A known liar, that has been know to lie from time to time.
A honest person, that has never lied
They can be perceived differently according to different people.
Now, both say some utterances about the world.
Which of those people is more trustworthy?
On one side, the known liar knows that you don’t trust what he says, so that perhaps he’d need to convince you about the topic at hand, independently from who says it
If the honest person knows that you trust what he says, if what he says is a lie, you are way more likely to believe it is true. You’d be way more easily convinced.
In some way, the best liars are the ones who lie the least possible in the least assuming sentences.
It’s be a slightly better question if you didn’t call the one who has been honest so far an honest person.
In other words…choices:
someone you know has lied from time to time
someone who has never lied as far as you know
Because later you raise the issue of the one who hasn’t lied being possibly a liar who has the tactice of picking their spots carefully.
I think this sinks us into a more realistic scenario and also doesn’t have the contradiction of the honest liar.
I would tend to trust the person who hasn’t lied so far as far as I know, all things being equal.
By that last (all things being equal) I think there are many other things that set off warning bells about a person. Someone can feel creepy, but as far as you know never lied to you. Or they can seem selfish or even conniving. So, if it was an issue that matter to me a lot the past (induction) behavior would weigh less.
I completely agree, you did explain it better than myself. Kudos to you.
A so-far honest person can cease to be honest whenever, tho. In fact, the best liar doesn’t feel creepy nor has anything that makes you doubt that person as far as personality goes, or ‘vibes’.
In fact, we could weigh up that the liar can be just a perceived liar (we may think he lied but he didn’t), but then it gets all wishy-washy.
In a way, the best liar is a person that has always been honest except once, about something that doesn’t matter much and that people agree with, in the first place.
I’m not assuming the best liars will set off some kind of warning bell, just mentioned criteria that could affect my decision to trust induction or not on the issue. Or trust the induction of I have regarding noticed lies vs. I have not noticed lies. Spies, I assume are sort of models of this kind of thing and double agents. They have to believe everything they say to some degree and they may be honest in terms of speech all the time, but they are leaving out something big and more important than all their sentences.
Then there’s a kind of practical issue. Even if you are right that the best of liars don’t feel creepy etc. and tell the truth most of the time, it still might be best to go with induction. Not to fully trust it, but it will work with most people, I would think. They lie a bunch, more likely to lie again.
But the ones who are strategically honest, preparing for that big lie may hit you with a life-changer, yes. On the other hand distrusting people who have been honest so far and distrusting people who have leaves you in a pretty paranoid life. Might be best to assume you will miss some lies and follow your heart.
If you do, then you’d be easy, let’s say, ‘prey’ of the best liars. If known liars are more likely (to you) to lie, you trust that such people will lie.
That’s what I wanted to say! It’s more important to distrust honest people than dishonest people… don’t you agree?
Rather having two people debate this issue, neither of whom knows exactly the usefulness of inducing clarity vis such pertinent factors that may enhance them to know whom among them to trust more than another; in order to choose a more trustworthy or reliable candidate, to assign it to a proven authority, known being virtuous and capable of the best choice?
It’s like acting with the stakes as your life. You are pretending to be a drug dealer in a biker gang, you damn well better feel inside like a drug dealer, even if you are an undercover cop. And that’s why that kind of work is so hard on the soul and psyche. You do end up liking people in the gang. When you beat someone up in a bar in front of your ‘friends’ - because that’s what the person you re being would do - you are going to feel that wrath and urge to violence for real. A bit like Mother Night, the Vonnegut - be careful what you pretend to be because you are likely to be it if you do it long enough and with intensity.
Sure, I think I acknowledged that. Though actually given childhood trauma and the training of decades of hypervigilence I am very good at reading people. Yes, some people don’t have tells, but no heuristic is perfect here. And then distrusting people who act honestly has a huge downside.
I don’t think so, no. I am not going to live my whole life to make sure some skilled liar doesn’t catch me. He’s already won if I live my life distrusting people who don’t lie to me.
Again, I’m sorry that this field is decided by two, the progressive and the regressive ones, and that makes for the Absolute from the near absolute not further divisible, those then who may be holding off, or holding off, may be at an uncertain impasse, whereas that uncertainty says volumes.
In either case, both views are plausible, and the question becomes who leads and/ or follows, whereas both are requisite the the work to go forward, though some backward tracking may also be needed for this slower to catch on or up.
I really don’t think so. Or I’ve had an incredible run of luck. And think of the life your heuristic creates. I’m not going to distrust people who behave well - and I like their vibe. I’d rather live well and get fooled by people now and then. The only way never to get fooled is to actively distrust everyone. Even on a practical, let alone emotional, level that is a really hard life to live. Asking directions, getting driving lessons, marriage, doctors’ first second and tenth opinions, friends. I think one would be quite diagnosable.
You seem to have as the sole criterion: my heuristic must have the lowest possible instances where I believe a lie. But most lies don’t to much harm. And then there is a cost in distrust, especially when aimed at people who have so far been trustworthy. It’s a bit like, in an abstract sense, our differences in the overweight thread. You seem to want only the simplest heuristic. For me there’s a lot of other stuff going on.
Because that honest person is sure you’ll fall for it, for example.
Yeah, that seems to you, but I don’t. Given that you say you ‘read’ people correctly, you choose not to distrust people that seem honest to you. For example, professional ones like politicians or actors. Since anyone doing that will fall into some lie, there’s no telling how much harm did those lies that are thought to be honest, since that person that fell for them can’t notice it.
That is not counting that people tell honest falsehoods, so there’s no point in trusting what is said anyhow.
Yes, when I say seems I am acknowledging this is both tentative and that is seems to me. I don’t know how it seems to others.
And no warning signals arise. I don’t, just to be clear, assign them a category based solely on whether I have instances or not of them lying. I also get a felt sense of people. I wouldn’t say flat out that I read people correctly, but rather that I think I read people well, though of course fallibly. I am talking about people I meet in the flesh.
I’m not sure if you mean I do trust them or I don’t or something else. People I don’t meet directly I feel less confident reading. I have a couple of friends who are actors, but people I know through their roles alone I don’t consider to know much about or have experience of them lying or telling the truth. Politicians I consider a class that essentially cannot tell the truth regularly since that would lose them votes.
I’m not sure if this is a response to what I said or quite what it means. I like the category honest falsehoods. I have distrusted people also who tell the truth but in ways that are deceptive through selection and also are brutal. There are other factors. I mean, someone who just gives me statistics for years, some colleague say, then suddenly says my wife is cheating on me, the accuracy of his statistical remarks don’t mean much in this new area of conversation between us.
Well first off, The liar, because it is not possible for a person to never lie. About anything.
So the lier is being honest about him being a lier and thus is more trustworthy then the person who says they are honest and have never lied, because that would be in itself a lie. So in this, the lier is more honest then the honest person.
In these situations, if I do not have other means to check the validity of the information, I usually go with statistics.
If someone has not lied so far, the probability that the information he/she transmits is correct is quite high.
Now for the liar, how “trust” do I have that is going to lie?
If the information is not in a binary form (for example, something happened or not), then even if I consider that it is a lie, I am unable to recover the truth.
dealt to ,