This reminds me of watching the film JFK, and by extension arguing with JFK truthers. Just an endless deluge of "well someone other than Oswald COULD HAVE done it, (therefore Oswald is exonerated)". Eventually you realise that this movie and these people have zero interest in approaching the evidence dispassionately and deriving the most likely explanation from that evidence. Rather, they have decided that the Warren report and its conclusions are wrong, and will bring up (or invent) any and all facts which seem remotely germane to advancing that goal, even if those "facts" are incongruent with one another or support alternative explanations which are mutually contradictory. The goal is not to advance a specific alternate explanation for what really happened, but rather to sow enough fear, uncertainty and doubt by suggesting superficially plausible alternate hypotheses that the viewer/reader throws their hands up in despair and decides that AT LEAST one of these alternative explanations must have something going for it. Which explanation for the assassination the viewer/reader arrives at is almost beside the point, provided it's not the official one (much like your clients don't care who gets implicated by their alternative explanations, as long as it isn't them).
Accepting a lie and gradually introducing new information that makes it less likely is essentially Columbo's strategy. Each episode is him frumpily saying things like "I guess it makes sense that Gillian gave the cookies to the dog, but I checked with the vet and the dog's right as rain. I wish my dog was that healthy" and murderer agreeing in an increasingly strained tone while Columbo prattles on about finding a good vet.
As for the reasons why it wouldn't work, isn't one issue that it could also work on people that aren't lying?
For example, consider Orwell describing a hypothetical conversation with a flat earther or an oval earther.
He concedes that he might eventually run out of "cards" to play against the oval earther and it's entirely possible that he'd lose the argument about the shape of the earth (regardless of what shape the earth actually is).
I think Scott Alexander also writes a bit about this, usually in the context of disproving Atlantis. Sometimes he doesn't have a way to refute a "fact" besides just waving it off as a coincidence. Or to use a historical example, Galileo was correct that the Earth rotated around the sun, but had no answer for the vexing existence of stellar parallax, despite being correct.
You point out that this is only a reasonable tactic during a confrontation, but it's even narrower than that. It's only useful for the attacker in a confrontation. If you're on "defense" then the extra facts you bring in are just "confetti". This feeling should be familiar to anyone that's argued with a conspiracy theorist. They're going to be bringing in the supposed trajectory of the bullet during frame 245 of the Zapruder film and I can just mumble something about how unlikelier things have happened. I don't even know what temperature jet fuel burns at or steel beams melt at. Sure, I can say some disjointed facts about where the jets hit, but someone that's been mainlining Loose Change for decades will be able to blow off that confetti without issue.
This applies more to criticizing "spin doctors" that are usually operating under a different set of assumptions and beliefs than the person calling them a spin doctor. It seems like "throwing confetti and pivoting" and "gauntlet of relevant facts until you encounter something vexing" are a type of Russel's conjugation. Due to underlying beliefs, it's unlikely that both parties agree which facts are relevant or vexing, making the difference between the two mostly a matter of perspective. Throw in the fact that the different parties might not be on even footing (one might be more knowledgeable, one might be smarter, one might be facing higher stakes, one might have some sort of positional advantage like deciding when the conversation is over) and there's possibly even more subjectivity on what counts as relevant or vexing for the conversation.
I can see this being gamed by a sophisticated liar going after a comparatively ignorant rube, but that's a universal failure point for any rationality tool. The Galileo example illustrates why my framework is inappropriate when dealing with earnest truth-seekers. The people who pointed out the lack of a stellar parallax had a fair point!
A conspiracist might try to bring a fuckton of facts to bolster their theory, but so can the other side. 9/11 offers a really good contrast if we're discussing motivation or opportunity. All I'd need to do is point to Osama Bin Laden's statements for why he planned the attack, and the conspiracist would need to contort his theory around that fact (maybe "Well Osama was just a patsy so that the [deep state?] can evade suspicion..."?).
And there's no requirement at all that both sides agree which facts are relevant or vexing. The only questions that need to be answered is whether a given fact is consistent with each given theory, and I haven't encountered issues on that front.
But people disagree about whether a fact is consistent with a given theory. Somewhere, there's a truther Yassine Meskhout confidently saying that he's not worried about arguing with government stooge spin doctors. If they throw some confetti about how Osama bin Laden did it, simply bring up that Osama didn't take credit until after the invasion and in the immediate aftermath released a tape denying responsibility.
Then the Bush stooge will squirm and contort his theory to be that Bin Laden is actually the type of terrorist that doesn't want his motivation known immediately or maybe the tape was faked or maybe some other thing and that the bin Laden's statements after America already invaded is what really matters. Maybe they'll have some explanation for why it's more likely that a man living in a cave planned 9/11 than that a jihadist on the back foot is willing to claim credit for something that makes him look powerful. (Bonus points if they then insist that ISIS claiming credit for the Las Vegas shooting doesn't prove that ISIS did it). Then see what convoluted way they fit the third tower falling into their theory ("it was some unique construction! It was hit by debris that started a fire and the sprinklers also just happened to fail!) .
That anti-Yassine would almost certainly be entirely familiar with most facts I could bring up and has already incorporated them into his worldview. On the other hand, he could bring up all kinds of things that I have never considered and might struggle to incorporate into my belief that bin Laden planned 9/11. He could therefore rule me a liar using this method.
I think it's very unrealistic to assume that any argument like this could be resolved with "all I need to do is point to x" if they're almost certainly already aware of x and think that it is consistent with the theory they're presenting. A meta-disagreement about whether a theory is inconsistent with the facts presented can be ruled as the target not engaging with the exercise or "throwing confetti", rather than a failure of the exercise. So maybe this is a no-fail strategy but only in a tautological way.
