Why do people post obvious lies? Why do they create fake AI photos and videos with fake stories that they present as true? Why are there obvious but successful web sites with titles like “Infowars” that are up front about their lies?
Wendy
4 Likes
The answer to all:
- Survival both physical and psychological
- Status $$$
- Power sex
- Security
7 Likes
Either they do not know why not? Or they don’t like why not?
It is a huge ethical mess that is intolerable. It is in our faces nonstop.
Credit to Musk, he is labeling which location the liars are posting from. Meta could be doing that as well.
3 Likes
That’s almost always true, outside of pathologies. They tell people what they want to hear, like Alex Jones did. He got a lot of money doing that, didn’t matter if any of it was true (it wasn’t). He’s not the only one, though he’s the only one who has been caught and punished (to my knowledge…kudos to the Sandyhook parents).
Preachers do it, also. They make claims they can’t possibly know, do fake “healings”, sell Jesus-soap-on-a-rope and John-the-Baptist shower curtains, and rake in the bucks. Just for telling people something they want to believe.
10 Likes
Well, it seems to me that these are also the reasons people tell lies in Real Life. I assumed @WendyBG meant why do folk tell outright whoppers on the internet for reasons other than the obvious that are almost always self serving. That’s the real headscratcher.
I have a shrewd idea that some folk just like the idea of tricking others….even when there’s no obvious personal gain can come from it. Online sources allow for anonymous spectatordom….so you can sit back and see how much traction your lie generates. Sort of like a grander version of those National Enquirer headlines. The big question I have is…..how come folk fall for these lies. Not only that, dig their heels in and double down on same when challenged on their bamboozlement (divorce/child custody lawyers excepted, of course…..they’d end up penniless if they didn’t)
10 Likes
Also @WendyBG ….. I’d challenge the idea that this thread is actually totally OT. There are heaps of actual, unashamed lies that have METAR consequences. First to spring to mind for me (a discussion at home today, in fact) are the unfolding consequences of the lies at the heart of the current anti vaccine movement. Yeah, I know……anti vaxx sentiments have waxed and waned since the time of Jenner but the current surge began with the publication of Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent case report back in the late 1990s. Aided and abetted by the popular press, the parents of the children involved, the law firm representing them, and the internet echo chamber. It’s gained momentum since with folk willing to make preposterous claims on internet sites that couldn’t possibly be true, thus fanning the flames even during the Covid epidemic.
11 Likes
It really is complicated. As an ex prosecutor, defense attorney, and uncle with a close relationship with at least two nephews who have spent a lifetime aggrandizing their personal accomplishments, I have found that such conmen are extremely lazy. Very early in life they learn to bs about their accomplishments all day every day until they believe their lies and therefore become very good at it.
Alex Jones and a very prominent U.S. politician fit that description. The only thing new under the sun is the existence of Russian bots that fuel and sustain outfits like info wars with lies to give them credibility. Russian bots are obviously serving Vladimir Putin in his unending quest for power, and Rupert Murdoch and his ilk support lies used by certain prominent politicians in their unending quest for power.
So there are liars who are just plain power mad - I.e. Putin, Murdoch.
And then there are the inherently lazy conmen who have lied all their lives until they believe their own lies and become power mad - I.e. Jones, prominent U.S. politician
11 Likes
Scientists have demonstrated that there’s a dopamine hit when somebody “likes” your post, which is one of the reasons Facebook took off when they included that feature.
I would submit that there’s a similar, perhaps identical reaction when somebody even responds to your thoughts, and the internet makes such interaction easy and rewarding. That some people have found a way to monetize it as well is just a side “benefit”, and we’ve long known the twin outcomes of “followers” (as old as the Pied Piper fable) or the reactions to negativity being stronger than to positive outcomes.
At any rate, lots of reasons, almost none of them good.
7 Likes
@VeeEnn is right. I’m interested in the lies that don’t fall under those self-interested categories. Why trick people when there is no personal benefit? The result could be neutral (like seeing a post that shows a buck with antlers curled up on a mat next to a dog on someone’s deck) or it could be deadly (like spreading anti-vaccine propaganda).
Lies poison the well. Nowadays everything is called into doubt.
Wendy
4 Likes
In my humble opinion most, if not all, lies are spewed out of self-interest.
We’re living in a morals be damned world, so lying has become more accepted…even encouraged. God help us.
5 Likes
To prove that you exist and, if only in small pathetic ways, have the ability to attract attention while making fools of the gullible.
It is a mode of being that, when we most still lived together in communities where people KNEW each other, youngsters testing its use normally were caught, reprimanded and reformed…. not any more.
3 Likes
Even if there is no material benefit, such sharing/promoting generates attention for the sharer … which they see as positive for them.
2 Likes
1 Not always?
2 and that’s a “good” thing? It teaches “critical thinking” skills?
ralph
2 Likes
I thought it was older than that. Back in the 50s there were competing polio vaccines. A batch of live vaccine was “too alive”, and gave people polio. There was also a dead vaccine, but through lies it was suppressed for years.
I read about that within the past year (don’t recall where).
Are you just looking for the pony in there somewhere? If you cannot verify the conclusions no amount of critical thinking will get you there. And if all information is unreliable you will never be able to verify your conclusions. The Truth will be like religion. You can’t prove anything. You have to take it on faith and hope you’ve guessed right
Good information is good. No information is bad. Bad information is is worse than no information. Supposedly by Kurt Vonnegut.
5 Likes
So… Being able to distinguish between good and bad information (lies) is not a critical thinking skill?
ralph
1 Like
I am not a psychologist. I suspect most of those you mention have some sort of pathology. They don’t need to lie, they are just driven to. Some subset of that probably derive benefit in how it makes them feel.
Thinking about it, I don’t think there is any such thing as “no personal benefit” (other than a possible pathology). They may not benefit financially, or socially, but they satisfy a need. Which is a benefit of sorts to them.
And then, sometimes, they don’t consider them lies. wzambon was a minister of some sort. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, so I won’t make a specific proclamation of his faith, but I consider it lying if you tell me something that you can’t possibly know, even if you sincerely believe it. But wzambon is an honest guy who isn’t deliberately lying to anyone (to the best of my knowledge and experience with his postings).
1 Like
Under the aforementioned circumstances the only thing critical thinking will do for you is tell you there is no good information. It’s not a matter of distinguishing one from the other. There is no “other.” Now, in the world as we have heretofore known it, then yes, being able (and most of the time it’s really just being willing or motivated) to distinguish good info from non-good info would be a critical thinking skill
2 Likes
I have a fault among you. I do not document things. It means you all run around in circles, uncertain what to do.
There are people here completely into detailing everything. You can make mudpies with all of it. But it feels dead on. You all can get lost in the “data”. All of it is full of mistakes. Buried in the data are your heads AT TIMES.
The Blue Whale in the room is a press corp, massive number of government employees elected or not, and elite corporate types who religiously won’t discuss taxes. It is not the elephant in the room. It is the blue whale.
Some folks have a three pronged set of goals
Very limited taxes
No debt
No social programs, kiss the FDIC goodbye in a downturn.
To those ends there MIGHT be a serious move to default on the debt.
The question why “trick” might be rephrased as why not tell the truth?
Supply side economics is a zero sum game. That has been the only game in town. People are very worried. It is now becoming a self fulfilling prophesy of ruin.
If we had raised taxes to enter demand side economics with some grace…things would have been decent, fair, honest, and much better.
3 Likes
Don’t know if you’re familiar with country and western music, but Brad Paisley did a song about this years ago.
3 Likes