[HN Gopher] People can be convinced they committed a crime that ...
___________________________________________________________________
People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened
(2015)
Author : Quinzel
Score : 269 points
Date : 2023-06-17 04:01 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psychologicalscience.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psychologicalscience.org)
| Nowado wrote:
| Anyone interested should just Google 'Elizabeth Loftus'. She
| convinced people of a bunch of things that never happened, some
| of them very quickly. Standard example is getting people to tell
| stories about meeting Bugs Bunny in Disneyland, but there was
| also some crime stuff, I think past trauma as well.
|
| Law enforcement has their quotas and they'll use any garbage they
| can to fill it, but it's kind of hilarious that people just trust
| their memories for important stuff they can control.
| rainworld wrote:
| _Loftus has also been involved with the cases of [Robert Durst,
| Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, Jerry Sandusky,] Ted
| Bundy, O.J. Simpson, Rodney King, Oliver North, Martha Stewart,
| Lewis Libby, Michael Jackson, the Menendez brothers and the
| Oklahoma City bombers._
|
| Completely normal. Absolutely no reason to question her work.
|
| She did some CIA consulting, too.
| getpost wrote:
| Argh! The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean
| that all memories are false.
|
| Commentary: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-
| elizabeth-...
|
| Rebuttal: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-
| yorkers-hi...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean
| that all memories are false.
|
| How is this even slightly relevant?
|
| If some memories are false, and other memories are true, and
| none of us can tell which is which, then according to our
| principles of justice we must act as if all memories are
| potentially false.
|
| "Memory as evidence" crumbles at that point.
| George83728 wrote:
| Wow, that New Yorker article really is something. She hires
| private investigators to obtain _sealed court records_ about
| an allegation of child abuse and de-anonymized the child.
| Then when the university reprimands her for this and tells
| her to turn over the documents, she calls that an "Orwellian
| nightmare". Orwellian? Who's the one doing the spying,
| procuring documents they have no right to possess? Loftus
| herself was the Orwellian nightmare but she saw herself as
| the victim in this. Even if Loftus's hypothesis about the
| case is correct, she clearly caused a great deal of emotional
| anguish for this person but was more concerned with the
| university telling her to leave it alone. The whole of this
| article paints her as a narcissist if not a psychopath.
|
| The whyevolutionistrue rebuttal is insubstantial, it doesn't
| address this at all.
| terribleperson wrote:
| It does however mean that if you're trying to manipulate
| someone to reveal or recall something, you need to be careful
| that you're not just making them fabricate it.
| getpost wrote:
| Agreed; there should be no manipulation, but evidently
| that's too high a bar for most people most of the time.
| zealtrace wrote:
| This study was immediately critiqued for distorted results due to
| the way the researchers interpreted the data.
|
| "We used three different approaches to recode their data. Using
| Shaw and Porter's approach, we replicated their 70%. Using
| alternative approaches that distinguish between false beliefs and
| memories, we found 26-30% of subjects met the criteria for false
| memories. Moreover, we showed that laypeople's understanding of
| remembering better aligns with the alternative coding approaches
| than with Shaw and Porter's."
|
| http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/87062/
| lisasays wrote:
| Ok, so -- half full or half empty? Or are you saying it's all
| BS?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Not quite as bad as expected. This means that a bit more than
| half of those with false beliefs probably wouldn't testify to
| the absolute truth of their belief in court.
| 037 wrote:
| Do you remember the movie Under Suspicion (2000)[1], starring
| Gene Hackman? Can't say too much without spoilers, but it's
| related.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Suspicion_(2000_film)
| kbrkbr wrote:
| - 2x30 participants - Not chosen at random - No double blinding -
| Plenty of leeway for influence by conductors of experiment
|
| I'm not convinced these results can be generalized into more
| than: some researchers could trick 60 handpicked students into
| seemingly believing a false memory for a short period of time.
| Let's wait if this is reproducible.
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't understand your argument. "People Can Be Convinced They
| Committed a Crime That Never Happened" The test subject were
| people, they got convinced.
|
| They are not claiming that everyone under every circumstance
| can be convinced they commited any crime.
|
| Even if it can only happen sometimes to some people under some
| circumstances that would be of great importance to the process
| of justice.
| kbrkbr wrote:
| You are right. I indeed thought only probabilities would
| matter here, when it is possibilities.
| krisoft wrote:
| > You are right.
|
| Thank you.
|
| > thought only probabilities would matter here, when it is
| possibilities
|
| Oh! That puts it very succintly. That is a very good way to
| express what i was thinking. I will use your phrasing in
| the future in similar cases where this distinction matters.
| tvbuzz wrote:
| Reminds me Derren Brown's 'The Push'. Trailer here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFpACkiZ2Q
| yosito wrote:
| > The fact that the students appeared to internalize the false
| events to the extent that they did highlights the fundamental
| malleability of memory
|
| This seems like a bit of a leap to assume that this is about
| malleability rather than just lying to researchers and saying
| what they feel is expected. I could very easily imagine myself
| playing along with someone trying to convince me of false
| memories just because I don't want to put up a fight against
| someone who is gaslighting me.
|
| Speaking of which, how is gaslighting students considered ethical
| research?
| Timon3 wrote:
| How would you propose we differentiate between students
| "playing along" and students really having false memories?
| Couldn't I discard any psychological study by saying "well, the
| participants could have faked it", since it's by definition not
| falsifiable (any test could also be faked)?
| canjobear wrote:
| You should indeed be extremely skeptical of studies whose
| only dependent variable is a voluntary participant response
| and where the participant has an incentive to tell the
| experimenter what they think they want to hear (for example,
| to make the experiment end faster).
| kenjackson wrote:
| Except in this case for the follow up interviews there was
| no incentive to lie.
| canjobear wrote:
| They're incentivized to tell the experimenters what they
| want to hear so they can get paid and go home faster.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| In most psychological experiments, volunteers are told it
| will take an hour/an afternoon/whatever at the time they
| sign up to participate. The notion that all of them
| actually want to cut corners and just obtain the cash in
| return for the bare minimum of time and effort is an
| assumption about people in general, not a fact.
| kenjackson wrote:
| In the follow ups they are simply asked to recount and
| give their confidence of recounting. It's only the
| original interview they are told to try to remember
| details even if they can't.
|
| The premise of the study is that the first interview is
| used to plant the memories. The follow up interviews are
| to see if they stick. They specifically aren't trying to
| intervene in those interviews.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Having participated in plenty of these (as it was
| required for class credit, and they also paid reasonably
| well for an in-between classes hour type thing to go do),
| the 'researchers' can also be completely obnoxious. One
| study I was involved in had me listen to some rant about
| how women do better on a math exam I was about to take,
| being left in a room for about 10 minutes alone, and then
| being given the exam - on pink paper. It was generic
| algebra 2 / SAT level test.
|
| After the exam the researchers just endlessly hounded me
| from a hundred different angles trying to get me to
| express doubt or uncertainty in how I performed on it. If
| I just wanted my $20 and credit, it would have been far
| easier to just give them what they wanted. But I've been
| ever the contrarian. They also said they'd email me my
| results in 8 weeks. They did not. I've always wondered if
| I ended up getting culled from their 'study' as an
| 'outlier.'
