Technology and the End of Lying 339
HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Post reports that lying may soon become a lost art as our digital, data-hoarding culture means that more and more evidence is piling up to undermine our lies. "The research shows the way lies are really uncovered is by comparing what someone is saying to the evidence," says Tim Levine,"and with all these news analytics that can be done, it's going to enable lie detection in a way that was previously impossible." For example in Pennsylvania, police are prosecuting a woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted earlier this year after data from her Fitbit didn't match up with her story, Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument, instant messaging programs that archive digital conversations make it easy to look back and see exactly who said what — and if it matches up with what a person is saying now. "Lying online can be very dangerous," says Jeff Hancock. "Not only are you leaving a record for yourself on your machine, but you're leaving a record on the person that you were lying to."
Even more alarming for liars is the incorporation of lie detector technology into the facial recognition technology. Researchers claim video-analysis software can analyze eye movement successfully to identify whether or not a subject is fibbing 82.5 percent of the time. The new technology heightens surveillance capabilities—from monitoring actions to assessing emotions—in ways that make an individual ever more vulnerable to government authorities, marketers, employers, and to any and every person with whom we interact. "We must understand that—at the individual level and with regard to interpersonal relations—too much truth and transparency can be harmful," says Norberto Andrade. "The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people."
Even more alarming for liars is the incorporation of lie detector technology into the facial recognition technology. Researchers claim video-analysis software can analyze eye movement successfully to identify whether or not a subject is fibbing 82.5 percent of the time. The new technology heightens surveillance capabilities—from monitoring actions to assessing emotions—in ways that make an individual ever more vulnerable to government authorities, marketers, employers, and to any and every person with whom we interact. "We must understand that—at the individual level and with regard to interpersonal relations—too much truth and transparency can be harmful," says Norberto Andrade. "The permanent confrontation with a verifiable truth will turn us into overly cautious, calculating, and suspicious people."
Lies, I say (Score:5, Interesting)
Liars won't stop lieing. Few enough do even after confronted with their lies IRL. If anything, the lies will be more elaborately spun. That too can be done very convincingly online, we've seen enough evidence of that, too. Sure it will probably come out eventually. But by then the damage may well be done.
Re:Lies, I say (Score:5, Insightful)
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...and those that want to believe the lies will find more reasons to do so.
I never thought about it that way, but that's actually pretty profound. It's like how the moon landing conspiracists have now woven a web almost as complicated as simply going to the moon, and other fringers will only be more convinced of the odd stuff they believe.
Re:Lies, I say (Score:4, Informative)
The technology enables us to lie more effectively. We can find whatever truth we desire:
"The anti-vaccine agitators can always find a renegade researcher or random “study” to back them up. This is erudition in the age of cyberspace: You surf until you reach the conclusion you’re after. You click your way to validation, confusing the presence of a website with the plausibility of an argument.
Although the Internet could be making all of us smarter, it makes many of us stupider, because it’s not just a magnet for the curious. It’s a sinkhole for the gullible. - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07... [nytimes.com]
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I have to admit that I am beginning to wonder if we as a society are mature enough for the internet.
The amount of pure stupid, rude, and or cruel on the internet is overwhelming at times.
Just look at the comments on CNN sometime it makes Slashdot look like a bastion of sanity.
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Yes.
You lied if you intended for us to believe you were being accurate.
You made a careless mistake anyways, either if you intended us to believe you were trying to be accurate, or if you were actually trying, but of course, didn't...
And after all this, you could be forgiven. Just not by us.
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Since when did (Score:2)
will not work for poker games where people bluff (Score:2)
will not work for poker games where people bluff
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All this means is that you can catch them (Score:5, Interesting)
... not always... just easier in some cases. Good liars will learn to work around the evidence and bad liars as usual will be caught as they always have been caught.
I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done. I don't know... maybe its all just media hype but it seems like that has gotten out of control and maybe the law needs to be tweaked a bit to discourage false claims.
