If they have no idea what’s going on then there’s no need for this exercise. There’s other ways to cooperate in truth-seeking.
ymeskhout
Karma: 1,492
I don’t consider alternative explanations on their own to be indicative of lying, especially if the alternative theory as a whole more accurately comports with reality. This is why there are two parts to this exercise: surviving the gauntlet of facts and dethroning the other survivor (if any).
Why would lying be a natural response for a non-liar falsely accused of lying?
I’ve never encountered this framework before but I’m curious. What do you find useful about it?
It’s certainly possible to just constantly amend a theory and keep it technically cohesive, but I’ve found that even dedicated liars eventually throw in the gauntlet after their contortions become too much to bear. Even if a liar refuses to give up, they still have to grapple with trying to unseat the truthful (and much less convoluted) theory. That’s why there’s two parts to this exercise: surviving the gauntlet and dethroning the other survivor.
I didn’t take a position on what balance between convenience vs ambiguity we should strike, it’s always context-dependent. That said, second-person pronouns like “you” tend to be significantly less ambiguous than third-person pronouns. Because you generally know who is talking to you directly (see what I did there?) whereas “they” can potentially refer to anyone in the world.
I mentioned this in another comment, I used an unrealistically convenient example for illustrative purposes. A real-life application of my rubric on a real-life lie would be much more complicated and take multiple detours.
I’m unclear on what the distinction is exactly. This is a tutorial that works for catching a talented liar but also creating common knowledge between yourself and a bad liar.
The example was intended to be unrealistically convenient, since the goal there was just an illustrative example. Had I used an actual lie narrative from one of my clients (for example) it would’ve gotten very convoluted and wordy, and more likely to confuse the reader.
I acknowledge there are limitations when you’re dealing with unknowable lies. Beyond that, it was really hard to figure out how rare “lies with convenient flaws” really are. I don’t know what denominator I’d use (how many lies are in the universe? which ones count?) or how I’d calculate the numerator.
How to Corner Liars: A Miasma-Clearing Protocol
Meme Talking Points
The whole point of the sentence was to demonstrate how bad ambiguity can get with pronouns, and this exchange is demonstrating my point exactly. The issue might be that you’re making some (very reasonable) assumptions without noticing it narrows the range of possible interpretations. The only unambiguous part of the sentence is “John told Mark”, but every other he can be either John or Mark.
Edit: my apologies for any rude tone, it was not intentional. All of us necessarily make reasonable assumptions to narrow ambiguity in our day to day conversations and it can be hard to completely jettison the habit.
No, because John could be speaking about himself administering the medication. It’s also possible to refuse to do something you’ve already acknowledged you should do, so the 3rd he could still be John regardless of who is being told what.
That’s the thing, I generally present as very masculine and if anyone referred to me as ‘she’ I would find it more confusing than anything else. If I actually cared, maybe I’d look for what effeminate signals I gave off, but I can’t imagine a scenario where I would find it offensive or get mad at the person.
Yes, and there were areas I could’ve gotten into in terms of how other languages rely on pronouns. One that I am most familiar with is French and its distinction between singular and plural ‘you’ (tu & vous), and vous also can be singular if used formally. So if anyone is translating from French, you have to make a judgment call regarding whether each vous is plural or formal singular. Some information is inevitably lost in the transfer.
Pronouns are Annoying
My entire criticism of his luxury beliefs framework is that it is arbitrary and applied in a selective ad-hoc manner, largely for the purpose of flattering one’s pre-existing political sensibilities. The very fact that you’re adding all these previously unmentioned rule amendments reinforces my thesis exactly. If you think my criticism is off-base, it would be helpful if you pointed out exactly where it is contradicted. Something like “if your critique is correct then we should expect X, but instead we see Y” would be neat.
He’s not asserting that the upper class rejected monogamy in a way that was widely adopted. He does say this about his classmates, but his classmates aren’t the entire upper class.
He claimed that monogamy was rejected by the upper class sufficiently enough to cause divorce and single parenthood to spike, he literally says “The upper class got high on their own supply.” I consider that “widely adopted”, and if you disagree with my description, it helps to specify exactly why. Regarding his classmates, his favorite anecdote has been one person who says polyamory is good but doesn’t practice it, so I don’t know where he establishes that doing polyamory is widely adopted by his classmates.
You said that he didn’t use such a story because he thinks anti-leftist examples are uniquely compelling. “It isn’t bizarrely unconventional” and “it isn’t even a luxury belief” are alternate explanations to “he’s biased against leftists”.
I can’t make up and apply new criteria like “bizarrely unconventional”, nor can I just accept Henderson’s framework when I’m critiquing it.
And luxury beliefs should imply a more extreme elite/non-elite imbalance than just “somewhat fewer people support it”.
Again, I can’t just make up new criteria. My whole point has been that ‘luxury beliefs’ is selectively applied, and making up new requirements so that only a specific set of beliefs fit the bill is exactly what I’m critiquing.
Sure, polyamory is bizarre and unconventional, but that only further undermines Henderson’s assertion that it was widely adopted (enough to have an impact) by both the upper and lower class of society circa 1960-1970s.
I didn’t present the oil tycoon story as a luxury belief example, but rather as an example of a story that carried the same “saying but not doing” lesson. I did present “support for a harsh criminal justice system” as an example of a luxury belief that Henderson would contest, even though it perfectly fits his template.
I already said I don’t consider alternative explanations on their own to be indicative of lying. I don’t know where you’re getting this notion that speculation is evasion, here’s what I said on the matter: