calebxy wrote:

Has anyone here seen Lie to Me? And just to be clear, I'm not talking about the panel show. That's called Would I Lie To You. No, I'm talking about the crime drama about a scientist who can work out if people are lying, and what emotion they're feeling just by looking at them. That show got me really into behavioural psychology, and I used to be really got at it (being able to tell if people are lying) but I've lost my touch now. I must keep working on that, because it's a very useful skill to have.

I would really like to be like, say, Sherlock or Patrick Jane (from The Mentalist) but what they do isn't anything remotely resembling an exact science. To be fair, behavioural psychology isn't an exact science either, but it's fairly close. So that's something that you can actually learn, as you would any other subject. But as far as I'm aware, there's no way of learning to be Sherlock. You literally just have to be very clever and intelligent and extremely good at working things out.

However, saying that, I have thought of a few ways that I could get good at working things out. To work out things about people from physical details, logically, you could choose someone who you do actually know all about and take note of certain characteristics about them, such as their clothes. Therefore, if you did that with enough people, you should eventually be able to get a pretty accurate idea of which physical details go along with which facts about someone.

For example, if I take note of some details about my own house, and I know why things are the way they are, then it may be the case that if those same details are present in someone else's house, the reasons are also the same. Of course, you would need to get a large sample before you can start generalising. But still, I think that could work. That's the only way I can think of to actually ‘learn’ to be like Sherlock. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

So, I will work on that, as well as practising my lie detection skills.

Maybe you should join my detective forum, of deduction knowledge and observation, in my signature, only the best of the best of the detectives get in, only people who know various plants, animals, object brands and know how to deduce things from a scratched matchbox.

calebxy wrote:

Has anyone here seen Lie to Me? And just to be clear, I'm not talking about the panel show. That's called Would I Lie To You. No, I'm talking about the crime drama about a scientist who can work out if people are lying, and what emotion they're feeling just by looking at them. That show got me really into behavioural psychology, and I used to be really got at it (being able to tell if people are lying) but I've lost my touch now. I must keep working on that, because it's a very useful skill to have.

I would really like to be like, say, Sherlock or Patrick Jane (from The Mentalist) but what they do isn't anything remotely resembling an exact science. To be fair, behavioural psychology isn't an exact science either, but it's fairly close. So that's something that you can actually learn, as you would any other subject. But as far as I'm aware, there's no way of learning to be Sherlock. You literally just have to be very clever and intelligent and extremely good at working things out.

However, saying that, I have thought of a few ways that I could get good at working things out. To work out things about people from physical details, logically, you could choose someone who you do actually know all about and take note of certain characteristics about them, such as their clothes. Therefore, if you did that with enough people, you should eventually be able to get a pretty accurate idea of which physical details go along with which facts about someone.

For example, if I take note of some details about my own house, and I know why things are the way they are, then it may be the case that if those same details are present in someone else's house, the reasons are also the same. Of course, you would need to get a large sample before you can start generalising. But still, I think that could work. That's the only way I can think of to actually ‘learn’ to be like Sherlock. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

So, I will work on that, as well as practising my lie detection skills.

Good luck! I suggest you look at sweating and body language books, good liars cannot be taken down this way but it is worth a try!
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/24533754/ : this is a cool chatbot

You need an insight into human nature. That's how Sherlock does it. You need to understand the human being and why somebody does something. For example, if somebody is telling a lie they might be sweating and not looking at you in the eyes. If you did not know that those were two things often mean that a person is lying then you may just have been thinking that they were a bit hot and may not even have picked up on them not looking at you at all. If you pick up on those little things and understand why they do them then you can deduce lots of things.

These things don't work in real life though. You need DNA evidence.

lying is a language you just have to know how to speak it

I understand when some of my people close to me lie because I know them well and I am sure that it can never happen with them.