One thing which I think is reasonable with false accusations is having the person sentenced to a smiliarly harsh prison sentence.
If you accuse someone of murder and you KNOW they didn't do it... if you fake the evidence up... whatever... and it is proven in a court of law that you did all that stuff. I'm okay sending that person away for 30 years. Because that's effectively what they tried to do to someone else. They tried to get someone kidnapped and kept in a cell for 30 years. Imagine if I just grabbed you and threw you in a cell. What would the sentence for that be? Again... at least 30 years of me in being in a cell, no?
Alright... so if some person makes a fake rape accusation and stages the whole thing... falsifies evidence... commits perjury. Then lets look at how long whomever would have gone to jail had the scam worked. If the guy would have gone to jail for 10 years then... if you can prove she tried to set him up... then she goes away for 10 years.
The sorts of people that do this thing are generally cowards. They do it because they think they can get away with it and they think the consequences of being caught will be nothing.
If you make it clear that their story will be audited and if it is proven that they tried to set someone up that they'll do the time instead... I think a lot of these bullshit cases will go away.
I am applying this to all crimes. Not just rape. Everything. If you try and make it look like someone stole something... same thing If the person would go to jail for 4 years or something... you go to jail instead for 4 years.
Do not make false claims before the court.
The sword of justice must cut both ways.
Re: All this means is that you can catch them (Score:2, Informative)
You're not original. Deuteronomy 19:19
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Nothing about justice should be original. It hasn't changed in centuries...
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I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done. I don't know... maybe its all just media hype but it seems like that has gotten out of control and maybe the law needs to be tweaked a bit to discourage false claims.
After having been married to a woman that would lie and do just about anything unethical to get her way, I believe this has to do with a certain segment of the female population that I like to call "ultra liberal feminists". I'm all for equality between the sexes but this particular group I think believes that all men are stupid and deserve to be taken advantage. I suspect these women were born to other that were in households were men assumed superior authority and were education on the "evils of men" be
Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:4, Insightful)
its not about men or women. Human beings are opportunists by nature. Neither good nor evil... it is our nature to walk around and pick fruit from the ground or from the trees. We like the low hanging fruit. its easy to get at. We like big stupid animals that are easy to kill. We like the fish that are trapped. "like shooting fish in a barrel"... that's what human beings like. We like the easy way and we tend to avoid anything that is a pain in the ass.
The issue is that the standards for evidence are a little out of whack at this point for certain crimes.
A lot of it is just how effective it is to scare people into submission with political correctness. Nothing I'm saying is politically correct. And certain people exploit that to their personal gain.
Al Sharpton does it with race. He'll show up and cause problems claiming people are racist... until you pay him. Then he goes away whether or not you changed anything or there was even any racism there in the first place. You pay him and he goes away.
And a big part of our society just works that way. You can see a lot of it on slashdot. There are a lot of these twits that are just horrified that people aren't all scrupulously politically correct all times never mind if the politically correct answer is stupid. They don't care.
Dogma trumps reality. its like a religion and they're the cannon fodder zealots. All we can do is hold the line and wait for the fever to blow over.
One of the more positive things that has happened recently is that they got starved for victims so they started attacking their own political camps. They were basically doing purity tests. Once everyone is a liberal how do they justify their existence? well... they then ask "how liberal are you"... and they just start goal posting moving to make sure they have enough people to be outraged with at any given time.
So anyway, they were doing that and eventually they hit a segment of their own political contingent that fought back. And now they're a little baffled because a lot of the wind has gone out of their sails. They're getting attacked from all sides now and they're losing credibility rapidly.
Its funny because they're such dogmatic robots that they don't really understand what happened.
We'll see... they'll either be suppressed to the general good of society or they'll osterize most of their political base which will lead to a structural schism in the faction which will weaken them collectively.
Either way... these goofballs are at their zenith already. Its all down hill from here.
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Either way... these goofballs are at their zenith already. Its all down hill from here.
