I could tell you what this podcast is about, but how would you know if I was telling the truth? Normally, you’d just have to trust me, but in fantasy stories, we can have magic that stops people from lying. That’s what we’re talking about today, and it’s a far more fraught subject than you might expect. It turns out the possibility of lying is pretty intrinsic to the human experience, and changing it has huge ripple effects that most writers aren’t prepared to deal with. What kind of ripple effects, you ask? Listen and find out!
Transcript
Generously transcribed by Anonymous. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreants podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi, Wes Matlock, and Chris Winkle.
Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren, with me today is…
Chris: Chris.
Oren: and…
Wes: Wes.
Oren: I was going to mislead you about what the topic of today’s episode is, but I can’t because I’m in a Zone of Truth. So I have to tell you everything. Everything has to be truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because this episode we’re talking about anti-lying magic and how it’s way more messed up than you think. It’s very bad.
Wes: It’s so messed up.
Oren: It’s a very common staple of fiction. A lot of stories have it, and it almost always has way weirder implications than they think it does.
Chris: And wider and more subtle, at every level.
Oren: Because it turns out, being able to lie to people is a pretty fundamental part of the human experience. And once you change that, that really changes the way we interact with each other. A lot of stories don’t recognize this. Then this covers magic, like the actuals Zone of Truth spell for D&D, which stops people from lying. Covers things like Toph and Daredevil, who can supposedly tell that you’re lying by listening to your heartbeat. And it covers things like the Aes Sedai from Wheel of Time, who have a magical oath that stops them from lying. Because these are all different ways of getting at the same thing. And the first thing I want to talk about is the detection methods.
You need to be careful with these because the whole concept that you can tell that someone’s lying because their heart rate changes is actually pretty dangerous because it turns out that we have machines in real life that do that, and they’re called polygraph machines, and they are very unreliable. And because it turns out that, yeah, someone’s heartbeat might go up when they lie. But it also could go up because they’re nervous because you just asked them a hard question.
Wes: That’s like me at the doctor every single time.
Chris: I personally just like the idea that Daredevil or Toph have somebody that they think is like always lying to them and that turns out that person just has a crush on them.
Oren: And it goes beyond the polygraph detection. The whole concept of being able to tell that someone is lying from how they’re acting is very problematic, and it leads to people who are innocent being assumed to be guilty because they act in a way that we associate with lying. But it’s often just a result of stress or them being neuro-divergent in some way. That’s already a problem if you assume that Daredevil can tell someone’s lying because of their heart rate. That’s already spreading inaccurate and potentially harmful information.
But going beyond that, you would just not believe how many plots depend on people being able to lie, how many plot points need that factor. And this is why characters like Deanna Troi, her power is way more nebulous, right? She doesn’t know someone’s lying because of their heart rates. She just knows. And notice how her power mysteriously stops working a lot of the time.
Chris: She tends to phrase it as, “Oh, you know, he’s hiding something.” They start downgrading it into really vague terms because it’s just too powerful if she knows when something they say is precisely a lie.
Oren: There are episodes where we don’t even go that far, where she doesn’t even go with, “you’re hiding something.” It just goes with, she doesn’t say anything and it’s…but later we find out that person was lying. [sarcastic] Wait, hang on. Why didn’t Troi’s powers go? And it’s cause, well, we needed them to be able to lie for the story to work, okay?
Chris: I like to think about it this way – if all of the different conflicts you can’t have if people can’t lie. Do you want to have a betrayal in your story? Do you want to have a secret mole or traitor in your story? Do you want to have someone who seems nice at first and then turns out to be evil at any point in time? Do you want any member of Team Good to be able to keep a guilty secret? Think of all of the plot opportunities that you’re just straight up giving up if somebody can tell when another person is lying.
Wes: [sarcastic] Yeah. You’ll never pull off that surprise birthday party.
Oren: My favorite example of this is from The Wheel of Time, which I’m doing a reread of. In The Wheel of Time, you’ve got the Aes Sedai, who are mages, and they’re incredibly problematic, but we’re just going to look at one aspect of them today, which is that they can’t lie. They have a magic device that when they swear an oath on it, they have to keep that oath. And one of the three oaths they take is that they can’t lie. But some of them we know are secretly working for the Forsaken. I think it’s called the Dark One in Wheel of Time, but he’s Satan. And these ones are part of what’s called the Black Ajah ‘cause they are evil and everything in The Wheel of Time that is dark is evil. It’s not exactly a complex setting, morally speaking.
And so they have this whole thing about, “Who’s Black Ajah? We can’t know who the Black Ajah is,” and it’s all paranoia. And it could be anyone. It could be you, it could be you. It could be me. No one knows, right? That’s like a huge part of the plot. So first it’s okay, well, I said I can’t lie, so you could probably just ask, “Are you Black Ajah?” And later on we find out that the Black Ajah have a way to break those magic oaths, but they can only do it in special circumstances. So you could fix this by just calling each Aes Sedai into your room one at a time, having them reswear the “I won’t lie oath” on the magic item, because if it doesn’t hurt you to double up on the oath, right? It does nothing to you if you aren’t Black Ajah. And then say, “are you Black Ajah?” And if they say anything but no, then you know they’re Black Ajah and you can just get rid of them. And I was like, there, I solved it. I solved the Black Ajah problem. And of course, this was never brought up as a possibility at all because it would defeat the entire purpose of the paranoia aspect. And it’s like, see that’s a reason why, just enforcing magical not-lying creates plot problems.
