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People can be convinced they committed a crime that never happened (2015)
- Quinzel 3y ago[flagged]
- nathan_compton 3y ago[flagged]
- SouthOfHeaven 3y ago[flagged]
- nathan_compton 3y ago[flagged]
- traviswt 3y agoIt is possible to care about multiple issues simultaneously. Saying it's demented to care about one person being wronged because other, totally different people are wronged is a bit selfish. It's okay to have a purpose that you believe in, but the world isn't black and white.
- blooalien 3y ago> "spending time worrying about false rape accusations in the present environment is demented." I'm sorry, but not being concerned that some statistically significant portion of rape accusations against fullly innocent individuals often utterly destroys their lives just as much as being raped often destroys that person's life is demented. Both are absolute vile tragedies and should not occur in a truly civilized society. There's something deeply wrong and broken with the people who commit either of those acts.
- greenpresident 3y ago[flagged]
- DangitBobby 3y agoI just looked it up and it seems you are right. But I find it strange that "2%-10%" is considered rare, that's certainly more than I expected. 1. https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/health/services/promotion/sexual-assault-dating-violence/myths-about-sexual-assault-reports https://www.brown.edu/campus-life/health/services/promotion/...
- nathan_compton 3y agoFrom a Bayesian point of view, promulgating the false rape accusation idea is just irrational. When someone is raped (men and women are raped) they have a prior probability in mind about whether their accusation will be taken seriously. People they report to also have a prior as to whether the rape accusation is credible. In a world where most rapes are unreported there is almost no reason to adjust those priors towards "this is a false rape accusation." Our legal system sucks and I think its bad that a person's life can be ruined or seriously damaged by a false accusation. But it is worse to be sexually assaulted and not have it taken seriously. I think if you balance it all out, focusing on the false accusation narrative is bad.
- fzeroracer 3y agoI don't think this argument is worth continuing. Not in the sense of being wrong; your argument is correct and I agree with you. But in the sense that the site that started this whole thing is insane. If you take one glance at the rest of the site it becomes quickly clear that the person managing that site is not well.
- nathan_compton 3y agoGiven the considerations I posted about above, I don't think it ever hurts to remind people to take sexual assault accusations more seriously.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- joelegner 3y agoSimone wielding AI nefariously will eventually use this tidbit about human nature to terrible effect.
- Quinzel 3y agoWhat a terrifying thought that is.
- xattt 3y agoWe’ve got to stop Simone!
- madaxe_again 3y agoAI is not necessary to make your population believe the Big Lie - in fact, by applying a consistent false narrative to an entire group, you get reinforcement effects by more impressionable members of the group towards those with a greater resistance. This has been used, repeatedly, through history. Now, where AI could be applied would be in having a tailored, sculpted false narrative for each and every subject, which could be used for mass sentiment manipulation - profile each target, determine the ideal narrative to achieve the desired emotional and behavioural outcome, implant, rinse and repeat. Could be used for nefarious purposes, could be used for benign purposes - although it’s hard to see anything that involves the mass brainwashing of a population as benign. Perhaps it would be useful for deprogramming - undoing the effects of the currently prevalent methods where desirable, such as indoctrinated cult members, dictator worshippers, and religious zealots - but right there in my postulating you see scope creep, and that’s why it’s almost inevitable this will end up being applied for marketing and programming purposes. Remember when you first fell in love with Morbo brand human kibble? We do.
- localplume 3y agoYou touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares right? I mean advertisements already are basically brainwashing right? quirky jingles or catch phrases associated with some food or product, that stick in your head.
- fisot 3y ago> ~70+ % I wonder if this is an inherent brain bias thing, leaving some more susceptible than others.
- treeman79 3y ago[flagged]
- sin7 3y agoEven worse, a good portion of the population believes that a good portion now believes that ... whatever you just said. And this good portion is annoying. Bring up nonsense like this in conversations where it does not fit, in the middle of dinner, in the middle of pumping gas. Like damn, I'm watching out for one of those kids with a gun just waiting to exhibit his mental health and you want me to worry about the guy in a dress?
- kbrkbr 3y ago- 2x30 participants - Not chosen at random - No double blinding - Plenty of leeway for influence by conductors of experiment I'm not convinced these results can be generalized into more than: some researchers could trick 60 handpicked students into seemingly believing a false memory for a short period of time. Let's wait if this is reproducible.
