

How to Trick the Guilty and Gullible into Revealing Themselves - jmadsen
http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-to-trick-the-guilty-and-gullible-into-revealing-themselves-1399680248

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johngalt
My favorite trick is to have a salesman tell me that there is a better deal
somewhere else. Anyone who says 'the offer is only good until you walk out the
door!' knows that once you walk out the door you'll find something better.

Your buying <thing> once. The salesman sells <thing> every day. Whenever I'm
given an exploding offer, I hear an expert in the <thing> market telling me
that there is a better deal to be found.

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dang
This article about Errol Morris from a few years ago includes a related trick.

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/errol-morris-
the-...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/errol-morris-the-thinking-
mans-detective-99424163/?all)

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baha_man
"I wanted to tell you about his private-eye trick, which he learned from a
hard-bitten partner.

It wasn’t a blackjack-, brass knuckles-type thing. “It went like this,” Morris
explained. “He’d knock on a door, sometimes of someone not even connected to
the case they were investigating. He’d flip open his wallet, show his badge
and say, ‘I guess we don’t have to tell you why we’re here.’

“And more often than not the guy starts bawling like an infant, ‘How did you
find out?’” And then disgorges some shameful criminal secret no one would ever
have known about otherwise."

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adrianmsmith
Great article; but I've never been convinced by the authenticity of the King
Solomon story.

 _> "Fetch me a sword," Solomon said. "Divide the living child in two, and
give half to the one, and half to the other." One woman embraced his solution.
But the other begged Solomon not to hurt the baby and give it to her rival
instead. Solomon promptly ruled in her favor, figuring that the real mother
would rather give up her child than see it die._

The objective of the (dishonest) woman is to get the (living) baby. It seems
inhuman for a person, especially someone who wants a baby sufficiently to be
dishonest, to "embrace" the baby being killed.

~~~
dTal
Not to mention the unfortunate implication that chopping a baby in half with a
sword was a credible threat from Wise King Solomon.