| kenjackson wrote:
| That just sounds like bad research. In general if you
| know their angle that clearly then they've failed at how
| to do a research study of this type -- obnoxious or not.
| It sounds like they don't know how to do this type of
| research.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'm not sure that was the problem. Journals don't tend to
| publish negative results, and social science journals
| seem to have 0 issues with publishing studies that are
| overtly designed to confirm a hypothesis, rather than
| challenge it. Add in a bit of publish or perish, and this
| behavior is ubiquitous. What would you say is an example
| of good research in social psychology?
|
| As an example of bad science, you look to what's likely
| the single most well known experiment in social
| psychology - the Stanford Prisoner Experiment. It's not
| only failed to replicate, but was mostly entirely
| fabricated. [1] The famous clip of the guy screaming out
| 'I can't stand another night! I just can't take it
| anymore!' came from a guy who was intentionally faking a
| meltdown, because he needed to go study and they weren't
| allowing him access to his books, the guards were
| actively trained to be cruel, and more. Incidentally
| Zimbardo (the experimenter), far from being shunned, has
| received countless accolades for this experiment, some as
| recent as 2012.
|
| [1] - https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-
| lie-d869212b1f62
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Funny, but my one and only contact with PLATO when I was
| at the U of I was for a Psych 100 experiment like this.
| Timon3 wrote:
| How would you propose, in this specific study, they verify
| what you want? Please be specific regarding what questions
| you want asked, when they should be asked, and how these
| questions can't be discarded by saying "well, they could be
| faking it".
| canjobear wrote:
| I think this whole experimental paradigm is inherently
| unfixable.
| Timon3 wrote:
| So we just stop studying psychology completely?
| swayvil wrote:
| You can't trust psychology because people sometimes lie.
|
| You can't trust physics because you might be
| hallucinating.
|
| What's left? Authoritarianism? Consensus? Tradition?
| canjobear wrote:
| No, but the focus for studies like this should be on
| nonvoluntary responses like reaction times and EEG in my
| opinion.
| Timon3 wrote:
| How do you know that the EEG monitoring doesn't influence
| people? Couldn't they subconsciously fake it due to being
| actively monitored?
| cdogl wrote:
| Or the people undertaking these studies (and more
| importantly, the people peer reviewing and publishing the
| work) push back on broad conclusions that aren't
| substantiated by the research.
|
| Having seen the nonsense my partner has to put up with in
| order to get a post-graduate qualification to practice as
| a professional psychologist I'm not holding my breath.
| From where I'm sitting the replication crisis in this
| field looks like a crisis of incompetence and apathy.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > broad conclusions that aren't substantiated by the
| research.
|
| But these aren't broad conclusions, they are specific
| conclusions, and they are substantiated by the research.
| You're just positing that the results could be entirely
| fake on a whim.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not all of psychology, but this type of problem, yes. We
| just don't have the neurological knowledge required to
| get such information meaningfully yet. It would be like
| people in the 1700s trying to study nuclear forces - it's
| not an absurd endeavor, but they just didn't have the
| means yet.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > So we just stop studying psychology completely?
|
| That's not the only option. Why is it the only one you
| can think of?
|
| I mean, where are you going with "Our only options are to
| draw the wrong conclusions, or to stop studying it
| altogether"?
| Timon3 wrote:
| > That's not the only option. Why is it the only one you
| can think of?
|
| It's not the only one I can think of, but no other
| options have been presented to me. I have been asking for
| solutions, but nobody has provided any that can't be
| dismissed on the same grounds.
|
| > I mean, where are you going with "Our only options are
| to draw the wrong conclusions, or to stop studying it
| altogether"?
|
| Where did I write anything close to that? I am not saying
| anything about drawing conclusions, I am literally
| asking: how would you design a test that measures the
| proposed problem? Why are you accusing me of advocating
| for "drawing the wrong conclusions"?
|
| It's incredible how many people want to read my comments
| as advocating for something they are not. If you feel
| attacked because I'm asking how we could measure your
| idea, maybe I'm not the problem, but your idea is?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > It's not the only one I can think of, but no other
| options have been presented to me.
|
| Well, then, with all due respect, if you already know of
| other options, why are you asking?
|
| > I'm asking how we could measure your idea
|
| Who cares? Even if you cannot "measure" (whatever that
| means) the alternatives, the fact still remains that
| people are drawing conclusions from incorrect and invalid
| data.
|
| That's the point, really - the field of psychology is
| bereft of replicable studies.
|
| Observing that the way a particular field performs
| research results in invalid conclusions doesn't put any
| obligation on the observer to provide alternatives.
|
| It's enough to point out that a thing is wrong; there's
| no requirement to also provide the correct answer.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > Well, then, with all due respect, if you already know
| of other options, why are you asking?
|
| If someone engages in a conversation with me and presents
| a thought, I would like them to present it fully. If
| there are obvious flaws or implications, I try to reflect
| them, both so I can be sure I correctly understood the
| other party, and to give them a chance to fill in those
| holes. I do not wish to just inject my own ideas
| everywhere, I want to understand people as they express
| themselves. Seems like a pretty normal way to talk to
| other humans to me.
|
| > Who cares? Even if you cannot "measure" (whatever that
| means) the alternatives, the fact still remains that
| people are drawing conclusions from incorrect and invalid
| data.
|
| And because you are declaring the data incorrect and
| invalid that means it is so? You will either have to
| share your research credentials which allow you to judge
| it as such, or you'll have to answer the obvious
| questions that come after such a statement (e.g. "how can
| you prove that?"). It's pretty normal in science that
| instead of people just blurting out thoughts which are
| taken as truths, we reflect on ideas and ask questions
| that help us get to a better understanding divided from
| our subjective point of view. If the best you can come up
| with is "well, it's obviously true, duh" then your
| thought isn't as good as you think.
|
| > It's enough to point out that a thing is wrong
|
| You are wrong. There, I said that you are wrong - does
| that make you wrong? If not, is there maybe some system
| by which we can determine whether you're right or wrong?
| Your response to this question is "no need, I am right".
| lelanthran wrote:
| > You will either have to share your research credentials
| which allow you to judge it as such
|
| I was a research scientist[1] for 7 years of my 25 years
| of working experience.
|
| What are _your_ credentials?
|
| > You are wrong. There, I said that you are wrong - does
| that make you wrong?
|
| That's just your opinion. The lack of replicable results
| in psychology is _not an opinion_.
|
| We are not debating whether or not the research can be
| replicated, are we?
|
| I mean, are you seriously claiming that psychology is
| filled with replicable studies?
|
| [1] EDIT: an accredited _national_ research institution.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > I was a research scientist[1] for 7 years of my 25
| years of working experience.
|
| In what field? Is it close to psychology?
|
| > That's just your opinion. The lack of replicable
| results in psychology is not an opinion.
|
| I did not claim that psychology doesn't have a lack of
| replicable results.
|
| > We are not debating whether or not the research can be
| replicated, are we?
|
| No, we are not. We are debating whether we can dismiss
| this study without defining a way to falsify our claim.