- krisoft 3y agoI don’t understand your argument. “People Can Be Convinced They Committed a Crime That Never Happened” The test subject were people, they got convinced. They are not claiming that everyone under every circumstance can be convinced they commited any crime. Even if it can only happen sometimes to some people under some circumstances that would be of great importance to the process of justice.
- kbrkbr 3y agoYou are right. I indeed thought only probabilities would matter here, when it is possibilities.
- krisoft 3y ago> You are right. Thank you. > thought only probabilities would matter here, when it is possibilities Oh! That puts it very succintly. That is a very good way to express what i was thinking. I will use your phrasing in the future in similar cases where this distinction matters.
- chmaynard 3y agoI don't need convincing. When something bad happens, I always feel responsible.
- tacocataco 3y agoCouldn't find what I was looking for in a store? Better walk out feeling like I took money out of the cash register.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- ekianjo 3y ago> Evidence from some wrongful-conviction cases suggests that suspects can be questioned in ways that lead them to falsely believe in and confess to committing crimes they didn’t actually commit. It's been known for like dozens of years at least. What happened in soviet Russia and in China during the cultural revolution was all about making people convinced that they had committed crimes and that they deserved their punishment, and it worked very well.
- emodendroket 3y agoUnfortunately you do not have to look to the past or the other side of the globe to find an epidemic of false confessions.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoIndeed. Probably the dirtiest open secret of the US criminal justice system is that it is structurally incapable of giving a truly fair trial to the vast majority of the accused. The system would grind to a halt without the vast majority of cases ending in plea bargains, and we have pretty good reasons to suspect that common police interrogation tactics (often functionally indistinguishable from psychological abuse) tend to produce false confessions [1] [2]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-criminal-cases-justice https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158356619/plea-bargains-crim... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-confessions-police-interrogation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/false-confessions...
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoThere actually have been cases where public defenders have used this to organize and demand better treatment for themselves and the defendants. Where public defenders all convince their defendants not to plea, simultaneously, thereby forcing the court into a situation where they cannot avoid violating the constitutional right to a reasonably speedy trial due to all of the cases. I wished more civil resistance like this happened, but I know how career-threatening a stunt like this could be.
- nonameiguess 3y agoThis was published 8 years ago. Makes me wonder if it's replicated yet or if anyone has tried. I certainly am no fan of the reliability of human memory. It surprises me that more people aren't skeptical just from their own experiences. So many times I've told stories of things I did or remember from when I was young, especially to my wife, only to eventually visit my parents and find out I'm wrong and that never happened. And, of course, among my earlier memories are from kindergarten. I remember seeing the Challenger explosion happen in class and I remember missing half the year because of pneumonia. They can't possibly both be true because they'd have happened at the same time, but I remember both nonetheless. Is my memory of watching the OJ verdict live in high school history class also false? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. I have no idea how much of my remembered life actually happened without independent corroboration. It leads to such conflicted feelings when the subject comes up of people remembering childhood abuse they'd "suppressed." No doubt many more children are abused than remember and many, if not most, abusers never come to justice. But also no doubt many of these memories, like the entirety of the Satanic Panic, never happened, and many people are in prison or registered for life unable to get a regular job, who never did anything. It's worth remembering this as we see the development in real time of LLMs and other somewhat intelligent tools that are able to just make shit up and seem totally confident about it. They're not the only ones that hallucinate. All prediction and recall systems that are inherently probabilistic but need to tell only one story are likely to be susceptible to this kind of thing, including any and every AI we will ever develop, including ourselves. Claims need to have evidence and be independently verifiable or you shouldn't trust them. Even your own claims.
- Aerroon 3y agoI wonder if this is why people can become angry and aggressive when you accuse them of something. That would provide a natural defense against this kind of suggestibility. It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they would overpower you, but a few thousand years ago? I think it could've worked.
- cplusplusfellow 3y agoI can hear the police response now. “Why are you so angry about me accusing you of committing such a heinous crime that may even bear the death penalty if you didn’t do it?”
- Aerroon 3y ago"Because it's insulting that you think so lowly of me!"
- Jalad 3y agoWrong! "I'm invoking my right to remain silent, and I want my lawyer" Then you proceed to say nothing, no matter how much they're trying to provoke you. You also get a phone call https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- tacocataco 3y ago"Stop resisting" as they do whatever they want to you.