This is my read on the situation as well, and the way you've reacted to the idiot who accused you of being an MRA is a nice example of how the future of this conversation will go: those of us who actually care about men's rights (because they are human rights) will continue to say the things we've been saying for years (decades, in my case) like, "Maybe living in a world where if someone dies on the job, there is a 92% chance they are male is bad thing?" People who are the argumentative equivalent of script
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I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done. [...] One thing which I think is reasonable with false accusations is having the person sentenced to a smiliarly harsh prison sentence.
Something should be done! There oughta be a law!
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yeah... like title IX... "There are to be a law" is basically how everything got this screwed up in the first place.
False accusations of rape are not rare (Score:5, Informative)
False rape accusations are rare.
Rare? I'd hardly call 8% of accusations [wikipedia.org] in the US rare. Even the lowest estimates are between 1-2% of cases. While it can be difficult to prosecute he-said/she-said cases and (too) many rape cases never come to trial, false accusations of rape are anything but rare.
Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:5, Insightful)
... The post literally cited a fake rape claim... and we're seeing those in the media constantly now... published by every newspaper in the western world.
So I think you've confused "MRA" with "everyone".
Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:5, Insightful)
First, I'm not an MRA, and your immediate to leap to identity politics speaks far more poorly of you than of me.
Second, if you set someone up to be potentially executed... that's attempted first degree murder in my opinion. The fact that you're using a state executioner to snuff someone is besides the point. So that's where I get numbers like that. If you set someone up to that extent for those sorts of crimes then you tried to lock someone in a box for 30 years. What is the crime for kidnapping someone and throwing them in a box for thirty years? Because I can assure you... it wouldn't be 5 years... or 1 for good behavior and probation which is apparently what you think is reasonable.
Now, if you're at all capable of having a rational and honest discussion about this... you'll find I'm reasonable and open to other points of view. However, if you're got nothing but ad hominem, identity politics, guilt by association, strawman, and other assorted rhetorical bullshit... then I really have no choice but to label you a shithead and move on. I mean... what should I or anyone else do if they're met by someone in a discussion and that is literally all they do?
Be a better person. You like to morally judge people but you never look at yourself in the mirror. Be a better person.
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Login and I'll discuss that with you. Stay AC and I can't be drawn into the brier patch trolls and sockpuppets.
You really didn't read your citation very closely and I can show you a few things about this topic using your own citation that would put a different spin on the issue. I won't bother unless you login though.
Red herring (Score:3, Insightful)
I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done.
Perhaps this is awfully unfair of me, but I get the distinct impression that unprosecuted rapes don't bother you half as much.
And here we have the technique of trying to switch from an argument that one does not like to fight against to an argument one wants to fight for. If only there were a name for such a rhetorical device.
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Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:5, Insightful)
I am disturbed by how many fake rape claims there are though. Something about that should be done.
Perhaps this is awfully unfair of me, but I get the distinct impression that unprosecuted rapes don't bother you half as much.
Actually, this particular bias is to be expected, for both sexes. You'd expect women to worry mostly about unprosecuted rapes, since they're more likely than men to be raped. And you'd expect men to worry mostly about false rape accusations, since they're more likely that women to be falsely accused of rape.
Similarly, you'd expect people with large bank accounts to be more worried about identity thefts than people who store all their money under their mattress, while you'd expect poor people to be more worried about armed robbery of what little cash they have.
People tend to worry mostly about things that can effect them, for obvious reasons.
Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:5, Insightful)
It is awfully unfair. Show me something I said that suggests I'm okay with any crime going prosecuted?
It is a mark of the times that expecting some integrity in these matters is read by some as advocating rape.
Lets say I accuse you of murder... and you want due process. You want to my claims investigated.
What if I turned around and said that all of that discourages people from reporting murders and that your due process rights effectively make it easier for people to get away with murder?