Chris: I don’t think I’ve ever come upon a story with anti-lie powers that have actually been consistent because they are just too hard to manage. At some point in time, the story’s going to be inconsistent and break it.
Wes: Because they’ll kind of bring up this situation where this is the only option. There is no other way to find out unless we find who’s lying and force them to tell the truth.
Oren: Right. And I mean also it’s just there’s a lot of tension and conflict that almost all stories have over, Which characters should we believe? Is this character telling the truth? And here’s the thing is, it works in reverse too. Not being able to lie is actually a very powerful advantage if you’re in a society where most people can lie and everyone knows you can’t. Because that means everyone can always trust what you say. You can try to do the whole like sneaky-lie-without-lying thing that Wheel of Time tries to do and imply that all the Aes Sedai are untrustworthy [sarcastic] because they’re evil scheming women. This book has a problem with women. But beyond that, it turns out that that’s actually very hard, trying to be all sneaky, especially if someone is just like, “answer plainly: yes or no.” If someone won’t let you say five paragraphs to get around having to lie, that’s actually very hard.
And so if people know you can’t lie, then you can tell them things and they’ll know it’s true. Right? So there’s no longer a…you can’t have a conflict over trying to convince the King that he’s going to be assassinated because he knows you can’t lie, and you’re telling him he’s going to be assassinated. So at the very least, he knows you believe it. Now, in certain circumstances, you could still make that work. You could have the King be like, “Well, I know you believe I’m going to be assassinated, but I don’t think I actually will be.” That’s a thing that could happen, but it just makes everything way harder.
Chris: Speaking of which, I also want to talk about characters that have radical honesty. They’re not that common. But Elnor, for instance, on the new Picard show fits in this category. The only time I’ve previously seen a character that had had this trait (and it is a really novel trait, it is really interesting, but I think that it might just be really hard to maintain) was in the show, Lie to Me. They had a character that practiced radical honesty. But after, I dunno, five episodes, he just broke his radical honesty pledge for a really bad reason and then just didn’t have it anymore. And it was too bad because then he was a boring character. But I think it might’ve just been too hard for the readers to maintain the radical honesty and have their plot work.
So I’m kind of watching Elnor to see. They’ve had a really good conflict so far where he had to pretend to be somebody else. He was even in a costume. And he was like, “Well, I won’t lie.” And then they’re like, “Okay, well you better not say anything.” And his conflict was just to stay quiet during this entire deceptive exchange.
Wes: Chidi is another character that enforces a self code of not lying from The Good Place. And I think he’s a good example of it done very well because there are situations, minor spoilers, where they go to the actual Bad Place where he is told that he has to lie, he has to pretend to be a Bad Place employee, and he still doesn’t want to do it even in that situation. And I don’t know, I mean it’s a comedy, and there’s certainly good opportunities there, but the radical honesty character as playing into this anti-lying magic situation is a fun one, I guess. Chris, you’re right, you’re right. You don’t see it that often.
Chris: Well, I think the nice thing about Chidi is that he actually can lie if the plot really requires him to.
Wes: And it’s very clear how uncomfortable it makes him.
Chris: Right, he’s got the whole stomach ache, facial expression on. So we can see that there’s a consequence which will make it so he resists doing it in the future, but we can break it if we need to. Whereas a lot of time when you have characters like Elnor who’ve taken a sacred oath, it would just feel a little bit weird. Where we can imagine Chidi doing it under pressure, it’s harder to imagine Elnor lying under pressure.
Oren: Although here’s the thing. I would say that Chidi and Elnor are reasonably similar. They have different justifications, but in terms of the entire dynamics of the story, they’re sort of the same in that they personally won’t lie. But the only guarantee everyone else has that they don’t lie is that they say they won’t lie. That’s just, that’s way less disruptive. Also, Elnor is both doesn’t lie and also socially unaware. So that’s a very different kind of character type to a Chidi. Chidi doesn’t lie, but Chidi is also polite. Whereas Elnor is the kind of character [who] walks up to you and is like, “Hello, your nose is hideous. I don’t lie. Radical honesty.” Whereas Chidi doesn’t do that. He just doesn’t lie. And so those are two different kinds of characters, but they are much less disruptive to the setting in which they live because they could lie under the right circumstances and other people can’t have any guarantee that they aren’t.
Wes: Well, that’s what you’re really getting at in this situation where there’s magic at play or something. Chidi and Elnor have still retained their agency, and there’s nothing else kind of affecting that. But in stories where it’s a cheat, it robs them of who they are if somebody can just be found out or not have any choice in the matter.
Oren: Quick thing I should’ve mentioned. I realized we were talking about Chidi and Elnor, which sounds a lot like Eleanor, who was a character on The Good Place. But we were actually talking about Chidi from The Good Place and Elnor, the character from Star Trek Picard.
Eleanor from The Good Place lies constantly at all times. She’s still very rude though, it should be pointed out. She will still tell you your nose is hideous.
Wes: Oren, in Wheel of Time, do they ever bring up lies of omission?
Oren: Yeah. They don’t consider that a lie.
Wes: Like Zone of Truth (and all these other magic ways to stop people from lying) assumes that the person under the influence of the serum or the spell will talk. That has always bothered me, that they’re not only forcing them to tell the truth, but they’re also forcing them to talk.
