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Idea People

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Today’s post, for the second day in a row, comes from Dealmaker and Promoter Spin Williams, who is constantly in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

Wow!

What a fine group of Idea Generators you are!

I saw lots of promising notions in response to my post about Wright Brothers Day yesterday, but two stood out because they are both complimentary AND mutually exclusive, which is NOT an easy thing to do!

First, Jim of Clark’s Grove came along with this:

Screen shot 2012-12-17 at 7.08.58 PM

And a little while later, Anna followed with this:

Screen shot 2012-12-17 at 7.08.40 PM

In these two inspired comments, you see the future writ out so we can know it in advance. Because I believe that science will develop an amazingly adept lie detector. Why? It must! The world demands it!

In fact, a recent study by the Government Office Of Falsehoods, Balderdash And Lying (G.O.O.F.B.A.L.) found that untruths are so pervasive and influential in our public and private lives, fully 68.2% of everything anyone hears in the course of a normal lifetime is entirely made up. A person who could reliably identify these fibs would literally hold the key to our shared destiny!

And yes, I totally made up that agency and the statistic. You could tell, I’m sure. But not all falsehoods are so easy to spot!

Jim’s idea – creating an infallible “Lie-dentifyer” would be a boon to all the world! And it would spark a frenzy of research and development aimed at creating Anna’s idea – an equally infallible Story Generator.

Finally, we would have a completely fib-based economy. That’s bound to be an improvement. True, we’d have no clearer fix on the truth, but all our wars would be words-only!

I can’t wait!

Your far-sighted pal,
Spin

I’m not sure we don’t already have the fib-based economy Spin talks about.

But let’s assume that down in your basement workshop you found a way to develop the can’t-miss lie detector Jim suggested, or the totally believable story generator Anna envisioned. Would you keep it to yourself for personal use only, or share it with the world? And why?

65 thoughts on “Idea People”

  1. Morning all!
    While it seems a nice idea to stick the never-fail lie detector onto politicians, especially during electioneering time, I’m not sure I want to live in a lie-free world. In fact, I would not want to be confined to that. Lies and rationalizations… don’t we need them to get through the day?

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    2. I seem doomed to be the contrarian whenever politicians are discussed. My contrarian view here is that politicians who lie are not a problem. I don’t think they do well in the long run. The ones who scare me are the ones who tell the truth but are stupid, self-serving and badly misinformed. The problem with someone like Michelle Bachmann is not that she lies but that she is passionately wedded to a conservative ideology that makes her wrong, Wrong, WRONG! on just about every issue.

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      1. Throughout the campaign, I marveled at the sheer number of Romney lies and the arrogance with which he refused when caught to walk them back. I kept wondering, “Isn’t this pathological lying/pandering going to catch up to him????” Well, ultimately it did just that! In fact, PolitiFact (often far too kind to him) chose its “Lie of the Year”, and there it was: “Obama’s promoting Jeep moving its manufacturing to China”. Oh – and then there was that election result, too 🙂

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  2. Good morning. Catching people lying would be a good thing and it might also be dangerous. Whistle blowers, who release secret government documents that let us know that the government is lying to us, end up in a lot of trouble. Maybe someone already has an accurate lie detector, but knows that they had better keep it to themselves.

    Also, the people that tell the big lies would probably find a way to make everyone think that the lie detector doesn’t really work. In addition, there may already be a secretly developed machine, like that proposed by Anna, that can generate lies that a good lie detector can’t detect. Do I sound like I’m paranoid? Well, you know everybody is crazy except me, right?

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    But everything I say is a lie. With this gizmo, I would never get to talk again and have anyone believe me! I would be silenced. As would many of the Fox News talking heads. As a skillful liar and fictioneer, you need me to entertain you. Right?

    My motto is “Never allow the truth to interfere!” Jim’s invention is a threat to my very existence.

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    1. Well, Jacque, maybe the machine should be prevented from reporting on entertaining lies as well as being prevented from reporting on white lies.