Seem reasonable? Of course not. That is the general nature of the argument we're having though because you're suggesting that if false accusations are discouraged that I am thus a rape apologist or enabler or something.
Nothing of the kind. I'm an advocate for due process and integrity in the law.
So yes... that was awfully unfair... and silly.
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As your original post acknowledges, perjury is already a crime. The only thing you seem to be calling for is to make the punishment for perjury equal to the punishment for the crime the victim was accused of.
Making the punishment harsher probably wouldn't have any effect. Harsher punishments don't seem to have any correlation with reduced crime rates in general. The biggest problem is that perjury convictions are quite rare, especially in rape cases, because it's usually a case of she said/he said. If there
Re:All this means is that you can catch them (Score:4, Insightful)
No... I'm not talking about perjury.
I'm talking about setting people up.
They're not the same thing.
If you ask me if I was at location Y at time X and I tell you something other that what I know to be true for ANY reason that is perjury but I'm not neccessily trying to set someone up. I could actually be trying to get someone off by giving them an alibi. Or I could be lying for any of a million reasons. Possibly I don't want to incriminate myself in another crime. Possibly the answer would reveal I was doing something embarressing that wasn't illegal but I didn't want to admit to it in a court of law.
Any lie what so ever under oath is perjury.
Setting someone up is more than that. It is the deliberate attempt to decieve a court of law such that a mischarage of justice will ensue that will claim your innocent victim under the false impression that they are guilty of some crime.
The crime probably needs a special term and it needs degrees of severity just like murder or assault.
First degree of this would involve premeditation.
Second degree would be something done in the heat of the moment without consideration.
I'm not sure what third degree would be. Possibly a more serious form of just perjury that included any lie told to a court that harmed someone even though you intentions were not to harm anyone.
This would be in keeping with the way our legal system already works.
Tricking a court into destroying someone's life for you... you wrong not only your victim but you also make the court an unwitting accomplice in your crime.
It is not treated even remotely seriously enough. You do something like that and they should come at you last as hard as you tried to get the system to go after someone else.
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If anything I would be more harsh with those people if only because they're in a position of trust.
it is worse when a cop sets you up than if any random person does it because the cop not only harms a person but he also undermines the public trust of the legal system etc.
I don't know how much more harsh I would be... but I'd be comfortable with the increase in severity being pretty extreme. As in... I'd like a fair number of the police that get caught doing that and know that they're going to get convicted.
I believe it was Mark Twain who said... (Score:2)
Re:I believe it was Mark Twain who said... (Score:4, Insightful)
...If you always tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Even in his time, just sticking to the truth was the path of least resistance.
Basically good advice, but the reality is often subtler than that. Sometimes, you need both a good memory for the facts, and also a good memory of exactly what you really said. Ask anyone who's ever run for an elected audience. Your opponents will extract a portion of what you actually said, tweak it just a bit, and claim you said something rather different from what you really said.
And publicising what you actually said, with the expectation that it'll expose your opponents' trickery, isn't always helpful. Google "invented the internet" for a nice example of how poorly exposing the facts can work. At least in the political arena, it's unlikely that anything will have much effect on the prevalence of brazen liars.
Mark Twain also said "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
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He also said it was a decaying art form [online-literature.com]. Few put the effort and creativity into a truly good lie. I guess, if you're really just not going to try, you are just better off telling the truth.
Not on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument
Obviously the author has never been in an argument on /.
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Or considered that the so-called "source of truth" could have been compromised either maliciously or accidentally by erroneous input.
For example: my birthday on Skype is UNIX epoch date. I did that deliberately as it's none of Microsoft's business when it really is. However, my passport has an incorrect birth date because some numpty transcribed it from my birth certificate incorrectly and they want me to pay full price for a new one for their fuckup.
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Many subscribe to belief sets that will not allow the introduction of new, contradictory evidence. Political, religious, and tribal leanings come to mind.
Often enough, in debate, lying isn't the same as believing different fact(s).
