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November 27, 2007
the burma score
It started at the poker table. All poker players are liars—that's a given—but I wanted to see how my opponents behaved when they lied. So I would ask them questions to which I already knew answers.
"Did you have a King in the hole?" I'd ask, having already seen all four kings played. Invariably, he would look me in the eye and say yes. And for whatever good it did me, I now knew what he looks like when he lies.
Inevitably, this technique seeped into my real life. If I think someone might be lying to me, I ask them questions to which I already know the answers. I call it the Burmese Liar Trap. Only now, people aren't expected to lie. Certainly not friends and girlfriends, and certainly not about mundane stuff like with whom they've spoken or had lunch. It's revelatory. It turns out that some people just have congenital integrity defects. They lie needlessly.
You'll see their Christmas gift, still shrink-wrapped. "Did you ever watch that DVD I got you?"
"Oh my God, yes. It was absolutely sublime! And John, it means so, so much that it came from you. That you saw that and thought of me touched me deeply. Sometimes I wept while I watched it."
What on earth do you do with that?
It can be incredibly depressing. Even a couple of "harmless" lies cause you to question whether anything this person's said, if anything at all, is real. Has this person become so comfortable with lying that they can't stop? What about their professed affection for you? Is that too in question?
That's the problem with the Burmese Liar Trap. An undiscriminating pit, that.
posted by john at 8:03 AM • permalink