#250: Lying by Omission, Strategic Incrementalism & the Credulity Trap
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Indirect Deception
I. Lying by Omission
A Math Professor Moved To A Cabin In The Woods. Now He’s Serving Time In Prison.
What has the world become? Since when is trying to live a quiet and peaceful life in the wilderness a crime? Shameful. Just Shameful.
Or…this headline is an example of Lying by Omission, which happens when you make a technically true statement but leave out crucial context, so the listener forms a misleading conclusion.
The math professor in question happened to be Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In between his retreat to the woods and his imprisonment, he went on a 17-year mail-bombing campaign that killed three people. In a biased article, you’d probably find that small detail buried somewhere in a short paragraph that starts with “To be sure…”.
II. Strategic Incrementalism
Another sneaky way to manipulate is Strategic Incrementalism. Game theory YouTuber Christian Rieck explains it in the context of…game theory.
Strategic incrimentalism is simply a method for getting things done in many situations that otherwise would not have been able to get done. […]
This means that they ultimately need a step-by-step method […]: that at each stage of the game that emerges, they repeatedely create a situation of interest that ensures that ultimately many people in this one situation say, “yes, that’s what we want,“ but don’t think further about what the next strategic steps will be. That’s the idea behind strategic incrementalism.
—Prof Dr Christian Rieck, The end of freedom? How the social media ban silently dispossesses you!
Would you read and pay for a newsletter the government made mandatory overnight? Then let’s use Strategic Incrementalism to make it a required reading:
Here’s a voluntary critical thinking newsletter for civic enrichment — free of charge, of course.
It’s absolutely optional. But it does explain things people keep arguing about.
Since most people are reading it anyway, we’ve started publishing important government information in it, too. Exclusively. Purely for convenience.
We added a ‘recommended reading’ badge, which everyone seems to treat as mandatory. 🤷♂️
So anyway, it’s basically required reading now, even though no one remembers deciding that.
Guys, this government-mandated critical-thinking newsletter has really blown up. I’m afraid we have to put it behind a paywall. You know, to keep it sharp and relevant for you.
III. Credulity Trap
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer describes a simple technique to deceive a deceiver: setting a Credulity Trap.
If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every world he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.
Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look at though you did not believe him, this opposition on you part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.
―Arthur Schopenhauer
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Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com