Lying
©1996-2017 Roedy Green of Canadian Mind Products
Lying on Mass Scale
Last revised/verified: 2008-12-10
Consider some of the planet’s most successful liars, who manage to bamboozle millions. The most successful fall
in four camps:
Politicians
e.g. Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, Adolf HitlerChurches
e.g. the pope, faith healers, TV evangelists, Peter PopoffGamblers
junk bond salesmen, investment salesmen, casino operators. They persuade people that bad investments are sure
winners.Advertisers
Mattel, SC Johnson, Kraft
They share a number of techniques to pull their cons.
Dress to Impress
People tend to defer to those who appear to have more money and status than they do. This deferential behaviour is
part of the human genome, as it is any social, hierarchical animal. The clergy take this to extreme with elaborate
robes that are meant to suggest a magical link to god that only they possess.
Use Shills
A simple shill technique is just to have a dozen people standing behind the liar nodding slowly as if in agreement
with everything the liar says. The technique is at its most transparent in Ron Popiel informercials where the
audience pantomime amazement at every trivial kitchen gadget. The faith healers are most unscrupulous with this
technique using healthy people to simulate deathly ill members of the audience who experience a
miraculous recovery at the touch of the master liar.
Argue By Repeated Assertion
The arch enemy of the liar is the debater who analyses the lies in great detail and exposes why the lies could not
possibly be true. The liar avoids debate at all cost. If cornered into a debate, he simply ignores whatever his
opponent says and repeats his firm conviction about being right without offering any reason why it might be right. If
he did offer evidence, that would only expose it to dissection.
Consider how the Bush administration simply ignored all the concerns about anomalies in his 2001-09-11 story, sniffing as if the concerns were so inconsequential they did not even need addressing. The
Bush administration never presented any arguents or evidence for their story, giving the opposition less of a handle
to debunk their story.
Target Children
Children are hard wired to believe whatever adults, particularly parents, tell them, no matter how nonsensical. As a
young child, I accepted my father’s assertion that the world was a sphere, even though it seemed comical. What
was to stop the Australians from falling off? Children will accept even stories as ludicrous as Santa Claus or Jesus
if presented in a serious voice by an adult. If children did not have this blind trust in adults, they would poison
themselves with toadstools or get is trouble with kindly old men who hand out candy. A children’s story I heard
around the first grade had a giant foul-smelling spider as the villain. That story burned into my brain the injuction
Stay away from spiders. I have seen hundreds of nature documentaries as an adult assuring me that an
encounter with a spider is highly unlikely to end in death, but the child inside me will have none of it. I
won’t go near them. Other children were fed stories making them equally afraid of invisible old white-bearded
men hiding in the clouds.
The tobacco industry has discovered it as very hard to convince an adult to take up a cancer-causing habit, but it
is relatively easy to trick children into it. Just tell them the cigarettes give them adult prestige. Use cartoon of
Joe the Camel and bubblegum flavours. In the Philippines they hook their customers at two years of age by lying to
the parents the cigarettes are a form of medicine.
Because children are such easy marks, con men and the advertisers like to target them. The con men have to be
patient. Often they can’t reap the rewards of the con until the children reach adulthood. Those fears and
beliefs can then be manipulated to drag adults around as if they had nose rings.
Appeal to Arcane Knowledge
This is a favourite of politicians. They claim the justification for whatever lie they are telling is all classified.
They can usually get away with this when they don’t even have classified clearance themselves. Religious folk
use the technique by claiming magic knowledge, bestowed by god only on the elect (of which they are a member), or on
those who have taken some course of study (in the lie itself), or undergone some sort of ceremony or
brainwashing.
Repeat!
Unfortunately, almost anyone can be worn down to accept a lie if it is repeated enough. Liars use mechanical
recording machines to repeat the lies for them over and over 24/7 on TV and radio. The human mind is unconsciously
easily fooled into thinking any idea it hears over and over must represent the consensus of the tribe.
Political parties have talking points and direct thousands of people to spread these identical messages
over and over all through the populace. Paid shills spread them like mustard seeds all over the Internet, pretending
that they believe the lies personally. Advertisers are the ones who invented the repetition technique.
Hypnosis
Most people think of hypnosis as some guy in a silly turban waving a watch, but hypnosis is much more subtle than
that. I suggest you read a book about Milton Erickson, one of the world’s greatest hypnotists. You will then be
more wary of advertisers, preachers and politicians using hypnotic techniques to suck you in. Watch out for vague
language. Be suspicious when the cadence of speech is more memorable than the content. Religion is too illogical to
be sold on a rational basis. It is mainly sold with hypnosis.