Oren: So it gets weird here. Okay, so my understanding, and it’s been a while since I’ve read the Zone of Truth spell, I’ll call it up now while I’m talking, but my understanding is that the Zone of Truth spell doesn’t force you to answer. It just forces you to answer honestly if you talk. That’s how the Aes Sedai thing works. That’s typically how magic works. I’ve noticed that drug truth serums (which again, are not a real thing, but in fantasy they are or in sci-fi), those tend to be more along the lines of forcing you to answer. That can create some problems there. There’s a really good article that I’ll link to about the problems with Zone of Truth and how it basically incentivizes players to torture people, which is a thing that people do sometimes on purpose. Zone of Truth is an accident. It’s not supposed to work like that. But once you create a scenario where people can’t lie, then you can inflict pain on them until they tell you what you want to know. And the normal rules for why torture doesn’t work don’t apply anymore.
But I’ve also seen storytellers do that on purpose. Where they’re like, “Hey, my character in Daredevil does this. Daredevil can tell if you’re lying so he’s gonna beat on you until you give him the answer.” And it works for Daredevil, and that’s their internal justification. And my strong advice is don’t do that for all the reasons we talked about before. It’s actually both because Daredevil’s way of detecting lies is inaccurate and highly problematic. You’re almost certainly going to regret giving your character that ability at some point. But also because frankly a lot of people aren’t going to see that distinction. They’re just going to see a character getting tortured and they’re going to see the torture working and then they’re going to think torture works. And there’s a whole John Oliver segment about this, about how people think torture works and so they support torture when they shouldn’t. And just to be clear, torture would be bad even if it did work, but it doesn’t.
Chris: That’s almost why I think it’s better if you are going to do some sort of truth spell or effect for it to make the character talk. Cause then at least there’s nobody going to Torture Town. ‘Cause there’s no reason to because the character will talk. Granted, I think a lot of this is writers in the moment just want to give their characters information. That’s what they’re thinking about “How does my character get this information?” A lot of times, of course, they also want to be edgy, which is too bad. And so they resort to anti-lying powers and torture and things like that in order to just have their character be able to capture an antagonist, get information from them, and then move on to the next step. And there’s other ways to give your protagonist information. Search their person, take a phone out of their pocket, and then look inside their phone for instance, find clues. I have a blog post that’s just a list of ways for your character to get information and to get the clues that they need for your plot to move forward.
Wes: What’s also great about that is those clues serve as evidence. [laughter] You’re not just extracting a confession out of somebody through dubious means, but you’re actually building your case, which is great for mystery stories and things like that.
Chris: Depending on what type of story you have, there’s a whole other issue with if your main character is a cop and what appropriate cop behavior should and shouldn’t be. Where breaking and entering and grabbing clues is a typical thing for a protagonist to do, but cops are supposed to have warrants for that. I think that’s a little bit beyond my area of expertise, but that’s just another thing to keep in mind. But oftentimes the protagonists are not actually in an official position of authority and there’s a masquerade and so they’re trying to find out about the magical bad guy and there’s no authorities to help them and yada yada.
Oren: Another one that’s weird is if you really start drilling down on the whole concept of magical lie detection, you start to get into some bizarre situations where it’s not even really clear what a lie is. For example, if we go back to the Wheel of Time scenario, and let’s say the Aes Sedai decided to do what I suggested and bring in every Aes Sedai one at a time, have them re-swear the no-lying oath just in case they had it taken off earlier, and then ask them, “are you Black Ajah?” Are they lying if they say no because they don’t call it the Black Ajah? They call it the Zafran Booty Box. That’s what they call it. And then they’re like, “well, you didn’t ask me if I was in the Zafran Booty Box so I wasn’t lying.” Is that a lie? And how quickly can they change the name? If they find out you’re doing this, can they quickly put out a memo and be like, “Hey guys, we don’t call it the Black Ajah anymore. Now it’s the Zafran Booty Box, and they will never think to ask us that.”
Wes: This sounds like a semantics argument on Twitter. [laughter]
Oren: Yeah and that’s a weird question that doesn’t really have a good answer. And honestly, why would you put yourself in the position of needing to decide that?
Wes: But yeah, you bring up a good point. And that’s a lot of storytellers who employ this, I think, view truth as it is objective. The spell works because truth is objective and the person under the influence of the spell knows the objective truth, not their subjective reality and their interpretation of events. That’s a pretty big conceit to just put into your story, isn’t it?
Oren: I would argue that there is an objective truth. The question is: does your spell know what it is? Because for example, if in that scenario the answer to, “Are you part of the Black Ajah?” is yes, everyone there would agree to that in a vacuum with no other concerns. The issue is, Can you trick the spell by changing the name? You haven’t actually changed the truth. Have you tricked the spell’s programming is the real question.
Chris: Basically, is the spell dependent on the beliefs of the person saying it or does it just have all knowledge of the universe? Because if that person is wrong…
Oren: I do think it’s a different situation. It’s not even a question of, Does it have knowledge of the universe? This is still based on the knowledge that the people have. Most magic spell/truths assume that the spell only cares about what the person knows. But again, in this case, if you ask me, “Are you a writer for Mythcreants?” and I had just secretly two minutes ago in our financial documents changed the name from Mythcreants to Zafran Booty Box, and I said, “No, I am not a writer for Mythcreants,” I would be lying in that I know that, yes, I’m still a writer for Mythcreants, I know that name change isn’t real. It’s just something that I did because I wanted to play a semantic trick. And you would agree that if you knew everything that was going on, that saying that I’m still a writer for Mythcreants. So the question at this point is not, Does the spell have knowledge of the universe? The question is, Does the spell understand that you’re lying or have you tricked it with your little verbal semantics game?
