[Bonjoy]

You seem to disregard a subset that I’d put myself and many people I know in. Rather than being a truthful person, shocked when they discover untruth; or a less truthful person not shock by untruth, I’d consider myself as essentially truthful, but unshocked by untruth.
Can a person not envisage the thought processes and self-justifications of a deceitful person without possessing those traits themselves?
I can logically comprehend the actions of a psychopath. I know what a conscience is and therefore I can extrapolate how I might think and feel if I lacked one. Does this mean I have psychopathic tendencies?

[shark]

You are at it again. Stu was referring to a rarefied game where presumably you have an option to be truthful or not and dole out rewards or not probably with win;win, lose:lose etc type outcomes. My comment responded to that situation - not the world at large. ie I was putting myself in the mind of the truthful type of player playing an even-handed game and their response to someone who was seeking to gain advantage by lyiong.

According to the outcome in that experiment you would be in the minority - not the same conclusion that your mentality wouldnt exist.

 

[Stu Littlefair]

The reason I referred to Jonboy was because I was late to the thread and was responding to Jon's first weighty philisophical responses to the OP not to the last umpteen comments which were off-topic banter. Clearly I need to tread more carefully if that then cascades into all the conclusions you and JB make.

No need to tread more carefully. It was just you seemed surprised that Jonboy made a personal inference, and I was pointing out that most people would, given what you wrote. I'm sure we're all big enough not to go crying to our mummy though  

I will follow your link later to find what you are on about though I suspect if it relates to Enron then it is a kind of examination/accident/hindsightness that would not be counter-balanced by the $trillions of transactions that take place globally on word of mouth deals and general honest dealing in the corporate/financial world. 

Enron was just a high-profile piece of anecdotal evidence. The link is one of many studies in game theory showing that lying proliferates when it is tolerated, and is markedly reduced when it is punished. Punishment can mean financial penalties, but is often no more than revealing the liar to the players, thus encurring stigma, and usually reduced 'trading' for the liar.

Venn diagrams? I have classed a small set of people who are quick to mistrust others and made a comment about those that are extreme in their outlook and postulated why it might be - that view being confined to those peculiar people. I fail to see why that has any bearing on another small set - the extremely gullible. You may choose to see it as an equivalent type of statement but one doesnt necessarily follow the other.

I was merely trying to point out that there is a finite amount of people in the world. You have stated you are less trustful of those who mistrust others. If you take a random sample of people in the world there will be a large range of people, some of whom are always trusting, some who never trust, and the vast majority somewhere in between. If you want to create a sample of people whom you would trust, you could take a random sample, then remove from it those people who were most extremely mistrusting. This new sample would be weighted towards people who are more trusting. Therefore a logical consequence of your statement is that you mostly trust those who trust more than average. Since people lie, these trusting people will exhibit behaviour viewed as gullible more often than an 'average' person Although it would be a small effect, if you wanted to express it in exaggerated terms, "I mostly trust the gullible" is perfectly fair characterisation of your statement.  

I didn't find any research backing up your suggestion that those who are mistrusting are, in turn, more likely to lie. It would be interesting if true! I found plenty of stuff suggesting that lying is induced by extreme punishment for minor crimes, by genetic predisposition, and by a perception of widespread dishonesty amongst others. The latter seems relevant - it is in our interests that climbing seems as honest a pursuit as possible. I could envisage two possible ways of achieving this; one involving rigorous truth testing, and the other an 'emperors new clothes' approach to bulshitters. Both have their merits, and downsides of course...

[shark]

There is no weighting on the other types. If someone is quick to judge I am innately on my guard about them. All other classes wouldnt prompt that reaction in me which is why I think you saying "I mostly trust the gullible" is a gross distortion but compared to that group, yes, the they are more likely to be innately honest in the their accounts of themselves and what they know although by definition their judgements of what they take to be true that is unverified is by defintion more flawed than most. Phew. As for the people that are left ie most normal people their honesty of their own actions is equally likely as the gullible IMO but their judgements on for what they might believe to be true that is unverified is obviuosly more reliable.

