The Architecture of Deception and the Fragility of Truth

“ They never rise beyond the level of misinterpretation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! After all, what is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence. If a man is sufficiently unimaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie, he might just as well speak the truth at once. No, the politicians won’t do, and besides, what I am pleading for is lying in art. ”

“ It always roots itself into some fact. And there is the secret of its vitality. You batter the lie with your logic, but the blows rebound from the iron truth beneath. You assail it with the flashing darts of your rhetoric, the points fly harmless from the marble reality below. There is truth there somewhere. That is why your rhetoric and your logic fail. That, too, is why one so often sees that most bewildering and despairing sight, men clinging to a lie, honoring it, trusting it, defending it, in all sincerity, against all assailants. It is not the lie they defend, but the truth in the lie. ”

“ A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it; else the hand would cut itself, which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true. ”

“ The matter resolves itself into truth putting on the dress of falsehood. But in doing so it enters into a fatal alliance. What a dangerous weapon is given into the hands of those who have the authority to make use of falsehood as the vehicle of truth! ”

“ The literal truth may easily give a false impression, and becomes in that case the most vicious of falsehoods of which art is capable, just as the telling of facts with intent to deceive is the most dangerous form of lying. The thing to be sought is not accuracy of statement, but accuracy of perception, and the means must be subordinated to the effect.
It follows that even more vitally important than that all details be true, is that they be significant; that they not only appeal to the memory or the reason of the writer, but that they have a creative effect upon the mind of the reader. ”

“ For it is one thing to exaggerate and another to exaggerate enough. A lie must be writ so large as to become invisible; it must stand as the name of a country upon a map, so much larger than its surroundings as to escape detection. ”

“ Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth. ”

“ I have an honest lad to my tailor, whom I never knew guilty of one truth, no, not when it had been to his advantage. If falsehood had, like truth, but one face only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take for certain the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite, without bound or limit. The Pythagoreans make good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain. ”

“ And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert ”

“ They become accustomed to reject the more direct evidence in favor of the less direct, and where adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must resort to devices and expedients in order to explain away contradiction. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. ”

“ Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man who has thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed or the company parted; or like a physician who has found out an infallible medicine after the patient is dead.
Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim so frequent in everybody's mouth, that truth will at last prevail. ”

“ A lie is in every sense a violation of the laws of nature; and what is first uttered as a conscious, flagrant falsehood, becomes less so with each repetition, till unawares a day will come which shall see it transformed into a glaring truth. Such a person, no matter how highly organized, or perfectly trained otherwise, is no better than a machine. He does not live, he simply runs. ”

“ Where all the facts are out of sight a true report and a plausible error read alike, sound alike, feel alike. Except on a few subjects where our own knowledge is great, we cannot choose between true and false accounts. ”

“ These remarks will make it clear to us why many men of science have been deceived by very simple tricks and fraudulent devices, while investigating spiritualistic phenomena—their scientific culture is no guaranty that they are any more capable of detecting fraud than is the man-in-the-street—in fact their training has made them very much LESS capable of detecting fraud than the average person, who comes more in contact with the world, and is an acuter judge of character and human nature. ”

“ In the current work, we presented the participants with meaningless statements without cueing them to the possibility that they are complete bullshit. Although this is likely how bullshit is often encountered in everyday life, it may be that some skepticism about the source of the statement is the key force that may guard against bullshit acceptance. For example, poems attributed to prestigious sources are evaluated more positively (Bar-Hillel, Maharshak, Moshinsky & Nofech, 2012) . Interpretation is difficult and humans surely rely on simple heuristics (e.g., “do I trust the source?”) ”

“ The more widely truth is [Pg 24] recognised, the more does it deteriorate in price, while falsehood ceases to arouse its former measure of reprobation. Then it is, and not, indeed, until then, that the old blundering remedy by means of oaths and oath-taking is laid aside as out of date and no longer availing. Nowadays, at least among most races of mankind, the ordinary inducements to veracity are of themselves felt to be sufficiently powerful as to leave no ground for contending that truthfulness should be the subject of rewards and bounties. ”

“ We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the colour of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. ”

“ Hence children and inexperienced persons are easily imposed upon by unfounded statements:—and the most practised liar confides in the credulity of those whom he attempts to deceive. Deception, indeed, would never accomplish its purpose, if it were not from the impression that men generally speak truth. ”

“ What is worse, however, is, that when history has once been erroneously written, and a hero has been put forward in colors which are not real, the public actually becomes accessory to the deception practiced upon it: for it becomes so enamored of the false type which has been held out to its admiration that it will not loosen its hold on it. ”

“ In this environment, where trust becomes polarised around what “news” aligns with their views, many news consumers feel entitled to choose or create their own ‘facts’. Combined, these developments present an unprecedented threat level that can drown out journalism, as well as contaminate it with the implication that there is nothing to distinguish it from false and fraudulent information more broadly. ”

“ The way one man’s inaccurate statement is blandly copied down by the next man, and verification shirked at every turn! Why will they do it, these little scientific folk? For the great ones never do. The great ones verify, or else, when they come to a hole in their knowledge, they frankly tell you that they don’t know. ”

“ As one-to-many communications developed in the 20th century, especially with the advent of radio and television, satirical news evolved, sometimes being mistaken as the real thing in news consumers’ minds. Finally, as this guide illustrates, the arrival of the internet in the late 20th century, followed by social media in the 21st century, dramatically multiplied the risks of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and hoaxes. ”

“ Reading the same opinion on the site of a large proprietary publisher sends perhaps a different message, but not one that would cause most users to question the fidelity of the reproduction. Reading the same opinion on an open-access site, however, may prompt uncertainty as to the provenance and authenticity of the text. The availability of mechanisms for verifying a text’s authenticity will be an important functionality in encouraging more widespread use of open-access alternatives to proprietary publishers. ”

“ Digital users and consumers shall be protected from identity theft, phishing, other online scams, through essential systems and safeguards, such as cybersecurity, data privacy, consumer complaint mechanisms, and financial literacy campaigns. ”

“ Activities, other than those authorized by or in accordance with US law, that seek to compromise or impair the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of computers, information or communications systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by computers or information systems, or information resident thereon. ”

“ It is used to describe true statements about objects and events in the real world. One could equate the real world with the physical world, however, this might involve an unwarranted assumption that the laws of physics govern everything that is not a contrived system. All factually true statements are contingent, this means that they are always open to falsification and that the contradictory of a factual statement is not meaningless. ”

“ ABSTRACT There is a problem about explaining how systems that are true by definition can be informative about a world that is not. This problem is particularly relevant to the design of computerized information systems. A solution is offered based on the distinction between logical and factual truth. ”

“ Developed by the DOI Foundation on behalf of the publishing industry, its goals are to provide a framework for managing intellectual content, link customers with publishers, facilitate electronic commerce, and enable automated copyright management.
The Introduction to the Digital Object Identifier specifies:
"The Internet represents a totally new environment for commerce. As such, it requires new enabling technologies to protect both customer and publisher. Systems will have to be developed to authenticate content to insure that what the customer is requesting is what is being delivered. ”

“ The terms `trust' and `trusted' refer, with respect to electronic and information processing systems, to the ability of the Department of Defense to have confidence that the systems function as intended and are free of exploitable vulnerabilities, either intentionally or unintentionally designed or inserted as part of the system at any time during its life cycle. ”