Chris: So what you’re talking about is the distinction between technically correct and correct is often what we call that, right? Whether the semantics matter. But there’s also the difference of does the anti-lying magic based on a person saying what they believe to be true versus what if they’re wrong. Most anti-lying magic usually is themed to be based on what somebody believes to be true. But if we’re going to get into “how does a spell have knowledge of objective truth,” we could potentially have a spell where you can’t say things that aren’t true, even if you believe them.
For instance, in some of the Xanth books actually, there is a spell that’s supposed to make somebody say what their magic is even if they don’t know. That magical appears. So technically we could have a spell that enforces objective fact, regardless of what the person’s saying it believes.
Oren: I mean, there’s no reason you can’t do that.
Chris: You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. I mean, that’s like having an omniscient character in your story.
Oren: This actually comes back to another point that I was making, which is that when you’re talking about introducing speculative elements to your story, be it magic or technology, you can justify most things. The question is, Should you? You can create a world where the only way to do magic is to punch yourself in the genitals.
That would explain why people are constantly punching themselves in the genitals. But you probably shouldn’t. That’s not a good idea. And it’s the same thing with magic lie detection making torture work. Yes, you can make that a thing in your setting if you want and have it be logically consistent. It’s still a bad idea though.
In Lord of the Rings, you’ve got those weird square-shaped mountains around Mordor, and a lot of people say, “Oh, well those mountains are artificial. They were made by the Lord of the Rings angels. That’s why they looked like that.” And I’m like, okay, that’s technically plausible, but it’s still a bad idea.
If I was in Avatar, I could have the earthbenders run around drawing dicks on the map, and I could say, “Yes, see, an earthbender did it. That makes perfect sense in character.” And yeah, it does, but you still shouldn’t do that. It’s still a bad idea.
Chris: If you can at all avoid having any kind of anti-lying magic or powers in your story, that’s the best. But let’s say for a second that somebody already has established it in their story, they’re writing a sequel, or otherwise, they are wedded to this idea and talk about what we can do to mitigate this so it’s at least less of a problem, even if it’s still present.
Oren: [sarcastic] I don’t know man, I think you’re just doomed.
Wes: Very helpful advice.
Chris: For instance, in one of your articles, Oren, you previously talked about Troi? One of the problems with Troi, the fact that her powers are passive, where she doesn’t have to do anything, she just receives mental information from everybody around her. Whereas if she had to actively look in somebody’s head in order to see if they were lying or not, then she just wouldn’t be doing it all the time. And even better, she could consider it a violation of their right to privacy because it would be, and then only do it in extreme circumstances. What that allows is for antagonists that you have no reason to suspect or no strong evidence, if it’s in violation of a right to privacy to suspect, be able to lie with no issue. But if you really want to get…you have a captured antagonist that is obviously gonna commit genocide or something, she can take that extreme step of reading their mind.
Oren: Yeah. Honestly, I much prefer the idea of Betazoids and other psychics in general having to concentrate on you to read your mind because the idea that they are constantly listening to all thoughts around them and they can’t turn it off is actually kind of upsetting. It both makes me not ever want to be around them and also makes me feel very sorry for them. It’s like people have weird random thoughts that are very involuntary and that’s just sounds unpleasant.
Chris: Harry Potter does a pretty good job with veritaserum and making it. It’s very hard to produce. It’s in limited supply. JK Rowling establishes pretty well that often potions take several months to make. I think she uses it on one antagonist, but it’s also used as a threat to Harry. What if Snape, of course because Snape is the worst, accidentally slips over his pumpkin juice and threatens him with it, basically, which is awful because Snape is awful. She uses it to increase tension too, and then conveniently it runs out. They can’t just go get more. Now that does break down in a big world after a while. It’s like, “What if it’s really important to get this information? Somebody has got to have some of it somewhere, right? If we have the money.” It’s not perfect.
Oren: But first, you could brew up some liquid luck and then use the liquid luck to brew up more liquid luck and then use a little bit of the extra liquid luck to brew up some of the truth potion. And basically it’s just an infinite liquid luck cycle.
Chris: Yeah, the liquid luck was too far, should not have done the liquid luck.
In cases where we had, you’ve already established lie detection via heart rate, showing that it’s fallible is definitely better than nothing.
Oren: Fallible, having it require some fairly onerous conditions in order to use. The Vulcan mind meld isn’t as bad because not only do they have to physically touch you, but they have to say this long “my mind to your mind” thing, which it’s pretty easy to create scenarios where that can’t happen.
Chris: I also have to say with the heart rate, you’d think somebody’s heart rate would go up if they’re in pain, people are scared, or excited for whatever reason, and so you can eliminate torture as a good way to detect lies if you’re using heart rate because if you torture them, their heart rate will probably already go up. You use that to ask them questions in a very calm environment where they’re relaxed and not in pain.
Oren: That guy seemed cool as a cucumber, but his heart rate went up when I asked him this question so that might be worth looking into, right? As opposed to, well now we know he’s lying.
Wes: That’s probably a key element. Having just something cast suspicion is better than just saying “we know.”
“Oh, that was odd behavior, not what I noticed that person doing before.” And that’s better than just saying like, “I know.” There’s no intrigue there.
Chris: Yeah, I mean if you really do have a point of view character that can detect heart rate, then that would be something that would flavor the narration a lot in a lot of social interactions.
“Oh, the character’s heart rate just went up. What does that mean? Were they worried about something? Did I say something wrong?”
Oren: What is your heart rate detection range? ‘Cause you could be a mobile heart attack warning system if you get a lot of those around. Can we mass produce this system? And whenever anyone’s heart rate starts to have a problem, we’re like, “Aha! Get that person some help right away!”
