
You can fool some of the people, all of the time - pseudolus
https://www.economist.com/international/2019/10/31/you-really-can-fool-some-of-the-people-all-of-the-time
======
randcraw
I think the rise of lies has little to do with humans being hardwired to
resolve questions using emotions over reason. We prefer lies because we want a
complex world to be simple, predictable, and manageable. Obviously it's not,
so the only way that powerless people can believe their lives aren't spinning
out of control is for authority figures to tell them what they want to hear:
1) every problem is simple and 2) a simplistic solution will fix any problem
and return their world to the perfect Eden they believe it can and should be.

Happy fantasies are sustained only by lies. That's why we prefer lies.

~~~
TrackerFF
Hate to be political, but as one Trump supporter said, when asked on Trump and
his lies:

"I think what most liberals are missing is that this isn't about right and
wrong, it's about winning and losing. I've attached my entire worldview to
this man and I am going down with the ship. Not one of you is going to
convince me otherwise."

Some people are simply willing to accept lies, if it resonates with their
beliefs. A means to an end.

~~~
chrisco255
That may be one guys opinion, but you understand the other side is lying,
correct? What I didn't fully appreciate until Trump was how much of politics
is theater.

~~~
TrackerFF
More than just one guy - seems pretty systemic, if you ask me.

[https://www.axios.com/monmouth-poll-trump-
approval-a05b8144-...](https://www.axios.com/monmouth-poll-trump-
approval-a05b8144-1d1b-4296-a0d4-6ca0390b05ee.html)

(But, yes, all political parties lie to some extent - some are just more
brazen and outlandish than others)

~~~
chrisco255
Right, some (the DNC) will pay a foreign entity to craft a totally made up
conspiracy theory about Russia collusion and then leverage the FBI, the CIA
and all major news outlets to propagandize that bullshit while keeping a
straight face.

At the same time they'll spike a story for three years on a prolific pedophile
(Epstein) that implicates Bill Clinton, to protect their own.

All parties lie, but the DNC and their allies in the media...well they really
take the cake.

------
DrScientist
I'm not sure people are _really_ fooled by lies that much, rather they see
them for what they are, a tool to persuade for something they emotionally
connect to.

It's easy to despair at the apparent lack of rationality of my fellow human
beings and their ability to be manipulated at the emotional level by people
who don't have their interests at heart.

However aren't people who aren't emotionally controllable the definition of
psychopaths?

So perhaps rather than focus on pointing of the lies and demanding a fact
based debate, we should embrace the emotional and simple label people as liars
and have the courage to talk about the real emotional issues.

Take - 'Build the wall' \- clearly a not a great practical solution - but to
treat it as such is to misunderstand that's it's a simplified slogan that
covers a large raft of underlying issues - worries about immigrant, job
security, crime, drugs, culture, racism etc.

In fact by criticizing the wall as a practical solution you are implicitly
agreeing with the underlying agenda - that there is a solution needed. If you
do indeed agree with the underlying agenda and _only_ disagree on the solution
then you need your own slogan 'Dig a trench' or 'Shoot on sight' , if you
don't then you need something like 'Welcome in', 'Together we are stronger'
etc.

In the UK - arguing 'Get Brexit Done' is silly as it's just the start of a
long set of negotiations. However if you focus on that - you are effectively
again implicitly agreeing that it needs to be done, just arguing on a
technicality.

------
andrei_says_
May I recommend this talk on the neuroscience of language and thought by
George Lakoff?

[https://youtu.be/JJP-rkilz40?t=280](https://youtu.be/JJP-rkilz40?t=280)

And also this one on political language, morals and metaphors?

It will change how you listen to political speech, and especially political
speech targeting people with different political orientation -- which can
often sound nonsensical, but is actually carefully constructed to activate
their metaphors.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM)

Basically, the ideas of enlightenment (we are rational beings) are not true.

A couple of slides from the first lecture:

Myth:

Reason is conscious, you know what you think.

Science:

Reason is mostly unconscious, estimates are about 98% unconscious.

