Bitcoin Forum

(This post is a spin-off of the reply to the post: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20501.msg256086#msg256086 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20501.msg256086#msg256086))
After watching this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0XvP841jaM

I promised I would make a non-verbal analysis.
For those who are late to the party: I am a psychology major who has been studying non-verbal communication for a while.
For the fans of the TV series "Lie To Me": the science actually exists in the real world.
I studied the researches of the "real" Lightman, Paul Ekman, who is the pioneer in proving that facial expressions are universal (which was heavily contended by anthropologists before the revealing results of Ekman's research).
I am studying to certify myself in FACS which stands for "Facial Action Coding System" which is the first effort in the world to codify the facial expressions, also created by Paul Ekman (who is the direct inspiration for the creation of the TV series)
With this knowledge I decided to evaluate the video and analyze Dave's and Mark's facial expressions and body language.


Now lets begin:

Mark Karpeles: Owner of MtGox
Adam Barr: Mark's Partner (He's an open book, he should never play poker lol)
Bruce Wagner: Interviewer (Check how many times he says "MHM-MMM Okay" when doesn't give a shit/doesn't understand lol)

4:40
-Truth: Mark isn't Satoshi.
-?: he might had been in contact with Satoshi

07:40
+Adam doesn't believe that the leaked accounts are "wide open". (Probably Adam is thinking that FreeBSD MD5 is not "precisely" plaintext)

07:50
+?: They reported it to the japanese police.

09:55
+No signs of deception detected: regarding to the new server, more security, from scratch and new "state of the art technique".
+?: The main reason why they keep the old system is NOT "precisely" for investigative purposes only.

10:50
+Truth: new system built in-house

11:55
+Truth: They do keep transaction logs

15:31
-Truth: One Account compromised
++"Hacked" Account belonged to Mt.Gox?
Very Probably.
Detected disconformity microexpression in Adam. Also significant macroexpressions in Adam, who presses his lips for the first time; it might be interpreted as "I can't talk about it" and/or imply frustration/repressing emotions.
With what we have so far, I am inclined to believe that it was either Adam's account or the account was under Adam's responsability. (this might be a long shot... but I have a good scope! LOL)
This idea is supported when Mark starts his answer by laughing and looking at Adam out of the corner of his eye. Adam suddenly gets his eyes teary, glances away and bursts several microexpressions, repeating once more time a disconformity microexpression.
Probably Mark bitched a lot about it.
Update - Jackpot: I just found a particular gesture that is equivalent to a non-verbal confession (Thanks Adam! ^^ ).
Now I am "90%" (read as extremely confident) sure that the account was theirs.


20:40
++Truth: Not prosecuting Kevin (until they find any solid proof)
+Truth: they don't want to compensate Kevin (no shit, right? lol)

21:00
++Feelings: Whoa, Mark flashes a beauuutiful partial microexpression that reveals concealed DISGUST towards the idea of compensating Kevin. (LOL)

22:31
?: Bruce Wagner asks: The hacker had complete access to the system for 3 days, then he adds "That's gonna come out later". Both Mark and Dave basically say with their heads: "mmm... I don't think so"

25:25
+Truth: they can guarantee that the bitcoins and USD will be in the accounts when the system comes back and they are able to log in.

28:55
++Truth: Adam's facial expression allows us to predict Mark's answer. When Bruce asks: "...or are you gonna ask them to return them..." Dave makes a quick and short nod saying yes.
Mark ends up explaining that those who don't return the withdrawn bitcoins will get a negative balance in MtGox. (nice, lol)

38:32
+Truth: About not being contacted by any legal authority.

41:30
?Feelings: Mark seems to flash sadness when Dave explains about the people losing trust in MtGox. Weird eyebrows movement though, can't confirm.

52:17
+Lie!: When Bruce asks about "if it is a good idea locking the market price" and forcing price of the market. When Mark responds that they have no authority of manipulating the market which seem to be true, but when Bruce adds "well... that makes sense it's a free market, that's the whole idea", both Mark and Dave are unconvinced about it, nevertheless they nod saying yes.
Probably they think the free market is not really a good idea, but they are forced to do it anyway.