(I recognize that this has wandered pretty far afield from "liars" (as in people intentionally saying objectively false statements) and I'm essentially changing the topic entirely to people saying misleading statements or who believe false things. But I got held up on 'spin doctor' who I think rarely lie, for the reasons described here:
As for actual liars, I'm not even sure if it works against a good liar. After all someone making up a lie has probably spent more time thinking about possible inconsistencies than someone telling the truth. But there's so many "inconsistencies" police find when honest people talk to them! (probably bad to bring up a completely separate thought in a tacked-on parenthetical, but so it goes))
I agree with all of this. The dichotomy of conscious intentional deceiver vs honest truth seeker is too simplistic. For example, consider that when I brought up to you misstatements of fact in your own writings about Israel and Palestine, and in essays you pointed to as making airtight arguments which powerfully influenced your views, you waved these away as minor inaccuracies, "not load-bearing."
That is neither intentional deception, nor honest truth-seeking. It's rationalizing inconvenient facts which threaten a conclusion you are emotionally invested in and do not want to give up.
That is far more typical of the problematic statements in the modern discourse -- not deliberate lies, but disregard for the empirical truth compared to the larger truth of what feels right.
I think you accurately summarized my view in your second sentence, but I don't think your second paragraph, which seems to be focused on imagining a motivation is fair. It's entirely possible for one person to consider something a minor detail that doesn't need to be rigorously evaluated and for another to think that it's central to an argument.
Searching the transcript of your talk, it seems like Yassine Meskhout called something "not load-bearing" twice:
1. Whether stating an unproven fact as true is "misinformation" if that fact is later proven false (such as Oct 7 beheaded babies)
2. Whether the Yom Kippur war should be called an invasion
I don't think resolving these issues are very important to the question of whether there should be a Jewish state in the Levant, so understand why he was dismissive of them. I also don't think ~20 episodes of an offensive children's show produced 15 years ago is particularly important to that question. Yet that's called "load-bearing" by him but unimportant by you. Personally I don't care at all about the show. America's children spend hundreds of hours play-killing Arabs and Russians in COD so who am I to judge when children's media depicts violence towards geopolitical enemies.
I understand that I may be describing those arguments incorrectly, but I really don't care. Even if you correct me and it turns out that *actually* you two were arguing about the specific timeline of reporting or whatever, that wouldn't really disprove my central point that determining the importance of a specific fact or premise is inherently subjective.
Or if you'd prefer a hypothetical example, consider something like college admissions. Imagine 3 colleges all evaluating the same applicants. College A weighs high school GPA, SAT score and admission essays equally, putting each onto a 5 point scale and giving each applicant a score out of 15. College B does something similar, but weighs SAT score heavier so puts that on an 11 point scale and the others 2. And hippie lib college C just grades the essay out of 10 and give DEI score up to 5 based off of identarian traits. You could see how for college A a good essay would be "load-bearing" that someone is a good applicant but it wouldn't be for college B. And SAT score would be "load-bearing" for the same judgement by college B, but college C wouldn't even care if the wrong SAT score had been sent in.
Obviously in real life, it's not so obvious how things are weighted. But I think you guys were essentially acting like those colleges when you were arguing about beheaded babies or antisemitic mice or whatever you were talking about.
Yeah, you definitely can't use this theory to tell who is being honest in an argument between two other people. But you can use it to smell BS when it's you vs one other person, which is still a useful technique.
Great essay. I would be interested in your thoughts about debating conspiracy theorists who will endlessly go down the confetti road.
Do you think it's even possible to convince someone who thinks in irrational, self-serving plausibility of the stupidity of their claims or is it best to simply identify this form of thinking and move on.
I wish I had an answer, I'm utterly baffled by some of the conspiracy theories folks regularly entertain. I split theorists into two groups: grifters and true believers. For grifters, I know it's all an act, and so there's no real point except maybe cornering them in front of an audience. For true believers, I can't figure out how they get there, and so I have no idea how to get them out.
I'm excited to try out the miasma clearing protocol with a conspiracy theorist though, we'll see if the chance presents itself.
Here's a rare flat earth interlocutor who's actually acting in good faith, and addresses substantive points rather than making arguments from authority. The flat earther's position rapidly degenerates into ridiculousness like not knowing how parallel lines work.
Agreed, I found that frustrating too. I assume Brandon was trying to avoid upsetting Mark so as to maintain credibility as a good-faith interlocutor in the future, since focusing too hard on a specific point tends to feel adversarial.
Yeah I had a long time “friend” that I met on Twitter and we would debate conspiracy theories regularly. I found it interesting to figure out how his mind worked.
Eventually it got pretty stale because you can’t really corner someone in a text conversation. The majority of his arguments hinged on “are you saying the government never lies?” Combined with sweeping rejection of all data as corrupted.
I really lost a lot of faith that the rabbit hole can be reversed.
Check out Metabunk.org, Mick West’s forum for discussing specific claimed bits of evidence. Many of the prolific sceptics there started out as conspiracy theorists. You can watch users update their beliefs in real time.
i'm very familiar with Mick West. His debate with Eric Weinstein is probably one of the most informative examples of conspiracy miasma. (eric and his brother might actually be the miasma kings)
My thought is that it requires someone *wanting* to see the truth and be genuinely skeptical of their own beliefs. Unfortunately the mindset that turns people into conspiracy theorists (namely a concerted effort to avoid cognitive dissonance) is the same that keeps them there.
