Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: I would I would love for you to do something
Speaker 1: right now, and maybe even listeners to if they're up
Speaker 1: for it. Their hands are free, yeah, I know, not
Speaker 1: if you're driving, or just yeah, or even your dominant hand.
Speaker 1: Could you take your finger from your dominant hand and
Speaker 1: trace a queue on your forehead upper case if you're wondering, okay,
Speaker 1: with just my finger now, with like a sharpie or
Speaker 1: something you can do with the sharper if you want,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't recommend it. Okay, just unless you want
Speaker 1: some extra flare today. All right, there we go done. Okay.
Speaker 1: What I want to know is the little tail on
Speaker 1: the queue? Which side did you draw it on? Let's
Speaker 1: see it was on the right side. Ah, very revealing. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: you are apparently not a good liar. Oh okay, I
Speaker 1: know it sounds weird. I mean, I'm sure you're gonna
Speaker 1: explain how this works. But this is this is the
Speaker 1: thing right right side for the little thing on the queue.
Speaker 1: That means I'm a bad liar. But if I had
Speaker 1: not left on you, you would have been impressed by
Speaker 1: I would have been like, okay, if you had drawn
Speaker 1: it on the left, that would have meant that you
Speaker 1: were anticipating the way that it was going to look
Speaker 1: to me. Um. And this is actually the Q test
Speaker 1: from the Guardian article The Truth about lying and Laughing.
Speaker 1: Why isn't this done in job interviews and just you
Speaker 1: know in general, you know, like anytime you meet a
Speaker 1: new person, you should just require that they draw a
Speaker 1: Q on their forehead or everyone be labeled according any
Speaker 1: like the sneeches, because people will get hip to it
Speaker 1: and then they'll start training themselves to to draw it
Speaker 1: on the right or the left every now and then
Speaker 1: and then ends up playing out exactly like the sneeches,
Speaker 1: where everyone has different versions of the queue on their
Speaker 1: head and nobody knows what's white, but for the next
Speaker 1: five minutes it's super secret and you can try it
Speaker 1: on anybody that you know. UM. So it is interesting
Speaker 1: where the person places that tail, because uh, it's a
Speaker 1: really a test of something called self monitoring, and high
Speaker 1: self monitors draw of the letter queue. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: on the on the left so that someone can see it,
Speaker 1: and others on the right and so high. Self monitors
Speaker 1: are concerned with how other people see them, and they
Speaker 1: are usually able to adapt their behavior to suit a
Speaker 1: situation in which they find themselves. And they're skilled at manipulating,
Speaker 1: i e. They're good liars. So what is a lie? Right?
Speaker 1: And we need to get down to it? And and
Speaker 1: this is such a fascinating subject really, I mean, on
Speaker 1: the surface, it doesn't sound so much because the line
Speaker 1: is such an everyday part of our lives. Even if
Speaker 1: you're not a liar or a you know, or or
Speaker 1: someone who just lives and breathes lies, you still kind
Speaker 1: of do It's it's and I think like a great
Speaker 1: example of this and some and people are gonna be
Speaker 1: split on this. But the movie The Invention of Lying
Speaker 1: the Ricky Gervais, I did not see that um has
Speaker 1: you know, immensely talented cast. I'm I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of stuffers done in the past, but I was really
Speaker 1: disappointed in the film. I felt like it didn't really
Speaker 1: deliver the funny and it didn't really deliver on anything
Speaker 1: all that um mentally amusing either. So do you think
Speaker 1: that it got to the heart of lying, though in
Speaker 1: a way it did through failure. I feel like and
Speaker 1: and and again. I'm sure I've heard people that were like, oh,
Speaker 1: that film was brilliant, but I think the film by
Speaker 1: trying to create a world where there was no lying
Speaker 1: even and then the whole thing is that it's it's
Speaker 1: our world, except there's no lying in it. And then
Speaker 1: one guy accidentally innvinced the lie lying and it becomes
Speaker 1: this big thing. Uh, and again it gives them all
Speaker 1: these powers, but they weren't really like like, you can't
Speaker 1: envision our world without lying, Like everything falls apart, and
Speaker 1: then humor becomes really hard to pull off as well.
Speaker 1: And um, and I think we really have to take
Speaker 1: a step back and look at what lying is and
Speaker 1: just what how powerful a force it is, because I mean,
Speaker 1: we effortlessly lie. Even if you don't lie all that much,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to roll one off. But I really
Speaker 1: encourage everyone in this podcast to take a step back
Speaker 1: and really think of it in different terms. Well, I
Speaker 1: think most people think of it in a negative light, right,
Speaker 1: because it's not good to lie, right and normally normally,
Speaker 1: but I think what we're going to explore is when
Speaker 1: it is good and why it's actually necessary to our
Speaker 1: very existence. Yeah, so yes, so indeed, let's first get
Speaker 1: rid of the whole. I mean, we almost need a
Speaker 1: different word for it, um and different words being economical
Speaker 1: with the truth. Yeah, but that kind of feels like
Speaker 1: a lie in itself. It is. Well, any euphemism for
Speaker 1: a lie is a lie. Right. Well, there you go.
Speaker 1: That actually breaks down some of the stuff here about
Speaker 1: the linguistic power of lying, because so many parts of
Speaker 1: language are really akin to lying, like as simile is
Speaker 1: kind of is akin to lying in a way, you know.
