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From MIT Technology Review:
Evolutionary biologists have long thought that lying ought to destroy societies. Now computational anthropologists have shown that nothing could be further from the truth.
It's easy to see how lying reduces the level of trust between individuals and so threatens the stability of societies. So how do societies survive all this lying?
Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Gerardo Iñiguez at Aalto University in Finland and a few pals (including Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist from the University of Oxford of Dunbar's number fame). These guys have simulated the effect that lies have on the strength of connections that exist within a social network.
But they've added fascinating twist. These guys have made a clear distinction between lies that benefit the person being lied to versus lies that benefit the person doing the lying. In other words, their model captures the difference between "white" lies, which are prosocial, and "black" lies, which are antisocial.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 13 2014, @05:26PM
How is this entire study not an exercise in begging the question? Like, the literal, formal logic definition of begging the question?
Step 1: Define two different classifications of lies; one class is "prosocial", the other is "antisocial"
Step 2: Assign the lies being studied into the two groups
Step 3: Conclude that "prosocial" lies are good for society.
Pro and anti-social lies are not defined as being good or bad for society. They are defined as being good or bad for an individual. What happens to individuals in a society and what happens to the society as a whole can diverge wildly.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday June 13 2014, @08:21PM
Literally true, and yet they chose the labels "prosocial" and "antisocial" which explicitly denote good and bad for society. I read through the article and linked paper (heresy, I know), and the pro/antisocial labels seem to be taken from previous psychology publications. I'll grant the authors some kudos for questioning the basic assumptions inherent in the terms; from the linked paper:
The authors then go on to construct what appears to be a decent computer model of the stated assumptions (prosocial lies = good for one-on-one relationships, all other lies = bad for same). The model runs for a while and delivers the result that if you assign the attribute "prosocial liar" to most of the simulated actors the total network has more strong ties between individuals; conversely, "antisocial liars" make poorly connected networks with weaker ties between individuals.
So I'm back to asking how they were surprised that they got the result. If your premise is "A -> B, !A -> !B", and you encode the "->" mechanism as the foundation of your program, you're begging the question when you use your result of B from input of A to justify the premise.
Sure, the graphs are interesting, and they authors have fun commenting on the specific results they got as parallels to human society. I think it's dangerous to use this as a basis for actual human interaction. The authors built this model based on SWAGs about how to quantify human behavior and psychology; small coefficient changes would have large effects on the results. If I felt like spending some time navel-gazing I might test out their model and find where the tipping point is, perhaps widening the scale. I have better things to do with my time (like writing judgemental SN posts, obviously).
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 13 2014, @11:52PM
I thought it was really interesting article at first. But once I read on I came to your same point. They built the model around the fact that anti social lies increase diversity between 2 points. And white lies lessen diversity. And when 2 points are more diverse they will break ties, while less diversity keeps the tie....
Then they say you want a good society is one where there are more bonds between points.
I mean really??