|
| > I mean, are you seriously claiming that psychology is
| filled with replicable studies?
|
| Again, I am not claiming this, nor have I claimed it
| previously.
| FreshStart wrote:
| Or the science goes were the data is.. The servers of
| search engines or social networks. Psychology is what
| survives the queries into all of humanity.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Designing good studies is hard. That doesn't mean we
| should just roll over and be satisfied with bad studies.
| The same applies to most studies about human diet and
| nutrition.
| Timon3 wrote:
| That is why I asked for some way to test for what GP
| complained about, and the only answer I got was "there is
| no way". Do you have a way to design a study so the
| complaint "well, the participants could be faking it"
| isn't valid? I'm legitimately asking, so far all I've
| gotten was "no way".
| no_please wrote:
| [flagged]
| paulsutter wrote:
| That's for the author of the paper to design into the
| experiment
| Timon3 wrote:
| And I'm asking you: what solution would make you happy?
| What would it have to look like?
| darkerside wrote:
| Is it that hard to imagine that teens and the mentally
| impaired would do the same, focusing on resolving the
| present conflict (locked in room) over a future
| hypothetical problem (locked in jail)?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > How would you propose we differentiate between students
| "playing along" and students really having false memories?
|
| Remove the incentive for the student to fabulate.
|
| Have another, supposedly (to the students) 'independent'
| researcher ask them questions about it days or weeks later. A
| potential way of doing this would be to have a member of the
| Institutional Review Board (or supposed member of said board)
| following up with the students as a matter of 'quality
| control' and verification that the study followed IRB
| guidelines. Phrase the reason for the questioning as looking
| for non-punitive, but developmental, feedback for the
| researcher.
|
| For ethical reasons this would probably require blinding the
| original researcher to the identities of the students, but
| this could be done by having people other than the PI
| actually ask the questions.
|
| For a particular study on whether or not the student did
| something criminal, have the questioner _truthfully_ assert
| to the student binding confidentiality as to their identity
| by dint of being a psychologist or someone like that who has
| the legal duty to not divulge.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Thank you for an actual proposal! It makes a lot of sense
| to me, but there is one reason it probably wouldn't be
| allowed: the study "implanted" false memories (in the sense
| that participants stated they believed false memories). I
| don't think the study would pass ethical review if you were
| only to follow up days or weeks later (after the supposed
| end of the study), since that would also be the earliest
| point you would be able to clear up the lie.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It could probably be tailored to a shorter time period.
|
| A possible great way to do it is have the students
| originally questioned by grad students, and then the
| professor themself 'follow up' shortly afterward as a
| 'check' on their grad student's process. The problem with
| that is that some of the students may feel incentivized
| to make the grad student look good.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Yes, you could discard any study under that rationale among
| others. And the interesting thing is you'd likely be far more
| 'informed' for doing so. Social psychology has the lowest
| replication rate of any field. You're looking at top journals
| with replication rates in the twenties. [1]
|
| What this means is that if you were to take any give study in
| social psychology, and simply assume it was 'wrong' (either
| saying the opposite of the truth, or claiming a statistically
| significant effect when there really is none), then you'd, on
| average, be dramatically more 'informed' than somebody taking
| the studies at face value. [2]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psy
| cholo...
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience
| bee_rider wrote:
| > What this means is that if you were to take any give
| study in social psychology, and simply assume it was
| 'wrong' (either saying the opposite of the truth, or
| claiming a statistically significant effect when there
| really is none), then you'd, on average, be dramatically
| more 'informed' than somebody taking the studies at face
| value.
|
| The parenthetical seems like a problem to me. In the sense
| that, maybe you are right and most psychology research
| tells us nothing. But that won't tell us the opposite is
| true. There are lots of possible outcomes in a
| psychological experiment, "the opposite" is ill defined.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I don't want to discount the replication crisis, but I'd
| like to ask you the same question again: how, specifically,
| do you design _any_ psychological study that you can 't
| discard with "well, they could be faking it"?
| joebob42 wrote:
| It being extremely difficult or impossible to design a
| convincing study doesn't make the other ones convincing.
| Timon3 wrote:
| I am not saying that any study is or is not convincing. I
| am literally just asking: how could you define a test for
| this? I am not stating that any individual study is good
| or bad or anything in between. I want to know: if I
| design a study, how do I design it in a way that makes it
| a good study in regards to this question?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it is reasonable to expect for a person on
| in a sort of informal online conversation like this to be
| able to define a bulletproof experiment for the topic.
|
| Let's apply a similar logic to something that is clearly
| possible to design an experiment around. How about
| detecting neutrinos? If we were commenting on an article
| about detecting neutrinos by dropping a piece of paper
| and seeing if it bounced around a bit on the way down, I
| think we'd all identify that as not a very good
| experiment. But, I could not design a very good
| experiment for detecting neutrinos. And, this doesn't say
| much about whether or not neutrinos exist, I'm just not a
| physicist.
|
| So, if posed with that question, I would not have a good
| response. Despite this, I would still believe the dropped
| piece of paper experiment was not very good.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > I don't think it is reasonable to expect for a person
| on in a sort of informal online conversation like this to
| be able to define a bulletproof experiment for the topic.
|
| I am allowed to ask, right? It doesn't seem crazy to me
| that when someone criticizes a study, someone else will
| ask "how could you solve the problem you describe?". I
| would like to know if someone has any idea on how to
| falsify it, because if someone were to find one, it might
| convince me of the criticism.
|
| > Let's apply a similar logic to something that is
| clearly possible to design an experiment around. How
| about detecting neutrinos? If we were commenting on an
| article about detecting neutrinos by dropping a piece of
| paper and seeing if it bounced around a bit on the way
| down, I think we'd all identify that as not a very good
| experiment. But, I could not design a very good
| experiment for detecting neutrinos. And, this doesn't say
| much about whether or not neutrinos exist, I'm just not a
| physicist.
|
| I don't think that is a good comparison. A better one
| would be if there is an experiment, and then someone
| comments on the results by saying "well, it could have
| been dark matter particles interacting in some way". It
| might as well be true, but it's not definitive if they
| don't explain how to measure and isolate that. Someone
| else asking for how they would design the experiment to
| take this into account seems like a completely reasonable
| ask to me.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I don't think you're asking an unfair question. Its now
| been answered, by many people, to the effect of "this
| study isn't convincing, but we don't see a simple way to
| design a convincing one".
| Timon3 wrote:
| I suppose it has. The answer is (hopefully
| understandably) disappointing, since it can be used to
| discard any scientific efforts involving subjects, but
| it's what I expected.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Measure changes in something the test subject isn't
| expecting and wouldn't realize they need to fake? E.g. if
| you had to sit in the waiting room for 5 extra minutes,
| your test score changes like this.
|
| Measure differences below conscious control, like
| reaction speed to positive/negative/etc words after
| exposure to certain inputs.
| Timon3 wrote:
| > Measure changes in something the test subject isn't
| expecting and wouldn't realize they need to fake? E.g. if
| you had to sit in the waiting room for 5 extra minutes,
| your test score changes like this.