Conscious thinking is linear. Brain circuitry is massively parallel.

Myth:

Ideas are made meaningful via their direct connections to the external world.

Meaning is a matter of truth conditions.

Science:

Ideas are made meaningful via the brain's connections to the body and our
embodied experience.

Myth:

Emotion gets in the way of rationality.

Science:

Emotion is necessary for rationality.

------
buboard
My pet theory is that democracy is more tolerable because it alternates
between incompetent people fast enough to keep people's hopes alive.

~~~
sputr
Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with
votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the
only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is
fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open)
when the landscape of power changes.

The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they
have now become the weapons .. and if they are smart, they can use that power
to influence which actions of the warring factions are needed for their
supremacy so that they are more inline with the interests of the people. (2)
the entry requirements and risks to become one of the factions are much lower
which can help with (1)

The only problem is that the warring factions know this and will do everything
they can to conceal the reality of the situation so that the people do not
exercise the power that they have. And they have been very successful at it.
The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for
the people is beyond my belief.

~~~
FrankyHollywood
"The only two benefits of democracy..."

In my opinion the one major benefit of democracy over all other forms is that
a terrible leader can be voted away within 4 years. It's a political system
with garbage collection :)

~~~
Xelbair
If only it worked that way.

Under democracy you optimize for just a single metric - popularity. If leader
is terrible and popular no garbage collection will occur.

Rise of populism is inherently built into nature of democracy itself.

~~~
Spivak
I mean this is essentially how it works now but it didn't have to end up this
way in the US. As-written we actually have a very nice electoral college where
the people don't directly elect the president but instead choose someone
(hopefully?) qualified to evaluate the candidates and vote on their behalf.
And the states have the freedom to impose requirements on the elector
nomination process so you get qualified people.

But a consequence of the states being able to independently decide how those
electors are chosen lead to every state basically having a law that says that
"you vote for the candidate instead of the elector, and the elector's don't
actually matter and must follow the popular vote."

I really dislike the system as it exists now because the people directly
electing 2/3 of the government in a checks and balances system kinda ruins the
whole thing.

------
thinkloop
Isn't there an implied undercurrent with all this that genpop are idiots? I
personally am _not_ saying this, but if people say that "money buys
elections", what do they mean exactly? They do _not_ mean that massive
election fraud exists, nor that people are being directly paid for their votes
- there is no evidence of that. Everyone agrees that people are fairly voting
based on their wants. What they are _implying_ though is that the slovenly
masses are non-discerning dummies incapable of critical thought that can be
convinced to believe whatever drivel you are able to purchase with money. Is
that not the underlying premise of such statements?

~~~
pmikesell
Sort of, I guess. But it’s also the idea that most people receive a lot of
information passively as a result of whatever ads are shown to them on tv,
YouTube, Facebook, etc - so all that money goes to the volume of propaganda
pushed out promoting one result or another. Important concepts often have
nuance, and that means some good and some bad, and if you’re on one side or
the other you can tell the part of the story you wish to become the narrative.

------
jtbayly
So... I’m skeptical of the claims that we automatically believe what we hear.
Especially when they use Milgram as support.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
The Milgram experiment is problematic, yes. It's the most narrative-friendly,
but there's an enormous body of work on this question, and it seems largely to
point in that direction. (Google Scholar claims 819,000 results for
"confirmation bias".)

~~~
jtbayly
But confirmation bias is very different than believing everything you hear
automatically (by default).

~~~
Jeff_Brown
You're right.

I get only 5 hits for "default to truth" \-- which is so few that I think
there must be a better keyword to search for.

------
lapnitnelav
[http://archive.is/MXk4C](http://archive.is/MXk4C)

------
stared
There is an excellent SMBC comic on politics: [https://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/2012-08-21](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-08-21).
Transcribing the headings (not the complete dialogs):

"

1\. If you have a self-consistent view, you're going to have problems.

2\. In a self-consistent framework, you have infinite regression problems.

3\. If you want your group to hold together, you need an ideology that doesn't
make any sense.

4\. Once you have a nonsensical platform, the group members can define the
group however they want. Goals may change. The organization persists.

"

And well, it is the best description of any mainstream, organized religion. It
is not about beliefs, as many may think: it is about group identity and
loyalty. (Think about crusades, or violence against LGBT people, vs "turn the
other cheek" and "love your neighbor".)

Of course, one needs to pay the lip service to a professed ideology - but then
it is about _loyalty_ not necessarily - beliefs.