Speaker 1: And then uh, is so many figures of speech. Uh,
Speaker 1: whether you're saying, um, that guy literally stabbed me in
Speaker 1: the back, of course you're using language incorrectly in this case.
Speaker 1: But but it's a complete lie. And and even if
Speaker 1: you said, man, he's stabbing in the back and you're
Speaker 1: not um, and you're not adding that literally, that totally
Speaker 1: screws it all up. Even if you're just just using
Speaker 1: that that bit of speech there, you're lying. But but
Speaker 1: you're using a lie to make a point and make
Speaker 1: a comparison. Well, there are different types of flying too.
Speaker 1: You can do it sometimes, um, to avoid responsibility and recussions, right.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And this is this is kind of like
Speaker 1: the like a basic Hey did you unloved the dishwasher? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I unloaded the dishwasher. Well that now you get called
Speaker 1: on that. What's a better Well, just I think you
Speaker 1: had a good example the other day where you said, yeah,
Speaker 1: in grade school that you had drawn something on the floor,
Speaker 1: and to avoid the repercussions of that, you you fingered
Speaker 1: another kid in the class and said, ah, he did it. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a little more to Harris in that because
Speaker 1: I wrote his name on the floor, So I was
Speaker 1: I was planning ahead with this crime. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I framed this guy. Better example would be when I
Speaker 1: cut my sister's hair when I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like four or something, and she was a couple
Speaker 1: of years younger than me, and uh I she had
Speaker 1: like pigtails, and I cut one of them off with
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors, and I put the scissors in
Speaker 1: the pigtail in her hand and framed her for it,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, watch out for you man. So there's
Speaker 1: an example. I framed her because I wanted to avoid
Speaker 1: the wrath of my mother, right right, So that's that's
Speaker 1: a that's one of the reasons why you would do
Speaker 1: it to save your reputation, right, you might a lie
Speaker 1: to save your rep avoid hurting someone's feelings. Yeah, classic
Speaker 1: white lie, boost your ego. And when I say that,
Speaker 1: you know it could be sort of information you present
Speaker 1: about yourself via Facebook, Um, you know anything really and
Speaker 1: that that's kind of a lie we tell ourselves to
Speaker 1: you get into this whole area of lies. Is not
Speaker 1: just something that uh we use externally, but we we
Speaker 1: reflect in on ourselves and you get into this whole
Speaker 1: weird area of just the manipulation of our world view,
Speaker 1: in our in our perceived reality via lies. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about self deception to why that's important, um
Speaker 1: in a bit as well. But we also do it
Speaker 1: to manipulate people we allowed to manipulate. And we we
Speaker 1: lie in the sense that we control the amount of
Speaker 1: information given. Sometimes we don't always tell the whole truth, right,
Speaker 1: or if someone asks us a question, we don't uh
Speaker 1: necessarily say oh yes or no, or you know, you
Speaker 1: might just even remain quiet and let them make an assumption.
Speaker 1: This is this is interesting. I have to I was
Speaker 1: gonna wait till later about going to mention Uh, this
Speaker 1: book I've been reading um is called Embassy Town by
Speaker 1: China uh Melville. He's a British author of sci fi
Speaker 1: and fantasy. But it creates a scenario where you're kind
Speaker 1: of an invention of lying scenario where you have an
Speaker 1: alien race that have a really alien language that involved
Speaker 1: like it's very difficult for the people in this book,
Speaker 1: the humans to communicate with the alien species. And uh,
Speaker 1: the aliens have evolved so that they don't have they
Speaker 1: don't have lies in their language, they don't have like
Speaker 1: they're they're intrinsically trustful species. And so you have, uh
Speaker 1: that these aliens are really impressed by humanity's ability to lie.
Speaker 1: Like they're really amused by it, especially when humans lie,
Speaker 1: well mainly when humans lie in their language because they've
Speaker 1: they're incapable of doing it themselves. So to hear somebody
Speaker 1: say something that is not true like totally blows their
Speaker 1: mind because it's I mean, it's like, uh, it's like
Speaker 1: an hallucination or something like a psychedelic experience. They're saying
Speaker 1: something that's not true, but everything that we like, imagine
Speaker 1: if everything you could say is true and you were
Speaker 1: incapable of lying and you heard somebody lie, and you know,
Speaker 1: but that it was a bold faced lie, like if
Speaker 1: they said the skies purple and it clearly wasn't. Like
Speaker 1: is that kind of situation where they're like, whoa, the
Speaker 1: sky is purple? No it isn't. Oh my goodness, and
Speaker 1: they're getting this kind of uh uh, you know, this
Speaker 1: dissonance playing in their head, and so they they they
Speaker 1: they themselves, these aliens try to work up to lying,
Speaker 1: so they'll do things like they'll they'll they'll just they'll
Speaker 1: drop the last part of a sentence, or they'll they'll
Speaker 1: sort of they'll omit information from a sentence in an
Speaker 1: attempt to sort of work their way up to telling
Speaker 1: a full phase a lie. Well that's interesting and UM,
Speaker 1: I mean when when I hear you talk about it
Speaker 1: that way too, it makes me realize how much we
Speaker 1: are always constructing our own reality, so through our own perceptions,
Speaker 1: but also actively through lying, UM, And how that would
Speaker 1: be weird to aliens who are like, huh, they're they're
Speaker 1: creating these little stories. Just essentially what that is. UM,
Speaker 1: You might be surprised to know that there's some some
Speaker 1: jarring stats on how much we lie. UM. According to
Speaker 1: the Science channels The Truth about Liars, which is a
Speaker 1: really interesting documentary. One out of every four conversations that
Speaker 1: lasts more than ten minutes will contain a lie. Wow,
Speaker 1: this doesn't bode well for our podcast if we we
Speaker 1: generally go thirty minutes. So that's what four lives at least.