|
| I can discard this by saying "well, the subject might
| behave subconsciously differently when they know they are
| in any experiment". How would you refute that?
|
| > Measure differences below conscious control, like
| reaction speed to positive/negative/etc words after
| exposure to certain inputs.
|
| What if there are phenomena that don't correlate with the
| differences you know to measure?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is too vague. Hiw would you test this hypothesys,
| that this stidu is teating, by measuring such unrelated
| signals?
| yencabulator wrote:
| Perhaps this hypothesis simply is harder to test
| scientifically. It seems lots of claims in psychology are
| not verifiable.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It might not be possible with current knowledge, putting
| psychology outside the realm of the sciences.
| ineptech wrote:
| Was this not the whole point of the study in TFA
| comparing false memories of crimes to false memories of
| non-crimes? The assumption that people would be less
| willing to admit to a serious crime than to having been
| injured?
|
| > Intriguingly, the criminal false events seemed to be
| just as believable as the emotional ones. Students tended
| to provide the same number of details, and reported
| similar levels of confidence, vividness, and sensory
| detail for the two types of event.
| [deleted]
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Well, maybe you don't? Science gives you the tools to
| know when you're wrong. If you can't falsify your
| hypotheses then you're not generating new knowledge. So
| maybe stop trying and do something else.
|
| Which is not to say that we should stop psychological
| research- not at all. But maybe we should not treat
| psychology in the same way we treat science.
| Specifically, we shouldn't be trying to apply the
| scientific method in psychological research. Applying the
| tools of science in a domain where no scientific
| questions can be answered is only going to produce noise
| and confusion.
|
| I know that would really hurt psychologists' pride but,
| for example, philosophers are not considered scientists
| and yet their contributions to human knowledge are
| difficult to deny.
|
| Similar points have been made much more forcefully in
| "Cargo Cult Science", but I don't want to be mean myself.
| I'm just trying to say that I think there's far better
| ways to do psychology than trying to do it like it's
| physics or chemistry.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I'm sure many of us have experienced the effect where you're
| having an argument with someone where it doesn't really matter
| and the other person agrees with you to shut you up.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well this is just the latest of many studies suggesting memory
| is extremely malleable and suggestible.
| canjobear wrote:
| If the studies are based on asking people if they remember
| the false event, they are susceptible to the same critique.
| tzs wrote:
| I recall studies (...unless my recollection is a false
| memory!) where the subjects didn't know they were in an
| experiment.
|
| For example in one I remember the researchers got the
| parents and older adult siblings at a family gathering to
| start talking about funny things that happened when the
| kids were growing up. That included a made up story about
| when they went to one of the younger adult siblings' third
| grade school play, where something funny happened involving
| him.
|
| Much later the researchers managed to arrange for that
| person to end up in a conversation that turned to
| elementary school plays, and that person on their own
| brought up their third grade play and the funny incident,
| and even added details that were not in the story told at
| the gathering.
|
| When I said the story was made up, I didn't mean that what
| was made up was that something funny happened to him during
| the play. In fact his third grade class never had a play,
| nor did any of his other elementary school classes. Nor he
| did he attend any class plays from other classes.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Some do; others involve more subtle tricks like having
| subjects watch a video of a car crash, then using different
| wording a week later to ask them about details of the video
| (to spoil the surprise, the wording of the questions
| significantly alters recollection of what happened in the
| video).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| So is the legal justice system, witness testimony, job
| interviews, etc.
|
| It does not matter if they lied, if lies are
| indistringyishable from truth. The conclusion holds.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Strong bias on HN about replication. But the ability to implant
| false memories has been widely researched and replicated. This
| isn't a stretch. Memory is very fallible.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Exactly. Leonardo Dicaprio did it
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| It is impossible to discuss Psychology on HN. I think STEM type
| personalities are incapable of fathoming that the mind can be
| studied. I tend to think that the STEM personality has a lower
| than average ability for self-reflection, and thus they still
| think the mind is a mysterious phenomena that is beyond
| science. They aren't able to observe their own minds, and thus
| think it is impossible for anybody else to either.
| Quinzel wrote:
| [flagged]
| nathan_compton wrote:
| [flagged]
| SouthOfHeaven wrote:
| [flagged]
| nathan_compton wrote:
| [flagged]
| traviswt wrote:
| It is possible to care about multiple issues
| simultaneously. Saying it's demented to care about one
| person being wronged because other, totally different
| people are wronged is a bit selfish. It's okay to have a
| purpose that you believe in, but the world isn't black
| and white.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "spending time worrying about false rape accusations in
| the present environment is demented."
|
| I'm sorry, but _not_ being concerned that some
| statistically significant portion of rape accusations
| against _fullly innocent_ individuals often _utterly
| destroys_ their lives just as much as _being_ raped often
| destroys _that_ person 's life is demented. _Both_ are
| absolute vile _tragedies_ and should _not_ occur in a
| truly _civilized_ society. There 's something _deeply_
| wrong and broken with the people who commit _either_ of
| those acts.
| greenpresident wrote:
| [flagged]
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I just looked it up and it seems you are right. But I find it
| strange that "2%-10%" is considered rare, that's certainly
| more than I expected.
|
| 1. https://www.brown.edu/campus-
| life/health/services/promotion/...
| nathan_compton wrote:
| From a Bayesian point of view, promulgating the false rape
| accusation idea is just irrational. When someone is raped
| (men and women are raped) they have a prior probability in
| mind about whether their accusation will be taken
| seriously. People they report to also have a prior as to
| whether the rape accusation is credible. In a world where
| most rapes are unreported there is almost no reason to
| adjust those priors towards "this is a false rape
| accusation."
|
| Our legal system sucks and I think its bad that a person's
| life can be ruined or seriously damaged by a false
| accusation. But it is worse to be sexually assaulted and
| not have it taken seriously. I think if you balance it all
| out, focusing on the false accusation narrative is bad.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I don't think this argument is worth continuing. Not in
| the sense of being wrong; your argument is correct and I
| agree with you. But in the sense that the site that
| started this whole thing is _insane_. If you take one
| glance at the rest of the site it becomes quickly clear
| that the person managing that site is not well.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Given the considerations I posted about above, I don't
| think it ever hurts to remind people to take sexual
| assault accusations more seriously.
| [deleted]
| jbavari wrote:
| Interesting that the entire article had nothing to mention about
| the Reid technique [1]. The Reid technique has been used by law
| enforcement to convince criminals of confessions. Many
| confessions were found to be false. In the book by Carol Tavris
| and Elliot Aronson [2], they cover false confessions in depth
| with a few court cases, as well as police techniques to invoke
| cognitive dissonance in the accused. Callout to the book though,
| for self-deception and cognitive dissonance is something that
| affects us all!