~~~
Zarath
Totally agree. I used to know a hardcore catholic and spend a lot of time
around other hardcore catholics and I was amazed at how nearly anything could
be back-rationalized and absorbed into the philosophical framework with ease.
It's as if the framework itself is designed to neutralize counterarguments.
And not because it is based in reality and there is evidence to back
everything up, but rather because, as you mentioned, the logical framework is
so self-consistent.

~~~
pazimzadeh
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." \-
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Agreed. As an atheist, I found that some of the smartest people around are
religious.

------
MKais
"It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth"

Alexis de Tockeville (1805-1859)

------
aww_dang
Is it too much to ask the author to define his terms? The nature of truth is
subject to an ongoing epistemological debate. The author's unspoken
presumption is that fallible humans can even approach truth.

Is it not more honest in a way if a politician or a criminal accepts that he
can not do truth justice, and proceeds with the sausage making? Like an actor
winking into the camera, self-irony becomes an important part of political
theatre.

Audiences decrying the paradoxical nature of time travel or other impossible
sci-fi plot elements is declasse. This is how the bitter partisans of the
chattering classes appear while harping on the inconsistencies of their
opponent's presentation.

What else can we expect from Hollywood? An honest politician is a
contradiction of terms. It is insulting to expect one's audience to suspend
their disbelief for puritan phantasms like honesty in politics. Acknowledge
us. Give the readers some credit, we're not all outrage junkies.

~~~
Jeff_Brown
> Is it not more honest in a way if a politician or a criminal accepts that he
> can not do truth justice, and proceeds with the sausage making?

No. It's not better. That way lies Russia.

If you already believe all politicians are liars, how is it at all helpful for
a politician to tell you something you already know -- that he or she is
lying?

Postmodernism is poison. Don't give up on the truth.

Even if it were true that all politicians play loose with the truth, there is
an enormous variety to the spectrum. Some dodge uncomfortable questions. Some
make unrealistic promises. Some quote out of context. Some exaggerate their
accomplishments. Some make things up out of thin air.

Some politicians take none of those steps. We tend not to reward them for it.
But an enormous number of politicians will not take that last step.

~~~
aww_dang
>No. It's not better. That way lies Russia.

Please don't misread my comment as a prescription towards a political end. It
does not follow that I would endorse any politician, nor does it follow that I
subscribe to "the ends justify the means".

>If you already believe all politicians are liars, how is it at all helpful
for a politician to tell you something you already know -- that he or she is
lying?

I take it as a courtesy when their spiel is over the top and theatrical. It is
a small conciliation when they embrace the absurdity of their position and go
overboard. The presumption of political truthiness is insulting to me as a
viewer. I understand that they are in a position that requires them to lie and
cheat. I empathize, but I don't support them or endorse the process.

>Don't give up on the truth.

In the context of politics, these 'truths' are often highly subjective and
ideologically driven.

Consider the drug war and all of the studies which were funded/suppressed to
justify prohibition. Yet today cannabis is regarded as a panacea by many.

Even in the material sciences knowledge is constantly revised. Yet so many are
willing to stand on this false summit and beat their chests as if they have
reached the apex of understanding. In the case of politics what follows is the
coercive force of the state to achieve some ends suggested by their limited
understanding.

No, I haven't given up on truth. I reject politics as a means to any end.

>Some politicians take none of those steps.

Again with "This time is different", I'll call this special pleading.
Believing in politicians and expecting change is like loaning money to an
addict.

------
DesiLurker
My view is that this is a byproduct of a flaw in the way human attention
works. we deal with events not the whole landscape of reality as such. well
because thats what it takes to survive. Politicians & media have caught on to
this so all they have to do is manage attention when an undesirable event
happens. once the event is lost its very hard for us to go back and review it
as daily life take over & the cycle repeats.

IMO the only realistic way around this is to have more eyeballs looking at it
and have smaller pools of resources so there is less incentive to distort.
both of these converge to the solution that we need smaller constituencies and
a more EU like structure with a lot more representation per capita. Otherwise
everything becomes a 51% attack & with this electoral college & Senate
composition we'd be lucky if that.

------
yalogin
Some people want to hear some message and are willing to close their eyes and
throw all logic away. So are easy to con. All cults and hardcore trump fans
come to mind.

------
mizzao
"This article is full of lies" -> can someone list them?

------
Mathnerd314
The narrative I got from the 2016 election was that nobody particularly liked
any of the candidates, but that Trump's messages on trade etc. were marginally
better than Hillary's more-of-the-same platform. It's true that partisan
Democrats and Republicans put little thought into their votes, but since they
vote the same every election they're not really relevant to the outcome.

------
yogthos
Obviously, otherwise capitalism couldn't exist.

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

------
hagreet
This article is behind a paywall.