54:58
??: There is a LOT going on there but I need more time to dissect it carefully and interpret it properly. I don't see any clear sign of anything, but there is something doesn't quite feel right.
When Dave says: "We've been advised not to really mention any names right now" seems to be bullshit.
When Mark says that they want to be sure this never happens again seems to be honest.
I'll re-watch this part later.
(sorry guys, I am exhausted)

57:50
-Truth: probably truth that they don't know much about bitcoin7

My preliminary veredict: they have definitely something to hide (probably they directly fucked up and did something really stupid/embarrasing) and they don't want us to know, but they have good intentions, they seem to really have put measures to prevent the mistakes and toughen the system, and they are pretty much honest about the business.

This is all by now, I might review it later.
Cheers,
-bitsalame

PS1: My nick is not "bits-a-lame", it is "bit-salame", which in Spanish and Portuguese means "Bit Salami".
PS2: My general feeling is that I might trust in MtGox again, but they really need to get someone to take care of their PR, seriously.
UPDATE: I found another very supporting sign related to it the MtGox Account, it made it earn a second "+"

interesting... I had taken an interest some years ago in reversespeech (http://www.reversespeech.com/words_of_creation.htm)

Do you have any opinion/experience with that?

I agree 100%, but i'm not a Phych major. I just read people real well, from my experience.

This I agree with 100% especially. I noticed it too, and watched carefully for the reaction.
15:31
-Truth: One Account compromised
+Hacked Account belonged to Mt.Gox? Very Probably.
Detected disconformity microexpression in Adam. Also significant macroexpressions in Adam, who presses his lips for the first time; it might be interpreted as "I can't talk about it" and/or imply frustration/repressing emotions.
With what we have so far, I am inclined to believe (and this a long shot) that it was Adam's account or it was under Adam's responsability.
This idea is supported when Mark starts his answer by laughing and looking at Adam out of the corner of his eye. Adam suddenly gets his eyes teary, glances away and bursts several microexpressions, repeating once more time a disconformity microexpression.
Probably Mark bitched a lot about it.

They would have stated the account was not compromised, were it NOT compromised. It was most likely Mt Gox's account.

No, unfortunately Reverse Speech and any kind of Subliminal Messages are pseudoscientific.

Also, I have heard David Oats, i think his name is...I do not believe he is really onto anything significant. He is on Rense Radio once a month. Sometimes it's clear, but other times I hear him reach and when he "reaches" it's for a definitive conclusion, he rarely plays anything and wonders what it is. He usually has his mind made up first. It's not scientific or even intuitive enough for my liking.

I give tremendous credence to the OP theory and study.

When someone lies, they tend to look away. That's the most obvious one people know intuitively. When you are ashamed, you bow your head or look down. When you are hiding something you make fidgety moves or nervous gestures, when confronted with uncomfortable truth, you get upset. That's the obvious stuff. It's subconscious too, but much more revealing than reverse speech, IMO

Interesting, I'm inclined to think that if anyone owned half a million coins, then he wouldn't have stored them on mtgox, unless it felt like home :)

You know, come to think of it...and it occurred to me earlier....

What if Mt Gox, as an exchange, waited and waited for each good opportunity to buy bitcoins himself at the lowest price he could, and sell them off through his own exchange each time, using the earnings to buy up more bitcoins at the cheapest price, thus acquiring 500,000 bitcoins in a very short period of time?

He would not have done anything wrong, really, legally, but his advantage as an exchange would be considered something of a "conflict of interest", yes?

I'm pretty sure the 500,000 bitcoins were theirs. I never had much doubt about that.

Uhm, that is too much conjecture. If they make a video responding to that question, let me know ;)


Yeah, that was also my main hypothesis, but this is the first time I have some supporting evidence.
That's why I was so excited on watching this video ;)

It would have been a violation of their own terms : "mtgox does not act as a counter party to any trades".

What if Mark thought nobody would ever know because the bitcoin accounts are held by him, and bitcoins are an anonymous currency?

The chance of a false positive is too high for it to be useful.