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique [2] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(but_Not_by...
| koboll wrote:
| Pretty illuminating that the origin story of the technique is
| it eliciting what was later revealed as a false confession that
| sentenced an innocent man to life in prison.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I took a cursory look through the Reid technique.
|
| It's literally just modern gaslighting.
| swayvil wrote:
| Well, it's a highly developed and systematized form of
| gaslighting. A significant technological advancement over the
| common amateur gaslighting.
|
| Like the machinegun isn't just another musket.
|
| Consider the progress of technology in the field of lying,
| bullshit and propaganda.
|
| We've been developing that stuff for literally thousands of
| years. It has surely been refined to such a height as to be
| nigh-perfectly secret, invisible and powerful.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| It's a good thing it isn't used against the population at
| scale, huh.
| dandanua wrote:
| Are you sure?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That is exactly what they were implying.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| If you're being interrogated by the police, you've already
| lost. The only word you should say is "lawyer."
|
| Here's what the ideal interrogation looks like:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=6RoKvC1qcEY
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The Reid technique has been used by law enforcement to
| convince criminals of confessions. Many confessions were found
| to be false.
|
| This is one reason among many why it is a serious question to
| ask whether a confession increases or actually rather decreases
| the likelihood that the culprit commited the crime.
| mbg721 wrote:
| That only matters if the truth is a major consideration. Some
| theories of justice don't care, as long as social order is
| maintained.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Which theories of justice? What countries are practicing
| this supposed theory?
|
| Because this greater good thing sounds earily similar like
| the end justifies the means, which could argue for
| decimating a whole village to catch criminals as long as
| "overall social order of a larger group is contained".
| mbg721 wrote:
| I think most countries practice some form of "order is
| better than truth", including the US. There are famous
| examples of US courts rejecting arguments on the basis
| that "just because you have proof that you were wrongly
| convicted doesn't give you standing to appeal".
| ant6n wrote:
| Cardassians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribunal_(St
| ar_Trek:_Deep_Sp...
| madsbuch wrote:
| > as long as social order is maintained
|
| That would rely on the participants _believing_ that truth
| is the major consideration, right?
|
| If I knew that I would have to prove my innocence, that
| would lead to a lot of overhead for self surveillance and
| documentation.
|
| Ie. If the custom of just accepting false confessions
| becomes a widely accepted practice it could potentially
| lead to reduction of social order.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In the US, a claim of actual innocence based on new
| evidence is not sufficient to reopen a death penalty
| conviction, so long as the court case was performed
| fairly.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| As I understand it, a claim of actual innocence based on
| new evidence that would have led no "reasonable jury" to
| convict is entertained, assuming that all procedural
| appeals were not exhausted.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In _Herrera_ , a majority of the jurors in the original
| case said they would not have voted to convict if the new
| evidence had been available.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The argument for this, as ugly as it is, is that
| admitting arguments of innocence at that point would clog
| up the court system and impede justice.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Here's a good article about it. Scalia's claim was in the
| dissent, so this isn't _established_ legal doctrine in
| the US, and the Supreme Court has in fact ruled in favor
| of the convicted on more than one occasion, but as the
| article shows it has actually happened as _practiced_
| legal doctrine in at least one case.
|
| https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/justice-antonin-scalias-rebuke-
| of-...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Scalia joined the majority in Herrera v. Collins, where
| innocence could not be used to justify a Habeas claim.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Reading that it's specific to an 8th amendment claim.
|
| It definitely is horrific. It looks like further Supreme
| Court cases allowed actual innocence claims under other
| standards, or for specific types of evidence. All of
| these were close decisions though, and I fear what a more
| 'conservative' court will allow.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_v._Bell
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Scalia's concurrence was focused on the 8th, but the case
| presented both 8th and 14th amendment arguments for
| allowing habeas.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Schlup was two years later, but searching just now I
| guess it isn't that strong of a protection:
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/schlup-v...
|
| > Although this is a correct ruling, the Court's opinion
| is not likely to significantly protect innocent people
| from being executed. First, the Court failed to recognize
| key points of distinction between the evidence of
| innocence that Schlup presented and the evidence of
| innocence presented in Herrera v. Collins. Because
| Schlup's evidence was much stronger, the Court should not
| have ruled on the issue of whether the Constitution bars
| the execution of a factually innocent person. The
| implication of the Court's silence is that full habeas
| hearings are unavailable on straight-forward
| constitutional claims of actual innocence. Second, the
| Court's analysis of the fundamental miscarriage of
| justice exception does not appear to contradict the
| argument that the exception is a rule of permission.
| Thus, after Schlup, Federal courts will likely be free to
| dismiss the habeas petitions of State prisoners even
| where new evidence of innocence makes it "more likely
| than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted."
| UncleMeat wrote:
| That's not the only argument the majority made in
| Herrera. Habeas corpus is a specifically protected right
| by the Constitution. The argument wasn't just "this is
| impractical." The argument was "a guilty conviction that
| sentences a person to death is not a violation of habeas
| corpus _even if you are actually innocent_ and we all
| agree that they are innocent ".
| gweinberg wrote:
| Not really. Lots of societies have required accused
| criminals to be tortured until they confess. Presumably
| they would generally only torture people they believed
| were guilty, but there was no reason to be more confident
| the person was guilty after confession than before. The
| confession was purely of ritual significance.
| madsbuch wrote:
| > Presumably they would generally only torture people
| they believed were guilty,
|
| so in their system of belief, they are truthfully guilty.
|
| the question I am asking is whether you can divorce truth
| from confession.
|
| if the society cannot believe that a confessing person is
| indeed guilty, then it will not uphold societal order.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There are FOUR lights!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| (2015)
| analog31 wrote:
| I'm reminded of a famous case in Chicago in which a juvenile
| confessed to murdering his mother, and even offered many details
| that could only have been known to the person who committed the
| crime. There were calls for trying the kid as an adult, reviving
| the death penalty, etc.
|
| Then it was discovered that the police had gotten their files
| mixed up, and the kid had actually confessed to the wrong crime.
| qup wrote:
| Can you re-word this? It's hard to understand what you mean.
|
| Are you saying his mother was murdered, he confessed, but they
| mixed up the "unknowable details" from another crime, prompted
| the boy into knowing those, and then he confessed the
| unknowable details from another murder?
|
| It seems weird to say "he confessed to the wrong crime" given
| the circumstances, so I can't figure it out any other way.
| pests wrote:
| To me it sounds like he was in custody for an unrelated case
| and was questioned on the murdered mother case and admitted
| to all those details.
|
| Who knows though until the original poster decides to come
| back.
| bena wrote:
| "Chicago" and "false confession" turns up way more hits than
| it should. I couldn't find a story that matched those
| particular details. I've found others, like one where a kid
| was put in prison for confessing to fatally stabbing a woman.
| A woman, who was choked and beaten to death, not stabbed. Not
| even once.
|
| And the same cold reading techniques that allow psychics to
| know intimate details of your life can be done in reverse to
| get people to admit to details they shouldn't know. If the
| victim wore a red shirt. You don't ask what color shirt they
| were wearing, you ask if they were wearing a red shirt. If
| they say "I don't know", you tell them that's not good
| enough. They need to answer "yes" or "no". You got a 50/50
| chance for them to admit it was red. And if it was pink, when
| they say, "I don't know", you can then say, "Would you say it
| was more of a pink than a red?".
|
| Regardless, you badger, intimidate, and coerce into getting
| them to come to the same conclusion you did before you walked
| into the room. That they did it.
