How can you tell if someone is lying? • Hacker News Board

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#161

Post by laurieg » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

MrDrDr wrote: post #152

sillysaurusx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to watch this in full before gambling on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE In summary, you lose the moment you agree to talk.

Thank you for posting - I found this video fascinating. Made me think about the law in the UK. Interestingly when arrested here we are told : “You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” I’d be interested if anyone has experience of the UK system and if the same strategy…

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I believe that the court may draw an inference from your silence. You are innocent and decided to remain silent only to have a perfect explanation that fits will all evidence known to the police weeks later. Why didn't you offer this earlier?

There is an interesting TV show called 24 Hours in Police Custody[1] that follows people in the 24 hours after they are arrested. Naturally, there are many scenes of police questioning. Plenty of people do just answer "No comment" to every question, even after consulting a solicitor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hours_in_Police_Custody

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#162

Post by mewpmewp2 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:47 AM UTC

Nitramp wrote: post #137

zakember wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because the stakes are too low to make you feel unsettled (in getting a random number). But if you knew you did something that could land you in prison and you were supposed to hide it, that would be a completely different scenario.

The article linked explicitly cites a study that disproves that assumption. People cannot tell liars apart better than chance even when watching videos of murderers' interrogations.

Scenarios in the article may be cherry picked and videos are not the same as being in the same situation in real life. Also in article they didn't have a chance to provoke subject into verbal contradictions as they were only looking at visual cues.

Even in the article they mentioned 85% success rate after some training.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#163

Post by thinkingemote » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:48 AM UTC

MrDrDr wrote: post #152

sillysaurusx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to watch this in full before gambling on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE In summary, you lose the moment you agree to talk.

Thank you for posting - I found this video fascinating. Made me think about the law in the UK. Interestingly when arrested here we are told : “You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” I’d be interested if anyone has experience of the UK system and if the same strategy…

I'd also be interested to hear the advice, particularly as the Police seem to have a number of situations where you must give them varying amounts of information, and could be committing an offence if you don't, and other situations where you can say "no comment" to everything including name and address even when arrested. It's really confusing.

For example, the police can get you to show your documents, name, address if they think you are not a UK citizen. Another example: in a stop and search you must tell the police what they might find during a search.

i.e. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/sto...

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#164

Post by mewpmewp2 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

laurieg wrote: post #161

MrDrDr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for posting - I found this video fascinating. Made me think about the law in the UK. Interestingly when arrested here we are told : “You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” I’d be interested if anyone has experience of the UK system and if the same strategy…

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I believe that the court may draw an inference from your silence. You are innocent and decided to remain silent only to have a perfect explanation that fits will all evidence known to the police weeks later. Why didn't you offer this earlier? There is an interesting TV show called 24 Hours in Police Custody[1] that follows people in the 24 hours after they are arrested. Naturally, the…

If they ask you why you didn't offer this earlier, you send them a link to this video. But in all honesty, I think it's of course very different when it's a PR situation vs a court situation. If you are asked about what just happened by press, "no comment" or "wanting to plead the fifth" might instantly make you enemy of the public even if you are innocent and want to be strategic about it.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#165

Post by tim333 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:51 AM UTC

I relieved in a way that it's hard or impossible to tell based on the kind of stuff in the article as I've always been a bit rubbish at that and kind of assumed it was just me. Sometimes a practical way to tell if people are lying is observe them when they don't think you are looking or don't think it matters.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#166

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

kilroy123 wrote: post #151

sillysaurusx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to watch this in full before gambling on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE In summary, you lose the moment you agree to talk.

I knew it was going to be that video before I even clicked the link. I agree completely.

[deleted]

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#167

Post by antibuddy » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

doubleunplussed wrote: post #134

sriku wrote: post #123

"As a Homeland Security official told congressional investigators, “common sense” behavioral indicators are worth including in a “rational and defensible security program” even if they don’t meet academic standards of scientific evidence." What does that even mean? ... like there is a separate standard of evidence and there is a "we can get by without evidence" standard of evidence?

It's pretty obvious that there are useful truths that don't yet meet rigorous scientific standards of evidence. Like masks being useful in a pandemic or parachutes working. Non-serious "randomised trials" have been done with parachutes, and found no measurable effect - because for safety reasons the participants only jumped from an altitude of 2 metres or something. In sports medicine there are loads of things where…

To be fair, the last wave suggests that wearing masks has no effect in this pandemic[0][1]. Comparing Sweden and Germany (which have at least similar health systems and count similarly) the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is about the same, where Swedes rarely wear any masks and in Germany it is mandatory indoors (accessible to the public) and even mandatory in some zones outdoors.

