Lying is advanced cognitive function?

[BWE]

This link (http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/co-evolving-spe.html#more) is an overview article proposing a system that looks remarkably like civilization in general.

Contrarians occasionally proposed that speech evolved in order to tell lies. Darwinian logic seems to undercut this idea because any communication system must co-evolve, producing both speakers and listeners. We are all devilish enough to imagine some benefits of lying, but why should listeners to lies evolve? Once a communication system does evolve, however, an opportunity for liars arises. The listeners are out there, so lie to them and win big in the Darwinian struggle. Happily then, a recent paper finds there are costs to lying.

In the January issue of Adaptive Behavior, the paper “How Producer Biases Can Favor the Evolution of Communication,” by Marco Mirolli and Domenico Parisi (abstract here) argues that, "What you have in mind will influence what you say." Coincidentally, a recent New York Magazine essay about lying in children said something quite similar: “Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. It’s a developmental milestone.” (here)

Which is pretty cool. Incidentally, I have no idea how this page came to be open in my browser. But it's interesting. The author goes on to say:

Then, as you might expect, liars begin to appear. These are individuals who make use of the reliable signals of other producers, but who lie when it comes time for them to produce a signal. Thus, they maintain their own fitness while reducing the fitness of their fellows. Because of their greater fitness, their genes increase in later generations, corrupting both the quality of communication and the population’s general fitness.

The presence of so many liars eventually makes the communication system worthless. Listeners quit responding to such unreliable signals. Born into a world where everyone cries wolf, nobody listens to anyone. Logically it might seem that the communication system could never recover. What is the point of becoming a truth teller in a world of liars, especially when the immediate beneficiary of the truth is the listener and not the speaker? Mirolli and Parosi expected that kind of trap to destroy communications forever. Yet, to their surprise, communication does not disappear from the repertoire. After some generations of steady decline, communication starts to get better again and a new golden age eventually appears. Just as inevitably, cheaters emerge and once again begin to spoil the picture.

The presence of this cycle turned up time and again in the simulations. The selfishness that corrupts a golden age of communication is well understood, but the pressure to keep restoring communications, especially communications that benefit only the receiver, are still a mystery. The authors propose two factors that can press for communications:
read the rest at the link above.

[lpetrich]

Coincidentally, a recent New York Magazine essay about lying in children said something quite similar: “Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. It’s a developmental milestone.”
Lying can have an additional cognitive cost: that of continuing to be aware that one is lying.

It can be avoided by believing one's lies, but that strategy has dangers of its own, like falling for them.

That blog entry did not mention that issue, however. But it can explain certain very annoying sorts of untruthfulness.

[Ray Moscow]

I also don't understand that idea that evolutionary theory somehow makes the evolution of lying difficult. It's just another chapter in the arms race that fuels natural selection. Deceptions are very common in nature, and good liars can be very successful indeed.

I think lying is something at which humans excel -- but many of us also have pretty good BS detectors.

[Obd]

I also don't understand that idea that evolutionary theory somehow makes the evolution of lying difficult. It's just another chapter in the arms race that fuels natural selection. Deceptions are very common in nature, and good liars can be very successful indeed.

I think lying is something at which humans excel -- but many of us also have pretty good BS detectors.

I don't see why it would be all that different from other forms of deceit either i.e. the way cuckoo eggs mimic 'host eggs'.

[BWE]

The cool part for me was the strange loop or analog with cultural growth and decay.

[Harumi]

So I take it that if I ever get caught lying, I can just tell the person that I was exercising my advanced cognitive abilities? I wonder if that would pass muster. :p

On the serious side, I would love to know how communications regenerate during the decay. I guess it's like the pendulum effect, though that feels far too simple. I'd love to an explanation or hypothesis of why this happens.

[Dreadnought]

Yes, lying is a more advanced function than telling the straight truth. Never contemplated that before. I'm slightly surprised that the increasing presence of liars should more or less inevitably lead to the downfall of a culture though. Usually there are countering influences as well such as the even more advanced function of the bullshit detector that someone mentioned. Of course then you get the even more advanced function of the counter-bullshit detector mechanism (obfuscation), practised almost to perfection by some politicians. And so it should continue in a classical arms race. In the end I suppose there is an overall loss of fitness due to having to spend time and resources on countering lies. It wouldn't surprise me if this was one of the keys to increased intelligence evolving, not to survive against nature, but to be able to compete within the social group.

