I’ve enjoyed playing social deduction games (mafia, werewolf, among us, avalon, blood on the clock tower, etc) for most of my adult life. I’ve become decent but never great at any of them. A couple of years ago, I wrote some comments on what I thought the biggest similarities and differences between social deduction games and incidences of deception in real life is. But recently, I decided that what I wrote before aren’t that important relative to what I now think of as the biggest difference:
> If you are known as a good liar, is it generally advantageous or disadvantageous for you?
In social deduction games, the answer is almost always “no.” Being a good liar is often advantageous, but if you are known as a good liar, this is almost always bad for you. People (rightfully) don’t trust what you say, you’re seen as an unreliable ally, etc. In games with more than two sides (e.g. Diplomacy), being a good liar is seen as a structural advantage for you, so other people are more likely to gang up on you early.
Put another way, if you have the choice of being a good liar and being seen as a great liar, or being a great liar and seen as a good liar, it’s almost always advantageous for you to be the latter. Indeed, in many games it’s actually better to be a good liar who’s seen as a bad liar, than to be a great liar who’s seen as a great liar.
In real life, the answer is much more mixed. Sometimes, part of being a good liar means never seeming like a good liar (“the best salesmen never makes you feel like they’re a salesman”).
But frequently, being seen as a good liar is an asset than a liability. Thinking of people like Musk and Altman here, and also the more mundane examples of sociopaths and con men (“he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”). It’s often more advantageous to be seen as a good liar, than to actually be a good liar.
This is (partially) because real life has many more repeated games of coordination, and people want allies (and don’t want enemies) who are capable. In comparison, individual board games are much more isolated and people are objectively more similar playing fields.
Generalizing further from direct deception, a history blog post once posed the following question: Q: Is it better to have a mediocre army and a great reputation for fighting, or a great army with a mediocre reputation?
Answer: The former is better, pretty much every time.
All of the below is speculative; I just want to not that there are at least equally good arguments for the advantages of being seen as a bad liar (and for actually being a bad liar).
I disagree on the real world advantages. Judging what works from a few examples who are known as good liars (Trump and Musk for instance) isn’t the right way to judge what works on average (and I’m not sure those two are even “succeeding” by my standards; Trump at least seems quite unhappy).
I have long refused to play social deception games because not only do I not want to be known as a good liar, I don’t want to become a good liar! Being known as one seems highly disadvantageous in personal life. Trust from those nearest you seems highly valuable in many situations.
The best way to be seen as trustworthy is to be trustworthy. Practicing lying puts you at risk for being known as good at lying could get you a reputation as untrustworthy.
Aside from practical benefits of being known as a trustworthy partner for a variety of ventures, being known as a good liar is going to be a substantial barrier to having reliable friendships.
I stopped playing social deception games when I noticed how I no longer trusted my friends who’d proven to be good liars. I realized I couldn’t read them, so could no longer take them at face value when they told me important things.
My other friends who’d proven to be poor liars also became more trustworthy to me. If they’d kept practicing and become good liars, they’d have lost that trust.
Faking being a bad liar or being trustworthy seems like a potentially good strategy, but it just seems more trouble than remaining a bad liar and just being honest in your dealings. I’m sure there are some life circumstances where that won’t work, but it’s nice to live honestly if you can.
I agree being high-integrity and not lying is a good strategy in many real-world dealings. It’s also better for your soul. However I will not frame it as “being a bad liar” so much as “being honest.” Being high-integrity is often valuable, and ofc you accrue more benefits from actually being high-integrity when you’re also known as high-integrity. But these benefits mostly come from actually not lying, rather than lying and being bad at it.
Right. There’s no advantage to being a bad liar, but there may be an advantage to being seen as a bad liar. But it’s probably not worth lying badly to get that reputation, since that would also wreck your reputation for honesty.
The best way to be seen as trustworthy is to be trustworthy.
Depends on the environment. Among relatively smart people who know each other, trust their previous experience, and communicate their previous experience with each other—yes. But this strategy breaks down if you keep meeting strangers, or if people around you believe the rumors (so it is easy to character-assassinate a honest person).
Interesting material yeah—thanks for sharing! Having played a bunch of these, I think I’d extend this to “being correctly perceived is generally bad for you”—that is, it’s both bad to be a bad liar who’s known as bad, and bad to be good liar who’s known as good (compared to this not being known). For instance, even if you’re a bad liar, it’s useful to you if other players have uncertainty about whether you’re actually a good liar who’s double-bluffing.
I do think the difference between games and real-life may be less about one-time vs repeated interactions, and more about the ability to choose one’s collaborators in general? Vs teammates generally being assigned in the games.
