How To Spot A Liar

introHow To Spot A Liar

In a world of seductive scams, our sanity depends upon our ability to recognize lies. To enhance this ability, we must learn new ways of perceiving the world and strive for higher standards of honesty than are currently popular.

You should not believe anything that is in this instructable. If you are a searching person, you will eventually see that the patterns contained in the following steps can be verified. If you take the time and effort to investigate, you can see for yourself if these explanations and examples fit the real world.

Mere belief will not do. To verify the truth of anything that is said or written, you must see it and understand it before you can use it. You must live it before you can learn it.

To make it perfectly clear, this instructable is not about detecting liars only when you are face to face with them. If you want to learn about face-reading and micro-expressions (the brief expressions on a persons face that reveal their true reaction), there is an excellent book on this called: Unmasking the Face. It is available at amazon.com.

If you are interested in learning to spot a liar with body language, a good online source is here.

Many lies are to be found on the radio, in the news, or in written form, where you cannot see the person in question. This instructable is about the psychology of lies and the methods, techniques and arguments that liars often use. When you begin to see and remember these often repeated patterns, you can begin to learn how to spot a liar that is not in front of you.

Right now, most of humanity is under the domination of tyrants. In China, Russia, Cuba, Africa, and other parts of the world, tangible tyrants continue to rule. In all of the other countries, tyrants without a face, unseen forces, work behind the scenes to manipulate, indoctrinate, and obfuscate. It is the proliferation of lies and the willingness of people to accept lies, that makes this possible.

step 1What Is A Lie?

A lie is designed to create a separation between Reality and what we think or feel. Occasionally, a lie is so obvious that anyone can easily see through the sham. But more often than not, a lie is so subtle or diabolically clever that uncovering it requires an uncommon detachment. This objective point of view becomes impossible if there is any greed on the part of the looker. Those who desire what is being offered (money, acceptance, beauty, flattery) more than they want the truth will easily fall victim to a lie.

We rarely see a situation for what it is. Instead, what we mainly see is our reaction to the situation. We see the associations that are triggered by the situation. A person who is cold looks at a tree and sees a source of firewood. Someone who is hot looks at the same tree and sees cooling shade. Our view of the world is limited, obscured, and distorted by our thoughts and emotions. This is important. What we think and feel sometimes does not clarify our view--but blocks it.

To see and know what is a lie and what is not, you must first see clearly your own willingness to accept certain kinds of lies.

step 2Advertising Lies

When we look at the impressive and clever shenanigans of the marketing and advertising industry, we cannot help but be impressed. If we look past the greed and hypocrisy that makes the ads exaggerated and ridiculous, we cannot deny that they are effective. They captivate us, mesmerize us and entertain us. And so they sell things--in large quantities. It doesn't matter if what is sold is good for people or immoral or even defective. Anything can be sold if the right impression is made. This is the essential point that the people in marketing have not missed. Anything can be sold as long as we, their target audience, are willing to drift far enough away from the truth.

The liar, be he adman or politician, spends much of his time creating good associations to his lie. Buy his product and you will look sexier, smarter, richer, and all the rest. He wants you to associate his lie with something good that you hope to get. He knows what you want and finds ways to associate the acceptance of his lie with what you want. If you did not get caught up in the pleasant and exciting associations he creates, you could not fall for such a lie. You would see that what the liar says does not fit with what you truly know about the world.

step 3Expert Liars

Our society has the highest respect for those who spent the better part of their lives in school learning how to make the simple--complex and the complex--incomprehensible. The doctors and lawyers, politicians and tax collectors; they make the rules and explanations intentionally confusing. Its not that they can't make their rules simpler and easier to understand--they don't want to. They want you confused and frustrated and so far removed from your common sense that you will submit to any bureaucratic enlargement or the next volume of indecipherable regulations.

They want you dependent on them for an interpretation of just exactly what the rules and terminology mean. They want you to look to them for answers. Then, what is right and wrong can be decided according to their dictates. They want to be the final judges of what is honest or legal or healthy. They can then redefine it quarterly. This is the secret of how they obtain their power. This is how they continue to slowly gain control over your work and your life.

Can we learn from experts? Of course. They have their uses. Do they have the solutions that will get to the core of our problems? It would appear not. After centuries of following their theories and their solutions, we still have large numbers of the ignorant, the criminal, the unhealthy, the insane, the poor and the lazy.

All people eventually try to become experts. Some become technical experts, medical experts, or educational experts. There are even cuprolite and lingerie experts. Some are experts at shirking, stealing, or lying. Still others are experts at teaching experts or criticizing experts.

step 4Statistical Lies

"There are three kinds of lies:

Lies, damned lies and statistics"

Mark Twain

What people do or say they want to do, is constantly being added up and tabulated. We call these collections of partial surveys, statistics. Sometimes, such numbers can provide meaningful