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How technology could kill the art of lying

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Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#41

Post by brc »

brlewis wrote: post #29

And, of course, your fitness tracker could betray you: If you tell someone you're heading to the gym, but end up laying around watching bad reality television instead, the data it collects will reflect your laziness -- or, as the Pennsylvania case suggests, perhaps even more serious deceptions. The whole reason you gave your friends access to your fitness tracker data was so they could help motivate you. That's not a…

While I'm running I often let me brain wander in all sorts of directions to pass the time. One thing I came up with was a detective/murder story where the murderer used their fitness tracking application as an alibi, by convincing someone else to run their regular route and discreetly swapping/attaching their tracker to that person. They then do the murder while the other person creates the alibi unknowingly by running their regular route and creating a digital signature of the running.

The case is solved by a brilliant detective combining with a precociously smart computer guy who downloads the raw data from the gps tracker and determines that while route and speed are typical, the data betrays it was someone else because of the difference in gait, recorded by the accelerometer that was built into the device for an upcoming feature not yet released by the tracking company. This is either proved in a courthouse scene where the accused has to run across the room, or by deception by secretly tagging both the accused and their unsuspecting alibi runner and comparing the data.

Or something like that, anyway.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#42

Post by HOLYCOWBATMAN »

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.

I find you utterly naive and I'm touching myself while reading your comment. I like big butt and I cannot lie.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#43

Post by jsprogrammer »

tormeh wrote: post #39
jsprogrammer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure visibility is all that's required. You have to be able to accurately predict the entire future timeline and somehow prove that your prediction is accurate.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#44

Post by Retra »

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…

You have to place relevance before truth if you're not going to be a liar.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#45

Post by dredmorbius »

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?

Many of the terms we associate with "the end of the world" have meanings which amount to "revealed truth": revelation, apocalypse, enlightenment, catastrophe.

The upshot of each is that your previous understanding of the world is overthrown. It's not so much that it's the world which has ended as your worldview.

Mental models are difficult and expensive to construct. It takes an entire childhood and adolescence for humans, arguably a fair bit of adulthood as well.

Leaving those comfortable confines, even where they're wrong, is pretty distressing. We'll often work hard to re-shoebox reality into models to which it fits at best poorly instead.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#46

Post by ggchappell »

tormeh wrote: post #40
DenisM wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Admitting you were wrong makes you look incompetent.

It certainly makes you feel like you look incompetent. I wonder how much it makes others judge you as incompetent. Perhaps this issue has been researched? (I'm guessing that it might matter a great deal how one was wrong; there are different ways to be wrong, and different levels of wrongness.)

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#47

Post by reagency »

brc wrote: post #41
brlewis wrote: post #29

And, of course, your fitness tracker could betray you: If you tell someone you're heading to the gym, but end up laying around watching bad reality television instead, the data it collects will reflect your laziness -- or, as the Pennsylvania case suggests, perhaps even more serious deceptions. The whole reason you gave your friends access to your fitness tracker data was so they could help motivate you. That's not a…

While I'm running I often let me brain wander in all sorts of directions to pass the time. One thing I came up with was a detective/murder story where the murderer used their fitness tracking application as an alibi, by convincing someone else to run their regular route and discreetly swapping/attaching their tracker to that person. They then do the murder while the other person creates the alibi unknowingly by runni…

Columbo pretty much did that, with a toll road camera and a face mask.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#48

Post by reagency »

brlewis wrote: post #29

And, of course, your fitness tracker could betray you: If you tell someone you're heading to the gym, but end up laying around watching bad reality television instead, the data it collects will reflect your laziness -- or, as the Pennsylvania case suggests, perhaps even more serious deceptions. The whole reason you gave your friends access to your fitness tracker data was so they could help motivate you. That's not a…

With the gun-toting police and a prosecutor in the room, there is not such thing as "voluntary".

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#49

Post by Xcelerate »

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…

> people don't want to earnestly told that their face is ugly

This says more about society than honesty. If we collectively quit valuing physical beauty (you know -- something you're born with and can't control), that kind of statement wouldn't be an issue. Say "I'm bad at basketball" and no one cares. Say "I'm unintelligent" and everyone does.

Re: How technology could kill the art of lying

#50

Post by spacehome »

kryptiskt wrote: post #33
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.

That's .... brilliant.
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