Wes: Daredevil, he’s hearing it right? Or is it he’s sensing the vibrations of their hearts?
Chris: He must be hearing it. Pretty sure he has super hearing, doesn’t he?
Wes: He’s different. All of his senses are heightened to where he’s just super.
Chris: The other thing I have to ask is, How fast is this change? I can sometimes, if I’m really close to somebody, have my ear on their shoulder or whatever, hear their heart rate. But I’m not constantly monitoring how fast their heart was, measuring how excited they are. So is this a really noticeable jump that somebody would actually notice?
Oren: That I don’t know. We are going to have to save that question for another time because we are out of time on this episode, so I’m gonna have to call everything to a close. Those of you at home, if anything we said peaked your interest, you can leave a comment on the website at mythcreants.com.
But before we go, I want to thank a few of our patrons. First, we have Kathy Ferguson, who is a professor of political theory in Star Trek. Next we have Ayman Jaber, who writes urban fantasy and knows all there is to know about Marvel. And finally we have Danita Rambo. She lives at therambogeeks.com. We’ll talk to you next week.
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I do have a character in one story I work on who can detect lies. She (it’s complicated, but that’s her definition of her own gender) can tell when she asks you a question and your answer is a lie. That’s all. She doesn’t get a flag when someone around her isn’t telling the truth (because they’re bragging about their last fishing trip or something like that). She asks you a question and if you don’t answer truthfully, she knows. She’s good at asking questions so you can’t get away with avoiding a clear answer. She’s also not my main character and the question of ‘is this person lying’ doesn’t come up often in the story. It’s merely one of her specific skills, because she’s one of six individuals made through genetic manipulation who are very slightly based on Norse gods – she’s Loki, there’s also Hel, Freya, Tyr, Thor, and Fenrir. All of them, to a degree, were driven into madness when their powers were unleashed for the first time. Loki managed to gain control of herself relatively quickly and came out mostly intact. Fenrir was hit worst, because his human mind can’t cope with the input from his wolf senses, pushing him into an instinctive reaction with his human mind tagging along, but not controling the body.
There are, in real life, people known as ‘truth wizards’ who are very good at telling when someone is lying – they have the ability to spot ‘micro-expressions’ – changes in expression and body language too small and fleeting for most people to notice (and there are attempts being made to train computers to do the same thing – scary!)
A truth spell that made someone tell objective truth (not just what they believe to be true) could be used to foretell the future, who the traitor is, what is happening in distant locations , do research without having to perform the experiments… The only limitation would be asking the right questions!
There are people who can tell whether someone is lying with a very high likelihood. There are, however, also people trained so well in professional lying that they can even deceive someone like that – and not everyone has the same body language – even the micro-expressions, though mostly involuntarily, can lead you astray in a few cases. Neuro-divergent people, for instance, may have different micro-expressions.
There is, as it were, not always an objective truth. Sometimes we think we know what happened, but we don’t. We think we’ve seen someone throw a stone at another person, but they didn’t do it. Humans always have a subjective perception, therefore they’re unable to tell an objective truth. Is it night outside? That is something which can be answered objectively (although there are phases of the day where it’s unclear whether it’s already night or still day). Is two bigger than one? Yes, that can be answered objectively. But ‘did person X commit a murder’? That one can’t be answered objectively by anyone but person X. With that spell, you could ask every suspect ‘did you kill Mr. Body?’ and would get the perpetrator, but only if you identify them as a suspect beforehand. As soon as the killer, for instance, is a professional with no connections to the victim, you might never suspect them in the first place.
I also can’t see how to tell the future by asking for an objective truth – unless you ask a certified medium in a reality where precognition is reliable.
I thought Kenneth McKay imagined a spell that makes you say whatever is objectively true, regardless of your state of knowledge before the spell is cast. So it wouldn’t matter at all whom you put the spell on, could be anyone, since as soon as the magic kicks in, they’re really just a mouthpiece for The Truth.
You could have at least three different kinds of Magic Truth Spell:
1. You can’t keep quiet and you can’t intentionally lie. You have to say what you believe.
2. Same as 1, PLUS as long as the spell lasts, you have perfect recall, and you evaluate your memories in a 100 % rational way – that is, all wishful thinking, self-deception and stuff like that is gone.
3. You say whatever is in fact true, even if you didn’t know the truth before the spell kicked in.
3 would probably be a story-breaking spell, but I think that was McKay’s point…
In that case, why cast a spell to reveal an objective truth on a person instead of an object? It should be much easier to cast it on some sort of screen or crystal and see the truth than to cast it on a person and ask them.
I can see the ‘you say what is fact true’ spell breaking every story, yes.
Jeppsson is right – that is what I meant.
There’s a possible fourth kind of ‘truth’ spell – definitely a story-breaker – in which whatever’s said by the person under the spell BECOMES true, but that kind of reality reshaping magic would be too powerful for anything but a short story about its effects!
Even the inventor of the polygraph (who, fun fact, also created Wonder Woman) admitted that it was fallible.
Speaking of Wonder Woman, I’m surprised that no one brought up her Lasso of Truth. That one is interesting to me as it seems to be less “make you tell the truth” and more “make you more open about your thoughts and feelings.” At least in recent additions I’ve seen. Like there’s one part in the Rebirth line where she and three other people hold it and can not only communicate with her without issues (she’s still learning English at that point) but are also more open with each other. And it can also help someone who is being deceived whether by mind alteration, illusions, or lying to themself. Again, she uses it on herself in Rebirth when beginning to doubt something and through it realizes that something is wrong. And in one comic by Gail Simone where she’s protecting Gotham after Batman gets critically injured she uses it on members of his rogues’ gallery and it forces them to become introspective and look at their reasons for being what they are; it’s then mentioned at the end that most of them reformed (or at least started on reforming) due to this.
