an attorney who knows the game either before or during court. Every shred of information you share with them is ammunition and, again, you have no clue how they will use it, what it may appear to confirm or even what crimes they are actually investigating.

Every assertion you make to police opens you up to being prosecuted for completely separate crimes, including lying to the police, depending on what other information they already have (correct or incorrect).

Take the advice that every cop, every attorney takes and also gives to their kids: don’t talk to the police. Just get an attorney.

(A wild scenario of police catching someone in the act of a crime is not only not what we are talking about, but that individual was not exonerated.)

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