Everyone is lying to me

Politics and religion
1

You know, over the years we’ve had some fun political flame wars and whatnot. I think what I’ve taken away from the global and national political debates of the past few years is what I’ll call the “75% rule”

“75% of the time, people are lying to me”

This is what I mean by this rule:

In general, politicians, activists, prosecutors, defense attorneys, celebrities, lobbyists, scientists, and anybody else that is able to get a wide dispersal to their ideas is lying 75% of the time.

This lying comes in many forms. Some of the lying is really what most people would consider “being mistaken.” Meaning that it’s pretty frequent that people are simply wrong, although it’s a bit of a less benign wrongness that comes from being overconfident and egotistical about your own conclusions.

Sometimes the lying is a “white lie” sort of thing in which people spin the truth just a little bit or exaggerate for a “good cause.”

Frequently the lying is just a flat out untruth that people are telling because the consequences of the truth are so bad for them that they simply refuse to do anything that would jeopardize their own standing

And very rarely (less than 1% of the time I think) the lie is an institutional or group lie that attempts to form a conspiracy. In all likelihood anything you think is a conspiracy is not, and actual conspiracies are things you would probably never expect and would bore you.

I apply this rule to liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and socialists alike. Nobody seems to be free from the tendency to lie.

For every single argument we’ve ever had here (except for the religious arguments because this rule is absolutely not intended to apply to religion which I see as a completely separate topic) is something that I cannot say that I am more than 55% convinced of my own position. Even though I might have been more sure of it at the time, in retrospect I think that since my certainty always relied on information generated by other people, I cannot really be all that convinced of its accuracy.

And for every argument we’ve had I have always been able to find reasonable sounding arguments that backed up both sides. In the end I simply choose the side that already fits my values and principals and prejudices in all likelihood. I try to use critical thinking and in some cases I have reversed my opinions but in general that’s really hard to do.

Having said this, I’m sure that some person will respond and claim that I’m just an idiot. That I’m disillusioned with things because conservatism is bunk and I’ve been watching Foxnews too much. They’ll say that they’re totally 100% sure that their position on global warming, states rights, drug laws, murderous astronauts, American Idol, or Jessica Alba is absolutely correct and that only an idiot would possibly disbelieve their evidence that consists of temperature data, the Federalist Papers, jail statistics, diaper receipts, Paula videos, or paparazzi photos.

Unfortunately for you, 75% of the time you tell me this you will be lying.

2

Could you have maybe PMed this to yourself?

3

I would agree, except for scientists. The peer review system prevents their getting wide exposure until their results have been vetted by several other impartial persons.

Now, this doesn’t apply to “pet” scientists that are trotted out to support one side or another, but nobody should be listening to those people anyway.

H.

4

You’re obviously correct on the Pet scientists thing but I still have to disagree with you even on the “peer review” angle. Take a look at high-energy physics which is pretty well insulated from politics…moreso than biology or geology or climate science at least.

This is a field where the current model simply does not work. Nobody can figure out where to go with it and there is more and more evidence that the standard string theory ideas are complete hogwash. And yet this stuff is all peer reviewed to the max. The problem is that peer review is a you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours system. Even this kind of science becomes “politicized” in a way that really prevents people from having an open mind about alternate theories because they simply have so much of their life’s work invested in it.

Once you get to that point you simply aren’t objective anymore.

5

It doesn’t mean they’re lying though, as that implies a deliberate deceit on their part.

If you consider anything less than Absolute Truth as lying, well, that 75% becomes 99.99999%…

6

This sentence is a lie.

Frankly, Spoofy, this just looks like you coming up with a half-assed rationale that allows you to dismiss pretty much anything you want whenever you want to. People do this naturally, anyway, no need to try and convince yourself that you’re “right” to do so cause everyone’s practically always “lying.”

Not to mention there’s a lot of gradations that your black and white “lie or not” theory isn’t really useful for.