Socially speaking there are some sanctions that liars are subject to, if caught, but as lying is still a fairly succesful strategy they're probably not severe enough.

[Febble]

Well, as we evolved to lie, we also seem to have evolved cheater-detection mechanisms as well.

[Harumi]

I wonder if our current culture is a response to the cheater/liars. We're an unusually cynical generation, not likely to fall for the lies that would have gotten people even several decades ago. I mean, how many of us would actually fall for those 70's commercials? Or volunteer to fight in a war for the "glory" of it?

We're disillusioned, and our mindset reflects that. It takes a lot to dupe this generation. We've been lied to often to fall for it again.

[Cath B]

Well, as we evolved to lie, we also seem to have evolved cheater-detection mechanisms as well.

For one thing we evolved a taste for truth drugs - like alchohol.

I remember reading somewhere that there was a Roman custom that business should always be conducted while drinking alchohol because of the "in vino veritas" factor, and that a man who did not drink should not be trusted -don't know about women!

I guess the downside would be trying to remember what had been said and agreed the next day. :D

[BWE]

It's an arms race.

[Febble]

It's an arms race.

Yup. With a civilian spin-off in the form of morality.

[Don Alhambra]

(Disclaimer: I haven't read the article. :) This post isn't about lying and language at all, but really about deception in general.)

I think that lying, or at least deception, is absolutely fundamentally necessary for survival. Consider the standard predator/prey scenario where the one that is better at predicting the other's behaviour is more likely to survive and reproduce. There are two strategies that can be employed to better your lot in this situation:

1. Get better at predicting your opponent's behaviour
2. Make your own behaviour less predictable

I am currently reading a book by computational neuroscientist Read Montague in which he outlines that any decision-making brain must have evolved to use both of these strategies. I'll focus on the second one, as it's the most relevant (we can assume that the more complex a brain gets, the more intricate and better at modelling it becomes, I think, and while that's an interesting thing in its own right we'll stick with deception for now).

The example that Montague gives is that of a rabbit being chased through a forest. Now, if the rabbit ran predictably (e.g. ten feet forward and five feet to the right, allowing for obstacles) then any moderately good brain capable of learning this model could catch it relatively easily. So the rabbit must run less predictably than this. Now if it could decide to jink to the side at a certain point, then its path becomes intrinsically less predictable. However, any good poker player will tell you that people deciding to do something have unconscious 'tells' that will reveal to a crafty player exactly what their opponent is planning. So the predator could theoretically learn to predict such a voluntary change in path.

An interesting consequence of this is that to truly optimise its chances of survival the rabbit must make use of indeterminacy - it must make movements that it does not plan in advance. Then there is no way the predator can learn to predict what the rabbit is going to do. And the consequence of that is that the predator's brain has to be able to do the same thing. This ties in very nicely with the work on indeterminacy in brain and behaviour from Paul Glimcher and others.

So it's possible that in the social apes like what we are, the capacity to lie is built on this necessary apparatus for deception common to (probably) all lifeforms.

[Cath B]

So it's possible that in the social apes like what we are, the capacity to lie is built on this necessary apparatus for deception common to (probably) all lifeforms.

Built on, yes, but the sophistication with which we do it requires a complex grasp of the mind states of other real or indeed imaginary beings. It has been suggested that organised religion might have partly arisen as a result of this trait - as in the following http://www.liv.ac.uk/evolpsyc/Ann_Rev_Anthrop.pdf
For the individual who conceives all this as a good idea there is an additional level that he/she needs to aspire to: I believe that I can persuade you to believe that there are some supernatural beings who will understand what it is that we all want.

(Many thanks to SteveF for providing the link to said paper here. (http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=21873#post21873))

[Don Alhambra]

So it's possible that in the social apes like what we are, the capacity to lie is built on this necessary apparatus for deception common to (probably) all lifeforms.

Built on, yes, but the sophistication with which we do it requires a complex grasp of the mind states of other real or indeed imaginary beings.