Appeal to Authority
Even Christians admit that the bible was written by men, about whom almost nothing is known. Yet Christians like to
argue by finding something in the bible that agrees with their position. They refuse to acknowledge the bible is
nothing but a book and further a book proven time and time again to be in error. Christians don’t even
literally claim the bible was written by god, in the style of Moses and the Ten Commandments, (also a claim for which
there is no evidence). They pretend to be horrified when someone questions the authority of the bible as if that
person were spitting in god’s face. They steadfastly pretend to see no possible difference between questioning
the teachings of their religion and rejecting the creator of the universe. From where I stand, it takes some massive
chutzpah to pretend that poorly written book, so full of error and bad writing, was the work of the creator of the
universe. They pretend the authority of the bible cannot be questioned even though they can’t express a single
reason, other than custom, why it deserves that authority.
Children are punished for curiosity, punished for asking questions. They are trained to submit to arbitrary
authority. They are even trained to turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by that authority. That’s how the
Catholic Church came to be the largest paedophile ring on the planet. All Catholics had been trained from birth to
look the other way.
I wonder if the constructors of the English language were aware of the clue they were leaving about the dangers of
blind believing.
Tell a Big Lie
Hitler mastered this technique. Harper is a devotée. A huge lie is more impervious. To shift a believer away
from a big lie requires a major, painful, mental shift. They will this stick to it, even without any evidence to
support it and plenty to demolish it. I saw the effectiveness of the technique during the Canadian federal election
in 2008-10. Harper said that his party had the greenest platform and that each of the
parties opposing him as part of their official platform called for massive new taxes. This was a set of unusually
blatant big lies. I challenged Tory supporters to go to the websites of the various parties to see for themselves if
this were true. Nobody went. Why? Because if it would wrenching and painful to simultaneously be a Tory supporter and
to support a party that was telling major big lies. Because if they secretly did look, they would have to find some
torturous explanation to deny what they saw, e.g. imagined the parties all secretly changed their platforms to make
Mr. Harper look like a liar.
Some of Mr. Harper’s big lie supporters for example, to excuse Mr. Harper’s lies on global warming,
posit a planet-wide conspiracy of all scientists in league against its honest politicians like Mr. Harper (who
through some strange logic knows all that is necessary about climate science without ever having studied the
subject or possibly who relies on some more reliable source of information than the scientists). This is sort of
weirdness is what squirts out of a human brain when it tries to hold two mutually contradictory facts.
Dissemble
This classic case of this in the box of crackers that when you take it home is only 1/3 full, or the tower of blank
DVDs (Digital Video Discs)
that is only half full. If you read the fine print the box of crackers in only guaranteed to contain 200 grams.
The empty space is excused to allow for settling Literally, Kraft told the truth, but they tried to
fool and cheat their customers. Some politicians (on left and right) dissemble to attack a carbon tax, by
conveniently pretending to forget the offsetting income tax rebate to make it revenue neutral.
Harper likes to play dissembling games with the word pollution.
Kyoto does virtually nothing to deal with pollution and to deal with the quality of the air that we breathe.
Let’s forget about this unworkable treaty… Kyoto’s never going to be passed.
~ Stephen Harper (1959-04-30 age:59)
anti-environmental Prime Minister of Canada, Toronto Star, 2002-09-05
Some of the techniques for reducing CO₂
also have a beneficial effect on other pollutants as well. For example, more efficient appliances means less coal
has to be burned to produce the electricity, which means less sulphur and acid rain. More fuel-efficient cars mean
less emissions of all types. Green technology for heating means less particulates emitted. Wind and solar
don’t produce any emissions of any kind. But even if reducing greenhouse gas had no beneficial effects on
traditional pollution, you still have to do it. It threatens global human survival.
Use Ad Hominems
Ad Hominems are the prime technique of debaters lying on the
Internet. If anyone calls the lie, the response is to personally attack them, accusing them of child molesting,
sexual deviancy, philandering, having unpopular diseases, bestiality, having a hidden agenda, having ties with
terrorists, being a communist, loving some unpopular group… There needs be no grounds at all for the
allegations. Then they slip in, or at least imply, the logical fallacy, if these opponent is that wicked, any
facts or arguments they might present must necessaryily be false
[This is not the same as simply attacking someone for holding odious views, e.g. that chicken torture should be
taught in elementary schools. There is no lie or logical fallacy involved, just deliberate incivility.]
The subject of the ad hominem attack then becomes distracted, feeling obligated to defend his reputation. Nobody
is interested in this side debate but the guy defending his reputation. The discussion dies without every getting
around to discussing the original lie.
The Bush administration and its supporters used this technique extensively when anyone asked questions about
anomalies in the Bush story of what happened on 2001-09-11. Skeptics were quickly labeled
conspiracy theorists, traitors or even terrorists
Use Straw Men
Straw men are the favoured technique of the creationists. They
put false quotations in the mouths of their opponents and attack them. No matter how many times they are called on
this form of cheating, they just drag out the same old straw men at the next debate. These straw men are getting
worn. Creationists have been trying to fob them off since 1860.
