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How technology could kill the art of lying

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#31

Post by task_queue »

Xcelerate wrote: post #21

I can't wait for this to happen. I cannot stand lying, and it's my belief that a good majority of issues people face in their lives come down to lying or deceit (lying by omission). How refreshing it would be if everyone was utterly sincere to each other.

Judging by those with Aspergers I know, they are as close to that as you'll get.

It leads to dysfunctional behaviors because people don't want to earnestly told that their face is ugly when they first meet someone and every time after that.

Honesty can be brutal.

This also leads to another issue: when the data is centralized like this, those who oversee it can never be held to the level of accountability they hold others to.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#32

Post by DenisM »

itgoon wrote: post #19
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.

I often wonder why that is so.

Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#33

Post by kryptiskt »

flycaliguy wrote: post #5

I 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.

Just explain that Snopes was set up specifically to quash the truth about Walt, all the correct things on the site are there just to lend credibility to their cover-up of Disney's cryogenics.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#34

Post by wrsh07 »

task_queue wrote: post #31
Xcelerate wrote: post #21

I can't wait for this to happen. I cannot stand lying, and it's my belief that a good majority of issues people face in their lives come down to lying or deceit (lying by omission). How refreshing it would be if everyone was utterly sincere to each other.

Judging by those with Aspergers I know, they are as close to that as you'll get. It leads to dysfunctional behaviors because people don't want to earnestly told that their face is ugly when they first meet someone and every time after that. Honesty can be brutal. This also leads to another issue: when the data is centralized like this, those who oversee it can never be held to the level of accountability they hold ot…

There's a lovely parable about this in I, Robot [the book].

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#35

Post by x5n1 »

DenisM wrote: post #32
itgoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I often wonder why that is so. Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

Usually there is a reason people believe what they believe. It's called motivated reasoning. For instance I know my religion is full of shit, but it's a very important part of my identity. Therefore I must find reasons to continue to believe in it and defend ideas that it puts forward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#36

Post by pmalynin »

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.

People are "taught" to lie since the childhood and passed as "good manners". Ex:

>How are you feeling. >Good.

Or my favourite: >Wow, good job!

People learn by example, and they see these lies (in their technical definition) as acceptable and even encouraged behaviour and hence follow. Then we have parents lying to their children all the time, and then later when they learn the truth they will likely carry on their tradition of lying (aka Santa, Monster Under The Bed ... God) to their kids because, hell, my parents did it.

The list goes on and on.

Or maybe I'm just a sad cynic.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#37

Post by jsprogrammer »

DenisM wrote: post #32
itgoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I often wonder why that is so. Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

At the very least, you have to parse the new information and then understand what it means (ie. which beliefs of mine now change and how).

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#38

Post by Qantourisc »

DenisM wrote: post #32
itgoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I often wonder why that is so. Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

The cost ?

Well lets take this into the extreme. Lets assume you adopt a new opinion that a life is only worth it's economical value. The amount of mental work to integrate that believe in your current set of opinions (by changing them) is huge. So you'd rather not do it.

Another example: the lie your company is on a good path. Knowing accepting it is on a bad path, means a lot of work.

And as we know humans are lazy by design.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#39

Post by tormeh »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #26
mapt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Yes, >If one can technically verify level of belief I'll just let that one hang there for a second. Yes, if one can do that -- and I'm not sure there is any reason to believe that it is even possible to achieve, in an absolute/practical meaning of 'technical' [I'll just add, that I believe that people may believe any number of impossibilities and attempt to act in accordance with those beliefs] --, then all manner of…

Humans are machines and there's no reason to believe that our hidden state cannot be made visible. Suggesting otherwise is an extraordinary claim.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#40

Post by tormeh »

DenisM wrote: post #32
itgoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I often wonder why that is so. Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

Socially: Admitting you were wrong makes you look incompetent. If you were wrong then, why should anyone listen to you now?

Physiologically: Changing ingrained opinions on which many others are formed probably requires a good deal of brain re-wiring and may require solid plasticity. I'm unsure how much of a problem this is for the brain.

I guess there are a lot of other costs, but I can't come up with more.

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