- Clubber 3y ago>It obviously wouldn't work with the modern police, because they would overpower you Never go into a police interrogation without a lawyer regardless of innocence or guilt. That's our only counter today.
- j16sdiz 3y agoOnly if you can get a lawyer. In many parts of the world, you can't.
- yosito 3y ago> The fact that the students appeared to internalize the false events to the extent that they did highlights the fundamental malleability of memory This seems like a bit of a leap to assume that this is about malleability rather than just lying to researchers and saying what they feel is expected. I could very easily imagine myself playing along with someone trying to convince me of false memories just because I don't want to put up a fight against someone who is gaslighting me. Speaking of which, how is gaslighting students considered ethical research?
- emodendroket 3y agoWell this is just the latest of many studies suggesting memory is extremely malleable and suggestible.
- canjobear 3y agoIf the studies are based on asking people if they remember the false event, they are susceptible to the same critique.
- tzs 3y agoI recall studies (...unless my recollection is a false memory!) where the subjects didn't know they were in an experiment. For example in one I remember the researchers got the parents and older adult siblings at a family gathering to start talking about funny things that happened when the kids were growing up. That included a made up story about when they went to one of the younger adult siblings' third grade school play, where something funny happened involving him. Much later the researchers managed to arrange for that person to end up in a conversation that turned to elementary school plays, and that person on their own brought up their third grade play and the funny incident, and even added details that were not in the story told at the gathering. When I said the story was made up, I didn't mean that what was made up was that something funny happened to him during the play. In fact his third grade class never had a play, nor did any of his other elementary school classes. Nor he did he attend any class plays from other classes.
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- frogger8 3y agoSo many devs like me have wrote, approved and even committed code that we eventually convinced ourselves was correct.
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoWithout a git log and belief my keys are secured, I've read code I've written that I would never have believed I could have written, both good and bad. Memory is a fabrication. Scars are real. Wounds have stories.
- Garvi 3y agoI believe if a concentrated effort was made on social media to censor all talk of "round earth theories" (the exception being posts that are sufficiently dogpiled and ridiculed, to be made example of), creating a fake display of global unified flat earth thinking; given only a few months, 99% would turn flat-earthers. I also believe the only reason this has not happened yet is because there isn't any real profit in doing it. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool for manipulating people by displaying a fake image of them being alone in their way of thinking and in need of readjustment or risk ostracization. Ironically I couldn't explain on a better example, as mentioning cases closer to reality would just get this post censored. And I'm not talking about vaccines, gender or race theory. And if you can't immediately think of 20 things you're just not allowed to say on any platform, you're just not thinking anymore.
- beecafe 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kenjackson 3y agoI think most scientific theories, if given false data and evidence, would no longer be believed. That’s just because most people have very little direct evidence of the root of most phenomena. This seems very different than convincing me that I committed a crime that I didn’t.
- DrDroop 3y agoI remember reading a story on here about the two daughters of the founder of the false memory institute who served as expert widnes for the defence of multiple sexual abuse cases accusing their father of incest himself and having invented this false memory thing as a psychological cope. Maybe it was this one https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controv...
- kneebonian 3y ago> The researchers identified a total of 60 students who had not been involved in any of the crimes designated as false memory targets in the study and who otherwise met the study criteria. These students were brought to the lab for three 40-minute interviews that took place about a week apart. Psychology is the study of 18-25 year old undergrads.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tomohawk 3y agoThis is one of many reasons why you should never talk to police. There's nothing you can say that will better your position, and almost anything you do say will hurt your position. Famous video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE&pp=ygUUZG9uJ3QgdGFsayB0byBwb2xpY2U%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE&pp=ygUUZG9uJ3Qgd...
- dontupvoteme 3y agoJust hope that you're not in a jurisdiction in which silence can be used against you (such as the UK)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sonorous_sub 3y agoRIP Uncle Ted
- 037 3y agoDo you remember the movie Under Suspicion (2000)[1], starring Gene Hackman? Can’t say too much without spoilers, but it’s related. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Suspicion_(2000_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Suspicion_(2000_film)
- jbavari 3y agoInteresting that the entire article had nothing to mention about the Reid technique [1]. The Reid technique has been used by law enforcement to convince criminals of confessions. Many confessions were found to be false. In the book by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson [2], they cover false confessions in depth with a few court cases, as well as police techniques to invoke cognitive dissonance in the accused. Callout to the book though, for self-deception and cognitive dissonance is something that affects us all! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(but_Not_by_Me) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(but_Not_by...