As an editor, yes. The overall structure was entirely mine, and AI contributed maybe 10% of the final wording. I also tried to get AI to think of good examples for the stolen cookies hypothetical and it suggested the dog as an alternative theory to "allergic reaction" but bizarrely failed to note that chocolate is toxic to dogs until I pointed it out. Very odd blind spot.
I also fed the entire essay to Deep Research, using it for the first time, which was a very useful demonstration of its capabilities even if the feedback was ultimately "this is great, change nothing"
Mostly just vibes, difficult to pin down. I think it's related to all the flowery analogies. Many paragraphs "use lots of words while saying nothing". Lots of self-aggrandizing language about how great the method is.
> It’s a method I call the Miasma-Clearing Protocol. This process doesn’t rely on gut feelings or endlessly tedious debates over plausibility; instead, it systematically evaluates competing theories against all known facts. By forcing each theory to run through this gauntlet, we can separate solid ground from inflatable life rafts and expose the mirages for what they are.
> Now that we’ve explored the liar’s playbook, let’s turn the tables and examine how to systematically dismantle their house of cards.
> This exercise is never meant to be definitive, it remains strictly provisional. If a theory survives this gauntlet unscathed, it does not mean it’s the last word! Rather, this rubric is intended to be a ruthlessly efficient method of cutting through the chaff. First we clear the fog — only then does nuance have room to breathe.
I have noticed on X that AI proofreading will suggest terser but less emphatic alternatives. The result is clearer, but it is less conversational, lacking emphasis and 'tone,' so it is more like reading from a textbook, less like a conversation. For communication, AI is a two edged sword.
A problem with, eg, abusive relationships is that the abuser will often convince the target that anything they say will be held against them in unfair ways.
With this in mind, I’m looking at your top section on evasion. How do you differentiate a case where someone with that sort of life experience is trying to avoid giving information in a potentially abusive context, vs being evasive?
I might misunderstand your question. I've heard from clients before that the reason they lied to me was because they've been screwed over by prior defense attorneys, and so they're reluctantly cautious as a result. I've never seen a situation where I thought they were telling the truth about this. The closest circumstance I got was "My last attorney fucked me over on this, but I'm hoping you can use the information I give you" which is not a failure point.
I’m thinking about, say, a circumstance like this (I’ve seen stuff like this)
Abusive guy: Where were you and the kids the other night
Woman: You don’t have the right to know that
Guy: You’re being evasive, why wouldn’t you just tell me
Woman: Because I don’t like the fact that you’re trying to track my location
Guy: you’re being evasive!
So I feel like sometimes a person trying to evade answering an abusive person’s questions can look evasive when they actually have good reasons? Does that make sense? Maybe this is less applicable to situations you work with.
Yes, that makes sense, but this is essentially saying "sometimes it's ok to lie, or lie by omission" which I agree with. The essay above is about those who lie for bad reasons.
Also - my experience is that there are some liars who just never “snap” in the way you describe. They actually just keep going. Have you ever seen that? Maybe I just need better conversational tools for making them snap…
This is useful, thanks! I've learned NOT to trust my gut when it comes to such situations. Because my gut usually wants to believe both parties, and when faced with a choice, will default to the person I like more.
I don't know how well this works at your job, so feel free to correct me, but I wouldn't expect this method to be especially effective, for the reasons other commenters have pointed out.
Getting a liar to come clean requires overcoming the thought process that made them think lying was a good idea, and I'm fairly confident that showing them that their lie isn't plausible doesn't work very often.
This is certainly a great first chapter for a book on lies, but there is much more to be said on the topic.
One has to examine the person (always sadly common, but ubiquitous in the age of the internet) who starts out by lying to themselves. Climate deniers, for example, have a sincere belief that mainstream climate science is the tool of a vast conspiracy determined to enslave the world. The difficulty is that where you may be able to pin down one lie, they maintain an attachment to this belief on a deep emotional level, and will just substitute other lies as the basis for it. They aren't attached to the chain of reasoning that leads to the final position or even the details of the final position. They will eagerly share both articles claiming warming is a hoax, and claiming warming is good. They are not troubled at all by the fact both the things they are citing in support for their position contradict one another.
Another technique which (hopefully) would not fly in court, but which is everywhere online, is the Gish Gallop. This is a powerful rhetorical tool, at least as regards people who are already sympathetic to your position. The basic idea is that you do not support your position with one lie when you can lie a dozen times in the space of a few sentences. This is terrible difficult to refute because the person will be ten lies down the road before you can show why the point is dishonest. The blitz of claims alters the Overton window -- many people think that the craziest claims aren't true, but there must be SOME truth in SOME of the claims. That's statistics, right? /sarc
If you succeed in pinning down a concrete false statement -- well, I don't want to attack you, passive-aggressively or otherwise, but you illustrated some of the techniques in our conversation, even some you yourself describe here. Revising the claim -- it wasn't a horde of 14yo suicide bombers, it was one, it wasn't one, it was a 12yo carrying bomb materials. Challenging reality with hypotheticals -- it MIGHT be true Hamas beheaded babies on October 7th (it's not.) It MIGHT be the case that Palestinian society is a poisonous nest of religious fanaticism and nationalist fervor. Prove it me that it isn't! What do you mean, you can't prove a negative? Sounds like you're admitting I'm right…
I should conclude by saying we are none of us perfect and our arguments, especially when laid out in real time, will typically exhibit some of the bad habits of thinking to which humans are prone. As Richard Feynman wrote, the easiest person for you to fool is yourself.