| analog31 wrote:
| Yes, exactly as you describe.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| That's why confession obtained in unrestricted police
| interrogation can't be the only part of justice process. There
| first has to be evidence to detain and interrogate someone in the
| first place. The suspect must be informed of the right to remain
| silent and consequences of saying anything, and given an option
| to consult with a lawyer. Judges and juries should demand that
| collaborating evidence is presented to show that confession
| confirmed aspects of the crime that were not publicly known.
|
| If someone is well aware that they will end up in prison if they
| "remember" something from teenager years and that they don't have
| to say anything / are free to go, they will be much less likely
| to play along vs a student who knows they are part of a study
| with no real life consequences.
| [deleted]
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| If there was the political will for it, nothing about our legal
| system makes it impossible to prohibit admitting confessions as
| evidence in court. We could just say "those are never evidence,
| the prosecution isn't allowed to introduce them or even hint
| that they have occurred".
|
| Police could still use them as a lead, to track down real
| evidence. If the culprit claims to have disposed of the murder
| weapon and they discover the weapon where he said it was,
| that's real evidence.
|
| But more generally, eyewitness testimony itself (of which
| confessions are just a special variant of) should be
| inadmissible. Professionals giving professional testimony from
| notes and reports they have compiled should be the whole of it.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| > There first has to be evidence to detain and interrogate
| someone in the first place.
|
| No there isn't. The cops can just claim you were in the are-
| even if you weren't. And no, "asleep in my bed because the
| crime happened at 3 am" happens to not be an alibi.
|
| > Judges and juries should demand that corroborating evidence
| is presented to show that confession confirmed aspects of the
| crime that were not publicly known.
|
| It's actually possible to coerce someone into confessing with
| details not even they know of, with the police nudging them
| towards details of the case not publicly known. "No, you're
| lying about killing him with handgun, it's not a nicer way to
| kill someone's than how you actually did it, you wanted to get
| up close and personal didn't you".
|
| > If someone is well aware that they will end up in prison if
| they "remember" something from teenager years and that they
| don't have to say anything / are free to go, they will be much
| less likely to play along vs a student who knows they are part
| of a study with no real life consequences.
|
| Okay, but a student also isn't being held and gaslit well into
| the night with no sleep, food, or water, constantly told "if
| you just cooperate we can help you" (a complete lie) by the
| cops.
| lisasays wrote:
| I wonder if analogs can be found -- for example, in the way some
| people blame themselves for the "crime" of letting a marriage or
| relationship fail. Or allow themselves to be consumed by guilt
| when a loved one succumbs to an illness, or is lost in a horrible
| accident (that they feel they could have prevented, or reacted
| more quickly to somehow).
| fisot wrote:
| > ~70+ %
|
| I wonder if this is an inherent brain bias thing, leaving some
| more susceptible than others.
| treeman79 wrote:
| A good portion of the population now believes that their are
| more than 2 genders and that a person can switch genders. Same
| people who won't get a kid a tattoo so believe small children
| should be sterilized for life.
|
| People can be made to believe almost anything.
| sin7 wrote:
| Even worse, a good portion of the population believes that a
| good portion now believes that ... whatever you just said.
| And this good portion is annoying. Bring up nonsense like
| this in conversations where it does not fit, in the middle of
| dinner, in the middle of pumping gas. Like damn, I'm watching
| out for one of those kids with a gun just waiting to exhibit
| his mental health and you want me to worry about the guy in a
| dress?
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Your comment is straight out emotional. No substance or
| real argument whatsoever.
| sin7 wrote:
| Yeah. So?
|
| Make no mistake about it, there is no argument. We are
| not negotiating. I'm not recognizing anything that was
| said. Like hearing my nephew cracking up over saying
| poop, it was cute the first time. It's time for new
| material yungin'.
| broupannoiffuto wrote:
| [flagged]
| kneebonian wrote:
| > The researchers identified a total of 60 students who had not
| been involved in any of the crimes designated as false memory
| targets in the study and who otherwise met the study criteria.
| These students were brought to the lab for three 40-minute
| interviews that took place about a week apart.
|
| Psychology is the study of 18-25 year old undergrads.
| [deleted]
| pushcx wrote:
| The paper itself: https://sci-
| hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562862
| frogger8 wrote:
| So many devs like me have wrote, approved and even committed code
| that we eventually convinced ourselves was correct.
| chmaynard wrote:
| I don't need convincing. When something bad happens, I always
| feel responsible.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Couldn't find what I was looking for in a store? Better walk
| out feeling like I took money out of the cash register.
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| Especially innocent people under first time interrogation.
| Police, prosecutors and judges know this full well. Anything for
| conviction rates.
|
| I do not believe for a second you can convince any innocent
| person rhey have commites any serious crime unless they suffer
| from heavy amnesia.
| Garvi wrote:
| I believe if a concentrated effort was made on social media to
| censor all talk of "round earth theories" (the exception being
| posts that are sufficiently dogpiled and ridiculed, to be made
| example of), creating a fake display of global unified flat earth
| thinking; given only a few months, 99% would turn flat-earthers.
| I also believe the only reason this has not happened yet is
| because there isn't any real profit in doing it. Social media is
| an incredibly powerful tool for manipulating people by displaying
| a fake image of them being alone in their way of thinking and in
| need of readjustment or risk ostracization. Ironically I couldn't
| explain on a better example, as mentioning cases closer to
| reality would just get this post censored. And I'm not talking
| about vaccines, gender or race theory. And if you can't
| immediately think of 20 things you're just not allowed to say on
| any platform, you're just not thinking anymore.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think most scientific theories, if given false data and
| evidence, would no longer be believed. That's just because most
| people have very little direct evidence of the root of most
| phenomena. This seems very different than convincing me that I
| committed a crime that I didn't.
| beecafe wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| gweinberg wrote:
| SORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political
| influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes
| was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates
| that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to
| the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle
| agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively
| asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer
| without knowing it. --Ambrose Bierce
| tomohawk wrote:
| This is one of many reasons why you should never talk to police.
| There's nothing you can say that will better your position, and
| almost anything you do say will hurt your position. Famous video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE&pp=ygUUZG9uJ3Qgd...
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Just hope that you're not in a jurisdiction in which silence
| can be used against you (such as the UK)
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that
| suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely
| believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn't actually
| commit.
|
| It's been known for like dozens of years at least. What happened
| in soviet Russia and in China during the cultural revolution was
| all about making people convinced that they had committed crimes
| and that they deserved their punishment, and it worked very well.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or you know, it being the standard work process for police
| these days apparently, so they can pat themselves on the back
| and go home early: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCNQ0xksZ4
| emodendroket wrote:
| Unfortunately you do not have to look to the past or the other
| side of the globe to find an epidemic of false confessions.
| splendor_spoon wrote:
| What does this peppering of whataboutism add to the
| conversation?