Speaker 1: This is my second conversation that's going to be longer
Speaker 1: than ten minutes, by the way, So for me, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm already at the anti men and women line equal portions. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's another bit of information out there again
Speaker 1: from that Guardian article, The Truth about Lying and Laughing,
Speaker 1: and it says that four and five lives remain undetected,
Speaker 1: that more than people have lied secure job, and that
Speaker 1: more than sixty of the population have cheated on their
Speaker 1: partners at least once. What I don't, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just a Pollyanna over here if I'm really surprised
Speaker 1: by that. Um. And then people were invited to keep
Speaker 1: a detailed diary of every conversation that they had in
Speaker 1: a two week period, and the results suggested that most
Speaker 1: people tell about two important lives each day, and that
Speaker 1: a third of conversations involves some form of deception. Well,
Speaker 1: you know there, I can definitely see where they're what's
Speaker 1: a big lie is like a lot of big lies
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, are you done with that assignment yet? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's done. I just need to tweak it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah they didn't qualify that, right, I mean because a
Speaker 1: white lie we all survived by, probably on a daily basis. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: whether or not you even know you're doing part of
Speaker 1: being polite, you know, right, you want to pretend to
Speaker 1: interest in a particular conversation or um or just you know,
Speaker 1: it's sometimes lying is kind of just a lie by
Speaker 1: a mission knowing when to keep your trap shut. Well, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm interviewing someone and they're going on
Speaker 1: along soliloquy about something and they go, you know this
Speaker 1: and that, I don't say there, no, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about it instead of me just
Speaker 1: going to google later on? I mean, I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to get an interview out of that person. Said, you
Speaker 1: need those encouraging spurts of oh yeah, which we tend
Speaker 1: to do in conversation anyway. I mean, if you've ever
Speaker 1: been a cocktail party and someone starts talking about something
Speaker 1: you find yourself, you know, your head nodding in any cocouragement,
Speaker 1: which some people take is like, oh, they knew exactly
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here, I'm kind of I'm doing
Speaker 1: it now, right you arguing it? But but but oh
Speaker 1: yeah yeah we we we. The lies are an essential
Speaker 1: part of our our daily life. Now, they are rather
Speaker 1: different from deception. However, like just blanked in deception is
Speaker 1: it's a little different because you have very simple plants
Speaker 1: and animals that use deception, that have evolved to deceive
Speaker 1: prey or predators and in order to better suffrive a
Speaker 1: hostile environment. Um Like it just like a carnivorous plant
Speaker 1: that doesn't look like something that's gonna eat an insect.
Speaker 1: It looks like a meal rather than a predator. Like
Speaker 1: that's an example a very simple deception. Bugs that look
Speaker 1: like they have eyes in their back. You know, any
Speaker 1: form of camouflage that's deception. But it's not necessarily a lie.
Speaker 1: I mean, it isn't a lie in the case of
Speaker 1: an insect. Allies tend to involve um greater brain power
Speaker 1: and UM, and you generally need to look to, of course,
Speaker 1: the masters of of lies, humans or some of our
Speaker 1: hominid brethren. Yeah. Actually that just reminded me of two examples.
Speaker 1: One is a Porsche spider, which I think they would
Speaker 1: be great like card game players, like a poor face.
Speaker 1: When hunting fellow aracnets, they actually do a little bluffing game.