Re:Not on /. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument
Obviously the author has never been in an argument on /.
In an online class I recently took the instructor said something like "If you go in with the facts, nobody can argue with you".
Sure they can.
Re:Not on /. (Score:5, Funny)
Did you argue with him about it?
Re:Not on /. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument
Obviously the author has never been in an argument on /.
Also, there's the implicit assumption that all arguments can be resolved by "facts." In the real world, facts require interpretation and context. If you want to resolve a question like "Was person X at location Y at time Z?" then the facts needed to come to an answer usually have a relatively straightforward interpretation.
But questions like "Did person X cause Y?" or "Is person X responsible/culpable for issue Y?" are not often resolvable by appeals to facts. Both sides can provide their "facts," but who wins the argument often is a matter of interpretation.
And that's often where the "fact" problem comes in -- similar to arguments on Slashdot, it's often easy for someone to produce a battery of "facts" to support an argument. But if that person is biased and trying to win an argument, he/she may deliberately choose facts in a selective manner... which may significantly distort the truth.
Being able to verify "facts" is only a small part of determining "truth" in most circumstances. If most arguments could easily be resolved simply by collecting facts, we'd have no need for a judicial system, for example -- we could just have a simple legal "scoresheet," tally up the "facts," and then we know the "truth" which can determine guilt or culpability or whatever.
In the real world, "lying" is a much more complex behavior than simply stating demonstrably false facts -- it involves deliberate omissions of relevant facts or additions of irrelevant facts which can lead to misleading conclusions. Technology does much less to mitigate those latter concerns: in fact, with the proliferation of more and more data, it can make it harder to sift through what is actually relevant and irrelevant to answer a particular question.
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More importantly, there's the implicit assumption that these facts will always be available in correct and undistorted form from Google, which is so wrong-headed I can't even begin. Slanting Google to their worldview is a hobby (or even a business) for some people.
80% lie detection accuracy isn't that good (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine that you are talking to someone, and they are making a statement every few seconds (typical in a conversation). Now imagine that 1 out of every 5 sentences, a bell rings, telling you that they're lying, even though they are being perfectly truthful. (because that's the likely false positive rate, if the false negative rate is 20%.. most researchers "tune" the algorithm for what's known as equal error rate).
Would this be ok?
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There isn't enough information in the summary (and like I'm going to read the article...pfft!) to conclude there's a 20% false positive rate. It could be, when someone's lying, 80% of the time it says "pants on fire!" 19% of the time it says "don't know" and 1% of the time it says "truth!"
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Don't be fooled... (Score:5, Interesting)
Technology is just another piece of evidence that can be manipulated. Would a good liar use it to their advantage? Absolutely. Had Risley been smarter, could she have taken a nap and then started thrashing around as she woke up? Yes. Then the FitBit would be _evidence_, not contradiction, that she was raped.
There's a reason things like lie detector tests don't have to be admissible in court- they're still fallible. Don't be fooled into thinking anything new still relying on humans to analyze and use is going to be any different.
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This is precisely the problem with this sort of thinking.
A vast informational resource will reduce the frequency of things like lying on resumes. You can't just say "I did this" without others to corroborate your claim. However, that can easily lead to a tendency to simply assume the facts are out there. In turn, when someone does want to get away with lying, they can do so by making sure that their claims are either audacious enough that the victim assumes a lie would be impossible, or by fabricating enoug
Fatbit (Score:5, Funny)
> Fitbit
"Let that Slashdot nerd go, Chief, he's clean. His Fitbit showed he spent most of the day slouched and barely moving, interrupted only by trips to the bathroom."
"What's this series of spikes here?"
"It looks like he was shaking hands with someone vigorously. We're not sure who."
Re:Fatbit (Score:5, Funny)
"Must have been really excited to meet this person, too. That handshake went on for a good two and a half minutes."
Also, you missed the opportunity to rename it a "Fapbit."
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It was Tiny Tim, I swear it by the Holy Bible!