You asked me how many 14-year-old suicide bombers there have been, and I gave you a ballpark figure of "less than 10", which is supported by your own sources you sent me on the topic. You are lying about me ever claiming "horde of 14yo suicide bombers".
I gave you multiple examples of Palestinian teenagers caught with explosive vests at military checkpoints, and you're the one who insists that they were all just "couriers". Refusing to accept your fantastical explanation is not an example of me lying.
I made multiple valiant efforts to explain the 40 beheaded babies point and I have not been successful. I'm giving up, but people can read the transcript themselves.
I made a positive claim about Palestinian militancy being motivated by religious fanaticism and nationalist fervor, and provided evidence for my claim. I invited you to showcase any evidence which undercuts my claim, and I'm still waiting.
You, it's you that is lying, once again. As a liar writing about lying, you might have a unique set of insights, but unfortunately, like many liars, you are committed to selling the pretense you are honest.
I asked you that because you referred to 14yo suicide bombers in your writings and claimed Israel's apartheid rule was necessary to prevent 14yo suicide bombers from blowing themselves up in Israeli cities. The 14yo suicide bomber never existed, something you tediously are still trying to wriggle out of.
"I gave you multiple examples of Palestinian teenagers caught with explosive vests at military checkpoints." This is another lie. Where are these multiple examples in the transcript, if you are claiming you provided these examples? It doesn't help your argument ultimately, because I never disputed that 20 years ago, a tiny number of minors were involved in attempted suicide bombings. The dispute was whether they were deliberately recruited by the resistance organizations or whether, like minors have in every conflict in recorded history, they chose to participate, and deceived the people were working with as to their age.
"I made multiple valiant efforts to explain the 40 beheaded babies point and I have not been successful."
Probably because you are not starting from a place of honesty that recognizes that this was a blatant lie that you bought into wholeheartedly -- to the point of saying, in regards to an essay entirely resting on the premise that that lie was indisputably true -- "Their essay helped me understand the dynamics more than any other piece of writing, and it was thoroughly depressing because Inverse makes an airtight argument I don’t want to be true." (https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/follow-up-on-that-jewish-conspiracy)
It's really inconvenient for you to acknowledge that your understanding, such as it is, of what you call the "dynamics" of the conflict, is based upon a lie that has been wholly discredited. It speaks to, in the best case, and lazy and sloppy attitude towards the subject grounded in ignorance and self-righteous cultural chauvinism. You can't explain the fictional beheaded babies to others because you are not being honest with yourself.
"you're the one who insists that they were all just "couriers"."
Here is a lie that is very easy to refute with the transcript:
Okay, sure. Yeah. But the feedback, the things that you chose to attack were, well, ***maybe*** the 12-year-old that was caught with explosives at the security checkpoint was just transporting explosives rather than trying to be a suicide bomb. I mean, that just comes across as incredible, but that's what you want to address.
-------------
Emphasis mine. In the moment (when I would have corrected you to your face if you'd misrepresented my position) you correctly note I said a minor caught with explosive MAYBE was not a suicide bomber. Of course it's possible that there were, but that's not the only possibility. You dismissed as beneath the contempt the idea that a Palestinian caught with explosives could be anything other than a suicide bomber. You expressed certainty without evidence, I expressed uncertainty and asked for more information on the specific case you were referencing.
-----------
Like out of everything that I've written, that's what you want to address.
Well, you've made these specific factual claims that are incorrect. Most of your claims, most of anybody's claims when they're doing writing like this are too impressionistic, too vague to chase down and promote and clearly factually refute. And you can clearly factually refute the story of a 14-year-old suicide bomber.
***You can even chase it back to its origins where they arrested somebody who they initially thought was 14 and turned out to be 16.*** And they cleared that up.
________
Here I explicitly acknowledged that a 16yo was arrested on suspicion of being a suicide bomber.
And, again, you never in the whole course of the conversation say anything about a vest or an explosive vest. So your claims about our discussion are 0/3 in terms of truth.
Pretty sure I still have them -- they gave me five -- and I would be happy to send you one if I do. Though I kind of need your email address to do so -- if you want to subscribe to my Substack -- free!🙂, even briefly, then I can get it from that, and send you the subscription.
Or you can post it here briefly though that is somewhat hazardous -- more secure through a subscription to my Substack. And who knows? You might even stick around there! 😉🙂
This reminds me of watching the film JFK, and by extension arguing with JFK truthers. Just an endless deluge of "well someone other than Oswald COULD HAVE done it, (therefore Oswald is exonerated)". Eventually you realise that this movie and these people have zero interest in approaching the evidence dispassionately and deriving the most likely explanation from that evidence. Rather, they have decided that the Warren report and its conclusions are wrong, and will bring up (or invent) any and all facts which seem remotely germane to advancing that goal, even if those "facts" are incongruent with one another or support alternative explanations which are mutually contradictory. The goal is not to advance a specific alternate explanation for what really happened, but rather to sow enough fear, uncertainty and doubt by suggesting superficially plausible alternate hypotheses that the viewer/reader throws their hands up in despair and decides that AT LEAST one of these alternative explanations must have something going for it. Which explanation for the assassination the viewer/reader arrives at is almost beside the point, provided it's not the official one (much like your clients don't care who gets implicated by their alternative explanations, as long as it isn't them).
Yep! I was inspired to write this from talking to too many conspiracy theorists
Accepting a lie and gradually introducing new information that makes it less likely is essentially Columbo's strategy. Each episode is him frumpily saying things like "I guess it makes sense that Gillian gave the cookies to the dog, but I checked with the vet and the dog's right as rain. I wish my dog was that healthy" and murderer agreeing in an increasingly strained tone while Columbo prattles on about finding a good vet.