That's why many things are taken into consideration all at once.  ::)

Are you making an informed opinion or just making a supposition from hunch?
All sciences have margin of errors, and there are many ways of minimizing false positives (and false negatives).
It is a very serious area of research, and there is strong empirical evidence too that supports non-verbal communication.
What it is known in academia it is usually mixed with crap in the books available to the public... (and definitely it is almost never like what they show on TV lol)

Precisely, seeing the whole picture it is essential to a proper analysis.
It is called the baseline. For example, when the question about MtGox's account is popped out triggers a series of gestures and microexpressions that aren't repeated ever again in the whole video.
It indicates that "something is going on", but we can't be certain the real reasons of that feeling. To find out that requires more digging.
There are many types of gestures that reveals different things each of them with different degrees of confidence.
It is mostly a probability game, the more coherent and supporting signs, the higher the confidence.

Cheers,
bitsalame

Interesting analysis. This is why I'm always gratified to see people's faces recorded on video so that we can have access to this kind of data. I wonder if they will show their faces publicly ever again.

I don't know what the hell they meant by that as it's not an otc trading platform, facilitating exchange between individuals, like bitmarket.eu is.  You deposit your money in their accounts and they exchange it, transferring funds between multiple individuals.  They are always your counter party.  The BTC and USD traded there were not 'real' but just mtgox credits, which they could have created and manipulated at will.  Some people have been suggesting that the hack was so bad that the 500k BTC perhaps never existed.  

While your analysis is interesting, I think that you know better than to attempt to practice a method of lie detection that is both very inaccurate and very misleading if used by someone who does not have a great deal of experience. I'm not saying that the science is inaccurate, but that you should know that YOU don't know enough about this to practice it on strangers for the benefit of the public. You're hurting your reputation as a science major. You're also presenting your "findings" of truth or deception as truth or deception, when, in fact, each gesture, expression, or apparent emotion can point to a multitude of other conditions. If you're going to do this, please at least list them with probabilities along with the dominant/combined findings.

By findings, I don't mean interpretation of gestures, expression, microexpressions, or apparent emotions but only the states that they could point to. You should know better than to attempt to interpret the communicated message behind a perceived behavior. Dr. Ekman found that expressions might be consistent across cultures in the states that they point to, but the communicated nonverbal message is a crapshoot. Expression analysis, for example, is troublesome when used by trained soldiers interviewing potential terrorists (they have to phrase questions very specifically). I mention this because your subject is a French(?) guy speaking English that he obviously can't fully understand, living in Japan, and unable to hear his mumbling, badly-miked interviewer half the time, let alone understand him.

If you really want to do this, run everything you did by a psychology professor and have him post. If you can't get anyone to do this, well, there's a sign. Part of good science is realizing that you have inadequate skills to interpret results properly. Especially if you're essentially diagnosing humans. Especially when crime is involved. Especially if you have a reputation to earn or keep. Especially if you don't have credentials or someone with credentials to provide evidence as to your skill level. Especially when you are making judgements that affect someone's reputation. Especially when you're trying to do something that only a fraction of clinical psychology grad students would attempt to do in a public forum for the sake of, well, entertainment. Dude, this is the psychology equivalent of a pre-med major doing knee surgery. Yeah, he might get the fundamentals taken care of, but it's not good for anyone involved.

And you should note that this criticism has little to do with the science. I likely don't know the science as well as you, but I do know that you don't know it half as well as you think you do, or else you wouldn't be doing it here. Even a well-trained psychology professional with years of experience in lie detection would be very reluctant to write what you wrote about an internet video. Well, at least without lots of prior footage of the subjects and/or the ability to ask the questions themselves.

You admit that you aren't trained, but your idol Dr. Ekman says that something like 0.2% of people have the ability to semi-accurately perceive microexpressions without training. I would wager that an even much smaller fraction can, untrained, translate those perceived microexpressions into a reasonably certain analysis.

Your decision to providing this analysis alone, regardless of the content or quality of the analysis, basically screams "I have poor judgement". Since apparently having a handful of undergraduate psychology classes is enough to allow you to nearly write libel, that's my psychological analysis.

Please for the love of god don't take what I'm saying here as tearing you up for the sake of being a jerk. I would absolutely love it if you could do an analysis like that but could back it up. I also greatly encourage you to continue your studies, but to be very self-critical and skeptical, because yours is a field that has humans as the lab rats, so mistakes are often costly.