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think trying to do apply this finding to an ongoing
| injustice is more urgent than cataloguing the failings of a
| defunct state.
| splendor_spoon wrote:
| You are welcome to add those points to the discussion but
| right now all we have a statement of, 'but... but... they
| do it too!'.
|
| I appreciate the downvote though.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Somehow your call for them to add more points to the
| discussion adds even less to the discussion. Maybe that's
| the cause of your down votes.
| splendor_spoon wrote:
| Fair enough.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I can't downvote your replies (I'm pretty sure in general
| you can't downvote any replies to yourself on HN) so
| you'll have to take that complaint up with someone else.
| Anyway, what, I'm "more than welcome" to add these points
| but in some other, unspecified way than I did that you
| would have preferred? I'm not really sure what your issue
| is. I think it's encouraging complacency to say these
| things happened in the Orient decades ago and not they're
| happening right now, every day, in our own backyards.
| splendor_spoon wrote:
| Ooof. Well that is rather uncalled for.
|
| https://aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/whats_the
| _ma...
|
| Moving on...
|
| The GP quoted the article and found interesting anecdotes
| of said quote in history and brought them into the
| discussion with background information backing up the
| anecdotes. That's interesting and additive to the
| discussion! Your comment did none of that except to
| slander another side of the world. This is not to say
| that there are not examples that would support your
| point, you just apparently don't feel the need to add
| anything more!
|
| Working with you on being a better citizen of society
| (please update your terminology...) is also not
| interesting or additive to this thread. So I am going to
| leave it at that. Have a nice day.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm familiar with the connotations of the term "Orient,"
| but that was kind of the point of using it in this
| instance -- I think having Maoist struggle sessions be
| the first thing that comes to mind is the same kind of
| thinking about how something is exotic and foreign when
| it isn't. Maybe you would have gotten my point better if
| I put the term in scare quotes. I think the attacks on me
| as "not a decent member of society" are just kind of
| personal attacks that aren't very germane to the
| discussion.
|
| I think the whole charge of "whataboutism" is pretty
| bankrupt for reasons I think this article pretty
| accurately sums up:
| https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-
| whatab...
|
| > Try to imagine the following world: the Chinese
| Communist Party accuses the U.S. of crimes against
| humanity in the Middle East, and Washington does not turn
| around and say something like, "What are you talking
| about! You have one million people in re-education camps
| in the Xinjiang Province!" In this imaginary world, I
| guess, US officials would respect the fact that China is
| only talking about the Middle East right now, and out of
| politeness refuse to talk about anything else. To do so
| would be crude whataboutism.
|
| > Can you imagine that happening? Of course not. English-
| language commentators would contest the right of Xi
| Jinping to set the terms of the debate, and they'd use
| the opportunity to draw attention to human rights
| violations in China, which would be a good thing.
| Because, I think, it's good when we expose and condemn
| any crimes against humanity, no matter the motivations
| for the revelation.
|
| > Let's try an arena much smaller than the geopolitical.
| What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:
|
| > "Susan, you didn't take out the trash!" he says.
|
| > "Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your
| life," she replies.
|
| > Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a
| copy of The Economist, and say, "Susan, this is not about
| me. I can't believe you are doing whataboutism"?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The problem with whataboutism is when it's used by an
| abusive party to try to get the other abusive party to
| jointly agree that each party's abuse is okay.
|
| Other than that, yes, it's good to expose abuses (as long
| as over-exposure isn't being used to swamp out public
| awareness or caring of other abuses).
| tacocataco wrote:
| Downvoting has a high positive karma requirement IIRC.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm allowed to downvote comments that aren't replies to
| me all I want.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It's 500. You'll get there eventually. If you click on
| emodendroket's name you'll see that they have over 20
| thousand.
| antifa wrote:
| Mentioning the USSR in a thread about Western researchers
| researching phenomenon that happens in the West while in
| the West: not whataboutism.
|
| Pointing out the thing Western researchers were researching
| about in the West on Western subjects might happen in the
| West: extreme, egrecious, purely churlish whataboutism!
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Indeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal
| justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving
| a truly fair trial to the vast majority of the accused. The
| system would grind to a halt without the _vast_ majority of
| cases ending in plea bargains, and we have pretty good
| reasons to suspect that common police interrogation tactics
| (often functionally indistinguishable from psychological
| abuse) tend to produce false confessions [1] [2].
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-
| crim...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-
| confessions...
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| There actually have been cases where public defenders have
| used this to organize and demand better treatment for
| themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all
| convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously,
| thereby forcing the court into a situation where they
| cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a
| reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished
| more civil resistance like this happened, but I know how
| career-threatening a stunt like this could be.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think a bigger issue in this case might be there public
| defenders are oversubscribed and sometimes not acting
| with all the vigor one might wish.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I think there is a worse problem still... I could
| tolerate exhausted public defenders putting up a weak
| fight. After all, even a weak effort is still effort.
|
| But who do these public defenders identify with? They
| went to law school too, they passed the bar too. Their
| careers 15 years from now will look much like the
| prosecutors' careers. Hell, they might be sitting behind
| a bench, they're on the right career track.
|
| If they identify with the other lawyers and the judges,
| then they might not be putting any effort into it at all.
| They might instead be in the business of conducting their
| "clients" through the plea bargain pipeline, and act as
| if their duties primarily revolve around making certain
| that pipeline doesn't get clogged up.
|
| This wouldn't be all public defenders, mind you. But even
| a minor fraction of public defenders acting in this way
| would be horrific.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yeah, I was being somewhat polite with the way I stated
| it... A PD who meets you at the last minute and just
| shepherds you through plea bargaining wouldn't be a
| surprise, and horror stories of them dozing off in court
| and the like abound.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This was published 8 years ago. Makes me wonder if it's
| replicated yet or if anyone has tried.
|
| I certainly am no fan of the reliability of human memory. It
| surprises me that more people aren't skeptical just from their
| own experiences. So many times I've told stories of things I did
| or remember from when I was young, especially to my wife, only to
| eventually visit my parents and find out I'm wrong and that never
| happened.
|
| And, of course, among my earlier memories are from kindergarten.
| I remember seeing the Challenger explosion happen in class and I
| remember missing half the year because of pneumonia. They can't
| possibly both be true because they'd have happened at the same
| time, but I remember both nonetheless. Is my memory of watching
| the OJ verdict live in high school history class also false? I
| have no idea, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. I have
| no idea how much of my remembered life actually happened without
| independent corroboration.
|
| It leads to such conflicted feelings when the subject comes up of
| people remembering childhood abuse they'd "suppressed." No doubt
| many more children are abused than remember and many, if not
| most, abusers never come to justice. But also no doubt many of
| these memories, like the entirety of the Satanic Panic, never
| happened, and many people are in prison or registered for life
| unable to get a regular job, who never did anything.
|
| It's worth remembering this as we see the development in real
| time of LLMs and other somewhat intelligent tools that are able
| to just make shit up and seem totally confident about it. They're
| not the only ones that hallucinate. _All_ prediction and recall
| systems that are inherently probabilistic but need to tell only
| one story are likely to be susceptible to this kind of thing,
| including any and every AI we will ever develop, including
| ourselves. Claims need to have evidence and be independently
| verifiable or you shouldn 't trust them. Even your own claims.
