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How can you tell if someone is lying?

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Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#341

Post by hutzlibu »

simonh wrote: post #327
hutzlibu wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My defiant and sarcastic reactions to accusations were often considered evidence that I'd done wrong when I was innocent." You were rebellious. From the point of view of a common teacher, that means you are not innocent. There is actually a old common saying, when some kid got a beaten, but it later turned out to be not guilty of that ... "well, he deserved it anyway" or "well, then the beating was in advance for so…

Having been through army basic training, I can confirm this is not an attitude unique to school teachers. To be fair, discipline and self control is incredibly valuable even if it’s not the be all and end all.

"To be fair, discipline and self control is incredibly valuable"

It is!

But you don't need to break someone, to help them learn it. Breaking people is just the cheapest method.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#342

Post by cutemonster »

Razengan wrote: post #254
cutemonster wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that tend to end?

Usually not in my favor, especially if it's my word against somebody else's.

I wonder if there's a way to change how one thinks, to not assume that the other person won't trust what one says, and so avoid getting nervous / acting like a culprit

I wonder if thinking "I get paid anyway the same each month, what does it matter if they believe me or not" helps (unless one might get fired)

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#343

Post by Rule35 »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #86
neolog wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right but I had to think about it and might not have noticed. How did you have that ready to go?

I have a basic understanding of statistics and a basic understanding of logical fallacies, and I deal with this kind of sounds-good-if-you-don't-think-too-hard "insights" all the time.

> basic understanding of logical fallacies

Did you spot one here?

> I have a basic understanding of statistics

Perhaps an intermediate understanding would help. Entire schools tend to score higher or lower together, also wealth correlates to IQ and scholastic success and zip code. There are also other reasons an entire group would be biased higher or lower.

> I deal with this kind of sounds-good-if-you-don't-think-too-hard "insights" all the time

Uh-huh.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#344

Post by 13415 »

simonh wrote: post #326
13415 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, if you think about it, lying is knowingly saying what you believe to be false and what you say is also false. If what you say is accidentally true, then you tried to lie but failed. If you misdirect someone by saying the truth - e.g. because you know the person would assume the opposite of what you say or because you omit a presupposed fact such as that the gas station someone asked for is not closed -, t…

That’s not right at all. Lies are false statements about your own knowledge. Even if the fact your lying about happens to be true, you are still lying about your knowledge of it. It’s important to distinguish between the act of lying, the intended result of the lie and the relationship to the true facts. Those are all independent things. You can’t “fail to lie”, though you can fail to deceive with your lie. Suppose m…

I was presenting Andreas Stokke's theory, insofar as I remember it from personal conversation. He is a professor at Uppsala University now and started out his approach with a publication in the Journal of Philosophy. I used to defend your view in private conversations (thanks to a misconception by Augustinus) but have been successfully converted by him and many others.

However, you seem to be awfully certain of your position and present it with apodeictic certainty. If you're really interested in the topic, I recommend Meibauer (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Lying as a reading. You'll see that your view is far less accepted than you think it is, but feel free to correct that by publishing papers about it. I've never followed up on it, but as always in philosophy the controversy never ends. As I've said, I disagree with Andreas a bit about the nature of such theories. In my view, they are in the end arbitrary, based on conflicting "intuitions." Still, I think that upon sincere reflection everybody should be able to convince him-/herself that his definition is better than yours.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#346

Post by jonathanstrange »

golergka wrote: post #305
jonathanstrange wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, there is this one reliable method for detecting a lie, checking whether what the suspect says is true.

Saying something that is false and lying are not the same thing.

True, but knowingly saying something false is always lying.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#347

Post by simonh »

13415 wrote: post #344
simonh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not right at all. Lies are false statements about your own knowledge. Even if the fact your lying about happens to be true, you are still lying about your knowledge of it. It’s important to distinguish between the act of lying, the intended result of the lie and the relationship to the true facts. Those are all independent things. You can’t “fail to lie”, though you can fail to deceive with your lie. Suppose m…

I was presenting Andreas Stokke's theory, insofar as I remember it from personal conversation. He is a professor at Uppsala University now and started out his approach with a publication in the Journal of Philosophy. I used to defend your view in private conversations (thanks to a misconception by Augustinus) but have been successfully converted by him and many others. However, you seem to be awfully certain of your…

Interesting rabbit hole. I don't think that's quite Stokke's theory, in particular he doesn't seem to think that the fact you are lying about must be true. That's the falsity condition, which doesn't come from Stokke although some others argue for it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/

In fact the first parts of both definitions proposed by Stokke are just more formal versions of the definition I gave.

"You lie if and only if you say that p, you believe that p is false..."

It's a false statement about your own knowledge. That's essential. As Stokke says “you lie when you assert something you believe to be false”.

The greater rigor lies in violation of the violation of conversational norms and the purpose of the communication, which certainly seems correct to me. So while my definition and explanation were not complete, they seem to be consistent with Stokke.

The addition of the falsity condition seems to be contested. An attempted lie which is actually (unintentionally) relating the truth is apparently called a palter. I don't find that convincing, it's still a false statement about your knowledge so would meet Stokke's criteria at least as given in the article I found. I'd say it's a class of lie. Maybe he changed his mind later.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#348

Post by loloquwowndueo »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #314
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy I knew who used “scenarii” instead of “scenarios” would probably drive you up the wall :)

Indeed. Such I stand atop such lesser men of lesser etymological knowledge, that I unironically præfer the spelling of “lim”, for the “b” is but a false etymology, an was never there. I demand nothing less than perfection, and I shall receive it.

Bravo, this made my day. Kudos to you. :)

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#349

Post by Spivak »

jacquesm wrote: post #213
Spivak wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. The purpose of interrogation is for the officer to gather evidence pointing to your guilt which will be presented at trial. The trial is about figuring out the truth.

> The trial is about figuring out the truth. Even that is an assumption.

Fair, but as a defendant the trial is pretty much your only chance to tell your side of the story to the people whose decision actually matters. Police officers and prosecutors don't decide whether you go to jail so there's never a point to trying to prove your innocence to them.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#350

Post by oceanghost »

everdrive wrote: post #217
theelous3 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a fairly disruptive kid in school. It was all boyswillbeboys stuf. Drinking and smoking with friends in abandoned sections of the school. The kind of stuff that seems really serious then, and inconsequential now. I was brought in front of the board for expulsion after a litany of these types of things, and questioned about anything and everything for about two hours. We took the case to the board of education a…

This is an extreme case, but not an unusual one. People draw conclusions about people with very little information. They then carry on to believe that their conclusions have real weight, and are based in fact. It's part of why there were always be socially fluid types and con artists.

I know this isn't quite your point, but I can't tell you how many jobs I've not been offered due to missing some trivia question and the interviewer deciding my fate based on that.
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