Speaker 1: They sneak up on an arachnet and they wait until
Speaker 1: another vibration ripples through the web to disguise their own
Speaker 1: like a breeze, and then they're able to also mimic
Speaker 1: the vibrations of other species, so their launches fulled into
Speaker 1: approaching them and the belief that they've actually found a meat. Example,
Speaker 1: so like the first example is like in a horror
Speaker 1: movie where the person is in a creaky house and
Speaker 1: somebody's following them, but they're keeping pace with their footsteps
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they do a like a misstep and
Speaker 1: then they hear the creak of the person behind them,
Speaker 1: right or the wind goes through the door and it
Speaker 1: makes the door close, you know, creekly close, and little
Speaker 1: did they know this, but it was behind the door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a good example. And then U two apes
Speaker 1: Cocoa and Michael. They both used deception via their sign
Speaker 1: language skills, and one example, Coco broke out a toy cat,
Speaker 1: Are broke up a toy cat, and then signal to
Speaker 1: indicate that had been broken by one of her trainers,
Speaker 1: and then another one, Michael ripped a jacket belonging to
Speaker 1: a trainer, and then when when he was asked who
Speaker 1: was responsible, he signed that it was Coco. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so you see, I mean deception is is a big
Speaker 1: part of how the animal world and how how we
Speaker 1: navigate all of our circumstances, and it definitely gives us
Speaker 1: an evolutionary leg up, so to speak. Yeah, and it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: to being able to empathize, you know, and the and
Speaker 1: what we call the theory of mind, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ability to to look at another animal or
Speaker 1: or or human especially and being able to recognize that
Speaker 1: there is a mind there, and being able and being
Speaker 1: able to sort of try and put yourself in their shoes, um,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like how they are they are
Speaker 1: seeing the world around them. And then of course lying
Speaker 1: involves trying to use that to your advantage, Okay, because
Speaker 1: if you can inhabit that person's worldview, you can better
Speaker 1: construct a lie or a story. Right, you can kind
Speaker 1: of think of like I tend to think of the
Speaker 1: world view people's world views is kind of this bubble
Speaker 1: that surrounds them, you know, like this artificial reality, um,
Speaker 1: this virtual world. And and yeah, if you can empathize
Speaker 1: with somebody, the better you can empathize with somebody, the
Speaker 1: better you can understand their worldview. And uh. And therefore
Speaker 1: you know, you can use that. You can use it
Speaker 1: for a positive effect or or an extremely negative effect
Speaker 1: that depending on what your your scheme is. But in
Speaker 1: a way, it's like theory of mind. It's it's in
Speaker 1: a way it's reading a mind. It's it's being able
Speaker 1: to see what that mind consists of and and what
Speaker 1: that person may or may not be thinking about anticipating
Speaker 1: to anticipation. I mean that's key. That's the I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the evolutionary point here, is that if you can
Speaker 1: understand what that other person's mind is doing, then you
Speaker 1: have the advantage in a survival situation. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is interesting too that lyne has other psychological benefits. Um,
Speaker 1: there's scientific evidence that shows that depressive people are more
Speaker 1: honest with themselves and uh than than nondepressive people who
Speaker 1: are mentally healthy people, and that when people recover from
Speaker 1: a depression, they become less honest, assumably or presumably around
Speaker 1: the circumstances of that depression. So I kind of read
Speaker 1: that as you know, you sort of need to create
Speaker 1: a story for yourself in order to kind of get
Speaker 1: over that that bad patch in your life, huh, or
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, like the less you're caring about life.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like you start, you get depressed.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not caring about your physical appearance as much
Speaker 1: during that depression, and so you're not you know, you're
Speaker 1: not doing personal maintenance. But then also by not lying enough,
Speaker 1: you're you're falling out on your worldview maintenance, because the
Speaker 1: world needs to be carefully groomed and uh and and
Speaker 1: tweaked with just the right ensemble of lies. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're sitting around your in your your your bathrobe, presumably unwashed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not lying to yourself, and it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: shaving up and and uh, putting on a happy smile.
Speaker 1: I suppose, Um, Yeah, faking until you make it right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fake it to make You've talked about that before. Evolutionary
Speaker 1: biologist David Livingston Smith, also from the documentary UM The
Speaker 1: Truth About Liars, talks about in biological terminology, you have
Speaker 1: a deceiver in a sucker. Suckers don't do well. So
Speaker 1: that's really his his scientific terms. Yes, he says that
Speaker 1: these are the evolutionary biological terms for lung, a deceiver
Speaker 1: and a sucker. It's it's a pretty high brow there. Um.
Speaker 1: So those of us who are especially skilled at manipulating others,
Speaker 1: like politicians, they're they're like the stage magicians of our fantasies.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting how he phrased that, tend to
Speaker 1: be the most successful people because they're skilled at deception.
Speaker 1: So again here here we're talking about the benefits of lying,
Speaker 1: and then that people who tend to be more six us,
Speaker 1: we are better liars. And again that that phrase, they're
Speaker 1: like the stage magicians of our fantasies. They're they're creating
Speaker 1: this world and inhabiting our own worlds, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: and presenting a fantasy that we can buy into, that
Speaker 1: we cannot help but buy into because we have something
Speaker 1: called the truth bias, in which we want something to
Speaker 1: be true. So we're already sort of it's weird. We're
Speaker 1: hardwired to lie, but we're also hard wired to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that, I want to believe you, which makes
Speaker 1: us like the ultimate suckers. So hey, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break here and when we come back, why
Speaker 1: we are lousy liars? This presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow, and we're back. So why
Speaker 1: are we lousy liars? Because we cannot help but to
Speaker 1: give ourselves away in many different ways. One is is
Speaker 1: micro expressions, which you've probably heard about before. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the whole like thing like look at somebody's brow
Speaker 1: they're talking to you. Yeah. It's basically like yeah and
Speaker 1: involuntarily excuse me, involuntary muscle movement um that discloses an
Speaker 1: emotion and under one of a second. So you have
Speaker 1: to be particularly adept at reading someone's face in order
Speaker 1: to see this, or you could have like a camera
Speaker 1: and then slow moment and try to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But people really do do this. They cannot help themselves.
Speaker 1: So if someone is trying to hide the fact that
Speaker 1: they are feeling shocked or they're they're fearful of something,
Speaker 1: that emotion is going to cross their face flicker across
Speaker 1: their face even though they have a huge smile on.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing to look at too, is that
Speaker 1: when someone is smiling, they're engaging their their eye muscles,
Speaker 1: and so a fake smile. You'll see that the smile
Speaker 1: is there, but the eyes aren't actually moving. There's there's
Speaker 1: very subtle um indicators there that will show you like
Speaker 1: that person is is smiling through fear um. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why we're crappy liars. Oh
Speaker 1: that's like there was a bit on Modern Family where
Speaker 1: they're talking about like reacting to the other person's jokes
Speaker 1: and about how they'll be smiling with their their mouth
Speaker 1: but out with their eyes. Oh. I didn't see that,
Speaker 1: but you and we've all done it at one point, right.