As for the reasons why it wouldn't work, isn't one issue that it could also work on people that aren't lying?
For example, consider Orwell describing a hypothetical conversation with a flat earther or an oval earther.
https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/tribune/AsIPlease19461227.html
He concedes that he might eventually run out of "cards" to play against the oval earther and it's entirely possible that he'd lose the argument about the shape of the earth (regardless of what shape the earth actually is).
I think Scott Alexander also writes a bit about this, usually in the context of disproving Atlantis. Sometimes he doesn't have a way to refute a "fact" besides just waving it off as a coincidence. Or to use a historical example, Galileo was correct that the Earth rotated around the sun, but had no answer for the vexing existence of stellar parallax, despite being correct.
You point out that this is only a reasonable tactic during a confrontation, but it's even narrower than that. It's only useful for the attacker in a confrontation. If you're on "defense" then the extra facts you bring in are just "confetti". This feeling should be familiar to anyone that's argued with a conspiracy theorist. They're going to be bringing in the supposed trajectory of the bullet during frame 245 of the Zapruder film and I can just mumble something about how unlikelier things have happened. I don't even know what temperature jet fuel burns at or steel beams melt at. Sure, I can say some disjointed facts about where the jets hit, but someone that's been mainlining Loose Change for decades will be able to blow off that confetti without issue.
This applies more to criticizing "spin doctors" that are usually operating under a different set of assumptions and beliefs than the person calling them a spin doctor. It seems like "throwing confetti and pivoting" and "gauntlet of relevant facts until you encounter something vexing" are a type of Russel's conjugation. Due to underlying beliefs, it's unlikely that both parties agree which facts are relevant or vexing, making the difference between the two mostly a matter of perspective. Throw in the fact that the different parties might not be on even footing (one might be more knowledgeable, one might be smarter, one might be facing higher stakes, one might have some sort of positional advantage like deciding when the conversation is over) and there's possibly even more subjectivity on what counts as relevant or vexing for the conversation.
I can see this being gamed by a sophisticated liar going after a comparatively ignorant rube, but that's a universal failure point for any rationality tool. The Galileo example illustrates why my framework is inappropriate when dealing with earnest truth-seekers. The people who pointed out the lack of a stellar parallax had a fair point!
A conspiracist might try to bring a fuckton of facts to bolster their theory, but so can the other side. 9/11 offers a really good contrast if we're discussing motivation or opportunity. All I'd need to do is point to Osama Bin Laden's statements for why he planned the attack, and the conspiracist would need to contort his theory around that fact (maybe "Well Osama was just a patsy so that the [deep state?] can evade suspicion..."?).
And there's no requirement at all that both sides agree which facts are relevant or vexing. The only questions that need to be answered is whether a given fact is consistent with each given theory, and I haven't encountered issues on that front.
But people disagree about whether a fact is consistent with a given theory. Somewhere, there's a truther Yassine Meskhout confidently saying that he's not worried about arguing with government stooge spin doctors. If they throw some confetti about how Osama bin Laden did it, simply bring up that Osama didn't take credit until after the invasion and in the immediate aftermath released a tape denying responsibility.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090707090738/http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.binladen.denial/index.html
Then the Bush stooge will squirm and contort his theory to be that Bin Laden is actually the type of terrorist that doesn't want his motivation known immediately or maybe the tape was faked or maybe some other thing and that the bin Laden's statements after America already invaded is what really matters. Maybe they'll have some explanation for why it's more likely that a man living in a cave planned 9/11 than that a jihadist on the back foot is willing to claim credit for something that makes him look powerful. (Bonus points if they then insist that ISIS claiming credit for the Las Vegas shooting doesn't prove that ISIS did it). Then see what convoluted way they fit the third tower falling into their theory ("it was some unique construction! It was hit by debris that started a fire and the sprinklers also just happened to fail!) .
That anti-Yassine would almost certainly be entirely familiar with most facts I could bring up and has already incorporated them into his worldview. On the other hand, he could bring up all kinds of things that I have never considered and might struggle to incorporate into my belief that bin Laden planned 9/11. He could therefore rule me a liar using this method.
I think it's very unrealistic to assume that any argument like this could be resolved with "all I need to do is point to x" if they're almost certainly already aware of x and think that it is consistent with the theory they're presenting. A meta-disagreement about whether a theory is inconsistent with the facts presented can be ruled as the target not engaging with the exercise or "throwing confetti", rather than a failure of the exercise. So maybe this is a no-fail strategy but only in a tautological way.
(I recognize that this has wandered pretty far afield from "liars" (as in people intentionally saying objectively false statements) and I'm essentially changing the topic entirely to people saying misleading statements or who believe false things. But I got held up on 'spin doctor' who I think rarely lie, for the reasons described here:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-media-very-rarely-lies
As for actual liars, I'm not even sure if it works against a good liar. After all someone making up a lie has probably spent more time thinking about possible inconsistencies than someone telling the truth. But there's so many "inconsistencies" police find when honest people talk to them! (probably bad to bring up a completely separate thought in a tacked-on parenthetical, but so it goes))
I agree with all of this. The dichotomy of conscious intentional deceiver vs honest truth seeker is too simplistic. For example, consider that when I brought up to you misstatements of fact in your own writings about Israel and Palestine, and in essays you pointed to as making airtight arguments which powerfully influenced your views, you waved these away as minor inaccuracies, "not load-bearing."
That is neither intentional deception, nor honest truth-seeking. It's rationalizing inconvenient facts which threaten a conclusion you are emotionally invested in and do not want to give up.