Agreed. It's part of the modelling process: you have to be able to model other minds in order to successfully navigate through social situations. There's been quite a bit of work done on theory of mind in children, but not much in adults (however my friend Ian Apperly (http://www.ianapperly.eclipse.co.uk/) has been making strides in this area).

[Cath B]

So it's possible that in the social apes like what we are, the capacity to lie is built on this necessary apparatus for deception common to (probably) all lifeforms.

Built on, yes, but the sophistication with which we do it requires a complex grasp of the mind states of other real or indeed imaginary beings.

Agreed. It's part of the modelling process: you have to be able to model other minds in order to successfully navigate through social situations. There's been quite a bit of work done on theory of mind in children, but not much in adults (however my friend Ian Apperly (http://www.ianapperly.eclipse.co.uk/) has been making strides in this area).

Interesting link. I think I'm more reluctant to jump to conclusions about other folk's state of minds than most folk.

I wonder if, when very small children get ToM tests wrong, this could sometimes be a result of failure to understand the semantics of the questions rather than lack of ToM.

[Cath B]

While there is highly likely to have been pressure for folk to improve their lying and lying detection skills as we've evolved, honesty may also give an evolutionary edge at least some of the time.

But I suppose a truly successful liar may not necessarily be the person who lies most often, but rather the person who recognises the times when it's expedient to break his or her general truth-telling tendency and to then do so with impunity.

[Don Alhambra]

Interesting link. I think I'm more reluctant to jump to conclusions about other folk's state of minds than most folk.

I like to think I am too. I wonder if everyone does. :)

I wonder if, when very small children get ToM tests wrong, this could sometimes be a result of failure to understand the semantics of the questions rather than lack of ToM.

I would be very surprised if that were the case - for example, my girlfriend has worked in research into false beliefs/language development in children for over 10 years. Quite a lot is known about the ages young children can acquire language, even if we don't know much about exactly how they do it. If it were as simple as a semantic problem I'm sure they'd have worked that out by now!

While there is highly likely to have been pressure for folk to improve their lying and lying detection skills as we've evolved, honesty may also give an evolutionary edge at least some of the time.

But I suppose a truly successful liar may not necessarily be the person who lies most often, but rather the person who recognises the times when it's expedient to break his or her general truth-telling tendency and to then do so with impunity.

Would not surprise me in the slightest. There will be an optimal strategy. The best liars will have few 'tells' and look just like when they're telling the truth; will keep things simple so as not to get confused and convoluted; and will only lie when absolutely necessary.

[Cath B]

Interesting link. I think I'm more reluctant to jump to conclusions about other folk's state of minds than most folk.

I like to think I am too. I wonder if everyone does. :)

Don't think so. Some folk seem to think that an idea they've come up with as to a person's motives must be correct in situations where I'd feel less certain*. I'm inclined to consider such self-confidence unjustified, but there's always the possibility that I'm missing subtle cues that they're homing in on.

* But perhaps I'm just falsely assuming that because they act confident they really are confident.

I wonder if, when very small children get ToM tests wrong, this could sometimes be a result of failure to understand the semantics of the questions rather than lack of ToM.

I would be very surprised if that were the case - for example, my girlfriend has worked in research into false beliefs/language development in children for over 10 years. Quite a lot is known about the ages young children can acquire language, even if we don't know much about exactly how they do it. If it were as simple as a semantic problem I'm sure they'd have worked that out by now!

I hope you're right. A friend of mine, who has a mistrust of mainstream science and psychology, recounted a story of the time her small son was undergoing a development test. The child psychologist built a tower of three bricks and asked the child to copy him. The child duly built a tower of three bricks on top of the original three, making a tower of six bricks. His mother was told he had not passed the appropriate milestone despite her protestations that the task the child had carried out was more demanding than the one required.

But that was a long time ago, and things may have changed.

[Don Alhambra]

Don't think so. Some folk seem to think that an idea they've come up with as to a person's motives must be correct in situations where I'd feel less certain*. I'm inclined to consider such self-confidence unjustified, but there's always the possibility that I'm missing subtle cues that they're homing in on.

* But perhaps I'm just falsely assuming that because they act confident they really are confident.