Also when you think about it, the permanent mask usage has some serious hygienic downsides.

1. You need to touch your face way more often (reseat+put on/off)

2. Most masks still allow viri to go through (especially on the sides)

3. Masks are often reused and used for too long (correct usage would need either a lot of money+time or hundreds of masks/month)

The positive effects of masks in this pandemic are pretty debatable especially given the "circumstantial" evidence.

[0]: https://imgur.com/a/MNlOoTN

[1]: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/master/public/dat...

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#168

Post by mewpmewp2 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:54 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #110

raducu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some hot-shot detective try to get a random number from 1-1000 out of my head by using those techniques. Yeah, he couldn't.

You might want to watch this in full before gambling on that: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE In summary, you lose the moment you agree to talk.

I had few issues with that video while it was extremely entertaining and captivating. Yes, there are innocent people getting a guilty verdict. But the actual question is, statistically how often? It's easy to cherrypick few examples, because law of large numbers means that if there's 0.0001% chance of getting wrongfully prosecuted if you talk as an innocent person, there's bound to be some famous examples.

But maybe in 99.99% cases speaking the truth and co-operating quickly will spare you many months of stress and time.

All I'm saying is, that from the video alone it is not clear to me what the risk/reward here is and of course it is situation dependant.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#169

Post by nosianu » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:55 AM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #158

nosianu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh right, art elitism as counter example, great. Who gets to define what I see as art? "conceptual hollowness" - that sounds nothing but esoteric to begin with. Reminds me of the (German) "Hurz"... event ( https://youtu.be/MJ7jbQJXF68 ). I hate posting anything negative but sorry, this was just too much. Oh and I admit I actually didn't dislike the third of one Gladwell's book I once read, as well as a presentation h…

Leave aside the art metaphor if that's not to your taste, and perhaps a less metaphorical way of looking at it is that Gladwell is a storyteller, not a scientist. He creates coherent narratives, but they obey the logic of stories, not science. Other people have written detailed criticisms of his scientific writing - if you want to read them they're pretty easy to find. I genuinely think it's worth your time. I listen…

Thank you for making my point. Your comment is as vague and nebulous as you say Gladwell's stories are. Neither does he claim to publish scientific papers, last time I checked those were "popular science" category books like millions of others. I'm not sure what value there is in singling out one guy, or to point out the gigantic discrepancy between a scientific paper and a popular book, especially when it's done worse than the latter and even farther from any rigor.

The vitriol, downvote-happiness and almost zealotry of "commenter movements" like anti-Javascript, or, here anti-Gladwell, to me signals that this is more a self-perpetuating fad driven by group think (trying to fit in and proof one is part of the core). If it was merely fact driven such as mine would be ignored - or not be given cause to exist in the first place. It's not like I care one iota about Gladwell, as I said, I never managed to read more than a small part of one book. What I did notice though and why I even paid any attention at all was the amazing level of effort - coupled with an equally amazing level of vagueness - some people put into this.

If one were to think logically, even if you conclude all of Gladwell's books are really really bad, you would just ignore the whole thing. That call to arms anytime anyone dares mention Gladwell - or Javascript - is scary and as far as I can see far worse than anything Gladwell may ever have written. It reminds me more of high school "cool kids" group dynamics.

Re: How can you tell if someone is lying?

#170

Post by ripe » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

Robin_Message wrote: post #91

GavinMcG wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a book, by Malcolm Gladwell. The comment said the audiobook is like a good podcast.

If it's a book by Malcolm Gladwell, I can't anti-recommend it enough. All of the Malcolm Gladwell books I've read have been tripe. Unless he has radically improved his writing and grasp of nuance in the last decade (and published retractions of his earlier books), his books are dangerous anti-knowledge which will make you feel smarter but actually be dumber. Gladwell takes an obvious, folksy thing, adds a bit of a tw…

Oh God, thank you for saying this. I cannot read two pages of Malcolm Gladwell and cannot fathom his popularity. Generalizing from anecdotes in an entertaining way: that’s his whole schtick.

Or, maybe I’m an old cranky curmudgeon and should let people enjoy reading his junk science.