That is far more typical of the problematic statements in the modern discourse -- not deliberate lies, but disregard for the empirical truth compared to the larger truth of what feels right.
I think you accurately summarized my view in your second sentence, but I don't think your second paragraph, which seems to be focused on imagining a motivation is fair. It's entirely possible for one person to consider something a minor detail that doesn't need to be rigorously evaluated and for another to think that it's central to an argument.
Searching the transcript of your talk, it seems like Yassine Meskhout called something "not load-bearing" twice:
1. Whether stating an unproven fact as true is "misinformation" if that fact is later proven false (such as Oct 7 beheaded babies)
2. Whether the Yom Kippur war should be called an invasion
I don't think resolving these issues are very important to the question of whether there should be a Jewish state in the Levant, so understand why he was dismissive of them. I also don't think ~20 episodes of an offensive children's show produced 15 years ago is particularly important to that question. Yet that's called "load-bearing" by him but unimportant by you. Personally I don't care at all about the show. America's children spend hundreds of hours play-killing Arabs and Russians in COD so who am I to judge when children's media depicts violence towards geopolitical enemies.
I understand that I may be describing those arguments incorrectly, but I really don't care. Even if you correct me and it turns out that *actually* you two were arguing about the specific timeline of reporting or whatever, that wouldn't really disprove my central point that determining the importance of a specific fact or premise is inherently subjective.
Or if you'd prefer a hypothetical example, consider something like college admissions. Imagine 3 colleges all evaluating the same applicants. College A weighs high school GPA, SAT score and admission essays equally, putting each onto a 5 point scale and giving each applicant a score out of 15. College B does something similar, but weighs SAT score heavier so puts that on an 11 point scale and the others 2. And hippie lib college C just grades the essay out of 10 and give DEI score up to 5 based off of identarian traits. You could see how for college A a good essay would be "load-bearing" that someone is a good applicant but it wouldn't be for college B. And SAT score would be "load-bearing" for the same judgement by college B, but college C wouldn't even care if the wrong SAT score had been sent in.
Obviously in real life, it's not so obvious how things are weighted. But I think you guys were essentially acting like those colleges when you were arguing about beheaded babies or antisemitic mice or whatever you were talking about.
Yeah, you definitely can't use this theory to tell who is being honest in an argument between two other people. But you can use it to smell BS when it's you vs one other person, which is still a useful technique.
Great essay. I would be interested in your thoughts about debating conspiracy theorists who will endlessly go down the confetti road.
Do you think it's even possible to convince someone who thinks in irrational, self-serving plausibility of the stupidity of their claims or is it best to simply identify this form of thinking and move on.
I wish I had an answer, I'm utterly baffled by some of the conspiracy theories folks regularly entertain. I split theorists into two groups: grifters and true believers. For grifters, I know it's all an act, and so there's no real point except maybe cornering them in front of an audience. For true believers, I can't figure out how they get there, and so I have no idea how to get them out.
I'm excited to try out the miasma clearing protocol with a conspiracy theorist though, we'll see if the chance presents itself.
Here's a rare flat earth interlocutor who's actually acting in good faith, and addresses substantive points rather than making arguments from authority. The flat earther's position rapidly degenerates into ridiculousness like not knowing how parallel lines work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lycPqo4xtCE
I watched that! It's easy being a backseat driver but I told Brandon that he missed a golden opportunity by not pressing on the parallel lines point.
Told Brandon you mean? Mark is the flat-earther.
Agreed, I found that frustrating too. I assume Brandon was trying to avoid upsetting Mark so as to maintain credibility as a good-faith interlocutor in the future, since focusing too hard on a specific point tends to feel adversarial.
Yeah I had a long time “friend” that I met on Twitter and we would debate conspiracy theories regularly. I found it interesting to figure out how his mind worked.
Eventually it got pretty stale because you can’t really corner someone in a text conversation. The majority of his arguments hinged on “are you saying the government never lies?” Combined with sweeping rejection of all data as corrupted.
I really lost a lot of faith that the rabbit hole can be reversed.
Check out Metabunk.org, Mick West’s forum for discussing specific claimed bits of evidence. Many of the prolific sceptics there started out as conspiracy theorists. You can watch users update their beliefs in real time.
i'm very familiar with Mick West. His debate with Eric Weinstein is probably one of the most informative examples of conspiracy miasma. (eric and his brother might actually be the miasma kings)
My thought is that it requires someone *wanting* to see the truth and be genuinely skeptical of their own beliefs. Unfortunately the mindset that turns people into conspiracy theorists (namely a concerted effort to avoid cognitive dissonance) is the same that keeps them there.
I agree. There is no shortage of information debunking conspiracy theories, but what's missing is the demand for it from theorists.
exactly. any evidence that goes against their beliefs can be simply swept away with vague references to the deep state and media narratives.
hence why the term "conspiracy theorist" or "anti-vaxxer" is meant to be derogatory lol
Did AI help write this?
As an editor, yes. The overall structure was entirely mine, and AI contributed maybe 10% of the final wording. I also tried to get AI to think of good examples for the stolen cookies hypothetical and it suggested the dog as an alternative theory to "allergic reaction" but bizarrely failed to note that chocolate is toxic to dogs until I pointed it out. Very odd blind spot.
I also fed the entire essay to Deep Research, using it for the first time, which was a very useful demonstration of its capabilities even if the feedback was ultimately "this is great, change nothing"
Interesting. The specific phrasing choices seemed very AI-like to me throughout the whole article, more so than your usual.
