Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to tell when someone is lying?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#81

Post by adventured »

mapleoin wrote: post #32

Hardly anyone refrains from lying altogether, and some people report lying up to twelve times within that time span. I might open a conversation, for instance, by saying how nice it is to meet someone—when I’m really not at all happy about it. I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. I could say that the person’s wor…

I don't think this is an American trait.

Or maybe I'm a freak in my own culture. I don't lie like this article describes.

I've always associated low self-esteem with the need to rampantly lie. The inability to properly deal with reality, so the person prefers to fake it and avoid any potential mental or emotional confrontations. That's just an opinion of course.

I know an awful lot of people that will 'tell it how it is' rather than pretending to eg like a restaurant when they really don't. In fact, there is a historical stereotype about Americans that we're direct / blunt. The reality is, America has possessed a relatively large population + diverse culture for a long time, and accordingly it makes little sense to broadly stereotype the people that live here.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#82

Post by ZenPro »

saraid216 wrote: post #65
ZenPro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite - The technique you refer to already exists. It is distinct from reverse chronological. Approaches are numerous and to the layman the differences seem like semantics but they each have a specific use (I went into some detail on another answer above). However, something like "did you forget to call me last night?" is not a great example. The RC technique works for complex scenarios such as an individual lyin…

> However, something like "did you forget to call me last night?" is not a great example. I bring this up more because this is the kind of thing most people are interested in lie detection for, and they're hoping to get an excuse to say "Aha! I caught you!" as if that was proof of anything. Most people aren't in MI, or police detectives, which is the lion's share of relevance.

Absolutely.

I only referred to one technique for checking the veracity of a complex story.

There is a reason this role exists as a trade with considerable training.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#83

Post by StavrosK »

pstuart wrote: post #52
mrcdima wrote: post #16

After reading all of Paul Ekman's books, watching all episodes of Lie to Me, and reading various other pop-science books, articles, posts, and so on, all on body language and lie detection, the only honest conclusion I could reach was that if you really want to know if someone's lying you better know the truth beforehand. Though there is some science to the method, it ultimately relies on very complex combinations of…

After hearing about Ekman's work some time back I assumed somebody would come up with an app that would be able to analyze a video feed to spot the microexpressions. I guess it's just not that easy (or perhaps not reliable).

Do those even exist? It sounds like bunk.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#84

Post by balakk »

StavrosK wrote: post #83
pstuart wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After hearing about Ekman's work some time back I assumed somebody would come up with an app that would be able to analyze a video feed to spot the microexpressions. I guess it's just not that easy (or perhaps not reliable).

Do those even exist? It sounds like bunk.

There are some apps that do something similar:

http://www.emotient.com/

http://www.affdex.com/

They work reasonably well if a frontal face picture can be captured.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#86

Post by nly »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #35
mapleoin wrote: post #32

Hardly anyone refrains from lying altogether, and some people report lying up to twelve times within that time span. I might open a conversation, for instance, by saying how nice it is to meet someone—when I’m really not at all happy about it. I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. I could say that the person’s wor…

That's not lying. There's no intent to deceive - nobody is fooled. We know conventionally that he lives 'somewhere around Boston'; that he's offering an opening conversational gambit and not conveying emotional information; that we're confirming his right to enjoy something and not communicating a restaurant review. If we must call it lying, then we need a new word for when someone tells an intentional untruth with t…

The word you're after for harmless lies is 'fibbing', closely related to 'fibble-fable' which presumably means a fable that isn't entirely true. Not to be confused with 'fiddle-faddle' which means to lark about without telling porkies.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#87

Post by StavrosK »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #76
sirdogealot wrote: post #69

Maybe it's just that the article was written by a woman. (As I could easily see my significant other behaving in this manner when she was "out with her girlfriends".) But, does anybody on HN actually relate to this paragraph below? >I might open a conversation, for instance, by saying how nice it is to meet someone—when I’m really not at all happy about it. I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technic…

>> I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. > I am proud to say that I relate to none of those examples. I can relate to the one I highlighted. People ask me where I'm from all the time. Usually, I'll ask what they mean, but if they press the issue I have to delve deeper: "I'm from the United States." "If I answered…

It's not a lie because nobody expects the question to be answered with accuracy. It's just a topic that may start a conversation, so the more interesting you can make the answer, the better.

Hell, starting with the last one, where you say exactly where it is, and even going on to describe what it's like, what's nice about it, etc is the way the question was INTENDED to be answered.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#88

Post by Joeri »

arbitrage wrote: post #25
atacrawl wrote: post #21

Any time this topic comes up, I think immediately of the Louise Woodward case (aka the British Nanny Case): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward_case During the trial, much was made of Louise Woodward's odd demeanor on the stand; particularly, her propensity to awkwardly twist her mouth to stifle laughter during testimony. Many interpreted that as a sign of guilt, but my grandmother would laugh in a similar f…

Which is why it's a good thing that people are supposed to be judged based on facts, and not their popularity.

Jurors are still people, emotional judgements will get involved one way or the other.

The fact that jury trials are driven by emotion instead of fact was driven home for me by the parachute murder trial, where there was only circumstantial evidence, yet a 30 year conviction was achieved mostly based on the odd demeanor of the accused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_Murder

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#89

Post by ternaryoperator »

sejje wrote: post #57
ph0rque wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know conventionally that he lives 'somewhere around Boston' When Americans ask me where I was born, I don't say the actual country that no longer exists (USSR) nor the country that it is called now (Kazakhstan). I simply say Russia. The reason is that it's simpler for Americans to understand Russia.

What makes you think we understand Russia better than we understand Kazakhstan? Maybe you wish to have imparted your culture or something, however I don't expect most people have any reasonable idea what the culture is like in neither Russia nor Kazakhstan. Are you just hoping they know where it is on the map?

I think he means it's easier to understand in the same way we would tell a Russian that we're American, rather than from Ohio.

Re: How to tell when someone is lying?

#90

Post by thaumasiotes »

StavrosK wrote: post #87
thaumasiotes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I might go on to say that I grew up in Boston—a lie, technically, since I really grew up in a small town about forty minutes outside the city. > I am proud to say that I relate to none of those examples. I can relate to the one I highlighted. People ask me where I'm from all the time. Usually, I'll ask what they mean, but if they press the issue I have to delve deeper: "I'm from the United States." "If I answered…

It's not a lie because nobody expects the question to be answered with accuracy. It's just a topic that may start a conversation, so the more interesting you can make the answer, the better. Hell, starting with the last one, where you say exactly where it is, and even going on to describe what it's like, what's nice about it, etc is the way the question was INTENDED to be answered.

> It's not a lie because nobody expects the question to be answered with accuracy.

Well, if Michael Corleone takes the stand to affirm that he doesn't know what anyone is talking about, he is not and has never been a mob boss, and in fact no one in his family has ever been a mob boss, that won't surprise anyone (they might be surprised that he agreed to testify in the first place, but no one will be surprised by what he says). Can we conclude that he isn't lying?

Post reply on HN