It was just interesting to me, especially knowing Marston’s views on bondage.
There’s a fascinating book on that, actually, which I’d highly recommend, called “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” by Jill LePore. Marston was such a strange personality with so many different quirks and facets to his life, such as his involvement with suffrage and how that appeared in his comics, his unusual polygamous relationship/marriage, his views on sex and feminism, his obsession with lie detection (which you mentioned, in the forms of both the polygraph and Wonder Woman’s lasso), his incredibly specific panel notes which were often based on suffrage-based political cartoons, and quite a bit else. It’s quite a good read if you’re is interested in Wonder Woman and her originator.
The whole thing of “Just because something is internally consistent doesn’t mean is not a bad idea” was called the Thermian argument, for the creatures of Galaxy Quest that don’t have the concept of fiction.
And it couldn’t be more true that you are not exempt from unfortunate implications just because you rigged things in your work to function in a certain manner. Like you said in the post about antagonistic groups, those are just bad excuses. (Not to mention that a species made of nothing but sociopaths would be too selfish and uncooperative to create a society of any kind)
The same happens with the whole “making torture work” thing, it’s just unpleasant no matter the rethoric you use to justify it, even if it happens offscreen.
I can only think of one case that I think it actually worked, and the GM went to great lenghts to explain both in and out of universe why the lie detector was needed in order to keep the information from being worse than useless. Not to mention that both the torturer and the interrogator were villains and probably the most despicable pair of people in the entire campaign.
And by the way, the GM also seemed to realize that the anti-lying magic was a bit of a story breaker power, because the interrogator was one of the first villains to die.
But yeah, most of the time, it’s better to just avoid yourself the trouble.
You guys should make an episode about which are your favourite fantasy books. Like the one you made about the types heros you liked when you were younger, and the ones you like now, but for books.
I’d love to see that as well!
In my story, magical devices known as ‘stone-pairs’ allow for instantaneous thought transmission. One caveat – instead of sending words, it sends the full meaning behind them. For instance: Character A attempts to send “Good night” to a character they hate, and Character B receives: “Shut up, your voce is grating.” They act as a form of hyper-truth enforcers, radical honesty.
The societal and comedic potential is near endless! Judges and arbitrators would use them during trial, protagonists accidentally reveal their tricky pasts, and politicians (the rare well-intentioned ones, that is) might be willing to risk humiliation if the public is offered certainty of their good-will.
Another potential example of stone-pair transmission:
Instead of “good morning”, it’s “If a stone fell on my head right now I wouldn’t feel too much worse, so please speak quietly, also I didn’t want you to know this as I wish to impress you by not complaining.”
And it removes the potential for the annoying trope of miscommunication to stretch the plot, which is another plus!
Thank you Oren and Chris for the insightful podcast, and have a great day :)
Voce = Voice. Ah, why do spelling mistakes only become apparent after the comment has been sent? (Probably due to the font shifting and the change in background, but I’m no neuroscientist.)
I created a character who can control the truth whether it be lying convincingly or detecting the lies (but not forcing out the truth), at the expense of her own energy, but I want to make it logical. I wanted this character to be the daughter of the Big Bad (I know it’s kind of generic, but I’m not going to make it a secret), so I was thinking that this character should be bad then move to good then bad then good again so that she can help the protagonists when the conflict rises to more of a higher point where her power isn’t really needed as much. Do you think this would be a good idea?
It sounds like this character has a pretty complicated role in the story, switching sides back and fourth like she does. I can’t really comment on that, but having her be able to detect lies may give you some of the same problems we talk about on the podcast, as you can see with characters like Troi from TNG.
Now, if she’s a villain, or at least a partial villain, this might not be as big a problem. As a rule, heroes are more likely to be on the receiving end of lies, so having that power on a character with unclear loyalties isn’t as likely to cause a problem.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly by “the expense of her own energy,” but if she has to use up a resource of some kind to employ her power, that could reduces the chances of a problem even more.
When I saw this post, all I could think of was the scene from Warehouse 13 that introduces Steve Jinks.
If you haven’t seen the show, it’s about this secret organization tasked with gathering and containing objects that have some type of magic like ability that causes a lot of trouble. The warehouse agents are always lying to be able to get the job done. ‘Cause who’s gonna believe that Jimi Hendrix’s guitar shoots lighting?
Well, Steve Jinks.
In the first episode of season 3, Steve intercepts the agents before they can get the guitar. They can’t even get through one lie before being interrupted by Jinks calling them out. It isn’t until one of the actually tells the truth that they get anywhere.
Excellent podcast. The first character who came to mind when I saw this was Emma Swan from the TV show Once Upon A Time. The world has fantasy, but her “truth detector” (her words) thing is just that in her career she can instantly tell if someone is lying. It’s never used in any real capacity, though. Only when the audience knows something (for example, the audience knows that this character didn’t commit the murder but the show doesn’t want to go through a messy investigation and would rather have Emma just say “she didn’t do it.”) that the characters don’t is this “superpower” (again, her words) used. Many, many times characters lie to her and she doesn’t pick it up. It really just should’ve been cut out of the storyline because it’s so minor.