Moving on...you said:

<i> I didn't find any research backing up your suggestion that those who are mistrusting are, in turn, more likely to lie. It would be interesting if true! I found plenty of stuff suggesting that lying is induced....by a perception of widespread dishonesty amongst others.</i>

Isnt this one and the same thing ?

[nik at work]

This is brilliant, it's like the text version of radio 4.

Carry on....

[Stu Littlefair]

Moving on...you said:

<i> I didn't find any research backing up your suggestion that those who are mistrusting are, in turn, more likely to lie. It would be interesting if true! I found plenty of stuff suggesting that lying is induced....by a perception of widespread dishonesty amongst others.</i>

Isnt this one and the same thing ?

No, it's not the same thing. Two reasons. The first is confusion from my sloppy language. These studies show dishonesty in groups is increased by an increased perception of frequent dishonesty within the group. It says little about individuals. The second point is that causal relationships don't necessarily work both ways*. Even if we could extend group results to individuals, the results show that an increase in mistrust can cause an increase in lying. You are suggesting that a propensity to lie causes an increase in mistrust. The two are not (necessarily) linked.

*An analogy that should make this clear is that an increase in flu cases leads to an increase in flu vaccinations. It isn't true that an increase in flu vaccinations causes a sudden outbreak of flu!

 

[shark]

You are suggesting that a propensity to lie causes an increase in mistrust.


First let me say that my language has been sloppier and in this sort of discussion it should be exemplary. With regard to the above it is just a pet theory unproven even to myself yet, maybe never, based on a few observations over a number of years.

In trying to make sense of it I am thinking that the mindset of someone who is dishonest is that they would tend to believe that others similarly think the same way which is why they are mistrustful. They might also convince <B>themselves</B> that what they are saying is true as some coping mechanism (or to to make themselves more convincing) so they don't have to deal with that paradox - a kind of compartmentalisation.   

I think I have reached the limits of my sloppy thinking on this subject. Can we trust a liar to give further insights ?

[Stu Littlefair]

Well, your proposed hypothesis is plausible. But it rests on the unproven assertion that people assume others behave in a way similar to them, and it also fails to account for confounding effects (might liars be better at spotting lies in others, therefore more trustful if they 'sense' no deception). That's why it would be interesting to find some studies which back it up. Then we could all shout "liar, liar" at Bonjoy at the wall tonight. Unfortunately, I can't find any such studies* and I've wasted a day at work researching something wholly unconnected with my work.

*or maybe I have, and I'm just lying about it.

[webbo]

I can logically comprehend the actions of a psychopath. I know what a conscience is and therefore I can extrapolate how I might think and feel if I lacked one. Does this mean I have psychopathic tendencies?

everyone has psychopathic tendencies.you need to look at them a bit like a rev counter.
for instance you might nick someones parking place in a busy car park,not exactly ideal social behaviour.however bulldozering them out of the way to get the space is a touch into the red.

[shark]

<i>No, it's not the same thing. Two reasons. The first is confusion from my sloppy language. These studies show dishonesty in groups is increased by an increased perception of frequent dishonesty within the group. It says little about individuals. The second point is that causal relationships don't necessarily work both ways*. Even if we could extend group results to individuals, the results show that an increase in mistrust can cause an increase in lying. You are suggesting that a propensity to lie causes an increase in mistrust. The two are not (necessarily) linked</i>

I have had another go at grasping this morning. If it follows that a decrease in mistrust in groups (a group being a collection of individuals and we are social animals) decreases lying then this neatly brings us back to Fiends’ OP that an additional reason for it being generally better to assume honest behavior is that it also observably increases honest behavior (for whatever reason) compared to immediately pursuing verification for validation/proof purposes which IMO would increase the <B>perception</B> of frequent dishonesty within the group. In any case the types of validation questions would arise anyway i.e. who is this guy?, what’s their track record? I’d like to see the video? motivated by curiosity and interest rather than suspicion. However, if anomalies start to accumulate then reasonable doubt arises and is aired which it seems to me is the way it has generally worked so far in the Peak at least. 

[Johnny Brown]

If you publicise such an important ascent, and if you are not ready to provide concrete information to the interested public, then the public cannot reward this behavior with its recognition!

- Alex Huber on Tomo Cesen & Cesare Maestri