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    2. Okay, I seem to be overly concerned about defending the lie detector. However, Steve, are we really civilized? Also, aren’t there some lies that have a negative effect on becoming civilized? Marriage certainly is a tricky business. I might be a good idea to keep lie detectors away from married people who are having problems with their relationship.

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      1. G’morning Jim. Are we really civilized? I have submitted a guest blog to Dale. If he runs it, you will see that my answer is “not vury damn civilized.” And as for lies in marriage, let me throw out one example of how terrible truth can be for two people living together. She does a pirouette in the living room and asks, “Do these plaid pants make me look fat?” God help the poor slob who tells the truth then.

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        2. I was going to say that, tim; it’s definitely not the pants. Another way of looking at it is this: If your spouse (I won’t limit it to the wife) is indeed fat and asks you if whatever they’re wearing makes them look fat, you can honestly say, no. You don’t need to add that because they’re fat, nothing they wear will make them look thin. That would surely get you in trouble. I don’t ask these questions, I have a mirror!

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  6. Morning–
    I think Anna’s onto something. As long as you can rationalize what it is you’re doing it’s OK. I spend half my time amusing myself by making up answers to questions and if you say it with a straight face people believe you. It’s crazy! But it works! Honest, would I lie to you?
    As George Costanza says, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

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  7. I’ve been horrible at lying and too proficient at “truth-telling” my whole life. In fact, it downright rankles me to shade the truth (as I see it). The best example I can offer is that when I was 18 and attending the U of M, any of my sorority sisters who were sexually active informed me that, to obtain the Pill, all you had to do was go to Boynton Health Center and tell them you were married. Give them a made-up married name. I simply couldn’t do this and by 19, David was born.

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  10. We are discovering just how incorrect are our memories.
    I wonder how truthful is our truth-telling. I have more and more doubt about mine.

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  12. It seems the perfect lie detector would most likely create more problems than it would solve. It may be best if it is never used.

    I don’t know what to say about the the totally believable storyteller. It could be a fun thing to use at times. Maybe, considering the world we live in, it might not change things very much.

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    1. I think Martha might find a way to do something creative with a second bracelet like that. She is very skillful at turning almost anything into something of interest and seems come up smelling like roses no matter what happens.

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      1. There’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A lie detector can be helpful in determining the truth, but I don’t think it can get the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I think many deliberate lies are lies of omission, information that isn’t divulged that would drastically alter the understanding of what you’ve been told. I also thinks that many lies are never spoken, for instance when you remain silent and know you should have spoken up.

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  15. Wow – I’m just logging in now and realizing I missed a whole day about lies and juicy rationalizations. I think I only had one rationalization in my work day today (which was unusually busy – but also interrupted by a fine potluck midday). I honed my “tell a good story” skills in theater – a skill I’m sure Ben uses regularly. Had a professor in college tell me when I was explaining (on the fly) why I made a model a certain way that – he called me on my rationalization after I was done – that this was a skill that would be quite useful with directors as I continued out into the wide world of theatrical design. The key is to be confident and plausible. And a rationalization should be different than a lie. (Though that may be a rationalization.)

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  18. i missed a fun day, thanks bog family. i see we all jumped on the lie end of the equation but i think annas idea is huge. i really do. lets talk anna… the ability to plug in three or four elements and expound profusely is an art i love screwing around with. if youhave fifteen or twenty ideas imagine what could be done with a file of ongoing propaganda constructing. democrats could sound intellegent. kind of like obama…my passions on a disc with presentations tailored to audience of the day. i think the app would be a used and often referred to in a moment of need. reply to rush limbaugh? app launch. need to send off a note to inlaws? hit the app. keep the lie detector going for the people who think liars care about being found out. we do we really do. but this sounding intelligent with an organized presentation is something i can get behind. no spell checker though alright?

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  19. As painful as truth often is, I think a lot of friendships are lost because of the lack of courage to speak the truth. It’s a lesson that’s very hard to learn, but I know my closest friends are those who have endured the difficult passages in our relationship.

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