~~~
jraph
It seems to work with javascript disabled.

~~~
ra
Most paywalls are defeated by disabling cookies or javascript, or both.
Cookies is enough for the economist.

------
smoll
If most people are hard-wired to be duped, why does it feel like only recently
people are getting even more conspicuously duped by their political leaders (a
la Trump and Johnson)? Presumably this effect should have had a more uniformly
distributed effect throughout history.

Is it solely due to the weaponization of technology for this means? Or are
there other reasons for “why now”?

~~~
jplayer01
1) Accessibility

2) There's always been some measure of manipulation by political leaders in
order to achieve certain goals. Obvious examples are the US in drumming up
support for WW2 or the Vietnam war or ... well, any war, really. I don't think
anything has really fundamentally changed since the "good old days", except
people have realized that they can subvert democracy by just telling people
what they want to hear. We have decades of history where you can say something
and then do something else entirely, and this is just the natural extension of
that. Political leaders, businesses, etc. have realized that there are no
consequences for being bad actors, only benefits. Even if they are found out,
they can influence the news in ways to make it blow over in a day, or they can
tie up courts for years and years if it ever does go there (rare).

All I see is an inexorable march which started decades ago, and it's not going
to stop here.

~~~
paganel
>1) Accessibility

This doesn't get mentioned as often as it should. I have read almost no
critical analysis of the fact that cheap smartphones coupled with relatively
cheap mobile Internet have brought the political discourse to lots and lots of
more people, who otherwise most certainly would have switched the TV channel
when the politics were on or who didn't read the politics section in the
newspapers (if they used to read newspapers at all).

In other words, Facebook and Twitter by themselves would have meant nothing
without the cheap Android phones.

------
numinary1
Democracy is ostensibly majority rule (don't nitpick). The majority of people
are poor. Therefore, democracy is the rule of the poor (Aristotle). We do not
live in a democracy.

~~~
lucian1900
If the poor were truly in charge, why would they choose to remain poor?

~~~
mbillie1
I think you're missing what the parent is saying: since the majority are poor,
they plainly don't rule (since then they wouldn't remain poor). If democracy
is defined as "majority rule," and we plainly see that the majority in the US
do NOT rule, then the US is not a democracy.

~~~
lucian1900
Oh yes, I was agreeing.

------
rihegher
You can fool 1000 persons one time. You can fool 1 person 1000 times. But you
can't fool 1000 persons 1000 times.

Some people will know what I'm talking about :), the rest can just downvote
this.

~~~
losvedir
Yes, that is a well known phrase and what the Economist is alluding to here.

~~~
alberto_ol
from quote investigator

In conclusion, Jacques Abbadie should be credited with the interesting
precursor statement in French. QI believes based on current evidence that
Abraham Lincoln probably did not employ this well-known adage.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/11/cannot-
fool/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/11/cannot-fool/)