She was talking to Henry when she called it a superpower, and I always asumed she meant it figuratively, and was just good at spotting lies – but in Storybrooke was surrounded by people who were very good liars and/or had unusual tells.
Good points, especially about objective truth. A spell may only compel people to tell others what they believe is true, but could be mistaken, prejudiced, deluded etc.
Good podcast. I very much like all the points you raise about this (esp torture) but there was one area I think you neglected, unfortunately. I don’t just quibble about this because I like the shows/characters or to nitpick, but because both these things offer good game balance to characters with these kinds of abilities.
In the directors cut of the 2003 Daredevil film, Daredevil gets testimony A from a victim and testimony !A from a cop. His super hearing (how he detects heartbeats, he uses his martial arts training to turn up his hearing and also filter out extra sounds when focusing on one thing) tells them neither person’s heart rate is up so they both appear to be telling the truth. He checks the witness’s story and it is true, so he questions the cop and learns he has a pacemaker, so his heart always beats at the same rate even when he lies, so this heartbeat thing is not infallible.
Since your likely objection of “how many bad guys can have pacemakers” is entirely reasonable, a more compelling example is a piece of media you use for everything, “Avatar the Last Airbender.” Toph’s ability to detect heartbeat (through vibrations in the soles of her feet) has not worked twice: once with Jet (who was giving information he thought to be true but was objectively false because he had been brainwashed) who gave them info contradicting something they thought they already knew, and once on the Day of Black Sun when Azula lied to them because lying is a skill that can be practiced so it doesn’t raise your heart rate like spies, so her heart rate doesn’t spike at all when telling even overt or nonemotional lies.
I’m going through the archive and aside from Limyaael’s fantasy rants, I’ve never seen such a great resource of sensible craft advice I agree with. Keep up the great work.
I know this is an old episode, but I have a concept that I want to use that has Anti-Lying magic, but I don’t want it to have any plot holes. It’s an amulet that is activated by a magic word. The people around the wearer in a ten-foot radius sneeze when they lie for ten minutes until the spell has to be redone. And only one exists because the character who wears it is the only survivor from a destroyed universe. The people affected by the spell aren’t forced to speak, and their version of the truth is according to the views and beliefs of the person. Is that okay. I want to hone this to perfection, so I’d like to know if there is anything I missed.
If they know the amulet is being used, it would be possible for someone to lie by telling the truth – then deliberately sneezing!
True, but only if they know of the amulet’s properties which I guess in this story is highly unlikely. Thanks though, for helping. I found it useful.
tbh, I think of something like Veritaserum in itself as being a form of (psychological) torture, because it forces someone to spill all their secrets and robs them of their free will or the ability to withhold any information, no matter how personal or traumatic.
Very good point!
“And here’s the thing is, it works in reverse too. Not being able to lie is actually a very powerful advantage if you’re in a society where most people can lie and everyone knows you can’t. Because that means everyone can always trust what you say.”
My favourite example of that is how Vulcans will sometimes do this: “Vulcans never lie”, lied Spock.
It’s hilarious and it works because it’s a common misconception about Vulcans, but it doesn’t break the plot because characters who know better or have a strong reason to double-check, won’t fall for it.
As far as Elnor goes, I remember it as him not knowing how to lie or detect lies or even consider that people might be lying because he grew up in a subculture of radical opennes (which btw I love as a Romulan subculture/counterculture!!!), I don’t remember him taking an oath, although I may just have forgotten it. But it wouldn’t bother me if he breaks the oath, it would still be interesting because he has a lot to learn about how lies work in the wild. Luckily he doesn’t seem to be judgey about other people around him lying.
Re-reading this, I was reminded of the story of Thomas the Rhymer. Thomas is kidnapped by the Queen of Fairie because of his talents as a poet and minstrel. However, the Fairie Court must pay one human soul as tribute to hell, every seven years, and the payment is due soon, so Thomas fears it might be his soul that gets sent in payment. While riding out with the Court, he meets a girl who falls in love with him, and persuades her to, in effect, kidnap him back, as he’s been spelled not to escape. She manages this, but the Fairie Queen curses Thomas to be unable to lie – which ends his career as a poet, as he can no longer say ‘her eyes are like stars’ or ‘his valour was beyond compare’ or make up tales at all.
However, he turns his curse to good use, becoming a trusted advisor to the King, who knows he cannot lie to him, and making prophecies, as, if he tries to say what will happen in the future, he can only say it if it is true!
Another thought, regarding the ‘warning the King he’s about to be assassinated’ bit – isn’t that what happened to Julius Caesar?
That brings up an interesting philosophical question: what is a lie? Take fables–strictly speaking it would be false to say that a fox and a crane sat down to lunch. But the message of the story is true. So is it a lie?
Further, what about perception? It’s not a lie to say something you believe, no matter how wrong you are. If I genuinely believe that, say, the count had my brother murdered, I can say so without lying–even though the statement isn’t true (he was framed).
A lot of fun in a story could be had with playing with such conditions. Give someone a truth serum and have the person struggle to find ways to work around it. Or with someone suffering adverse consequences due to the loopholes, as in the frame-up I mentioned.
Yes, there’s always the question about what truth is.
There are absolute truths, but a lot of what we see as ‘true’ or ‘false’ is down to our own knowledge. That’s why someone can ‘cheat’ a truth detector (or a person who can tell when someone is lying) by saying something they believe to be true, even if it’s factually wrong. It’s not a lie, because they are not aware it’s untrue, so their body doesn’t give any ‘lying’ signs, yet it’s not the truth, either. That’s one reason why the results of a truth detector are not admissible in court – even though a suspect or witness might think they are telling the truth, what they say can be untrue.