Guys: GO OUTSIDE

I don't know much about the research, but I just searched our EBSCOHost on the psych literature and found this:

Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage.
Ekman, Paul, University of California, San Francisco, CA, US
Source:
    New York, NY, US: W W Norton & Co, 2009. 402 pp.
ISBN:
    978-0-393-33745-7 (Paperback)

Abstract:
    (from the cover) In this revised edition, Paul Ekman, a renowned expert in emotions research and nonverbal communication, adds a new chapter to present his latest research on his groundbreaking inquiry into lying and the methods for uncovering lies. Ekman has figured out the most important behavioral clues to deceit; he has developed a one-hour self-instructional program that trains people to observe and understand "micro expressions"; and he has done research that identifies the facial expressions that show whether someone is likely to become violent—a self-instructional program to train recognition of these dangerous signals has also been developed. Telling Lies describes how lies vary in form and how they can differ from other types of misinformation that can reveal untruths. It discusses how a person's body language, voice, and facial expressions can give away a lie but still fool professional lie hunters—even judges, police officers, drug enforcement agents, and Secret Service agents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)


Note the abstract:
he has developed a one-hour self-instructional program that trains people to observe and understand "micro expressions";

P.S. one thing I do know, subliminal mesages are complete BS.

First of all, you don't know WHAT I analyzed, and don't know who I've been trained with.
You don't know neither my experience, nor my rate of successful profiling.

Also, I stated very clearly the level of confidence and if it was a unsupported hunch I clearly stated it.
I've been responsible enough to create a disclaimer before making the analysis where I think I've been clear it is not categorical affirmation of anything, you obviously ignored the whole disclaimer in the beginning of the post.

PS: For the record, my successful rate of detection of microexpression without previous training was 85%. After the training I detect 100% consistently. I am also gifted in detecting emotion based deceptions, which means that even before I was aware of the researches in non-verbal communications my hunches were usually correct when something was "off".
With the research and training, now I have an explanation to my accuracy.

Although I really like the show "Lie to me" and have read Ekman's books. I must stand firmly behind Horkabork's positions - for they are identical to my own. I'm a biopsychology recent graduate. I've discussed Ekman's techniques with a cognitive neuroscience PhD - and the consensus is - in short. There is not enough evidence to fully support Ekman's theory yet - enough to make it functional. That is, making the predictions actually accurate.

His work in inter-cultural expressions is definitely of interest though.

You should research about the "project diogenes".

BTW bitsalame,

do you have any other research names I can look up? Im intrigued, but also wary of any research primarily driven by one guy. Always safer to have confirming instances.

For example, this research seems to offer a less optomistic view:

Detecting deception from emotional and unemotional cues.
Authors:
    Warren, Gemma, Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom, gcw102@york.ac.uk
    Schertler, Elizabeth, Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
    Bull, Peter, Department of Psychology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
Source:
    Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, Vol 33(1), Mar, 2009. pp. 59-69.
Abstract:
    Encoders were video recorded giving either truthful or deceptive descriptions of video footage designed to generate either emotional or unemotional responses. Decoders were asked to indicate the truthfulness of each item, what cues they used in making their judgments, and then to complete both the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT) and Subtle Expression Training Tool (SETT). Although overall performance on the deception detection task was no better than chance, performance for emotional lie detection was significantly above chance, while that for unemotional lie detection was significantly below chance. Emotional lie detection accuracy was also significantly positively correlated with reported use of facial expressions and with performance on the SETT, but not on the METT. The study highlights the importance of taking the type of lie into account when assessing skill in deception detection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

Emphasis mine.

Not judging, just curious all things psych.

Paul Ekman is very respected in the academic circle. Doubting about his integrity because he was pioneering, it is like doubting of Einstein for being unique in Physics.
Maureen O'Sullivan is the another leading academic in deception research, both Paul Ekman and Maureen O'Sullivan are together in the Diogenes Project where they study people who are naturally gifted in detecting deception at a rate of 80% or more.

This research also revealed that law enforcement aren't particularly successful in detecting lies (actually agents in the Secret Service scored below chance LOL).

Very interesting analysis bitsalame.

It indeed makes more sense, all those bitcoins belonging to MtGox... maybe the hacker even knew that, since he had access to an auditor's computer, and somehow knew where to start looking for coins. Maybe the "auditor" computer had the password to the super-rich account. Actually, maybe the "auditor" wasn't an auditor, but just one of their employees who happened to have access to the whole database and money.