It's Not Always "Lying" (Score:5, Insightful)
Great example of our technology out-pacing our wisdom. What many people label "lying" is actually misremembering. Our biological memory-retrieval systems are extremely bad. Every time you remember something, your brain is rewriting the memory [radiolab.org], meaning the more you remember an event the more your brain distorts it.
This happens over and over again in our courts, people honestly remember things completely wrong and we call them liars. The film "Rosemary's Baby" is based on a true story of ritualistic child abuse, except the "real" story was entirely implanted [google.com] in the minds of everyone involved by psychologists. Even the accused were convinced they were guilty. It's absurdly easy for a psychologist to implant false memories of our childhoods [wikipedia.org] in experiments.
The wording in this post unnerves me. The older I get and the more digital the world becomes, the more I learn that I misremember 60% of what has happened in my life. If technology is used to prosecute anyone who makes a statement that contradicts hard factual data, then many innocent people will be prosecuted. We need our scientific wisdom to catch up to our cognitive biases.
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Great example of our technology out-pacing our wisdom. What many people label "lying" is actually misremembering. Our biological memory-retrieval systems are extremely bad.
Most people I know think of lying as deliberate action, designed to gain something, whether it is to get someone else in trouble, obfuscating the facts to make yourself look innocent or "right", or the more benign but still corrosive lying to tell others what you think they want to hear. Malice or manipulation in short.
If my wife attributes something someone said 25 years ago to me, I'd never consider that a lie, just a faulty memory. Hers or perhaps even mine.
This is only a problem for idiot millenials.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... who catalogued their entire lives online including endless photographs, times and dates, feelings, opinions, likes, dislikes etc.
Wait, whats that loud clucking sound I can hear?
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Re:This is only a problem for idiot millenials.. (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to like picking people up on spelling. Thats generally done by people who, in lieu actually having anything resembling a coherent point to contribute to the argument, feel they need to be noticed and admired for their - in their eyes - incredible intellect. Narcissists in other words.
Got anything else or is that it?
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Sorry, can't let you get away with that. Someone who *willfully* places a whole boatload of personal information in the public domain without considering the long term consequences I'm afraid is solidly in the category of "idiot". And the millennial generation are the ones who are doing it by far the most.
Secrets (Score:2)
Ask me no secrets and I'll tell you no lies.
Obfuscation Increases (Score:2)
The art of lying (Score:2, Interesting)
The art of a good lie is in weaving it into truth.
A lie on its own without some truth to back it up is doomed to failure. This has always been the case. If you want to be convincing in your lies, they need to be just small parts of a larger story which is mainly truth.
If I told you that I was once interviewed by the TV news, talking about Princess Diana just after she died, then you might disbelieve me. And you'd be right to: it never happened.
However, if I told you about the day I was walking around London
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bold assertion. What about "little white lies" - lies constructed so that all people involved are better off, or at least neutral, believing it. You know like "I thought that dress last night looked good on you"
Beyond that, I may want to consistently lie to distort the data collected about me on the internet for marketing purposes. In this case (and many others) lies increase privacy.
What about a male crossdresser who identifies as female to Google so he can see ads for shoes and makeup? Everyone wins, because of how that data will be used.
And those are all cases that work if you think that lying is somehow wrong and needs to be counterbalanced in some way. I would think a more accurate statement is stuff like "getting someone to be falsely imprisoned" is wrong and lying is but one tool to cause that to happen.
Will be the end of my country (Score:2)
Not only lying (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only lying will vanish then, but changing one's mind over time, too :-(
Technology of lies (Score:3)
Double-edged sword (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it idiot-proof... (Score:2)
...and the Universe will produce a better idiot.
I'm sure the same applies for liars.
Lie detection does NOT work. (Score:3)
Let's say we have a school of 200 students, one of whom pulls a prank. Teachers apply the test to all 200 students and they get 35 people that failed the lie detector - but only of them did it. Worthless information.
