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Technology and the End of Lying
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."
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.
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?
...and those that want to believe the lies will find more reasons to do so.
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, 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 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 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.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
... 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?
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.
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.
Interestingly enough, saying two contradictory thing means that any one of them could be true. Or neither. Or both?
Damn, I'm confused.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
...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."
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
... 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".
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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.
Facts can be changed. Welcome to 1984.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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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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" because of their experience. This creates a false sense of entitlement that is unhealthy. What they don't realize is they raised a group of women that have false beliefs about men in general. It's kind of like how racism gets perpetuated through family generations. Very sad.
Women, because they are typically not superior to men in the physical sense recognize that their emotional and intellectual savviness can be used to balance that out, sometimes in very sinister ways. Some day I hope we don't have this class, gender, race war type of stuff in our society and we can learn to all respect each other. We do much better when we collaborate instead of trying to take advantage of each other.
We'll make great pets
> 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.
Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
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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... 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.
I think you've confused "data" with the plural of anecdote.
According to the very conservative numbers from the NCVS (national crime victimization survey) nearly 300,000 rapes and/or sexual assaults occur each year. Single or even double-digit number of false rape reports in the newspapers is statistical noise.
Facial analysis studies could show how to detect lies, but it could also instruct on how to evade detection. If you know which eye movements, twitches, etc. are indicators of lying, you can practice avoiding those things while lying. Conversely, peppering in those types of indicators during obvious truths could cause false positives and totally throw off the reliability of knowing whether someone is lying.
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.
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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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 is any physical evidence it tends to be unfavourable to the accused. Cases of people claiming rape when it can be demonstrated that they were not with the accused at the time of the alleged attack, for example, are pretty rare, but are prosecuted.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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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