That’s My Story and I’m Sticking To It
Presidents, in particular, like to announce their lie, then refuse to answer any questions about it. If forced to
revisit the lie, they tell it again using exactly the same words. They are recalling a fabricated well-rehearsed
story not actual events.
Clergy like to tell a lie then imply there would be something exceedingly improper about asking what evidence
there is to support it. If challenged, he will act huffy — how dare you call me a liar by suggesting
anything I say would require evidence. How dare you question God! He fails to see the humour
of his rebuttal.
Ronald Reagan used to inadvertently lie when he would repeat well-rehearsed plots from his movie making days as
actual events.
Just Kidding
When you hear a tale, you tend to place it in one of three categories:
- Something likely true.
- Something likely a lie.
- Just a story. It is not literally true, but it is not meant to be. This category includes entertainment,
morality stories, fairy tales.
We tend to turn off critical faculties for (3) so we can enjoy the fanciful. Car makers show us cars flying, jumping
and going exceedingly fast. Even though we know these are just entertainments because the stories are about real
cars, we unconsciously associate these magical powers with real car brands. We are sucked in much the way a small boy
half expects to fly by attaching red cape to his back. Think of all the silly white lies, that a carpet sweeper will
cause your husband to go an a manic cleaning spree, that AXE squirted on your arm pits will make beautiful women
kidnaps you and hold you as their sex slave…
Theatrical Conventions
You probably overestimate your ability to detect liars, seduced by your skill at detecting liars in the movies and in
TV dramas. In drama, there are a number of conventions to let the audience quickly finger the villains. Keep in mind,
in a drama, everyone is lying! In real life, liars are much more difficult to detect. Only the most
accomplished liars go into it as a profession.
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
~ Jean Giraudoux (1882 1944 age:62)
Summary
Selling and lying are the core of religion, politics and business. You are being sold and lied to every waking
minute. Professional salesmen and liars are using every imaginable tool to hone their tools. The more aware of how
they go after you, the better you will be at resisting them.
Books
Book referral for Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for Professional Practice
 |
recommend book⇒Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for Professional Practice |
| by |
Aldert Vrij |
978-0-471-85316-9 |
paperback |
|---|
| birth |
1960 age:57 |
B002C1BD7E |
kindle |
|---|
| publisher |
Wiley |
|---|
| published |
2000-03-14 |
|---|
| How professionals in law enforcement and psychology detect lying. It also covers lie detector tests. |
|
| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder. |
Book referral for How to Master the Art of Selling
 |
recommend book⇒How to Master the Art of Selling |
| by |
Tom Hopkins |
978-0-446-38636-4 |
paperback |
|---|
| birth |
1944 age:73 |
978-0-938636-03-8 |
hardcover |
|---|
| publisher |
Grand Central |
B005SZ151U |
kindle |
|---|
| published |
1988-10-20 |
|---|
| This is a book about selling products, somewhat more ethical than most. However, Hopkins in big on the art of dissembling. If you are aware of the various techniques the pros are taught to persuade you and lie to you, you can defend yourself against them better. Many of its dirty tricks can be adapted for a greater purpose |
|
| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder. |
Book referral for How to Spot a Liar: Why People Don’t Tell the Truth… and How You Can Catch Them
 |
recommend book⇒How to Spot a Liar: Why People Don’t Tell the Truth… and How You Can Catch Them |
| by |
Gregory Hartley, Maryann Karinch |
978-1-56414-840-7 |
paperback |
|---|
| publisher |
Career Press |
978-0-7858-2304-9 |
hardcover |
|---|
| published |
2005-09-01 |
978-1-60163-595-2 |
eBook |
|---|
| |
978-1-60163-837-3 |
WebBook |
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| |
978-1-59316-104-0 |
audio |
|---|
| |
B001C367OM |
kindle |
|---|
| Hartley is a professional interrogator for the US military. I suppose just spotting the liar is not much of a coup. You want to know the truth behind the lie. There is the old joke, How do you know when a politician is lying? — his lips move. Also comes in big print, audio and audio CD formats. |
|
| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder. |
Book referral for The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson: The Complete Volume
 |
recommend book⇒The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson: The Complete Volume |
| by |
Ronald A. Havens |
978-1-904424-17-8 |
paperback |
|---|
| publisher |
Crown House |
978-1-904424-96-3 |
hardcover |
|---|
| published |
2005-05-31 |
|---|
| Erickson was perhaps the world’s most skillful hypnotist. He used it primarily in psychotherapy. His techniques allowed him to hypnotise people without them ever being aware of it. As you might expect, his techniques are now used for much less altruistic purposes. |
|
| Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder. |
