How technology could kill the art of lying • Hacker News Board

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#11

Post by jsprogrammer » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:02 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #7

Whatever 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…

>Whatever 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.

Sorry, how did 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers' not exist (and in even worse form) when you could lie?

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#12

Post by Zikes » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

The availability of the truth has had very little impact on what people choose to believe.

"Chemtrails", global warming, evolution, historical events, etc.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#13

Post by Swizec » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #11

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #7

Whatever 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…

>Whatever 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. Sorry, how did 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers' not exi…

I think that's the point. Without lying, political and social structures of humans break down.

Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. Even something as simple as telling a friend or coworker that that thing they do isn't that annoying counts as lying.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#14

Post by BinaryIdiot » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

So the article talks about how technology is making it harder to lie which I think in some ways it's true but in others it's making it easier to bend the truth and sometimes it even makes it easier to lie. For instance many of the folks that are against vaccinations will regularly quote "studies" that are published in "journals" that are all made up to sell someone a book or some natural remedies. Even worse is all of the information out there about GMOs with some of it being good science, some bad and some places where they mix it all up. Of course a normal person who didn't grow up to become a scientist isn't going to be able to separate between all of the good and bad information every time (especially since even scientists themselves can't always separate it if it's in a different field).

I have to wonder if an ultimate goal will end up being similar to Peter F Hamilton's Gia Field idea in his books where it essentially links people together in a way that's not easy to break and it forces you to feel everyone's emotions around you. So if you are trying to lie to someone, hurt them or steal their stuff it's going to be obvious not only to the victim but everyone around you and the perpetrator will feel his victim's emotions. Naturally this is a pretty crazy idea that's probably over 100 years away from being able to happen but still the article kinda reminded me of it.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#15

Post by Florin_Andrei » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #13

jsprogrammer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whatever 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. Sorry, how did 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers' not exi…

I think that's the point. Without lying, political and social structures of humans break down. Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. Even something as simple as telling a friend or coworker that that thing they do isn't that annoying counts as lying.

> Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together.

That's actually a pretty tough indictment of human nature, if true.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#16

Post by DINKDINK » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #10

Many 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?

Technology won't kill lying. Despite there are clear and distinct punishments in society for those who murder, people still don't resist their impulses or think they're can out smart the system (some do, some don't).

Technology will never stop those who have retaliatory power from lying. Janitor catches CEO lying about making a specific sales deal go through versus CEO catching janitor lying about when he clocked in. Strong intra-team asymmetries exist.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#17

Post by jsprogrammer » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #13

jsprogrammer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Whatever 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. Sorry, how did 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers' not exi…

I think that's the point. Without lying, political and social structures of humans break down. Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. Even something as simple as telling a friend or coworker that that thing they do isn't that annoying counts as lying.

I guess I don't understand the argument's construction then.

Lying could almost, literally be defined as: 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers'.

The OP is claiming that eliminating lying actually increases the occurrence of distortion and disinformation (through an undisclosed mechanism).

To me, this would seem to be contradiction: eliminating the bad thing actually increase the occurrence of the bad thing.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#18

Post by mapt » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #17

Swizec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the point. Without lying, political and social structures of humans break down. Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. Even something as simple as telling a friend or coworker that that thing they do isn't that annoying counts as lying.

I guess I don't understand the argument's construction then. Lying could almost, literally be defined as: 'the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers'. The OP is claiming that eliminating lying actually increases the occurrence of distortion and disinformation (through an undisclosed mechanism). To me, this would seem to be co…

At an abstract level:

If one can technically verify level of belief, then one can both insist upon it in coercive capacities (the NSA does not want any employee who has any doubts about its holy mission), and tune arguments for it in non-coercive capacities (The breakfast cereal marketing department's learning algorithms will be able to test jingles against a fully verifiable 100% accurate human model).

Blowing things off and consenting because you just want to move on, ceases to be an option once it's detectable. Instead, the opponent can iterate on strategies of persuasion until the job is genuinely done. This doesn't produce an easily swayed populace for the same reason an unsecured computer doesn't produce an egalitarian botnet host: It is in the interest of every memetic attack to install defenses against other memes. Will you tell your new girlfriend, that her brown hair looks nice when your preexisting bias in favor of blondes has been hyped up into a whole obsessive fandom by your last girlfriend, who jealously insisted on the mental calcification of True Belief?

Mindreading in the form of an accurate lie detector of some sort is a large portion of mind control, once you extrapolate it to routine applications throughout society.

.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#19

Post by itgoon » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #7

Whatever 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…

People don't want to hear the truth. They want to hear they already know the truth.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#20

Post by kstenerud » Wed, Jul 08, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #15

Swizec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the point. Without lying, political and social structures of humans break down. Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. Even something as simple as telling a friend or coworker that that thing they do isn't that annoying counts as lying.

> Lying is literally what enables us to work and live together. That's actually a pretty tough indictment of human nature, if true.

Lying/deception is practiced by virtually all life forms, both for constructive and destructive purposes. It is a necessity for the resilience of complex organizational behavior.