Critical thinking is indeed hard to do, and very few of us can do it well enough or consistently enough to handle all the information we get on a daily basis. But you look like you’re looking for an excuse to just stop trying altogether.

But hey, I’m lying to you, so why should you care?

7

Like I explained, I really consider “lying” to be something that should be pretty broad. It’s one thing to say “trans-fats are bad for you” if you have done a ton of research that suggests that trans-fats are bad for you and the evidence is overwhelming. If later research reveals some amazing discovery that totally blows holes in how we understand these things and it turns out trans-fats aren’t bad for you after all, well fine, that’s purely a mistake.

But if you say “trans-fats are bad for you” even though there is a non-trivial amount of doubt but you fall victim to the temptation to sensationalize your conclusions because the lure of becoming a famous researcher is just too much for you, then that’s a kind of lying. It’s the least worst kind of lying but my feeling is that we should still recognize the fact that there is a lot of this kind of thing. I’m deliberately not soft-pedaling this kind of disinformation because I think it’s a huge problem.

8

Given the amount of time I spend reading about all these issues and thinking about them and trying to look at it from both sides I assure you that I’m not trying to dismiss anything.

What I see as the main problem here and everywhere is that there simply isn’t enough skepticism of the information we get. People believe the claims of their favored sources so uncritically that much of this stuff is taken essentially “on faith” by all parties.

9

Son, you aren’t gay. And you weren’t born a girl. I swear.

You’re also a very intelligent and attractive young man.

10

Just because they’re having trouble finding/accepting new theories doesn’t mean they’re at a dead end - heavy scrutiny is the trial by fire of new theories, and while scientists can get very worked up over these things, it more often than not won’t stop them from reaching the truth.

For example, Ludwig Boltzmann’s theories about the atom weren’t finally accepted until around 3 years after his suicide - before that there was a lot of conflict and few others even believed in atoms until 1905. Yet the truth was vetted out in the end, and his equations vindicated.

Robert Millikan steadfastly refused to believe in Albert Einstein’s photoelectric theory because it conflicted with something he had spent his career believing (that light was a wave, not a particle, and it traveled through the ether). He spent 15 years working to disprove Einstein’s theory, but in the end wound up experimentally proving it (for which - along with measuring electron charge - he got the Nobel Prize). It took a while, but eventually even he admitted it, albeit long after he had proven it to the rest of the scientific community.

11

75%?

I have the magical power of flight.
I have the magical power of immortality.
I have the magical power of telekinesis.
I have the magical power of super strength.

12

This is entirely reasonable and appears to have absolutely nothing to do with what you posted to begin this thread.

13

Yeah this is an encouraging story (that I’ve heard many times since I was a Physics major in college) but I think that sadly this is the exception. I’m not saying that progress in high energy physics is stopped, I’m just saying that there is so much of an inability to be honest with each other and ourselves about things that we are still delaying progress due to the inefficiencies introduced by our prejudices and blind spots.

It’s getting better…think of how slow scientific progress was in the dark ages or even the renaissance compared to now. And yet I still believe that science is subject to pretty bad inefficiencies due to the issue I’m describing.

14

Well, thanks I guess.

I see them as being different aspects of the same problem. People aren’t skeptical of the information that they themselves generate or the information they get from others. People are too willing to bend the truth and too willing to believe in bent truth.

15

Look, I like to think my beliefs arise from things I’ve witnessed and put into context. If I were wrong about Iraq, well, I’d say so. So far the evidence appears to the contrary. My initial doubts were fuelled by three sources - my understanding of history, much of the incidental reporting that was underplayed in the media, and a general skepticism about Bush and the Republicans. The last is bias and happenstance that, in this case, caused me to take the other two elements much more seriously.