It surprises me anyway, 500.000 coins... that's a lot of revenue for their service... it's indeed a business with a lot of space for more competition!

Just my criticism though: you should be careful before calling such technique a "science". It's as scientific as meteorology or other "sciences" which can't really be trusted... there's no logical way to build knowledge over axioms, and by using an empirical approach, how can you isolate all variables, distinguish interference and all? Anyways, maybe I'm just being too much of a purist here.

Allright then. Please tell me your experience, what you analyzed, how you did it, what you've been trained with, and your rate of successful profiling. So far, I understand that you are a psychology major and are not FACS certified. I assume that those are your highest credentials.

I forgot to mention in my earlier post that the biggest mistake that I noticed that prompted my rant was that you biased yourself by watching this video and performing the analysis with the volume on. I actually hope I'm right here, because I question the sanity of anyone who watched that video twice. That, and also being involved generally in bitcoin and likely Mt. Gox does not make you an impartial analyst.

Yep, I purposely ignored your disclaimer. You should know that disclaimers don't guard you from criticism when you're attempting to make a professional analysis such as this. Pre-med students would be idiotic to go around saying things like, "Well in my opinion, you have haemochromatosis, but this is not to be taken as medical advice." If you're not that confident in your statement, especially given the repercussions, don't make it. There's no backsies when diagnosing people. If you were well-certified professional with credentials that we could all be confident in, then your analysis would be not taken lightly. It could have real monetary, and potentially legal impact on the situation at hand. Magic isn't a plaything, Harry. You are toying with forces that you do not understand! Oh sorry, slipped into another personality there.

Anyway, by deflecting my criticisms by declaring exemption due to a disclaimer, you are essentially indicating that professionalism doesn't matter worth a crap, which doesn't exactly give me confidence in your science.

Thank you, however, for acknowledging and responding kindly to my long and grammatically-questionable post. :)

Haha :-)

I'm not doubting him because he was pioneering, I'm only saying that if it's legit, it WILL be duplicated/confirmed by other researchers, and I always like to see that.

I'm asking if you know if thats been done.

I have no time to explain to you anything, I am not interested in writing a paper in a bitcoin forum.
Either you take it, or you leave it, that's my deal.
By the way, I see you also suffered from selection bias since I already explained it in the post about the nature of my skills, but I am rational enough to realize that I can't use it to attack you back with it because that would be fallacious.

Have a good day

For the record 2: As I said, you prejudged me without knowing anything.
The volume was off the first time I watched it. There were very inconsistent gestures that were very awkward so I had to turn on the sound.
1) The lags in the teleconference were causing weird situations.
2) After turning on the sound I realized that the constant gazes were because Mark wasn't fluent in English and he had difficulty understanding the English pronunciation of the interviewer.
Without contemplating this, I would have reached to wrong conclusions.
Secondly, to properly assess the truthfulness, it is important to contrast the verbal expression with the non-verbal verbal expression and the context. It is way more complicated than you think.

Sure, research the professor I mentioned before: PhD. Maureen O'Sullivan, Professor Emeritus of the University of San Francisco.
There are countless amount of professionals researching deception. If you are really interested, tell me in what state you are and I might be able to find someone researching in your area.

Interesting. I'm reading a few of her articles now, judt out of curiosity.

Looks like they were critisized by Bond and Uysal, to which they reubbed. I can pick up the trail from here.

Cheers,

btw, I tend to agree it was probably mt. gox money, and i think thats the most interesting thing to note so far, but to back this up I only offer heresay and conjecture :-)

Also they are very cute, I can tell they hate lying, so they take another recourse; they simply avoid answering the question: non-answers and deflections.
If you watch it a few times you will also see the pattern ;)

(btw, their deflections suck lol)

Oh good a psychology undergrad has published their "professional" opinion based on sophomore text books, a couple 200 level classes and TV shows.
 And the "Veredict" was a real wowsa event.  Those lying cheaters, Get the rope.....

That reminds me of this Onion article ;D
http://www.theonion.com/articles/freshman-psych-student-diagnoses-roommate-with-bip,379/

Why do you guys believe that there can exist computer whizzes, but not psychology whizzes?
That is something that always escaped my understanding.
I am a psychology nerd who's been particularly gifted (or cursed).

