
How technology could kill the art of lying - timdugg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/08/how-technology-could-kill-the-art-of-lying/
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vezzy-fnord
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 learn, so much as learn what they like to read.

The web is a formidable vehicle for sowing confusion and ignorance, as much as
it is a place to obtain knowledge.

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

~~~
DenisM
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?

~~~
tormeh
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.

~~~
ggchappell
> 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.)

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nkw
Interesting article. If anyone hasn't read it, James Halperin's Truth Machine
(1997) is still one of my favorite books. It is an interesting take on
technology which can reliably determine veracity and what could happen if it
has a backdoor.

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akshat_h
Or it would make pre-planned lying easier. "Check my fit bit. And my phone.
And my watch. I was lying in my bed, not participating in high-speed
autonomous car racing." EDIT: "That traffic camera has my twin"

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dasdgr546546gf
Lies will just take a different form, such as with rhetoric and statistics.

Technology is not the be all, end all solution to universal connectedness,
agreement, and consciousness. Technology is a means of communication, it is
the stone tablet in an age of oral storytelling.

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beagle3
Many people in power lie with impunity all the time, even though there's
abundant evidence against those lies. No one seems to care.

Technology could have killed lies long ago. It didn't. Why would it start now?

~~~
DINKDINK
Technology won't kill lying. Despite there are clear and distinct punishments
in society for those who murder, people still don't resist their impulses or
think they're can out smart the system (some do, some don't).

Technology will never stop those who have retaliatory power from lying.
Janitor catches CEO lying about making a specific sales deal go through versus
CEO catching janitor lying about when he clocked in. Strong intra-team
asymmetries exist.

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BinaryIdiot
So the article talks about how technology is making it harder to lie which I
think in some ways it's true but in others it's making it easier to bend the
truth and sometimes it even makes it easier to lie. For instance many of the
folks that are against vaccinations will regularly quote "studies" that are
published in "journals" that are all made up to sell someone a book or some
natural remedies. Even worse is all of the information out there about GMOs
with some of it being good science, some bad and some places where they mix it
all up. Of course a normal person who didn't grow up to become a scientist
isn't going to be able to separate between all of the good and bad information
every time (especially since even scientists themselves can't always separate
it if it's in a different field).

I have to wonder if an ultimate goal will end up being similar to Peter F
Hamilton's Gia Field idea in his books where it essentially links people
together in a way that's not easy to break and it forces you to feel
everyone's emotions around you. So if you are trying to lie to someone, hurt
them or steal their stuff it's going to be obvious not only to the victim but
everyone around you and the perpetrator will feel his victim's emotions.
Naturally this is a pretty crazy idea that's probably over 100 years away from
being able to happen but still the article kinda reminded me of it.

~~~
Xcelerate
> For instance many of the folks that are against vaccinations will regularly
> quote "studies" that are published in "journals" that are all made up to
> sell someone a book or some natural remedies.

I think one of the pressing necessities for the future is a way to categorize
the "quality of science". This is seriously lacking at the moment.

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flycaliguy
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.

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kryptiskt
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.

~~~
spacehome
That's .... brilliant.

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Zikes
The availability of the truth has had very little impact on what people choose
to believe.

"Chemtrails", global warming, evolution, historical events, etc.

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nobael
This article specifically focuses on lying, but it really should be focusing
on privacy. At least, that seems the underlying theme to me.

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Xcelerate
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.

~~~
task_queue
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.

~~~
Xcelerate
> 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.

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brlewis
_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 betrayal. Additionally, the
Pennsylvania suspect voluntarily gave her username and password to the police,
without which they would not have had access to intra-day historical data.

~~~
brc
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.

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

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anant90
Reminds me of this post on Medium from a while ago: [https://medium.com/funny-
stuff/the-fine-art-of-bullshit-c09f...](https://medium.com/funny-stuff/the-
fine-art-of-bullshit-c09f7bbb391e)

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Kenji
Without reading the article very carefully, I have to say, lying has arguably
become even more prevalent in some areas. Internet communities, even small
ones that hold together like a family, are plagued by trolls who would create
alternate accounts, turn people against eachother and spread rumours. The most
talented of those people can break entire communities apart. I've seen enough
of that. No, lying is bound to stay.

