(no subject)

[feotakahari]

 Post I just saw on Twitter: “A lot of skeptical-type people are weirdly better at detecting when facts are being used misleadingly than they are at asking ‘wait, is this just completely made up?’”

I think this is supposed to be some kind of dunk, like “look at how silly those skeptic people are!” And as someone who is much, much worse at identifying lies than at identifying misleading use of truths, that honestly pisses me off. I think my difficulty recognizing lies is related to my inability to read facial expressions, and my problems with remembering visual information, and all the other stuff brains are supposed to do that mine can’t. It’s not some kind of character flaw that I could easily fix by just trying harder!

Comments

[sigmaleph]

Generally agreed.

Just-so story time: I think people are generally bad at thinking 'wait, this might just be made up' or at least expending effort in checking that or something? or maybe the failures at it are more salient or something.

So people who for unrelated reasons pick up the skill 'notice misleading use of facts' are going to be better at that than at the thing most people by default are bad at

I think some common subsets of neurodivergent people might be worse than neurotypicals at picking up lies via body language or expressions, but I don't think that's what's most relevant here. Most instances of 'actually, that's just made up' are not delivered in person by the person who actually made them up.

[lb_lee]

Yeah, same. I mean, a lot of society only runs because we take it as a given that most people aren't blatantly lying to us. For me, at least, there's a sort of, "this can't actually be happening, you can't be lying THAT BLATANTLY can you???" that slows me down, even if it's obvious. For some reason, it just seems more... more reasonable to mislead than to outright lie! (Which is kind of weird, when I think about it.)

For me at least, I feel like misleading is easier to understand. It's harder to get caught, it still sorta kinda could be interpreted to be true, and thus it just seems a safer gambit. (If caught, the misleader can always claim misunderstanding or misinterpretation.) Flat-out lying, though, I think maybe it happens for different reasons, sometimes totally unrelated to trying to be believed. I've known folks who said whoppers that could easily, immediately be disproven, and yet they still couldn't seem to help themselves. I STILL find myself mulling it over, trying to answer the question, "why????" The answers seem weirder, more unbelievable, STRANGE. (For example, the best guesses I have are, "because they are trying to actively tamper with someone's perception of reality," "because they actively take pleasure in getting people to believe obviously untrue things," and other things that just seem so... so WEIRD.)

I understand why people mislead others. But baldfaced lying... you know, I'm still not sure I understand why people do that. (I mean, there's always, "people are dumb," but the folks I know who pulled that were not dumb. They were smart people! Which makes it even weirder, because it feels like if they'd been misleading, they would've gotten away with it!)

[feotakahari]

When you put it that way . . .

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”—Adolf Hitler

[lb_lee]

Ha! Yeah, that. Maybe perversely, by going the whole hog, the sheer audacity means you're less likely to get caught, even when it's so blatant!

I always passed it up to my kind of mental illness, which means my grip on reality isn't as good as other folks, but I definitely know that even when someone obviously, blatantly lies to my face and I have the hard numbers to prove it, I still find myself going, "that can't be right... surely they wouldn't... would they?" It's really disorienting, for me anyway!