Speaker 1: You know how that feels too. It feels weird. You're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm doing the thing, and you're trying to I mean,
Speaker 1: you're trying to manually manipulate all of these things that
Speaker 1: normally occur naturally, like when I naturally respond to something funny.
Speaker 1: I'm not really I'm not cautious. I'm not going going
Speaker 1: like all right, qu smile now, all right, now, eyes
Speaker 1: look at the person who just made a joke, all right,
Speaker 1: and then do the ha ha, you know, because like
Speaker 1: we've thought you were creeped out by laughter yoga because
Speaker 1: it's it's fake laughter, right, it doesn't ring true, and
Speaker 1: so it's just creepy. Um. But yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't have your neurons firing, you know, to those particular
Speaker 1: muscles saying hey, come on, guys, let's get engaged because
Speaker 1: you really think this is funny. So it's a little
Speaker 1: bit like having botox eyes. Yeah, I mean that on
Speaker 1: the other side, unless you're like a complete alien, I guess,
Speaker 1: and you just have to fake everything. But well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that you just steal someone else's face and that circumstance. Um,
Speaker 1: there's another tell, which is your speech. If you will
Speaker 1: naturally try to distance yourself from a situation, if you
Speaker 1: are lying, which means the personal pronouns I, me, and
Speaker 1: myself you will cease to use, which is really interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: so you're trying to distance yourself. And they've seen this
Speaker 1: over and over again. There's a scientist named Jeff Hancock,
Speaker 1: and he plotted um, George Bush's speech patterns and what
Speaker 1: he said over like a year period and he found
Speaker 1: that the months before, uh, the Iraq War, that George
Speaker 1: Bush had a significant drop in the use of what
Speaker 1: they call truthful pronouns, the I, me and myself in
Speaker 1: the three months preceding my record, and then when war
Speaker 1: broke out, you can see on this graph, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden he went back up to his the radular
Speaker 1: place where he would use those personal pronouns again. So
Speaker 1: he was in those three months preceding the Iraq War
Speaker 1: using distancing pronouns. So like before just lying at the
Speaker 1: normal level for a politician, and then right before the
Speaker 1: war when they're presenting the evidence, the idea is that
Speaker 1: and the justification for the war the weapons of mass destruction,
Speaker 1: all that the lying was. Yeah, the extrapolation is that
Speaker 1: when he was talking about weapons of mass destruction, he
Speaker 1: was using distancing verbiage, which means which is usually indicator
Speaker 1: of length. And but then when war broke out and
Speaker 1: he ceased to be talking about weapons of mass destruction
Speaker 1: and I was talking about the war, that the personal
Speaker 1: pronouns I, me and myself, the truthful pronouns returned. Huh. See,
Speaker 1: now this really makes me think about again about like
Speaker 1: the power of language, what we're talking about here. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a bit from one of our Scott Baker's books
Speaker 1: where he's talking about he's trying to make a point
Speaker 1: about about philosophy and and about out in this fantasy
Speaker 1: series about magic. He says that philosophy is the act
Speaker 1: of making language confirmed to the world, whereas magic is
Speaker 1: making the world conform to language. And I can't help
Speaker 1: but feel when we're when we tell a lie, that's
Speaker 1: what we're doing the latter, We're trying to make the
Speaker 1: world confirmed to conform to our language. And uh and
Speaker 1: in doing that, I mean it's in the same way
Speaker 1: that in a fantasy world, like casting a spell would
Speaker 1: require a great deal of physical energy and mental concentration,
Speaker 1: telling a lie, uh involved seems to involve that as well,
Speaker 1: because we are we are summoning our all of our
Speaker 1: our mental faculties two remake the world to either remake
Speaker 1: the past, the present, or or some semblance of the future. Um.
Speaker 1: And and again this may sound a little bit like,
Speaker 1: you know, an overstatement of the obvious, but but I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of amazing the more you think about it.
Speaker 1: Like when you tell a lie, you are in a
Speaker 1: way like wounding the timeline. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a
Speaker 1: field of linguistics called psycholinguistics that talks specifically about this,
Speaker 1: which I think we should probably do a podcast on
Speaker 1: at some point. UM. And it is fascinating. Again, it's
Speaker 1: the way that we're creating these stories and influencing the
Speaker 1: way someone thinks about something. UM. And usually we're doing
Speaker 1: that through speech, but we can also do it through
Speaker 1: writing and UM. Another good way to ferret outlying and
Speaker 1: writing is that there's a third more use of negative emotions.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about emails here basically, UM. And Again
Speaker 1: there's the researcher went through all of this data and
Speaker 1: basically said, look at you know, you know here all
Speaker 1: these different categories, and what we're beginning to see is
Speaker 1: that people who are allowing in emails UM, for example,
Speaker 1: have a lot of negative emotions expressed, and there are
Speaker 1: more references to he, she and they. Again there's backing
Speaker 1: away from the eye me and myself and UM. There's
Speaker 1: actually software being developed by Cornell University to help the
Speaker 1: technicalize and email communications. The government is very interested in this,
Speaker 1: by the way, of course, but a general baseline of
Speaker 1: how you can detect a lie is you can also
Speaker 1: look for clues like the person is is giving you
Speaker 1: way too many details. So yeah, and again this, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like a classic example of I think you
Speaker 1: see this in you see this in the in various
Speaker 1: storytelling and especially in comedies where the person is telling
Speaker 1: a lie and so they have all this, they have
Speaker 1: the setup, they have the story in their head, and
Speaker 1: if the person is buying the lie without thinking about
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, I get it, you went you
Speaker 1: didn't go to the video store or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: But but but it's like in the act of creating
Speaker 1: something that wasn't real, we have to really create it.
Speaker 1: We have to uh, we we have to really engage
Speaker 1: in in what I've seen referred to as mental time travel. Well,
Speaker 1: but really before before you talk about that, because that's
Speaker 1: really cool. Um, just like you're talking about in setting
Speaker 1: up that um that circumstance that the lie, you also
Speaker 1: will notice that people will start speaking slower because it's
Speaker 1: giving me them more time to think and they're not
Speaker 1: using contractions. So, I mean, that's fascinating that your brain
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it just drops the contractions just
Speaker 1: to gain like a split second. So it can be
Speaker 1: like and uh, yeah it was red and yeah it
Speaker 1: was nighttime and yeah sure I was here. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's amazing this um, this idea of mental time travel.
Speaker 1: Um that that I'm referring to. Hear. Um, Let's see,
Speaker 1: I was reading about this, uh in Behavioral and Brain
Speaker 1: Sciences and it's the work of Thomas Sudan North and
Speaker 1: Michael C. Core Ballas. And I'm just gonna read this
Speaker 1: quick bit here, he says. They they're talking about just
Speaker 1: the evolution of of of of human memory and how
Speaker 1: it works, they says, to explain why the cognitive arms
Speaker 1: race seems to have persisted longer in humans than another primates,
Speaker 1: resulting in apparently unique cognitive skills, including perhaps mental time travel. UM.
Speaker 1: A potential explanation is that once early hominance obtained a
Speaker 1: certain level of ecological dominance, perhaps partially through technological advances
Speaker 1: as as discussed earlier, Uh, they were faced with increased
Speaker 1: competition for their own from their own species. Humans uniquely
Speaker 1: became their own principal hostile force of nature. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's pretty easy to follow. Basically, we're, uh, we're
Speaker 1: in this point we have to compete with other humans
Speaker 1: rather than other animals. All right, then they continue this
Speaker 1: may have resulted in a runaway social competition between and
Speaker 1: within groups towards greater intelligence and enhanced abilities for both
Speaker 1: cooperation and deception. These may have included the ability to
Speaker 1: entertain alternative, alternative future scenarios, which is basically what they're
Speaker 1: talking about mental time travel. Uh. This this idea that, um,
Speaker 1: we need to be able to form an idea false
Speaker 1: idea of what may happen in the future, so that
Speaker 1: we can, you know, we can predict what will happen
Speaker 1: in the same way that we need to be able
Speaker 1: to contemplate somebody else's mind in order to outsmart them
Speaker 1: or manipulate them. Um. But yeah, and then they also
Speaker 1: meant they also in theory of mind and also communication itself.
Speaker 1: So I really like the idea of thinking about it
Speaker 1: as a as as mental time travel, you know, and
Speaker 1: that and that when you're telling this lie, you're having
Speaker 1: to slow down, your your language is changing, the construction
Speaker 1: is changing, because you are you're you're you're traveling in
Speaker 1: time to a certain extent. You're you're tinkering with with
Speaker 1: the timeline. It just really fascinates me. It is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that is what you're doing. And again it's
Speaker 1: the anticipating and trying to predict the future, which is
Speaker 1: is a so so amazing that we're manipulating at that
Speaker 1: level in those split seconds. That to me is is
Speaker 1: pretty wondrous. UM. And in every culture too. I was
Speaker 1: looking around, I was I was thinking, is there some
Speaker 1: sort of language, like I just think like languages is
Speaker 1: closely linked to all this. Uh. Might there be a
Speaker 1: culture that does not have line And the closest you
Speaker 1: can you can come there. There's a tribe called the
Speaker 1: Paraha people Um and their indigenous hunter gathered group in
Speaker 1: Amazon and they have a really like a really unique
Speaker 1: language like there's nothing else like it on on earth. Um.
Speaker 1: It has just eight consonants, three vowels UM. And you
Speaker 1: know it's a it's a complex array of tones, stresses, syllables. Um.
Speaker 1: It can be it can be sung, hum or whistled.
