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Deceptions
1. Deceptions
2. The perfect crime
Years ago, in college, when my class was about the get car privileges for senior year, we had to go through some car safety training. In the introduction, the local policeman doing the training made the statement, "I could tell you how to commit the perfect crime" but then deferred, leaving us thinking.
Think about it. What would be a candidate for the "perfect crime" (in a general sense)?
I thought about it though and come to the following conclusion. The "perfect crime" would be a crime that the one on whom the crime was committed (or oneself, reflexively) did not even know that a crime had been committed.
Discussion question: What are some perfect crimes that you have encountered (not realizing it until much later)?
3. Confidence artists and deception
A con artist or con job is a "
confidence" job whereby the perpetrator gets the confidence of a person and then uses it to their own advantage.
Discussion question: Does this ever happen in a church? This is, the person you thought was a "
sheep dog" turned out to be a "
wolf dog".
In general, deception is harder than the truth since there are many more ways to do deception than the truth.
4. Boolean values and error codes
Consider computer science, software engineering and programming. (The following is in simple terms. Reality gets more involved.) In two-valued logic, as used to program computers, ,
0 is (usually) taken as
false and
1 as
true. That is, integers are used (behind the scenes) to represent 2-valued Boolean values.
An error code is often returned from a called function to indicate what when wrong. Students often want to return
true as
1 for everything went ok and
false as
0 to represent an error.
However, in a functional sense, there is only one way for everything to have gone ok. There are a countable infinite (in theory) ways for something to go wrong.
5. Boolean values and error codes
The larger the system, the more ways there are to go wrong. Thus, error codes are often represented using
0 for everything went ok and values
1,
2,
3, and so on, are used to represent both that something went wrong and the number code of the error that happened.
6. False teaching
Thus, with false teaching, false Christs, etc., there are many more ways for things to be deceiving than there are ways for everything to be ok.
And deception is often done not with false facts or false rules but by omitting facts or rules and letting people then believe what they want to believe.
7. Sherlock Holmes
When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
This is easier said in theory than done in practice. Thus, deception can be hard to detect in practice, especially if the one deceived is ignorant (does not care) and/or apathetic (does not care).
8. Theory and practice
An interesting remark attributed to Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut is as follows.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Overheard in computer sciences for years before attributed.
9. Theory and practice
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
Richard Feynman (American theoretical physicist)
10. Sculpting an elephant
A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. David Gries (Computer scientist)
11. Testing programs
Note that in software engineering terms, it is impossible to test the simplest of software programs to show it is correct. That is, that it has the correct output and no errors. One of the first demonstrative proofs was by Dijkstra (1972).
In some cases, one can prove (using logic, axiomatic proof rules, etc.) that a program is correct. one cannot test programs to find (all of the) errors and that it is correct.
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Details are left as a future topic.
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12. Computer bugs
As I have now said many times and written in many places: program testing can be quite effective for showing the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence. Edsger Dijkstra (computer scientist)
Dijkstra, E. (1976).
A discipline of programming. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall., 20.
13. Deception in action
Deception in action is similar between military operations, a salesperson making a (dubious) sale, and false teachers or false Christs in a church setting.
One waits for the person to make their decision and not interrupt them during the "
perfect crime" is committed. At least until the Monday morning quarterbacks get into the action.
14. Mistakes
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Napoleon Bonaparte (French Emperor and military leader)
Napoleon did this again and again as his prey fell into his traps.
Austerlitz is an excellent example.
15. False teaching
In false teaching terms, the mistake of the opponent is not recognizing the deception as that opponent is "
offended". That is, ensnared and caught in the trap.
.
16. Three errors puzzle
What is not there may be important?
Consider this self-referential sentence that has real issues. First, find them. Then ask yourself the following question. How easy is it to fix them?
17. End of page
