And yet, there's at least one widely quoted test which indicated that more people were able to accurately tell when a person had lied on the phone than when making direct contact.

Also, people who said the world was flat were purposefully lying to manipulate sheep while looking to the right… not simply not knowing the truth? What the hell are going on about?

Seriously Scott, can you stop it with the whatever-school-of-beliefs-you've-decided-to-follow and give us our promised game? ;_;

People said the world was flat because they had nothing better to go on at the time.

EDIT: What Cesque and RC said.

I don't know whether you read most of these comments, Scott, but I just wanted to have a longer reply to you.

I read your blog, and I read your tweets. I don't really know what to say, but I'll try to say it anyway.

I am a scientist, you see. Science isn't knowledge and theories and research and titles. Science is a way of thinking. Science is the way of arriving at conclusions. Science is the curiosity to see whether patterns in nature hold under scrutiny. Science is the ability to say, "I don't know, not because it's impossible to know, but because I don't have enough evidence to formulate the claim". Science is critical and sceptical, it doesn't look for support for a claim, it looks for uniform evidence that discredits the counter-claim.

And as a scientist, I believe that understanding is the fundamental form of respect, so I read your blog and tweets in an attempt to understand. Actually, it was because I was worried you were murdered by someone and that someone is posting your blogs now, because you underwent quite a shift in style.

And as a scientist, I think you're primarily being hypocritical. You keep talking about sheep and arrival at truth and being lied to, yet you take things for granted yourself. You assumed the Gay Girl in Damascus was real. Why? Because you were told it was (by the media), no doubt. How's that not being a sheep?

And as a scientist, I think you don't quite understand what science is. You take words out of physics textbooks, like "antimatter", and try to fit them into your own (hopefully your own), dualistic, pantheistic worldview. I always see that as a disrespect to people who arrive at actual scientific theories through scientific methods, it's pretty much like hearing about someone's morals and then saying, "it doesn't pay off." You can't understand certain things if you don't follow the logic those things were arrived at.

And as a human being, I respect your right to have your beliefs as much as I respect anyone's rights (including mine) to think they're bullshit. I don't think you're harmful, just delusional, then again, I'd never trust an overly fanatical person, no matter what school of beliefs they follow.

Of course, as a linguist, I take personal offense in your belief in this bullshit.

I also think you're simplifying the situation a little bit. People who say that "all religions share the same traits" miss out the fact that religion is not a universal human behaviour, it's just a particularly sticky one. It so happened that in our world, this-and-that system of beliefs came to dominate the world, but there have been a lot of cultures whose religious system were vastly different from the two-three core ideas that are held as universal now, and there have been and are cultures who had no beliefs. Neither the Anglo-Saxons nor biblical Jews believed in an afterlife, for example.

Other than that, meh, I guess I believed a lot of the things you do back when I was fifteen… then again, a belief that Earth is an organism is one thing, and the belief that Earth will help the Syrian revolution is another.

But going back to speaking as a human being and a member of 64digits - I just don't think you're going to get a lot of support here. Nothing wrong with sharing your views, and your blog is certainly interesting, but you're not going to do much by dumping random factoids like this.

What Cesque said.

You should always do your best to think things through as critically and logically as possible. Art has it's place, hell I value art almost over everything else, but not as a means of scientific explanation (maybe as a conduit to explain it though).

Just as often as the mainstream media is too slow to accept realities, there is always an opposite force that embraces the unknown. Their embrace of this unknown often leads to outrageous claims of "real truths" that are simply fabrications, the most dangerous of which are sometimes based loosely on scientific studies/claims in an attempt to win your belief.

If you listen to 10 minutes of speech played backwards, your chances of hearing what sounds like normal, logical speech is very high. Think about how incredible our ability to discern and make sense of speech is. It is such a fine tuned skill that your mind will piece together information in an attempt to find semblance of speech, even where there is none.

The human mind woks in such a way as to try and make sense out of everything that it takes in. It's why people see the face of Jesus in taco shells.

The world is constantly reshaping. It always has and always will. As long as money and power are desirable to people, there will be great evils and unjust acts done "in the name of justice" to affirm this power, no matter what rhetoric the politicians of the time spout at you. It truly is a "dog eat dog" world to many.

The best you can do? Do what you think is right, help others when you can. Nobody will come up with a "magic cure" for turmoil, but you can encourage people to help others and do the right thing.

It is not a reflection of your religious background or your duty as a *insert country name* citizen, but an attempt to offer fairness to others, to allow healthy growth of bodies and minds, to continue to expand your own personal and universal greatness as a whole. It's for the progression of humanity. It lies in all of us. It is universal in all humans if we don't let it die. Just don't trick yourself into thinking it's anything other than evolution.

It's true that people give off signs when they're lying, but I don't think you can classify things people do subconsciously as easily as you do.

While lying, people often refuse to make eye contact. Obviously this isn't true for everyone. Good liars will always look people straight in the eye because they're aware of it. However, saying they always look to the right is a little too specific to be considered a fact.

And I do need to blink often. My eyes dry out in specific times of the year. That's like saying people tear up whenever they're thinking of something sad, when in fact they're just reacting to seasonal changes. It's probably a little too much to say.

Some things are just overanalyzed, just like that link Cesque posted. Some people think too much, and that's why we have so many doomsday predictions.