Which ones? I can see if I remember. I wonder also if I'm getting cross-influenced
Mostly just vibes, difficult to pin down. I think it's related to all the flowery analogies. Many paragraphs "use lots of words while saying nothing". Lots of self-aggrandizing language about how great the method is.
> It’s a method I call the Miasma-Clearing Protocol. This process doesn’t rely on gut feelings or endlessly tedious debates over plausibility; instead, it systematically evaluates competing theories against all known facts. By forcing each theory to run through this gauntlet, we can separate solid ground from inflatable life rafts and expose the mirages for what they are.
> Now that we’ve explored the liar’s playbook, let’s turn the tables and examine how to systematically dismantle their house of cards.
> This exercise is never meant to be definitive, it remains strictly provisional. If a theory survives this gauntlet unscathed, it does not mean it’s the last word! Rather, this rubric is intended to be a ruthlessly efficient method of cutting through the chaff. First we clear the fog — only then does nuance have room to breathe.
I tend to think and write in imagery and one of my scorned habits is ending up with tons of mixed metaphors.
>we can separate solid ground from inflatable life rafts and expose the mirages for what they are.
I can't remember for sure but I think this was AI, although it's repeating what I thought of regarding life rafts and mirages.
>Now that we’ve explored the liar’s playbook, let’s turn the tables and examine how to systematically dismantle their house of cards.
This was AI, it thought a transition sentence was missing.
> First we clear the fog — only then does nuance have room to breathe.
This was originally "Nuance can wait." but AI suggested this instead.
I have noticed on X that AI proofreading will suggest terser but less emphatic alternatives. The result is clearer, but it is less conversational, lacking emphasis and 'tone,' so it is more like reading from a textbook, less like a conversation. For communication, AI is a two edged sword.
Yeah, I have to put my foot down and fight it on this point so hard
A problem with, eg, abusive relationships is that the abuser will often convince the target that anything they say will be held against them in unfair ways.
With this in mind, I’m looking at your top section on evasion. How do you differentiate a case where someone with that sort of life experience is trying to avoid giving information in a potentially abusive context, vs being evasive?
I might misunderstand your question. I've heard from clients before that the reason they lied to me was because they've been screwed over by prior defense attorneys, and so they're reluctantly cautious as a result. I've never seen a situation where I thought they were telling the truth about this. The closest circumstance I got was "My last attorney fucked me over on this, but I'm hoping you can use the information I give you" which is not a failure point.
I’m thinking about, say, a circumstance like this (I’ve seen stuff like this)
Abusive guy: Where were you and the kids the other night
Woman: You don’t have the right to know that
Guy: You’re being evasive, why wouldn’t you just tell me
Woman: Because I don’t like the fact that you’re trying to track my location
Guy: you’re being evasive!
So I feel like sometimes a person trying to evade answering an abusive person’s questions can look evasive when they actually have good reasons? Does that make sense? Maybe this is less applicable to situations you work with.
Yes, that makes sense, but this is essentially saying "sometimes it's ok to lie, or lie by omission" which I agree with. The essay above is about those who lie for bad reasons.
Also - my experience is that there are some liars who just never “snap” in the way you describe. They actually just keep going. Have you ever seen that? Maybe I just need better conversational tools for making them snap…
The hope with building a paper trail like the one I displayed makes it harder and harder to perpetually wriggle out.
This is useful, thanks! I've learned NOT to trust my gut when it comes to such situations. Because my gut usually wants to believe both parties, and when faced with a choice, will default to the person I like more.
I don't know how well this works at your job, so feel free to correct me, but I wouldn't expect this method to be especially effective, for the reasons other commenters have pointed out.
Getting a liar to come clean requires overcoming the thought process that made them think lying was a good idea, and I'm fairly confident that showing them that their lie isn't plausible doesn't work very often.
In my experience, the rubric has worked very well. It's an empirical question on where else it can scale.
This is certainly a great first chapter for a book on lies, but there is much more to be said on the topic.
One has to examine the person (always sadly common, but ubiquitous in the age of the internet) who starts out by lying to themselves. Climate deniers, for example, have a sincere belief that mainstream climate science is the tool of a vast conspiracy determined to enslave the world. The difficulty is that where you may be able to pin down one lie, they maintain an attachment to this belief on a deep emotional level, and will just substitute other lies as the basis for it. They aren't attached to the chain of reasoning that leads to the final position or even the details of the final position. They will eagerly share both articles claiming warming is a hoax, and claiming warming is good. They are not troubled at all by the fact both the things they are citing in support for their position contradict one another.
Another technique which (hopefully) would not fly in court, but which is everywhere online, is the Gish Gallop. This is a powerful rhetorical tool, at least as regards people who are already sympathetic to your position. The basic idea is that you do not support your position with one lie when you can lie a dozen times in the space of a few sentences. This is terrible difficult to refute because the person will be ten lies down the road before you can show why the point is dishonest. The blitz of claims alters the Overton window -- many people think that the craziest claims aren't true, but there must be SOME truth in SOME of the claims. That's statistics, right? /sarc
If you succeed in pinning down a concrete false statement -- well, I don't want to attack you, passive-aggressively or otherwise, but you illustrated some of the techniques in our conversation, even some you yourself describe here. Revising the claim -- it wasn't a horde of 14yo suicide bombers, it was one, it wasn't one, it was a 12yo carrying bomb materials. Challenging reality with hypotheticals -- it MIGHT be true Hamas beheaded babies on October 7th (it's not.) It MIGHT be the case that Palestinian society is a poisonous nest of religious fanaticism and nationalist fervor. Prove it me that it isn't! What do you mean, you can't prove a negative? Sounds like you're admitting I'm right…
I should conclude by saying we are none of us perfect and our arguments, especially when laid out in real time, will typically exhibit some of the bad habits of thinking to which humans are prone. As Richard Feynman wrote, the easiest person for you to fool is yourself.
