Or calling in “sick, sick of the job”.
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I always wondered if it would be possible to make an app for that.
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To a degree, yes.
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I think there is an important nuance that differentiates the kind of risk-taking behaviour between that inherent in ‘pattern-matching Vs Toy-model building’ and the kind of models one needs to be able to formulate in order to intentionally deceive another mind.
I suppose you could make the argument that the first variety of human could still mislead another through unintentional miscommunication and the second variety could promote a lie through misunderstanding a situation through their weak model building but wouldn’t those cases constitute a behavioural development grown from the genesis of the differentiation Nietzsche is seeking to illuminate as a primal difference, rather than serve as a direct example of it?
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We just bought some fitness trackers and I was very much feeling like that. I feel a bit like an animal that’s been tagged for release into the wild. Although mine doesn’t have GPS tracking at least.
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According to Heinz Doofenshmirtz, society would collapse:
Have you ever wondered what it is that holds the fabric of society together? No it’s no cooperation, or trust or any of that stuff hippies want you to believe, it’s lies. All the little white lies we tell each other.
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The Nietzsche, to me, is to my first point: that we don’t have access to “truth”, simply falsehoods (errors) that have proven more beneficial to our survival than others, or even likely more beneficial than truth. In that case, a “falsity” detector is pointless, as all statements are false in some fashion, though we may have some ways of categorizing and comparing the degree or type of falsity between statements, the mental constructs with which we do so may also be suspect.
As to willful misleading, there is of course the “I did not hide the bloody knife” kind of stuff that a polygraph can test, but the overwhelming majority of what most of us call lies live in an intentional grey zone. The most frequent lies and also the most consequential lies do not come from knowing X but saying Y, they come from an epistemological stance that selectively chooses and manipulates information to meet our preferred version of reality than one that seeks objectivity. When that jackass from Oklahoma whose name I can’t be bothered to remember right now says “Global warming is a hoax”, and then “Trees cause global warming”, he’s not thinking “Global warming is real, and trees are not its cause.” He’s just saying and thinking (and in people like him, there’s little space between the two) things that he wants to believe, and therefore believes.
So I guess I think that unless this device is constantly making all sorts of complicated epistemological arguments and staking out a position on what is an acceptable vs. unacceptable methodology for forming a worldview, the devices would at most make an annoying noise whenever you said, “That’s a lovely hat you’re wearing today, Aunt Janice” whenever you didn’t really like her hat. And maybe that’s what we were supposed to be discussing, but I consider that a piss-poor way to spend a morning…
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I usually say “I don’t know what it is but it looks like it is trying to eat your head.”
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I am lying!
Your move lie detecting machine.
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“Paradox detected. Statement invalid.”
I think this is a very central point. Is there any kind of model whatsoever that can be constructed that doesn’t, in some manner, mislead? Even physics, maths and logic should be undermined by fault of growing out of consciousness. Potentially, that scenario suggests a proper understanding of consciousness and its relation to reality would allow for the development of what you could then call an ‘accurate’ model, but you still don’t easily get around the problem of what happens with the model as soon as imperfect consciousness perceives it.
Your example of belief equating unintentional misleading is interesting. Certainly this happens, and I think that you could say probably in more instances than not - The psychic limb that is driving the person at that moment of deception, or probably in most moments, is not concerned with any consideration of truth or falsehood whatsoever. The person is caught up in the process of expressing their allegiance to whatever group has grown around whatever idea they have chosen.
However, these moments of filial display are driven, must be driven, by the kind of gauging behaviour that Nietzsche is talking about. Unless that person really is a philosophical zombie, the type of belief/misunderstanding we are talking about implies that the person has weighed their options from some perspective.
The choice to remain ignorant, however socially ingrained or peer-invoked, doesn’t negate the consciousness of the choice any more than it negates any other aspect of the persons consciousness of ‘reality’.
That reality may very well include huge social pressure to conform but ‘in reality’ it constitutes merely another factor to be considered. 
I agree this notion can be most disagreeable.
However, and to Nietzsches (and to your) point, the genesis of logic is a reality in which we all partake. If there was such a thing as an ‘accurate lie detector’, (and I would dispute that such a thing does currently exist) it would have to make use of the axiom which Nietzsche describes. But I don’t think such an accurate lie detector would be purely detecting the engagement of this axiom, one can probably assume that most every human you meet will have transcended that threshold. Rather it would probably be detecting some kind of signal which embodies a convergence of that archetype of logical arbitrage, a conscious exchange and weighing of mental images.
I guess what I’m saying is that the person really does appreciate, on some level of consciousness, that they are lying and that the difference you showed Nietzsche proffering, whilst not being the difference, would probably constitute the archetype or genesis of the ‘difference’ being detected.
Ultimately, the signal should originate from the the human beings awareness of its deception, which your example of a white lie may not trigger. Are you aware of being deceptive, or of smoothing over with social niceties?
If we are to consider an ‘accurate’ lie detector, and not just a detector of qualia which amplify logical modelling which contributes to a preconceived world view.
I think.
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A “duvet day”?
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James Morrow’s “City of Truth” is another one worth reading - story is based in a society where everyone’s conditioned to tell only the truth.
$2 on the kindle - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9501D8/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_MgEXwb0CRF0SS
“What would it be like if we all wore accurate lie detectors around all the time” you ask?
Honestly, I couldn’t tell you.
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As @humbabella says, “When we are being honest we are at our least likely to say something true.”
I think having magical lie detectors would simply reveal that what we think is true of our own preferences, plans is orthogonal to what is actually true of us. We are strangers to ourselves.
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I would love this world of truth, really.
Tell me I’m dumb when I’m dumb.
Tell me when I’m brilliant (it happens).
Tell me when it doesn’t matter (It always does).
Just tell me.
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Argh! Truth be told, I was seriously hoping they would go a little deeper than this. Confabulating the tall tale with the lie, seems disingenuous. Jason Nesmith is not trying to sabatage anyone’s truth when he performs on his show, calling that a lie fills the time without advancing the scenario.
The film The Invention of Lying addressed this much more directly, where Mark Bellison scrambles for a way to use his newfound superpower for good. That story argues that certain self deceptions can actually be healthy, at a higher level than, “How are you? I am fine”
I really appreciate the difference between secrets and privacy, and lies in the service of privacy seem to occupy a completely different category than lies that maintain secrets.(privacy seeks to conserve attention, where secrets are about getting a competitive advantage) In the studies I’ve seen about this in the animal realm, lies are always about getting sex or access to food, rather than diplomacy.
As Polyamory gains traction, more people are piggybacking transparency into those agreements, sometimes going into radical honesty, and it can get just as awkward as she imagines in the show. But those of us on the aspie end of the spectrum often prefer the blunt clue-by-four , to the mystic subtle tactfulness that often flies by unnoticed.
So, if everyone wore accurate lie detectors, would we be unable to turn them off? Could we decide to ignore the chimes? It’s not like we expect the truth from our politicians or coworkers, otherwise those realms would look much different. I’d be more interested in imagining a scenario where we would no longer be motivated to lie. Maybe have those super accurate lie detectors remain silent, and then transmit the aggregated results to some kind of public weather report. The less lying we find necessary, the higher our gross domestic product. (or something)
With Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialism in the news, the topic I’d really like to chew on, is how competitive society should be as a healthy process, and at what point that turns into a pathological process. If we weren’t force to compete with each other for the basic necessities of life, presumably we wouldn’t have to lie to each other so much, either.
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