Everybody Lies
A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society.
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15people
2017–2025years
45% recommend50% neutral5% critical
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What Hacker News says
- Yup. I've long been semi-curious about deceit, lying, etc. From studies of how our primate cousins lie to each other in the never-ending game of Get The Banana to every day Machiavellianism.
Does the person lying to me know they're lying? Surely they know that I know, right?
I'm also terrified that I'm lying to myself. Am I just in denial? Is some level of wishful thinking necessary? What are my blind spots?
I'm no smarter about any of this stuff (The Human Condition) than anyone else.
ICYMI, I enjoyed the book Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28512671-everybody-lies
Please share any books, links, observations you have. TIA.
- > The search engine part is especially nonsense
Maybe you need to read "Everybody Lies": https://www.harpercollins.com/products/everybody-lies-seth-s...
- I would encourage you to set aside your feelings, and instead consume the data and build your model from there. Observe what people do, not what they say ("revealed preference"). What does the data show us?
I believe I have provided robust citations throughout this thread, and am happy to consider any data you might have refuting those citations; your advice blatantly ignores the data. Certainly, from a dating perspective, hygiene, emotional health, and maximizing social opportunities is important. But you will still arrive at poor outcomes if counterparties are not interested in what you offer (which I address verbosely with links in thread). Expectations are cheap to have, and the cost is borne by the party who must jump through hoops to attempt to meet them.
If aggregate female expectations are beyond what a male population cohort can obtain, what do you expect of those men? They can either grind to meet a standard they will never meet, or opt out and seek their own happiness. Is it wrong to believe someone's expectations are unrealistic? I don't believe so, that is an opinion that can be held. I am happily partnered for over two decades, the advice I give to young men is simple: rapidly ascertain if a potential partner is worth your time and energy, and move on the moment you discover they're not. If you don't want a partner, or the effort is not worth the outcome, opt out and live your best life solo. That is all you can do. ~50% of first marriages fail, and the numbers get worse for second (67%) and third (73%) marriages. Most of this is luck anyway.
(I recommend "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/...)
- Stories are powerful avenues because they involve human emotion.
Unfortunately, human nature is dark in its essence, conditioned to lie, so the truth will always be tinted.
Recommended book: Everybody Lies, by Google data scientist
- Don't have kids so no direct experience but I read the book Everybody Lies which looked at google search trends and was just fascinating and I do think mentioned that many people actually do regret having kids (and also a lot of women wonder if they're male partners are gay). So, if you regret having kids, you're probably less alone than you think!
- Users will give you the preferences that they think are important. Or are important at the point of that interview.
Analytics can give you a decent glimpse of revealed preferences, which may or may not be what you're after.
Whether or not this is a good thing, depends on a lot of subjectivity, sure. But suppose you run a porn site - if you asked most users what they wanted in porn (before they had seen any), they would probably say one thing. If you examine what kinds of videos people look at, you'll see another. (This theme, with actual data from pornhub, is explored at length in the book "Everybody Lies" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.)
Both routes (asking and instrumenting) have their uses.