In the Dune series, one of my nit-picks is about how the Truthsayers are used in courts of law to tell whether somebody is telling the truth. So, when the villains want someone dead, they order underlings to kill them instead of killing them with their own hands. Then, when the Truthsayer asks them, “Did you kill So-and-So?” they can say no.
My problem: The obvious next question would be, “Did you order anyone to kill So-and-So?” And the next question after that would be, “Did you in any way arrange the death of So-and-So?”
In court, someone should be asking such questions, yes. If it were just for a regular conversation or an interview, that trick might work, but in court, where such stuff is probably on the table often, they should have realized that weakness of the system and worked against it.
There’s something I wish they had talked about even though it’s not quite the same as the rest of their examples: in books based on classical faerie mythology, it’s often a well-established trope that faeries are physically incapable of lying, but they are still known for betraying and cheating each other and humans. Do we think that’s a good mechanic or not? I have read some books where it gets done very well but I’ve also read some where it causes massive plot holes. For example, characters who are half-faerie, half-human are often able to lie – but what is the tipping point for that? Would be interested in knowing what people think about this particular convention and how best to handle it.
I haven’t heard of faeries being unable to lie before – but I’m not a specialist on faerie mythology, so that’s my bad.
I think, since humans are very good liars, it shouldn’t be too hard to explain why having human blood enables the half-faerie to lie – it’s from their human half. You can spin a magical or biological reason for that, but that’s what it burns down to.
In general, being unable to lie still means being able to withhold information as long as not explicitly asked for it (it’s not exactly lying, after all). That means you can betray or cheat someone without lying to them. It all comes down to what you define as lying – is it only telling something which is not true or is it also not telling the full truth?
I am pretty sure that the Aes Sedai did use that trick of re-swearing the oaths to catch the evil members. There was this subplot where a few Tower members were secretly kidnapping members and making them swear to catch Black Ajah, and in one of the later books there was a huge purge using the rod. Also, minor quibble, it is stated that revoking and re-swearing an oath like “I swear not to lie” is incredibly painful. But then, it’s been a while since I read the books, and I think one reason nobody did that earlier was because nobody wanted to believe that the Black Ajah existed and the people who did were killed by spies of the evil Aes Sedai.
Definitely not objective truth. The truth is, a lot of people are not ready to handle the truth. The truth is scary.
I quite like Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, but I find that she never uses it nearly enough, which is probably the solution to any plot hole problems. She just forgets that she has this, one of her greatest props.
In my current book, I am writing a magical object that changes color when someone is lying. It is pretty necessary for the plot, as I want to avoid spies and traitors, in order to keep this part of the plot simple. The object does not force anyone to tell the truth, but the person is asked yes or no questions, and the stone verifies their statements. (Not objective truth, but what the person believes) When a person is using sarcasm etc, the object turns grey, for uncertainty. For safety, the people just don’t trust anyone in the grey area. Is this likely to break my plot? It may cause disagreement between the characters later on, but I am willing to incorporate that into the tension of the narrative…
I can’t say for 100% certain without reading your story but the chances are high that such tech will cause problems. Almost all stories have scenes where the drama depends on the hero’s not being sure if someone is telling the truth. If the only reason to have it is to ensure that protagonists aren’t spying on each other, there’s probably a less intrusive way to do that, like giving them all reasons to trust each other.
One of my characters was a secondary villain who was blessed/cursed by an eldritch god. She can never lie, and no-one else can lie in her presence.
‘Secondary’ villain is a misnomer. The is not the main antagonist, but she is probably the single most dangerous person on the planet, with everyone, including the actual antagonists, absolutely horrified of her.
The real kicker is this: While the power means you can only say things you believe to be true, belief is not all or nothing, and not entirely conscious. If you say something that you ‘believe’ but are uncertain about, perhaps even unconsciously, you will feel pain.
People lie to each other and themselves all the time, in minor and major ways, to the point that most people are unaware they are doing it. Everyone has deep uncertainties and profoundly contradictory convictions that they push to the back of their mind and forget about. This goes doubly for relationships. Two or more people flat out cant coexist without either hiding aspects of themself from each other, or certain ‘open secrets’ that both know about but decide not to talk about.
She has a way of talking circles around people, using word-play and mind games, to dredge up these buried mental landmines and force people to confront them.
In essence, she was so horrifying because her power prevents people from lying *to themselves*. And it turns out, basically no-one can actually do that for very long, because, to quote the villain, who, I should remind you, absolutely 100% believes every single word that comes out of her mouth, ‘there is no man or woman on the earth who can truly know themself without coming to hate themself, or who can see even those they love as they truly are without the deepest disgust. I count myself among this group. I am the worst human being who has ever lived. I am a curse in human form, a blight upon humanity itself. And humanity deserves every second of it. I leave a trail of burning cities, civil wars, and broken souls in my wake, without even lifting a finger. You do it to yourself, because that is what you are: Pathological liars, unable to function with the crutch of deception removed.’
I loved her concept, and will have to revisit it someday, but the actual story she was in I had to mothball years ago. The story was turning out way, way, WAY darker than I had initially planned. It had gone far past Edge, well past Grimdark, and gone sailing into the yawning abyss of existential dread. There’s the germ of a good idea there, I think, but it was just too much.
A related note on the whole ‘Zone of Truth encourages torture’ concept, it could be argued that the forced honesty, over a long enough time, could itself be considered a form of psychological torture, in light of the above.