Donald Trump recently lost $5 million to a plaintiff at a trial in which there was no physical evidence, but only some dramatic testimony from a plaintiff and her confederates (#BelieveWomen). Let’s see how good we are at detecting liars. First, an example from a patent trial where I recently testified. The plaintiff’s expert is trying to bolster the inventiveness of the invention, a patent on a way to deliver internet applications to phones other than the obvious HTML/CSS/JavaScript. The patent (U.S. 9,063,755) was filed in November 2008, 1.5 years after Apple released the iPhone and promised that HTML/CSS/JavaScript web sites designed for desktop computers would render just fine on Safari for the iPhone. The inventor will seem like more of a genius if the Internet is completely broken as of 2008, but can be saved by this invention.
Q. What was Internet technology like at that time [2008]?
A. It was pretty exciting. As that paper showed, it was really a time when new devices were coming into the Internet, and web pages were getting much more sophisticated in terms of the kinds of things that they could do. …
But as you get into kind of the time frame of the patents, you can now start to do — sell things, you could provide videos. Say, if you had a restaurant, you could have a map, so somebody could say, “Well, where’s your location?” If you had a mobile device, you could get directions, turn-by-turn directions with Google Maps, or at the time, it was MapQuest, right? So you could do turn-by-turn directions.
You could do add to cart, so now you could buy things directly online and have them shipped to you. We take that for granted today, but once upon a time, that was really very much a novel kind of feature or service.
Google Maps, of course, was more than 3 years old in November 2008 (an October 2005 NYT article on mash-ups with Google Maps and JavaScript on the browser). MapQuest was a 1996 sensation. Streaming video via Real Video was available in 1997. As for the inchoate nature of online shopping in 2008, Amazon was a public company and had $18 billion in revenue that year. But the other side’s expert sounded so credible, smart, and sure of himself that I believed him and I have no doubt that the jury did too! (the side that hired me eventually prevailed and did not have to pay the patent owner)
Here’s an exercise for readers: look at the video in “Mormon mom accused of poisoning husband with fentanyl-laced Moscow Mule is seen promoting her kids’ bereavement book a MONTH before she was arrested for his murder” (Daily Mail). The authoress, before being arrested for murder, talks about the “unexpected” death of the person whom, if the police are to be believed, she stuffed full of fentanyl (why did he die rather than simply moving to San Francisco?). Most people are, of course, somewhat nervous when being interviewed on television for the first time. Other than that baseline nervousness you’d expect, can you tell that the husband’s death was perhaps not unexpected for this author?
The book has been memory-holed by Amazon, but not yet by Google:
When we follow the link…
Related:
- “She Wrote of Grief After Her Husband Died. Now She’s Charged in His Murder.” (NYT) (unlike at the Daily Mail, the noble journalists at the NYT do not provide readers with any way to access the interview with the accused murderess)
Contrary to popular belief, human beings are pretty poor in identifying liars. So there are lots of videos out there where supposed experts, say a retired FBI agent, tells you how to identify liars but this is nonsense the social science research tells us (yes I know most of that is nonsense too, but that is a topic for a different day). Bernie Madoff managed to bilk lots of intelligent and probably shrewd people. So did Eliz Holmes. And more recently it seems SBF. The legal system leaves it to a group of random people to figure it out. The alternative would be to leave it to a single individual, a judge. Britain mostly eliminated juries in civil cases about 40 years ago. In something technical like patent litigation it seems quite odd to leave things to a jury to figure out — you would think that leaving the decision to a finder of fact with expertise in the science at issue, say electrical engineering, would be the more sensible way. But juries are a wild card and that is why the legal profession loves them since their decisions are hard to predict which encourages litigation which enriches lawyers and provides a pay check to all the hangers on, judges, court officers, experts.
While I bought from Amazon online starting mid-late 1990th it was in-browser and not on mobile. But I definitely played networked chess on my old Motorola java flip-phone before 2008 using non-html java app, this is single piece of evidence that shows prior art thus making patent claim invalid. If I understood the claim correctly. So I would not think twice to vote against the claim.