We all have filters that effect how we take in and process information. That’s Mass Communications 101 stuff. If you’re smart you realize you’ve got blindspots and biases and take them into account and look for supporting facts before you take strong positions. I probably could even explain why I was skeptical Bush and The Republicans would be inclined to “spread freedom” in a way that was likely to work given their track record of hating nation-building and favoring authoritarianism over democracies in foreign affairs (easier to manage, re: Cold War, even up to the 80’s, in the third world).

Admittedly, my intial take is to be deeply mistrustful of much of what comes out of the right as it tends to be deceptive and manipulative. What that doesn’t mean is that it’s going to always be deceptive and manipulative. Thomas Friedman often said, at least until he sobered up, that “Just because George Bush believes it doesn’t mean it’s wrong” when talking about Iraq. While Iraq is a bad test case for that statement the principle is a correct one.

But look at the track record here. I think it’s beyond bias when you look at the facts, trotted out, over and over that this administration (which has been doggedly championed by the entire Republican party until quite recently) is incompetant, corrupt, secretive and borderline meglomaniacal.

We’ve had bad administrations before and I doubt ever a lily-pure one, Democrat or Republican, but these guys never fail to surprise. Historians have them pegged as among the worst ever already.

And they’re the flagship of conservativism and the Republican Party. Conservatives may wince when they ponder that Bush’s jacked up government spending to insane levels and gotten us involved in precisely the kind of foreign entanglements our forefathers warned us about and displayed utter managerial incompetance where Iraq and Katrina are concerned - but they put him where he is and cheered him on.

Kristol may be beating up on Rumsfeld now and Norquist may be beating up on Kristol. Fingers are a-pointing everywhere. But these guys pulled together in a team effort to create this massive clusterfuck we call our elected administrative branch and its policies.

So who should I be more skeptical of? Who has the better track record on things that actually matter?

16

Damnit, that’s typical Qt3. In the normal nonacademic (and online) setting I’m used to being “the Physics guy” (I’m a Phys&Math major), but between you and mouselock I’m busted down straight past “a Physics guy” to “the young/inexperienced physics guy.” ;-)

That’s definitely true, but I’d argue that there’s a big difference between being bogged down by blind spots and outright misinformation, because in science it’s all about the burden of proof. And when someone publishes something, you can at least (usually) be sure that it’s well documented and layed out in a non-hand-wavy manner.

You mentioned string theory earlier. It’s been an exciting idea and something of a craze for a years now, but had it ever really progressed from mathematical model to something that can be tested experimentally? If there’s stuff coming out now that disagrees with it, I’d almost say that’s a step forwards because at least there’s a measurable result we can use for comparison.

This is an even bigger tangent than before, but… I know what you mean by how slow it is/seems right now. But when I think about i t, it took a long time from when people in the 1800’s were (super-slang paraphrasing time!) like, “whoa, hey, particles might exist” to "not only that, but it’s made of smaller particles! And light’s particles too! And there are all kinds of crazy particles that hold them together and can be accounted for lost mass in their reactions! And now we’re at, “whoa, hey, there might be vibratory thingies that make up and dictate the behavior of particles!”

EDIT: stupid public-use mac keyboards… fixed a couple of glaring typo’s, but no promises on my post being typo-free.

17

To me, your reply reads as though Spoofy were specifically calling you out about the Bush administration and Iraq instead of making some pretty general observations. Do you read Iraq as a sort of subtext in SC’s post, or are you just bringing it up as an example?

18

I think that’s a very good post from spoofychop (although the name makes it hard for me to write that with a straight face). I think lying might be too strong a word to cover most of it, but this is how I believe every should view the information provided to them. I don’t see it as a depressing reality of people’s devious motives, just as a reality. Everyone has a motive to cover up the truth sometimes, and to push a certain set of “facts” another. As long as we don’t think in terms of absolute truths then we should be doing fine.

19

Just an example. I don’t think Spoofychop is a big believer in how the Bush administration is handling things either. But that’s my broken-record in this forum so it seemed the logical example to cite.

20

Obviously, it doesn’t work if you just say things that are known to be true.