The end of religion? (Score:2)
Nice idea (Score:2)
Please apply it to political power plays, clandestine operations, secretive courts and legal systems, like tort law
https://www.law.cornell.edu/we... [cornell.edu]
A million years will pass and there will still be lies!
Besides, who plays big brother and hoards all data in secrecy?
Can all be manipulated at will, thats a permanent lie right there.
Just like you can Google a fact to end an argument (Score:3)
Okay, pretty much stopped reading at that point. The fact is that it's as easy to propagate lies through the Internet as it is truth.
I see this as an unmitigated good (Score:2)
Sorry, but I see this as an unmitigated good. The times I have been damaged, I have been damaged by liars. Liars telling lies they know I have no way to contradict. In fact, this is basically how the world is run. People receive false evaluations from people in positions of power, they receive false promises from associates, they receive false information about people's intentions and the false factual information about events of the world. If there were some way to take away their power, then that would b
Facial analysis to tell when a politician is lying (Score:2)
Simple - their lips are moving
Yeah (Score:2)
Because NOBODY ever lies on the internet. That's a proven fact, amirite?
Some liars are easy to detect... (Score:2)
If a person is a Marketing drone, a politician, or a lawyer, they are liars.
Just a way to increase the prosecution of lying? (Score:2)
I'm always kind of amazed its a crime (and a fairly serious one) to lie to the FBI and many other government police agencies. It seems like a fair number of people accused of some crime don't get convicted of it, but instead end up getting convicted of lying to investigators, often before they have been charged with a crime or even if they are not the target of the investigation at all.
The better strategy most criminal defense attorneys advocate is don't talk to them at all. I think only a handful of peop
What will they do? (Score:2)
Re:This is a curse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. Facial analysis is unlikely to work on psychopaths, especially those who fully believes in the alternate reality the invent.
That leaves looking at electronic communication, but that information is private. (For politicians, the whole honest people have nothing to hide thingy only applies to common plebs like you and me.)
It is also only a problem for corrupt bureaucrats.
True bureaucrats that follow the forms religiously won't have a problem with this. They would amputate their own legs if the correct check-mark for it is set. To them filling out a form untruthfully is a mortal sin.
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This hasn't stopped politicians so far. You can go on line and find video of damn near any one of them claiming to fully support an idea and then in a different campaign claiming that same idea will be the end of civilization as we know it and (s)he would never support such a thing.
Re:This is a curse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, saying two contradictory thing means that any one of them could be true. Or neither. Or both?
Damn, I'm confused.
it depends... (Score:2)
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This hasn't stopped politicians so far. You can go on line and find video of damn near any one of them claiming to fully support an idea and then in a different campaign claiming that same idea will be the end of civilization as we know it and (s)he would never support such a thing.
Yeah - much of what The Washington Post proposes only works if people are willing to: test their own beliefs; do the research; analyse what they read; can find the facts in the first place (like if, maybe - in an alternate future, Google, and maybe one day other search engines, can be forced to change recorded history).
I don't dispute it's possible, but likely is another thing.
As for software driven micro-facial expression used to recognise liars. I suspect it won't catch those that believe the lie (and bul [stoa.org.uk]
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And this is one reason why I love The Daily Show. While the regular media will just play the latest clip of the politician saying "X will destroy America!!!", The Daily Show will then play the "I fully support X" clip. Yes, they do it for laughs, but they are informa
Re:This is a curse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really. They have control of the media, that is, the modern propaganda apperatus. The truth no longer matters in such a sphere. Lies can become truth, and truth blasphemy if the media simply choose a narrative and stick to it no matter what.
We live in the age of "framing", "narratives" and "explainer journalism". The truth, reason, hard evidence? None carry more weight than a twitter post these days.
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Re:This is a curse... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod up. Please.
Like this [telegraph.co.uk]
Or this [inquisitr.com]
Or this [nationalreview.com]
Re:This is a curse... (Score:4, Insightful)
> This is a curse for politicians, bureaucrats and profiteering corporations.
Whatever. Technology has been advancing since those institutions began, and they've only gotten more powerful.
No advance in technology will strip them of their power unless it's created by a concerted effort to do so. It won't happen by chance.
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Unfortunately it probably won't work because it will be unable to determine if there is any substance to their speech or the difference between lies and incompetence.
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... for politicians, bureaucrats and profiteering corporations.
We already do that, time and time again. How many war profiteers, dishonest corporations, politicians, and other malefactors have been caught out in barefaced lies already? Of those, how many have suffered the consequences?
Confronting a self-righteous liar with the truth typically only inflames their self-righteousness and that of their followers.
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That's why I never post anything!
Re:And my wife Morgan Fairchild... (Score:4, Interesting)
Lying is a self defense mechanism. When someone faces a threat it takes more energy to build up the courage and tell the truth, because our natural instinct is to tell a lie point the finger to someone else. For the most part telling the truth is better long term, but for many of those white lies it is probably better.
Now on more of a point.
This technology isn't about finding lying, nor is Though shalt not lie one of the 10 commandants. It is baring false witness or perjury. In essence where they need to take your statements as truth. So in this article electronic data is useful in solving crime and if you lied in court then you can be shown that you did, due to more evidence. Was I talking on the cell phone when the cop pulled me over? We can take his word for it, or we can just show the court the phone bill showing that we didn't make a call at that time. Is that acquisition that I did something that day true, perhaps there is digital evidence that I wasn't there. A cell phone log, where I was getting some data at a different location, or on the other side showing that I was indeed there.
Now with this technology it can go both ways, that why it is extremely important that we don't have blanket over-site of our data, from the NSA, or other officials, unless via a warrant. We can't have truth cops, or even being flagged for suspicious activity if we very from our normal activities.
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There have been studies showing that humans are not alone, when it comes to the fine art of deception. Certain birds, mammals, and even fish have been known to use some form of deception to improve their situation. One of my favorites is the cuttlefish, which can show flashy male mating patterns on one side of the body, but leave the other side (facing potential competitors) dull and uninteresting.
As far as humans go, I imagine it's part learned and part innate. I have a four-year-old who lies all the time
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As long as there are statistics, there will be lies.
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Don't worry politicians will just ban computers and make data mining illegal.
Of course by that point it will be to late.
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You bring up one good point... when it comes to politicians, you can spot a lie from them from 10 miles off.
Example? In CNN's recent interview of Hillary Clinton, she claimed that she never got a subpoena for her private mail server... took less than 30 seconds to discover otherwise. Opposing ideology groups were broadcasting her false statement -- with evidence proving that she spoke falsely -- across social media even before the interview ended.
However... it means approximately nothing. Why? Because the p
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Example? In CNN's recent interview of Hillary Clinton, she claimed that she never got a subpoena for her private mail server... took less than 30 seconds to discover otherwise.
Technically, she is correct. She never received a subpoena for her mail server. She did receive a subpoena for certain emails, but not the server itself. Now did she speak truthfully? Probably not as for all practical purposes, people see the emails stored on the server and her email server as synonymous. But, the question isn't if she spoke truthfully, it is whether or not she lied, which she did not.
Re:Data can lie too ! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Data can lie too ! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not quite correct about Columbus. Pretty much everyone except Columbus knew that Columbus was wrong about the travel distance to Asia. In fact, Columbus proposed his voyage to King John II of Portugal as early as 1485, and was laughed out of court. His brother was rejected by Henry VII of England in 1486 for the same reason.
The Spanish Crown financed Columbus, over the objections of their scientific advisers , for two reasons: the conquest of Grenada was wrapped up in 1492, and the Crown needed to find something for their surplus soldiers and sailors to do, and more importantly, the Crown was absolutely desperate to do something, anything, to break Portugal's trading monopoly with the East around the Cape of Good Hope.