People think that they can spot liars, but they cannot. This authoress needs to write another book on how her kids cope with having a murderer mom.
Yes, people are very bad at reading others. I know people on the autism spectrum who don’t have the capability or inclination to make something up. Yet, they would come across as “unreliable witnesses”.
Ironically Trump himself behaved in a somewhat autistic manner when asked about “[they let you] grab ’em …”. He doubled down and said that historically and empirically this has been true.
He could have evaded and played the locker room talk card (which it was), but he stuck to his convictions.
This would have made him more credible for me.
Most people aren’t skeptical enough of things they are willing to believe. Here is one example of something that seems absurd, yet society has fallen for the analog of this and most get indignant if anyone dares question it:
https://thebigillusion.com/
“Imagine a government-created online test that 10 million students take from home with a $500 reward for passing. The tests are unsupervised. The program manager — who has the same mindset of those in the 1950s who ignored what happens behind closed curtains — proclaims, “Of course no one cheated! Where is your evidence someone cheated?”.
Would you accept that no cheating would occur? It sounds absurd, doesn’t it? The manager might argue for the students’ innocence until proven guilty. But this is only relevant to individuals. If someone accuses John of cheating on his test, John is innocent until proven guilty.
We can’t accuse specific students without evidence. But we can challenge the validity of the entire system”
Back in 1889 president Grover Cleveland warned that country was in dire peril and he feared for the continuation of our democracy.. due to problems that had arisen over century since the countries founding due to a lack of secret ballots, all voting is public. Despite the desire to believe human nature has magically changed since then, or that bad things don’t happen behind closed doors (despite the existence of domestic violence, coercion in union votes at work, etc, etc) people have fallen for the my myth that voting by mail is somehow not forgoing the secret ballot and going to lead eventually to the same problems: but arising eventually at the speed of social media in a toxic political climate due to people not bothering to look closely, wishful thinking or simply being “in denial” about the evidence of history and simple logic (see that site).
“Dr” Phil:
What will you do when your wife/daughter comes home one day and claims she was sexually assaulted? Will you say, “But where is the physical proof? Don’t have any? Well then you are obviously lying! I don’t care about your dramatic testimony!”
Typical Republican: “Those kind of people suck. Oh — my relative is that way? Well now it is okay.” See: Dick Cheney
Have some empathy for once. I know the woman sued your orange god-king, but he is in fact an admitted serial sexual assaulter.
Orange Caesar does not suppress free speech, unlike a woke organization that arrested an invited speaker for speaking within the time limit and charged him with trespassing. All for mentioning Epstein, which, judging by your post, you should support:
https://nlpc.org/featured-news/nlpc-chairman-peter-flaherty-is-arrested-during-berkshire-shareholder-proposal-presentation/
Perhaps the new rule for determining truth should be: If you are de-platformed (literally in this case), you speak the truth.
I am guessing that Phil will not wait 25 years to make a complaint.
R: you’re so right. I complain every day!
Mike you are a Dumb Dumb!
TS: Mike may not be a Dumb Dumb, but he is definitely a sexist. Nowhere in my posts regarding this remarkable new opportunity from the New York court system do I suggest that identifying as female is a prerequisite to seeking status or cash via “claims she was sexually assaulted”.
Phil, first of all me calling Mike a Dumb Dumb is one of my many leitmotifs. Kinda of like when I say n**ger whaaaa? or Obama always said if you like having a leitmotif you can keep having a leitmotif. Moving on from that…. I was in New York City 25-30 years ago and am just remembering I was once raped by Donald Trump! This bird brain doesn’t have the greatest memory but I am sure it happened, somewhere at some time. I am proclaiming on this very blog my newly rediscovered memory of this incident. I am hoping fellow readers of this blog including Pavel and Mike will testify in court and corroborate my story.
@Mike
What will you do when your son is accused without proof? Have some empathy?