To be honest, I have seen quite a bit of this with all the recent drama that has gone on. I'm not going to comment on it further here, but it does strike me as odd that some people are so sure about the motivations of others. It seems to me that modelling someone else's mind, having had none of their prior experiences, is a very difficult thing to do.

A friend of mine, who has a mistrust of mainstream science and psychology,

Whoops, biased sample...

recounted a story

..and anecdotal evidence. ;)

of the time her small son was undergoing a development test. The child psychologist built a tower of three bricks and asked the child to copy him. The child duly built a tower of three bricks on top of the original three, making a tower of six bricks. His mother was told he had not passed the appropriate milestone despite her protestations that the task the child had carried out was more demanding than the one required.

But that was a long time ago, and things may have changed.

Ha! Good for the kid. :) It sounds more likely than not actually, especially if it was a while ago. We know a huge amount more now than we used to. We know that Piaget (he of the developmental milestones) was wrong, for a start - it's not that on day 1 your child cannot do X, and on day 2 he/she can, it's more subtle and complicated than that, and it's more like kids will be able to do X more often as their cognitive abilities improve. After all, even adults make mistakes.

It's important to note as well that a child psychologist who works in assessing your child is not always the same as a developmental psychologist who works in research. Scientists try bloody hard to control for things like that because it's quite embarrassing for your work to be published where it can be critiqued out in the open by someone with a sharp mind. Plus it's just wrong.

Having said that, I'll ask my g/f and see what she thinks.

[Cath B]

A friend of mine, who has a mistrust of mainstream science and psychology,

Whoops, biased sample...

recounted a story

..and anecdotal evidence. ;)



Hoped you wouldn't notice (but kinda suspected you would). :D

[Cath B]

Yes, lying is a more advanced function than telling the straight truth. Never contemplated that before. I'm slightly surprised that the increasing presence of liars should more or less inevitably lead to the downfall of a culture though. Usually there are countering influences as well such as the even more advanced function of the bullshit detector that someone mentioned. Of course then you get the even more advanced function of the counter-bullshit detector mechanism (obfuscation), practised almost to perfection by some politicians. And so it should continue in a classical arms race. In the end I suppose there is an overall loss of fitness due to having to spend time and resources on countering lies. It wouldn't surprise me if this was one of the keys to increased intelligence evolving, not to survive against nature, but to be able to compete within the social group.

Socially speaking there are some sanctions that liars are subject to, if caught, but as lying is still a fairly succesful strategy they're probably not severe enough.

Well, as we evolved to lie, we also seem to have evolved cheater-detection mechanisms as well.


Quote:
Originally Posted by BWE View Post
It's an arms race.
Yup. With a civilian spin-off in the form of morality.

So far everyone (including me) seems to be making the assumption that lying is in the interests of the liar (unless he/she gets carried away by his/her own hyperbole) and against the interests of the people being lied to. But is this necessarily the case?

Consider two neighbouring tribes preparing for a skirmish. Both, are pretty evenly matched in most respects and have leaders canny in strategy.

The leader of Tribe A addresses the crowd and says:-

"Well folk, I have some doubts as to whether I'm a great person to act as commander, but I seem to be the best here, so I'll try. We've got our strengths but we have our weaknesses too - rather like Tribe B. So lets hope for the best and do our best."

The leader of Tribe B addresses the crowd and says:-

"The future is ours - but only if you follow The Great God Gadzib who inspires and leads us all through the visions I have been blessed with. She has revealed to me that we shall be blessed with victory as we confront our enemies - but only if you fight nobly and bravely and follow the leadership of me, her Prophet."

Which tribe would you put your money on?

Of course, leadership by the divinely inspired won't help in all circumstances as in the tragic case of the Lakota Sioux and the Ghost Shirts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Shirts).

But I suggest that there may have been a time in our early history where some folk were more inclined through both gene and meme influences to act like Tribe B (leaders and followers both) than others and that such folk would, on balance, tend to have the evolutionary edge.

[David B]

While we are talking about advanced cognitive functions aiding both lying and lie detection, it might be as well to remember that a very effective way of persuading people with good lie detection routines (which I think people have, compared to chimps, say) is to believe the lie.

