16 December

Research consistently shows that people lie. All the time. Not just because we’re all evil gits, but for a whole range of reasons. The most fundamental being the translation thing again, what we think we mean is never what others think we mean. But also because we curate our selves, people who do surveys for example will lie about themselves, and sometimes they even believe the lies themselves. This is where I think Google has changed the world. People lie much less in their actual behaviour, when they’re acting anonymously. And Google has truckloads of data on us acting in those ways. It’s not sinister, anybody can look at the data, and it’s not linked to individuals, just group trends. Here’s an example. Assumptions generally say marriages fail because because people are unhappy, and their marriage is ‘loveless’. That’s what people say in surveys. But what does their behaviour and searching tell us? That overwhelmingly people are struggling with sex in their marriage. It beats love and happiness hands down.