- antisthenes 3y agoI took a cursory look through the Reid technique. It's literally just modern gaslighting.
- swayvil 3y agoWell, it's a highly developed and systematized form of gaslighting. A significant technological advancement over the common amateur gaslighting. Like the machinegun isn't just another musket. Consider the progress of technology in the field of lying, bullshit and propaganda. We've been developing that stuff for literally thousands of years. It has surely been refined to such a height as to be nigh-perfectly secret, invisible and powerful.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoIt's a good thing it isn't used against the population at scale, huh.
- dandanua 3y agoAre you sure?
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- anigbrowl 3y ago(2015)
- zealtrace 3y agoThis study was immediately critiqued for distorted results due to the way the researchers interpreted the data. "We used three different approaches to recode their data. Using Shaw and Porter's approach, we replicated their 70%. Using alternative approaches that distinguish between false beliefs and memories, we found 26-30% of subjects met the criteria for false memories. Moreover, we showed that laypeople’s understanding of remembering better aligns with the alternative coding approaches than with Shaw and Porter’s." http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/87062/ http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/87062/
- lisasays 3y agoOk, so -- half full or half empty? Or are you saying it's all BS?
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoNot quite as bad as expected. This means that a bit more than half of those with false beliefs probably wouldn't testify to the absolute truth of their belief in court.
- Nowado 3y agoAnyone interested should just Google 'Elizabeth Loftus'. She convinced people of a bunch of things that never happened, some of them very quickly. Standard example is getting people to tell stories about meeting Bugs Bunny in Disneyland, but there was also some crime stuff, I think past trauma as well. Law enforcement has their quotas and they'll use any garbage they can to fill it, but it's kind of hilarious that people just trust their memories for important stuff they can control.
- rainworld 3y agoLoftus has also been involved with the cases of [Robert Durst, Ghislaine Maxwell, Harvey Weinstein, Jerry Sandusky,] Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson, Rodney King, Oliver North, Martha Stewart, Lewis Libby, Michael Jackson, the Menéndez brothers and the Oklahoma City bombers. Completely normal. Absolutely no reason to question her work. She did some CIA consulting, too.
- getpost 3y agoArgh! The fact that false memories can be induced does not mean that all memories are false. Commentary: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-elizabeth-loftus-changed-the-meaning-of-memory https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/how-elizabeth-... Rebuttal: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-yorkers-hit-job-on-elizabeth-loftus/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/04/25/the-new-yorkers-hi...
- terribleperson 3y agoIt does however mean that if you're trying to manipulate someone to reveal or recall something, you need to be careful that you're not just making them fabricate it.
- getpost 3y agoAgreed; there should be no manipulation, but evidently that's too high a bar for most people most of the time.
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- lisasays 3y agoI wonder if analogs can be found -- for example, in the way some people blame themselves for the "crime" of letting a marriage or relationship fail. Or allow themselves to be consumed by guilt when a loved one succumbs to an illness, or is lost in a horrible accident (that they feel they could have prevented, or reacted more quickly to somehow).
- SoftTalker 3y agoThere are FOUR lights!
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoThat's why confession obtained in unrestricted police interrogation can't be the only part of justice process. There first has to be evidence to detain and interrogate someone in the first place. The suspect must be informed of the right to remain silent and consequences of saying anything, and given an option to consult with a lawyer. Judges and juries should demand that collaborating evidence is presented to show that confession confirmed aspects of the crime that were not publicly known. If someone is well aware that they will end up in prison if they "remember" something from teenager years and that they don't have to say anything / are free to go, they will be much less likely to play along vs a student who knows they are part of a study with no real life consequences.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago> There first has to be evidence to detain and interrogate someone in the first place. No there isn’t. The cops can just claim you were in the are- even if you weren’t. And no, “asleep in my bed because the crime happened at 3 am” happens to not be an alibi. > Judges and juries should demand that corroborating evidence is presented to show that confession confirmed aspects of the crime that were not publicly known. It’s actually possible to coerce someone into confessing with details not even they know of, with the police nudging them towards details of the case not publicly known. “No, you’re lying about killing him with handgun, it’s not a nicer way to kill someone’s than how you actually did it, you wanted to get up close and personal didn’t you”. > If someone is well aware that they will end up in prison if they "remember" something from teenager years and that they don't have to say anything / are free to go, they will be much less likely to play along vs a student who knows they are part of a study with no real life consequences. Okay, but a student also isn’t being held and gaslit well into the night with no sleep, food, or water, constantly told “if you just cooperate we can help you” (a complete lie) by the cops.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoIf there was the political will for it, nothing about our legal system makes it impossible to prohibit admitting confessions as evidence in court. We could just say "those are never evidence, the prosecution isn't allowed to introduce them or even hint that they have occurred". Police could still use them as a lead, to track down real evidence. If the culprit claims to have disposed of the murder weapon and they discover the weapon where he said it was, that's real evidence. But more generally, eyewitness testimony itself (of which confessions are just a special variant of) should be inadmissible. Professionals giving professional testimony from notes and reports they have compiled should be the whole of it.