Also, I know it might sound as bragging but it is the true: I don't need to study the textbooks in college because I studied them all before hand when I was younger. I don't need to study them, I just "get it", I "feel it" and I know it by heart. I always go beyond the scope of the class because undegraduate college is simply too basic for me. Sometimes I know more than the graduate students who are teaching us in class. I am an undergraduate, but I already have my proposed doctoral thesis being reviewed by my professors. They also thought I was being pretentious, now they acknowledge it is quite creative and original. The provost told me that if my ambition is successful, I would deserve a Nobel prize.

When you guys were reading your first pages of computer magazines and programming your first lines of Basic, I was doing a sociological analysis of my class for the lulz (even before I knew the term "sociology"), reading psychology papers and in elementary school I was stealing and reading the parenting books my parents used to buy to try to understand me!
As time passed I even developed my own version of cognitive psychology and sociology by intuition alone, and the first day I grabbed a textbook that talked about it, I was like "damn, so everything I used to do actually had a name!".
I always had a keen sense of observation and my deductive skills got even more refined when I first learned about "Fermi Problems" when I was around 13 years old, which allowed me to do quick accurate approximations of everything in non-obvious ways: it introduced me to the world of lateral thinking.

Maybe it is my nature, or maybe it is caused from all this nurture I got through self-education, but I can immediately empathize with any human being, no matter how rebellious, troll, elder, open minded or squared, and it is thought to be one of the main characteristics to actually "feel" deceptions accurately (emotion based deceptions, that is)
The discovery of Ekman and O'Sullivan allowed me to calibrate even better my perception, and I assure you that I knew about Ekman a decade ago before the series Lie To Me came to Fox. For me, it was really surprising to see his life on screen.
I have even communicated with Prof. O'Sullivan before she passed away last year, and she connected me with one of her closest students who was in charge of the Diogenes Project.

So, well, there you have it.
What happened to you in world of computers, it happened to me in the intricate world of the human mind.

The best news is, I am not alone. There are thousands of gifted and talented people in the world. You might be one, whoever you are.
If you were diagnosed or suspected having ADD or ADHD, you might be misdiagnosed.
Giftedness has very very similar symptoms to ADD, but with only one key difference: if you are a gifted you CAN concentrate on whatever subject that interests you. It doesn't have to be a subject in school, it could be about sports or motorcycles, anything.
You might have difficulty focusing in class or in anything that you don't care, but if it interests you you ace it.
On the other hand, people with ADD/ADHD CAN NOT CONCENTRATE ON ANYTHING.
Also, gifted kids usually get along with people much older than them, and usually don't get along with the kids of their same age.
Giftedness doesn't mean being a genius, it means to be intellectually more mature, deep and/or curious than the kids of your age.
Most of the times it causes emotional stress to the kids because emotionally they are still immature, when intellectually they are way ahead of their age (it's called asynchronous development).

And let me clarify: I am not talking about Indigo kids, that is newage bullshit. I am talking about the psychological definition of giftedness.
If you feel identified (I bet that the great majority here does), you might be gifted. The problem: not many psychologists are really trained to identify them, that's why Ritalin is being horribly overmedicated and horribly misdiagnosed.

Well, I better stop my rant here.
I want to start reading the new book I got from Amazon: "Security Analysis" by Graham and Dodd.
Why?, why not? For the lulz.

Sayonara!

FYI - I nod at everything. It's a habit I've picked up here in Japan from teaching english. Nodding at students as they literally piece sentences together shows I understand, and encourages students that would otherwise be shy/nervous when trying to express their thought or opinions. In the last 8 months I've been here I haven't met many english speakers, so 95% of the time I speak english it is with non-native speakers. I've found this mannerism has carried over. I also tend to over express everything with my face (I'm very aware of this) so I don't know how it would reflect in this kind of assessment. (I think it may distort, rather than amplify, judging from what you were able to puzzle together). By prescreening our reactions with information that may or may not be true, your assessment is at the mercy of your own confirmation bias. Its definitely was amusing to read however. ;)

AAAAaaaaahhhhhh..... that felt good to read.   :)

That would be the worst-case disaster. Hacker with complete access to the live database creates 500,000 phony BTC >> Crashes Market >> Buys back into several accounts >> Uses automated scripts to quickly withdraw as many as possible from multiple accounts.
^^^
I hope that didn't happen, can we all please see our accounts soon?

