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I watched Secret Devs and in there was an issue about faking insanity to find out, whether the suicide of her boyfriend was faked or real. It made me come to the conclusion, that people are unable to perceive accurately, how they look, when they are lying and what it impacts, when their story is taken truthfully. Just as with predators and mammals, we are not genuinely perceiving ourselves as hunters but Civilians, who want to get along.

This question is about the boy who cried Wolf, how living out a narrative restricts your freedom of choice and Will, determining the outcome, thus resulting in a Cassandra effect.

Where should I look, to find answers to this problem of perception? It appears to be rather prevalent in this time, there people think themselves as fighting for something, resulting in more chaos than good, like the bear, who in order to chase away the fly on his masters nose, while he was sleeping, took a boulder sized stone and tossed it. The fly flew away, but the stone killed the master.

J D
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Walgekaaren
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    You're interested in the science of cognitive biases which is related to the philosophical nature of a theory of logic and fallacy. The short summary is that the human brain processes information in such a way that it makes mistakes regarding determining truth. It is susceptible to illusion, deception, fallacy, etc. Also see Festinger's cognitive dissonance and epistemology. – J D Sep 09 '20 at 19:51
  • The liar does indeed see the risk of blowback. However, they also believe they are in a strong enough position to keep the situation under control. – Mark Andrews Sep 09 '20 at 23:46
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    People sometimes do not perceive that telling the truth may be used against them too. Then again, they often do and that is why they are lying, or staying silent.And for every boy who cried wolf too much there is a boy who did not cry wolf enough, and got eaten. So be careful with drawing conclusions from these sorts of fables or even real life stories. There are many of them and the suggested conclusions can be opposite. – Conifold Sep 10 '20 at 00:48

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An answer to the general question: Why do humans not perceive the cost of lying? is that humans discount the value of future events. So the utility of a lie in the present may be perceived as greater than the cost of that lie in the future.

You can read about the human hyperbolic discount rate here: Living for the Moment while Devaluing the Future

Q: Where should I look, to find answers to this problem of perception?

A: Evolutionary psychology

Basically, humans and animals have evolved to prioritise the present: a bird in the hand etc. The future is discounted, by all accounts, hyperbolically:

Actual economic experiments however show that the shape of the discount curve is hyperbolic, or as Harvard economist David Laibson prefers quasi-hyperbolic. This means that the early periods have much steeper discount rates than later periods. Laibsons research indicates that peoples discount rates are 12% during days 0-5 but drop to 4% in days 20-25. We REALLY prefer the present.

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Chris Degnen
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