Like when evolution gives people the capacity for infatuation, in which someone can say, believing it to be true, something to the effect of 'I will love you forever', despite lots of evidence suggesting that such avowals don't often work out in practise.

Temper is another example of what I am trying to get at, though it has its differences as well as its similarities with what I'm trying to get to above.

It is not good, I think, for the physically weaker person to always defer to the stronger.

Temper might be a way of saying 'You might be stronger than me, you might be able to beat me to a pulp, but my blood is up and you might well get hurt in the process'.

Cognitive function, it seems to me, in the form of lying and lie detecting, is far from the only thing that is concerned with deception, bluffing, detecting deception or not, calling bluffs or not, stuff like that.

There is lots of atavistic stuff hanging on in there, too.

Scope for conflict between cognitive stuff and atavistic stuff, too.

David B

[Ray Moscow]

Temper is another example of what I am trying to get at, though it has its differences as well as its similarities with what I'm trying to get to above.

It is not good, I think, for the physically weaker person to always defer to the stronger.

Temper might be a way of saying 'You might be stronger than me, you might be able to beat me to a pulp, but my blood is up and you might well get hurt in the process'.


It can even be a Superpower:

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/5192/mmvd1.jpg

Mr. Furious (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132347/)

[Cath B]

While we are talking about advanced cognitive functions aiding both lying and lie detection, it might be as well to remember that a very effective way of persuading people with good lie detection routines (which I think people have, compared to chimps, say) is to believe the lie.

Yes, that's true.* Such as a very sincere proponent of homoeopathy or astrology.

And perhaps, in the fraction of time it often takes us to decide whether to believe someone or not, a meme struggle of belief/disbelief has been going on inside our brains without reference to the conscious part of ourselves.
*And not a lie

Like when evolution gives people the capacity for infatuation, in which someone can say, believing it to be true, something to the effect of 'I will love you forever', despite lots of evidence suggesting that such avowals don't often work out in practise.


David B

Tide be runnin' the great world over.
'Twas only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin' the toss and call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin' as the sea.

Here's the same little fishies that sputter and swim,
Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand:
An' him no more to me or me to him
Then the wind goin' over my hand.

by Charlotte Mew

[David B]

While we are talking about advanced cognitive functions aiding both lying and lie detection, it might be as well to remember that a very effective way of persuading people with good lie detection routines (which I think people have, compared to chimps, say) is to believe the lie.

Yes, that's true.* Such as a very sincere proponent of homoeopathy or astrology.

And perhaps, in the fraction of time it often takes us to decide whether to believe someone or not, a meme struggle of belief/disbelief has been going on inside our brains without reference to the conscious part of ourselves.
*And not a lie

Like when evolution gives people the capacity for infatuation, in which someone can say, believing it to be true, something to the effect of 'I will love you forever', despite lots of evidence suggesting that such avowals don't often work out in practise.


David B

Tide be runnin' the great world over.
'Twas only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin' the toss and call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin' as the sea.

Here's the same little fishies that sputter and swim,
Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand:
An' him no more to me or me to him
Then the wind goin' over my hand.

by Charlotte Mew

'..the toss and the call in the breast...'

And 'fishes'

David B

[Cath B]

While we are talking about advanced cognitive functions aiding both lying and lie detection, it might be as well to remember that a very effective way of persuading people with good lie detection routines (which I think people have, compared to chimps, say) is to believe the lie.

Yes, that's true.* Such as a very sincere proponent of homoeopathy or astrology.

And perhaps, in the fraction of time it often takes us to decide whether to believe someone or not, a meme struggle of belief/disbelief has been going on inside our brains without reference to the conscious part of ourselves.
*And not a lie



Tide be runnin' the great world over.
'Twas only last June month I mind that we
Was thinkin' the toss and call in the breast of the lover
So everlastin' as the sea.

Here's the same little fishies that sputter and swim,
Wi' the moon's old glim on the grey, wet sand:
An' him no more to me or me to him
Then the wind goin' over my hand.

by Charlotte Mew

'..the toss and the call in the breast...'

And 'fishes'

David B

Don't blame me, blame google!

I thought it was fishes but I was too lazy to check.