One interesting experience I’ve had, which maybe validates this: I played a lot of One Night Ultimate Werewolf with a mixed-skill group. Compared to other games, ONUW has relatively more ability to choose teammates—because some roles (like doppelgänger or paranormal investigator, or sometimes witch) essentially can choose to join the team of another player.
Suppose Tom was the best player. Over time, more and more players in our group would choose actions that made them more likely to join Tom’s team, which was basically a virtuous cycle for Tom: in a given game, he was relatively more likely to have a larger number of teammates—and # teammates is a strong factor in likelihood of winning.
But, this dynamic would have applied equally in a one-time game I think, provided people knew this about Tom and still had a means of joining his team.
Sometimes being known as smart is already a disadvantage, because some people assume (probably correctly) that it would be easier for a smarter person to deceive them.
I wonder how many smart people are out there who have concluded that a good strategy is to hide their intelligence, and instead pretend to be merely good at some specific X (needed for their job). I suspect that many of them actually believe that (it is easier to consistently say something if you genuinely believe that), and that women are over-represented in this group.
But frequently, being seen as a good liar is an asset than a liability. Thinking of people like Musk and Altman here, and also the more mundane examples of sociopaths and con men (“he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”). It’s often more advantageous to be seen as a good liar, than to actually be a good liar.
Thinking of more concrete, everyday, scenarios where your ability to lie is seen as an asset:
White lies
When someone shares yet-unpublished research results with you
I’d guess, based on these, that the main effect of being able to lie better is being seen as more consistent, and making complex social or political systems easier to deal with when you are involved. People can share information with you, while not expecting second or third order consequences of that. People can trust that regardless of what happens in your personal life, they will not need to spend their own emotional energy dealing with you. They can trust that they can ask you how they look, and consistently get an ego boost.
In the ancestral environment, allies and non-enemies who visibly told better lies probably offered more fitness than allies and non-enemies who visibly made better tools, let alone invented better tools (which probably happened once in 10-1000 generations or something). In this case, “identifiably” can only happen, and become a Schelling point that increases fitness of the deciever and the identifier, if revealed frequently enough, either via bragging drive, tribal reputation/rumors, or identifiable to the people in the tribe unusually good at sensing deception.
What ratio of genetic vs memetic (e.g. the line “he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”) were you thinking of?
I’ve enjoyed playing social deduction games (mafia, werewolf, among us, avalon, blood on the clock tower, etc) for most of my adult life. I’ve become decent but never great at any of them. A couple of years ago, I wrote some comments on what I thought the biggest similarities and differences between social deduction games and incidences of deception in real life is. But recently, I decided that what I wrote before aren’t that important relative to what I now think of as the biggest difference:
> If you are known as a good liar, is it generally advantageous or disadvantageous for you?
In social deduction games, the answer is almost always “no.” Being a good liar is often advantageous, but if you are known as a good liar, this is almost always bad for you. People (rightfully) don’t trust what you say, you’re seen as an unreliable ally, etc. In games with more than two sides (e.g. Diplomacy), being a good liar is seen as a structural advantage for you, so other people are more likely to gang up on you early.
Put another way, if you have the choice of being a good liar and being seen as a great liar, or being a great liar and seen as a good liar, it’s almost always advantageous for you to be the latter. Indeed, in many games it’s actually better to be a good liar who’s seen as a bad liar, than to be a great liar who’s seen as a great liar.
In real life, the answer is much more mixed. Sometimes, part of being a good liar means never seeming like a good liar (“the best salesmen never makes you feel like they’re a salesman”).
But frequently, being seen as a good liar is an asset than a liability. Thinking of people like Musk and Altman here, and also the more mundane examples of sociopaths and con men (“he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”). It’s often more advantageous to be seen as a good liar, than to actually be a good liar.
This is (partially) because real life has many more repeated games of coordination, and people want allies (and don’t want enemies) who are capable. In comparison, individual board games are much more isolated and people are objectively more similar playing fields.
Generalizing further from direct deception, a history blog post once posed the following question:
Q: Is it better to have a mediocre army and a great reputation for fighting, or a great army with a mediocre reputation?
Answer: The former is better, pretty much every time.
All of the below is speculative; I just want to not that there are at least equally good arguments for the advantages of being seen as a bad liar (and for actually being a bad liar).
I disagree on the real world advantages. Judging what works from a few examples who are known as good liars (Trump and Musk for instance) isn’t the right way to judge what works on average (and I’m not sure those two are even “succeeding” by my standards; Trump at least seems quite unhappy).