| [deleted]
| sonorous_sub wrote:
| RIP Uncle Ted
| Aerroon wrote:
| I wonder if this is why people can become angry and aggressive
| when you accuse them of something. That would provide a natural
| defense against this kind of suggestibility.
|
| It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they
| would overpower you, but a few thousand years ago? I think it
| could've worked.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| I can hear the police response now. "Why are you so angry about
| me accusing you of committing such a heinous crime that may
| even bear the death penalty if you didn't do it?"
| Aerroon wrote:
| "Because it's insulting that you think so lowly of me!"
| Jalad wrote:
| Wrong! "I'm invoking my right to remain silent, and I want
| my lawyer"
|
| Then you proceed to say nothing, no matter how much they're
| trying to provoke you. You also get a phone call
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
| tacocataco wrote:
| "Stop resisting" as they do whatever they want to you.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Thinking about anger as a defense makes a lot of sense to me.
| The cost to the individual whose opinion might be changed is
| pretty big: you will have to re-evaluate any thoughts that
| branches off the thought that is being challenged, so it might
| have a cascading effect. There needs to either be some natural
| stopping points (i.e. the thought graph is acyclic), or some
| other mechanism must keep us from going in circles.
| not_alexb wrote:
| Not convincing in the general sense at least; I get high on
| learning new things that change my perspective entirely --
| and that doesn't seem to be uncommon
| Timon3 wrote:
| But is that literally _always_ the case? Most of the time I
| also like learning new things, even things that change my
| perspective entirely. But that is when I am in the mood to
| actually engage with knowledge. There are other times when
| I 'm much more annoyed by new knowledge going against what
| I already know. Let's say I'm doing my taxes, and my tax
| program has a popup "here are 804 changes to the tax code
| from last year", I will not be happy about having to learn
| that.
|
| Maybe this difference is caused by the perceived usefulness
| of new information. If there is potential for my new
| perspective to greatly help me, it might be worth exploring
| more than if I can't see any way for it to be productive.
| Clubber wrote:
| >It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because
| they would overpower you
|
| Never go into a police interrogation without a lawyer
| regardless of innocence or guilt. That's our only counter
| today.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Only if you can get a lawyer.
|
| In many parts of the world, you can't.
| [deleted]
| stubish wrote:
| I think this is the mind _defending its worldview_ , in the
| same way as people react when you question or present evidence
| that contradicts. And yes, it is a natural defense against
| changing your mind and can be rationalized as a survival
| strategy (my worldview has kept me alive and healthy so far,
| and adjusting it is increasing risk).
| lancebeet wrote:
| This article reminds me of an episode of Derren Brown's TV show,
| called "The Heist"[0], where he supposedly manipulates a group of
| ordinary people to commit an armed robbery. Apparently, in a more
| recent episode called "The Guilt Trip"[1], he convinces people
| they have committed murder, which seems even more similar to
| what's described in this article. It would be interesting to read
| a skeptic's analysis of the phenomenon, since you're left
| wondering how much is caused by people acting to please the
| observer (the cameras in Brown's case, the experimenter in the
| article's case) and how much is actual planted false memories.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDtMMsFoHuY
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AzTLw0Xwok
| DrDroop wrote:
| I remember reading a story on here about the two daughters of the
| founder of the false memory institute who served as expert widnes
| for the defence of multiple sexual abuse cases accusing their
| father of incest himself and having invented this false memory
| thing as a psychological cope.
|
| Maybe it was this one https://www.thecut.com/article/false-
| memory-syndrome-controv...
| joelegner wrote:
| Simone wielding AI nefariously will eventually use this tidbit
| about human nature to terrible effect.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| "The AI" itself will. Along with blackmail. Probably the worst
| thing (if this comes to pass) Humans ever did was make a
| generation think they'll make shiny skeleton robots wielding
| guns with red eyes instead of sit in the shadows of a
| datacenter combining n-grams into weapons
| interestica wrote:
| Can't tell if typo, or if speaking about relevant film
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film))
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| Starring one of my favorite actors, AI Pacino
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I could go for a Dunkaccino.
| Quinzel wrote:
| What a terrifying thought that is.
| xattt wrote:
| We've got to stop Simone!
| madaxe_again wrote:
| AI is not necessary to make your population believe the Big Lie
| - in fact, by applying a consistent false narrative to an
| entire group, you get reinforcement effects by more
| impressionable members of the group towards those with a
| greater resistance.
|
| This has been used, repeatedly, through history.
|
| Now, where AI could be applied would be in having a tailored,
| sculpted false narrative for each and every subject, which
| could be used for mass sentiment manipulation - profile each
| target, determine the ideal narrative to achieve the desired
| emotional and behavioural outcome, implant, rinse and repeat.
|
| Could be used for nefarious purposes, could be used for benign
| purposes - although it's hard to see anything that involves the
| mass brainwashing of a population as benign. Perhaps it would
| be useful for _deprogramming_ - undoing the effects of the
| currently prevalent methods where desirable, such as
| indoctrinated cult members, dictator worshippers, and religious
| zealots - but right there in my postulating you see scope
| creep, and that's why it's almost inevitable this will end up
| being applied for marketing and programming purposes.
|
| Remember when you first fell in love with Morbo brand human
| kibble? We do.
| localplume wrote:
| You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine
| that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but
| it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for
| marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly
| work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to
| supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as
| long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares
| right?
|
| I mean advertisements already are basically brainwashing
| right? quirky jingles or catch phrases associated with some
| food or product, that stick in your head.
| im3w1l wrote:
| If you google Paris and you get an ad for a hotel, that
| isn't brainwashing. It's fun to be radical but let's stay
| grounded here.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Ah, but if you Google Paris in the first place, that _is_
| an outcome of marketing - which is for all intents and
| purposes brainwashing. Bernays, who invented modern
| advertising, said as much himself in "Propaganda".
|
| So: Why google Paris? Why even Paris as an example? Hell
| - why Paris, period?
|
| Examine your answer carefully, and you'll see the non-
| sequiturs in our reality that we usually happily ignore.
| Timon3 wrote:
| Come on, we all know that marketing goes further than
| that. Very simple example to disprove your thought-ending
| comment:
|
| I am a hypothetical gun shop owner and want to increase
| sales, so I put up ads that talk about the need to defend
| against high crime rates onto any search that might be
| related to the local area, anything about security,
| anything for new renters and owners. Without telling
| people that the area has a high crime rate, people will
| start to believe that it does, and that they need to
| protect themselves.
| evandale wrote:
| > You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine
| that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but
| it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for
| marketing or advertisement.
|
| Many people imagine companies indoctrinating the population
| but we are brushed off with "the first amendment only
| applies to the government" and nonsense about how companies
| and platforms don't have to uphold free speech because
| they're not the government, they don't owe you anything,
| and if you don't like it find another company to do
| business with.
|
| It's definitely disturbing how people will give
| corporations leeway to inflict harm upon society because
| they're not the government.
|
| My point with this comment is that companies already use
| censorship to create a false narrative of the public
| opinion so it shouldn't surprise us that they'll use AI on
| top of that to achieve the same goals. They won't even have
| to censor people if they can create an infinite on-demand
| stream of content that supports the narrative they want to
| push.
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