Speaker 1: And it it's striking in the number of things that
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen Like. They don't have numbers. Uh, they
Speaker 1: don't have concepts of counting. Uh, they don't have color. Um,
Speaker 1: the simplest Uh, they have the simplest pronoun inventory. That's
Speaker 1: known they don't have relative tenses and that this is
Speaker 1: really key. They don't have creation myths or fiction. Uh
Speaker 1: they and uh in their individual or collective memory is
Speaker 1: no more than two generations in the past. So it's
Speaker 1: like it's very stripped down. And that's just the mere
Speaker 1: fact that they don't have fiction, that they don't have
Speaker 1: these creation myths. I was thinking, like maybe this is
Speaker 1: maybe they'll wonder if they have lies. But they lie
Speaker 1: all the time. They like the some of the guys
Speaker 1: that that spent time with them, um and in particular,
Speaker 1: like you know, learn their language. Uh, Like they said,
Speaker 1: these guys would like to them all the time, just
Speaker 1: to kid around with them. So I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: a form of entertainment, yeah, form of entertainment. But it's
Speaker 1: it's also it's it's independent of like linguistic ability. Like
Speaker 1: I wonder if we were lying to each other, you know,
Speaker 1: probably before we even have the ability to really converse
Speaker 1: with well. I mean, I think it's part and parcel
Speaker 1: of existence really. I mean, you'd have to be a
Speaker 1: species of one not to lie. You know, as soon
Speaker 1: as there are two of you, lies begin, and you know,
Speaker 1: call me um a negative Nelle but I just think
Speaker 1: it's a really important part of being part of a
Speaker 1: community or a culture, or you know, any sort of
Speaker 1: really even an organism. You know, you've got to be
Speaker 1: able to cooperate together, and part of that is actually lying. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I say lying, it's more like social lying
Speaker 1: in order not to hurt someone's feelings or so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. You know, to try to keep keep
Speaker 1: the momentum of what you're trying to create together going. Um.
Speaker 1: I did want to mention a couple of technologies that
Speaker 1: can help detect lying, and we all know lie detectors.
Speaker 1: That's that's probably the first thing people think of. M
Speaker 1: R I. Um. You know that's been used. Actually, let's
Speaker 1: used in India, I believe in their court systems. Um not.
Speaker 1: I don't believe there's any other country that has adopted that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about this in a previous podcast. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then there's something called a laser Doppler vibrometer, which
Speaker 1: just sounds weird, and it's a laser directed at the
Speaker 1: carteroid artery, which is your main blood flow to the brain,
Speaker 1: and it measures blood flow and heart rate and is
Speaker 1: intended for use in interrogation, in border crossings, in security checks.
Speaker 1: So again there are ways to to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: from a behavioral perspective, if someone's lying, and then there's
Speaker 1: all these different things physiological that we can look at. Um,
Speaker 1: there's something else called an interrogator simulator, and that uses
Speaker 1: thermal imaging to measure breathing and blood flow around the eyes,
Speaker 1: because when we're stressed, our blood flow changes and you
Speaker 1: can really see that in those areas. And then at
Speaker 1: the same time that it's measuring all these things, there's
Speaker 1: a computer that asks questions and then assesses these physiological responses.
Speaker 1: So again it's like they're minor, little acts of sorcery
Speaker 1: that we carry out because they're they're they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of unnatural. They're little unnatural acts that that change the
Speaker 1: world around us. Yes, and yeah, still that we know
Speaker 1: humans are so variable that any one technology you could
Speaker 1: probably beat. Right, there's nothing, there's no bulletproof method here
Speaker 1: so far. So which leads me to the whole uh
Speaker 1: point here is that if you if you want to
Speaker 1: lie with gusto, there are a couple of different things
Speaker 1: that you can do to make it convincing. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So one is don't And I'm not saying, hey, go
Speaker 1: out and lie. I really am not. I'm not advocating that, um,
Speaker 1: but if you were to, you would want to not
Speaker 1: deviate from your behavior baseline. Okay, okay. So that means
Speaker 1: like you know, if you usually react in one way
Speaker 1: to something, you you want to be pretty consistent, like
Speaker 1: if you if you're generally see did at a meeting?
Speaker 1: Don't stand up to lie? Yes? That is going to
Speaker 1: weren't you a lot of unwanted Notice a special hat?
Speaker 1: When when did you decide to lie to everything? You
Speaker 1: put a liar hat it It says I'm lying right now.
Speaker 1: Don't don't put that hat on. Um. This is interesting
Speaker 1: develop a rapport with a person with whom you are
Speaker 1: lying to, which is again it's that whole like you
Speaker 1: were talking about empathizing and trying to inhabit that person's world,
Speaker 1: because then once that person feels some sort of connection
Speaker 1: with you and that you understand um or you understand
Speaker 1: that person, that they're less likely to say, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they you know they're lying because you're like, no,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't lie to me. We've got a rapport going again,
Speaker 1: not too many details. And then this was really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a Russian spy who was undergoing a polygraph from
Speaker 1: the US government and he asked his his Russian counterparts
Speaker 1: for advice, and what they told him was surprisingly simple
Speaker 1: and elegant, which was get a good night's sleep and
Speaker 1: rest and go into the test rested and relaxed, be
Speaker 1: nice to the polygraph examiner, develop a rapport and be cooperative,
Speaker 1: and try to maintain your calm. And he passed with
Speaker 1: blind colors. So sometimes it's just as simple as that.