I have long refused to play social deception games because not only do I not want to be known as a good liar, I don’t want to become a good liar! Being known as one seems highly disadvantageous in personal life. Trust from those nearest you seems highly valuable in many situations.
The best way to be seen as trustworthy is to be trustworthy. Practicing lying puts you at risk for being known as good at lying could get you a reputation as untrustworthy.
Aside from practical benefits of being known as a trustworthy partner for a variety of ventures, being known as a good liar is going to be a substantial barrier to having reliable friendships.
I stopped playing social deception games when I noticed how I no longer trusted my friends who’d proven to be good liars. I realized I couldn’t read them, so could no longer take them at face value when they told me important things.
My other friends who’d proven to be poor liars also became more trustworthy to me. If they’d kept practicing and become good liars, they’d have lost that trust.
Faking being a bad liar or being trustworthy seems like a potentially good strategy, but it just seems more trouble than remaining a bad liar and just being honest in your dealings. I’m sure there are some life circumstances where that won’t work, but it’s nice to live honestly if you can.
I agree being high-integrity and not lying is a good strategy in many real-world dealings. It’s also better for your soul. However I will not frame it as “being a bad liar” so much as “being honest.” Being high-integrity is often valuable, and ofc you accrue more benefits from actually being high-integrity when you’re also known as high-integrity. But these benefits mostly come from actually not lying, rather than lying and being bad at it.
Right. There’s no advantage to being a bad liar, but there may be an advantage to being seen as a bad liar. But it’s probably not worth lying badly to get that reputation, since that would also wreck your reputation for honesty.
Depends on the environment. Among relatively smart people who know each other, trust their previous experience, and communicate their previous experience with each other—yes. But this strategy breaks down if you keep meeting strangers, or if people around you believe the rumors (so it is easy to character-assassinate a honest person).
Interesting material yeah—thanks for sharing! Having played a bunch of these, I think I’d extend this to “being correctly perceived is generally bad for you”—that is, it’s both bad to be a bad liar who’s known as bad, and bad to be good liar who’s known as good (compared to this not being known). For instance, even if you’re a bad liar, it’s useful to you if other players have uncertainty about whether you’re actually a good liar who’s double-bluffing.
I do think the difference between games and real-life may be less about one-time vs repeated interactions, and more about the ability to choose one’s collaborators in general? Vs teammates generally being assigned in the games.
One interesting experience I’ve had, which maybe validates this: I played a lot of One Night Ultimate Werewolf with a mixed-skill group. Compared to other games, ONUW has relatively more ability to choose teammates—because some roles (like doppelgänger or paranormal investigator, or sometimes witch) essentially can choose to join the team of another player.
Suppose Tom was the best player. Over time, more and more players in our group would choose actions that made them more likely to join Tom’s team, which was basically a virtuous cycle for Tom: in a given game, he was relatively more likely to have a larger number of teammates—and # teammates is a strong factor in likelihood of winning.
But, this dynamic would have applied equally in a one-time game I think, provided people knew this about Tom and still had a means of joining his team.
Sometimes being known as smart is already a disadvantage, because some people assume (probably correctly) that it would be easier for a smarter person to deceive them.
I wonder how many smart people are out there who have concluded that a good strategy is to hide their intelligence, and instead pretend to be merely good at some specific X (needed for their job). I suspect that many of them actually believe that (it is easier to consistently say something if you genuinely believe that), and that women are over-represented in this group.
Thinking of more concrete, everyday, scenarios where your ability to lie is seen as an asset:
White lies
When someone shares yet-unpublished research results with you
Generally secrets confided to you
Keeping a professional demeanor
Generally being nice
You just have to say that you’re fine
I’d guess, based on these, that the main effect of being able to lie better is being seen as more consistent, and making complex social or political systems easier to deal with when you are involved. People can share information with you, while not expecting second or third order consequences of that. People can trust that regardless of what happens in your personal life, they will not need to spend their own emotional energy dealing with you. They can trust that they can ask you how they look, and consistently get an ego boost.
In the ancestral environment, allies and non-enemies who visibly told better lies probably offered more fitness than allies and non-enemies who visibly made better tools, let alone invented better tools (which probably happened once in 10-1000 generations or something). In this case, “identifiably” can only happen, and become a Schelling point that increases fitness of the deciever and the identifier, if revealed frequently enough, either via bragging drive, tribal reputation/rumors, or identifiable to the people in the tribe unusually good at sensing deception.
What ratio of genetic vs memetic (e.g. the line “he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”) were you thinking of?