This is very tedious, you're lying about me on a comment to an essay about lying. People can listen and read the transcript of our conversations themselves: https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/conversation-with-a-staunch-anti
You asked me how many 14-year-old suicide bombers there have been, and I gave you a ballpark figure of "less than 10", which is supported by your own sources you sent me on the topic. You are lying about me ever claiming "horde of 14yo suicide bombers".
I gave you multiple examples of Palestinian teenagers caught with explosive vests at military checkpoints, and you're the one who insists that they were all just "couriers". Refusing to accept your fantastical explanation is not an example of me lying.
I made multiple valiant efforts to explain the 40 beheaded babies point and I have not been successful. I'm giving up, but people can read the transcript themselves.
I made a positive claim about Palestinian militancy being motivated by religious fanaticism and nationalist fervor, and provided evidence for my claim. I invited you to showcase any evidence which undercuts my claim, and I'm still waiting.
You, it's you that is lying, once again. As a liar writing about lying, you might have a unique set of insights, but unfortunately, like many liars, you are committed to selling the pretense you are honest.
I asked you that because you referred to 14yo suicide bombers in your writings and claimed Israel's apartheid rule was necessary to prevent 14yo suicide bombers from blowing themselves up in Israeli cities. The 14yo suicide bomber never existed, something you tediously are still trying to wriggle out of.
"I gave you multiple examples of Palestinian teenagers caught with explosive vests at military checkpoints." This is another lie. Where are these multiple examples in the transcript, if you are claiming you provided these examples? It doesn't help your argument ultimately, because I never disputed that 20 years ago, a tiny number of minors were involved in attempted suicide bombings. The dispute was whether they were deliberately recruited by the resistance organizations or whether, like minors have in every conflict in recorded history, they chose to participate, and deceived the people were working with as to their age.
"I made multiple valiant efforts to explain the 40 beheaded babies point and I have not been successful."
Probably because you are not starting from a place of honesty that recognizes that this was a blatant lie that you bought into wholeheartedly -- to the point of saying, in regards to an essay entirely resting on the premise that that lie was indisputably true -- "Their essay helped me understand the dynamics more than any other piece of writing, and it was thoroughly depressing because Inverse makes an airtight argument I don’t want to be true." (https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/follow-up-on-that-jewish-conspiracy)
It's really inconvenient for you to acknowledge that your understanding, such as it is, of what you call the "dynamics" of the conflict, is based upon a lie that has been wholly discredited. It speaks to, in the best case, and lazy and sloppy attitude towards the subject grounded in ignorance and self-righteous cultural chauvinism. You can't explain the fictional beheaded babies to others because you are not being honest with yourself.
BTW, your transcript is searchable and the term "explosive vest" or indeed "vest" as a standalone word do not occur anywhere: https://www.ymeskhout.com/p/conversation-with-a-staunch-anti
"you're the one who insists that they were all just "couriers"."
Here is a lie that is very easy to refute with the transcript:
Okay, sure. Yeah. But the feedback, the things that you chose to attack were, well, ***maybe*** the 12-year-old that was caught with explosives at the security checkpoint was just transporting explosives rather than trying to be a suicide bomb. I mean, that just comes across as incredible, but that's what you want to address.
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Emphasis mine. In the moment (when I would have corrected you to your face if you'd misrepresented my position) you correctly note I said a minor caught with explosive MAYBE was not a suicide bomber. Of course it's possible that there were, but that's not the only possibility. You dismissed as beneath the contempt the idea that a Palestinian caught with explosives could be anything other than a suicide bomber. You expressed certainty without evidence, I expressed uncertainty and asked for more information on the specific case you were referencing.
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Like out of everything that I've written, that's what you want to address.
Well, you've made these specific factual claims that are incorrect. Most of your claims, most of anybody's claims when they're doing writing like this are too impressionistic, too vague to chase down and promote and clearly factually refute. And you can clearly factually refute the story of a 14-year-old suicide bomber.
***You can even chase it back to its origins where they arrested somebody who they initially thought was 14 and turned out to be 16.*** And they cleared that up.
________
Here I explicitly acknowledged that a 16yo was arrested on suspicion of being a suicide bomber.
And, again, you never in the whole course of the conversation say anything about a vest or an explosive vest. So your claims about our discussion are 0/3 in terms of truth.
> "The truth is people lie."
Indeed, quite a mouthful there.
En passant and speaking of which, are you familiar with the case described in a recent Free Press article/summary by Madeline Kearns?
The Supreme Court’s Death Row ‘Miracle.’ Plus. . .
https://www.thefp.com/p/the-supreme-courts-death-row-miracle?triedRedirect=true
Kind of a case of a good woman saving a supposedly bad man from the gallows.
BTW, I think I still have a free gift subscription there for you, or others, if you would like to have one.
I’m curious about free subscription!
Pretty sure I still have them -- they gave me five -- and I would be happy to send you one if I do. Though I kind of need your email address to do so -- if you want to subscribe to my Substack -- free!🙂, even briefly, then I can get it from that, and send you the subscription.
Or you can post it here briefly though that is somewhat hazardous -- more secure through a subscription to my Substack. And who knows? You might even stick around there! 😉🙂
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Great! Though your name, all strung together? A period of two there? 🙂
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Got it. And thanks for subscribing. I shall send it -- forthwith! Sent! 🙂