Speaker 1: It is just which is actually not so simple, because
Speaker 1: you're regulating your your your blood pressure, in your heart
Speaker 1: rate and all that good stuff, you know. Another example
Speaker 1: that comes to mind of of of the tell tale
Speaker 1: of a lie being that the liar has added a
Speaker 1: lot of extra information, is that when you have people
Speaker 1: um call or these days it's more email and sick
Speaker 1: for the day. It seems like my past experiences with
Speaker 1: this as a as a manager or that where that
Speaker 1: that you know, if someone needs a sick day'd be like,
Speaker 1: I'm sick, I can't come to work today, and you're like,
Speaker 1: all right. But if it's like a long explanation where
Speaker 1: it's like I woke this morning, I couldn't get out
Speaker 1: of bed, and then I had to. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like if you if it's a whole paragraph of explanation,
Speaker 1: and then then you're your malarkey alarm starts. I'll also
Speaker 1: say I will add to that to you, having managed
Speaker 1: for for a couple of years now, um that if
Speaker 1: if the term diarrhea is included in there, that's a
Speaker 1: telly because that no one wants to ask no question, yeah,
Speaker 1: like diarrhea say no more. Yeah, because nobody has ever
Speaker 1: responded with do you really have diarrhea? Yeah? Yeah, But
Speaker 1: you know you've got to be pretty close to your
Speaker 1: to manage to your manager to say I have diarrhea.
Speaker 1: Well in the first place, well not necessarily, I think
Speaker 1: you can. That's the thing. You throw it out there
Speaker 1: and it's like, whoa, they told me they had diarrhea.
Speaker 1: That's that's it's a back away thing. Yeah, So there
Speaker 1: you go. Another tip. Yeah, I think would actually work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it would work better on people that you're
Speaker 1: not that well acquainted with. There's more of a shock factor. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get to some more shock factors with
Speaker 1: some listener mail. Oh are we there already we are
Speaker 1: unless you have, um let me think. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: it's just such a rich subject. I feel like we
Speaker 1: could just go on and on about we could we
Speaker 1: could talk about kids and how they develop lying and
Speaker 1: how they're you know, not the instant cherubs that we
Speaker 1: know them to be, although they're pretty cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh and and also the whole you're talking about, like
Speaker 1: how do you get get at lying? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a whole other podcasts we're gonna get to about false memories.
Speaker 1: But but that's that ties into a number of these
Speaker 1: things here, Like you get in the whole situation of
Speaker 1: like how many times do you have to lie to
Speaker 1: yourself before you believe it? The lies we tell ourselves
Speaker 1: and then believe to get through through life exactly. And
Speaker 1: also the formation of false memories is very much tied
Speaker 1: into this idea of mental time travel and that I'm
Speaker 1: going to predict the future and create this version of
Speaker 1: the future and play around within and self deception and
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance, right, trying to lessen those uncomfortable feelings that
Speaker 1: you have by line line line All right, Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: hit the listener email. First up, we have an email
Speaker 1: from Andrew Andrew says, Hi, guys, I'm a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old from the UK and was wondering if you had
Speaker 1: any suggestions for books I could read. You often cite
Speaker 1: books on your show. So and then the email cuts off,
Speaker 1: but then he emails back, I know that you should
Speaker 1: have some good suggestions for me. Thanks in advance, Andrew. Um,
Speaker 1: sorry about the email being in two parts. Also, physics
Speaker 1: is my favorite subject. Smiley face. All right, Andrew, Uh, well,
Speaker 1: what are your suggestions? Well? Um, along the physics line,
Speaker 1: one book that comes to mind is The Physics of
Speaker 1: Superheroes by James Kakalios. That's k A k A l
Speaker 1: I O s Uh. He's the author of the amazing
Speaker 1: Story of Quantum Mechanics and uh yeah, this is uh,
Speaker 1: it's this is a really cool book. Like he just
Speaker 1: goes through like various examples of superhero powers and goes
Speaker 1: really in depth about how it might work or plant
Speaker 1: with more. And it's a it's it's really entertaining and
Speaker 1: it's shot full of physics. Uh. And then just in general,
Speaker 1: like in terms of you know, we have we've talked
Speaker 1: before about how science fiction and science are closely uh
Speaker 1: inter link. I feel like fifteen years old, that's perfect
Speaker 1: time to read. To read doon if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's your go to right, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, I can't how can I recommend
Speaker 1: anything else that happened first recommended in it? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's true. It's true for me. I would say. Check
Speaker 1: out a book called The Big Questions Physics by Michael Brooks.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. It kind of couches all the different
Speaker 1: questions and physics in a in a really interesting way,
Speaker 1: UM engaging way, Like what is time? Um? Is one
Speaker 1: of the questions that it tries to answer. Um. Do
Speaker 1: we live in a simulation? We've talked about that before?
Speaker 1: Am I unique? What is the God particle? Um? Those
Speaker 1: are all really interesting physics related questions that Michael Brooks
Speaker 1: tries to answer, and somewhat related is John Horgan's Rational Mysticism. Um.
Speaker 1: That is, spirituality meets science in the Search for Enlightenment. Again,
Speaker 1: the God particle is discussed in that. So if if
Speaker 1: you're really heavy Andrew, you can you can switch over
Speaker 1: to John Horgan's Rational Mysticism. It's good stuff, all right.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go and wrap it up. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: remind everybody to check out our Facebook and Twitter page.
Speaker 1: We are Blow the Mind on both of those and
Speaker 1: we put a lot of work into making sure they're
Speaker 1: also two cool links up to the stuff on the
Speaker 1: web as as well as updates on what we're working on,
Speaker 1: so be sure to check that out. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: the show, and feel free to drop us a line
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at house stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
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