This is hypothetical - the glasses don’t fact-check what people say, they somehow detect willful deception, like people expect polygraphs to do, but with high accuracy. Would people welcome these, fear them, object on privacy grounds? I think it would be very contentious. Would people feel different if they only fed the information to the wearer but didn’t record or send it anywhere? What exactly would the issues be?
Not to poo on the premise, but nobody would believe it reliable
Politics would make them illegal so fast, your head would spin.
I read a book around 10 years ago that convinced me that lying is almost never justifiable even when it comes to white lies and I’ve pretty much not ever lied since. And I’m not talking about radical honesty - not lying means not saying things that you know to be untrue, not that I always tell everything that’s on my mind.
Few observations that have came from this experiment:
- Most people lie constantly in situations that they wouldn’t need to and they don’t even realize it.
- The cartoon examples people think of about situations where you’re forced to tell an uncomfortable truth almost never happen.
- People can’t wait to brag about how good of an liar they are when the lie has been directed at a 3rd person - not realizing that gets them immediately labled as untrustworhy in my eyes.
- Not lying to others also makes it more difficult to lie to yourself and forces you to face your bullshit
- Most people absolutely hate for anyone to even suggest taking lying away from their toolkit (see this thread)
I read a book
share?
I strive for honestly in almost all things. I have a few relationships where honesty doesn’t really work unless I want them to become very stressed out - innocuous inquiries like ‘how are things?’ <surveys the hellscape of our national politics/ society / ai etc.> they’re dealing with dementia already, I can’t be honest in these kinds of interactions.
Lying by Sam Harris
TY!
I agree with these points, but you should talk to the other person here who said without lies civilization would collapse in a couple minutes. Quite the spectrum of beliefs.
I don’t necessarily disagree with them. There are people who have built their entire work and social life on lies. Pulling that rug out from under them at this point would cause it all to spectacularly collapse.
However, if everyone’s lies were suddenly exposed, hardly anyone would have any ground to stand on from which to criticize others - people would discover that everyone is full of shit.
Politicians would very quickly ban the thing “for our own security”
Can definitely see that happening.
But we already know politicians are lying and they still win elections,
A lot of broken relationships followed by relief years later, assuming near-universal adoption; if everyone were just honest, it would stop a lot of issues. Abusers, gaslighters, sociopaths, etc. would presumably hate the whole experience.
Half the politicians without a job … Prepare for a record unemployment 😁
Can’t speak for anyone else, but every other word out of my mouth in the presence of these glasses would be an intentional lie.
I would start being overly honest and forthcoming about things I don’t currently bring up because doing so isn’t polite. Wouldn’t want to lie by omission!
Anarchy in the streets immediately. Imagine how many romantic, professional and social relationships would be tested right away.
Politicians
That’s what I was thinking with the social aspect.
object on privacy grounds
That would be the reasonable thing to do.
Even then lying is usually unecessary. Refusing to give out information isn’t lying. The only situation in which I could make the case for lying is if refusing to answer reveals the truth.
Most people find lying absolutely neccessary in daily life.
Some do not like to admit that, for example in Usa is it culturally very overestimated.
Sure. Telling the truth in a world full of liars is definitely not convenient. It comes with a personal cost, but that’s the nature of living a principled life. Personally, I’d rather be disliked for who I am than liked for who I’m not.
I am trying to tag along with the thought experiment, but I can only imagine it being yet another tech bro scam. Elon Musk will sell Grok lie detector glasses that just fucking guesses, but the press will just keep copy-pasting deceitful press releases until half the people I meet believe the glasses do detect lies.
Many will then start using them in private resulting in both extreme frustration when they hallucinate lies, and unprecedented fashtech surveillance.
- Without lies any civilization would collapse in a matter of minutes: faced with what all of us really think, most people would kill one another (or commit suicide) even faster than that, as all the wishful-thinking and illusions so many of us rely upon would instantly vanish.
- People would try to get rid of that tech (and in the process some would decide to do some nasty things to their creators/advocates) trying to save themselves from that very short lived hell this tech created. And they would fail.
Might be a problem with narcissists who believe their own lies?
True, if it’s designed to detect deceit it won’t detect self-delusion.
People would very, very quickly start to rationalize why the detection couldn’t possibly be right. Look at how many scientifically or historically proven things people already are willing to disregard because it conflicts with their worldview or beliefs!
So they detect “willful” deception? People would just fall back on the “…well, I didn’t know” / “didn’t think XYZ counted” / “didn’t consider ABC” as their excuses. Or if it can be shown that 0.00-near-infinite-zeros-01% of the population has some quirk which makes them detect wrongly, suddenly there’d be most of the population claiming that.
To sum that up, are you saying people would find reasons to disbelieve that their heroes and icons are lying? I was thinking more along the lines of personal contact - everyday conversations, business deals, etc.
Yep. Their heroes, icons, leaders, family… and themselves.
Hell, they’d disbelieve if the glasses detected someone was telling the truth, but they didn’t want to believe that!
If I look in a mirror, will they detect when I’m lying to myself? Take my money.
Only if you’re doing it on purpose.
Lawyers would be fucked.
It’s devastating to my case!
It would destroy civilization instantly, since it relies on lies all the way down.
