How technology could kill the art of lying
washingtonpost.com
How technology could kill the art of lying
1–10 of 50 posts
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#2Lies will just take a different form, such as with rhetoric and statistics.
Technology is not the be all, end all solution to universal connectedness, agreement, and consciousness. Technology is a means of communication, it is the stone tablet in an age of oral storytelling.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#3Without reading the article very carefully, I have to say, lying has arguably become even more prevalent in some areas. Internet communities, even small ones that hold together like a family, are plagued by trolls who would create alternate accounts, turn people against eachother and spread rumours. The most talented of those people can break entire communities apart. I've seen enough of that. No, lying is bound to stay.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#4Interesting article. If anyone hasn't read it, James Halperin's Truth Machine (1997) is still one of my favorite books. It is an interesting take on technology which can reliably determine veracity and what could happen if it has a backdoor.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#5I definitely miss the days in which I could convince people that Walt Disney was frozen in a secret compartment at Disney World without somebody Snopesing me on their iphone.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#6Or it would make pre-planned lying easier.
"Check my fit bit. And my phone. And my watch. I was lying in my bed, not participating in high-speed autonomous car racing."
EDIT: "That traffic camera has my twin"
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#7Whatever you lose in the capability to lie for immediate personal merit you gain in the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers that they have no desire to escape from.
The use of statistical learning to create targeted user experiences will only exacerbate this. It works because one generally doesn't read because they like to learn, so much as learn what they like to read.
The web is a formidable vehicle for sowing confusion and ignorance, as much as it is a place to obtain knowledge.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#8This article specifically focuses on lying, but it really should be focusing on privacy. At least, that seems the underlying theme to me.
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#9Whatever you lose in the capability to lie for immediate personal merit you gain in the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers that they have no desire to escape from. The use of statistical learning to create targeted user experiences will only exacerbate this. It works because one generally doesn't read because they like to…
I think you have captured the nub of this issue. I read the article and then shared it among my Facebook friends after seeing it here. There, my tagline was "I'd like to see this happen, and that's the truth, but I don't expect this to happen, because I see Internet technology used every day to spread lies around." Truth-seeking is HARD, because it disturbs personal prejudices, and many people don't make the effort to seek truth even when verified facts are spoon fed to them. (I should probably write that last part of that last sentence as "everybody prefers factually incorrect prejudices to verified facts at least some of the time".)
Re: How technology could kill the art of lying
#10Many people in power lie with impunity all the time, even though there's abundant evidence against those lies. No one seems to care.
Technology could have killed lies long ago. It didn't. Why would it start now?