- broupannoiffuto 3y ago[flagged]
- analog31 3y agoI'm reminded of a famous case in Chicago in which a juvenile confessed to murdering his mother, and even offered many details that could only have been known to the person who committed the crime. There were calls for trying the kid as an adult, reviving the death penalty, etc. Then it was discovered that the police had gotten their files mixed up, and the kid had actually confessed to the wrong crime.
- qup 3y agoCan you re-word this? It's hard to understand what you mean. Are you saying his mother was murdered, he confessed, but they mixed up the "unknowable details" from another crime, prompted the boy into knowing those, and then he confessed the unknowable details from another murder? It seems weird to say "he confessed to the wrong crime" given the circumstances, so I can't figure it out any other way.
- pests 3y agoTo me it sounds like he was in custody for an unrelated case and was questioned on the murdered mother case and admitted to all those details. Who knows though until the original poster decides to come back.
- bena 3y ago"Chicago" and "false confession" turns up way more hits than it should. I couldn't find a story that matched those particular details. I've found others, like one where a kid was put in prison for confessing to fatally stabbing a woman. A woman, who was choked and beaten to death, not stabbed. Not even once. And the same cold reading techniques that allow psychics to know intimate details of your life can be done in reverse to get people to admit to details they shouldn't know. If the victim wore a red shirt. You don't ask what color shirt they were wearing, you ask if they were wearing a red shirt. If they say "I don't know", you tell them that's not good enough. They need to answer "yes" or "no". You got a 50/50 chance for them to admit it was red. And if it was pink, when they say, "I don't know", you can then say, "Would you say it was more of a pink than a red?". Regardless, you badger, intimidate, and coerce into getting them to come to the same conclusion you did before you walked into the room. That they did it.
- lancebeet 3y agoThis article reminds me of an episode of Derren Brown's TV show, called "The Heist"[0], where he supposedly manipulates a group of ordinary people to commit an armed robbery. Apparently, in a more recent episode called "The Guilt Trip"[1], he convinces people they have committed murder, which seems even more similar to what's described in this article. It would be interesting to read a skeptic's analysis of the phenomenon, since you're left wondering how much is caused by people acting to please the observer (the cameras in Brown's case, the experimenter in the article's case) and how much is actual planted false memories. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDtMMsFoHuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDtMMsFoHuY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AzTLw0Xwok https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AzTLw0Xwok
- pushcx 3y agoThe paper itself: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562862 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614562862
- omgomgomgomg 3y agoEspecially innocent people under first time interrogation. Police, prosecutors and judges know this full well. Anything for conviction rates. I do not believe for a second you can convince any innocent person rhey have commites any serious crime unless they suffer from heavy amnesia.
- kar5pt 3y agoIs there a typo in here? Your first comment contradicts your second.
- gweinberg 3y agoSORCERY, n. The ancient prototype and forerunner of political influence. It was, however, deemed less respectable and sometimes was punished by torture and death. Augustine Nicholas relates that a poor peasant who had been accused of sorcery was put to the torture to compel a confession. After enduring a few gentle agonies the suffering simpleton admitted his guilt, but naively asked his tormentors if it were not possible to be a sorcerer without knowing it. --Ambrose Bierce
- tvbuzz 3y agoReminds me Derren Brown’s ‘The Push’. Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFpACkiZ2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doFpACkiZ2Q
- u1tron 3y ago[dead]