Or you've convinced yourself (and others) that you do.  Seems to me it's a pseudoscience-du-jour that can't bear any real scrutiny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticism).  A TV driven fad backed by a quack.  A psychological con so people can feel like they have some superpower.  Who else wouldn't want to be 100% right on everything.  Word to the wise: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and you're probably fooling yourself.  Eckman's stuff isn't even peer reviewed.  He's a Guru, not a scientist.

whoa, maybe I'm crazy, but........SHOULDNT YOU BE BUSY GETTING MTGOX BACK ONLINE!???

The METT is a standard test, I don't throw numbers because I like them.
It seems that you really need to check your biases.
I am tired of uninformed and uneducated Wikipedia-based critics-du-jour.

Edit: Not even peer reviewed? Quackery? Seriously, STFU.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"

whoa, youre a mess (most shrink majors are, thats why they are there), but could you take this down the hall to your "colleagues" or your Nobel prize committee chair,
cause nobody cares.  Thanks

Wow. Looks Legit (http://face.paulekman.com/productdetail.aspx?pid=27).

"METT Original-Online
This license allows you train with METT original and take the pre and post tests to see how much you have improved

Most people complete METT original training in under one hour. There is no certificate with this training

$20.00"

Sorry, but the burden is on you to prove it actually works.  Show me a peer reviewed study under real world conditions showing Eckman's "science" works.  Until peers can confirm Eckman's "science", your "analysis" is worth about as one lone self declared "expert" says it is, which given the number of self declared experts out there, isn't a whole lot.

You mentioned the METT.  As I understand it, the METT basically shows you flashes of random expressions.  You identify correctly and you get a higher score.  This supposedly will allow to to read and identify microexpressions IRL, allowing you to be a better lie detector...  But what if it's BS?  What if all you're doing is learning to take a test better?  What if all you're doing is inflating your ego?  Whoo... it's a standardized test.. i'm "better".

All this would be fine if you were just deluding yourself but people believe this stuff (thanks in part to Lie To Me). You have accused Mt. Gox publicly of lying and that causes real harm.  It's irresponsible to present "evidence" such as yours when it hasn't been scientifically verified. (at least without some sort of very clear disclaimer).

Interesting read, thanx

You are an uneducated troll. I never said that I only used microexpressions to evaluate deceit.
It is a waste of time to spend it with you.

I actually study researches, not Wikipedia.
http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=%22Paul+Ekman%22&gw=jtx&prq=Paul+Ekman&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on (http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=%22Paul+Ekman%22&gw=jtx&prq=Paul+Ekman&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on)

And Paul Ekman is a legend in the world of psychology and anthropology.
Stop embarrasing yourself.

No results.  Still waiting for that evidence of real world results with eckman's "Science".

Hahaha, I am done with you.
You are seriously a joke, good luck in life. I'll be tough for you.

Fact I can't find much of anything written by Eckman (http://www.jstor.org/action/doAdvancedSearch?q0=paul+eckman&f0=au&c1=AND&q1=&f1=all&wc=on&Search=Search&sd=&ed=&la=&jo=) on jstor.  Way to "research" there, Mr. 100%.  I'm done with you.  It's past my bedtime.

Im personally on the 'fence' but I can confirm that Ekman is featured in psychINFO. If you don't know what this is, you shouldn't be commenting.

If anyone is interested looking up the research, as I am (i must be bored), from what I can see, Ekmans most cited contributions are:
(289 citations) Who can catch a liar? American Psychologist, Vol 46(9), Sep, 1991. pp. 913-920.
(131 citations) A few can catch a liar. Psychological Science, Vol 10(3), May, 1999. pp. 263-266.
(117 citations) The ability to detect deceit generalizes across different types of high-stake lies, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 72(6), Jun, 1997. pp. 1429-1439.

There may be others, but these papers seem like the big tickets. Haven't looked up METT though.

Of course, I have also come across published criticism's. Anyhoo, whatever you do, please don't argue a point (for or against) based on wikipedia!

Have fun!

ps psyborgue, you probably didnt find anything, cause you spelt his name wrong ;)

Of course not, because you are a certified idiot.
You keep misspelling his last name, and you seem to even have difficulties on click on my link ("No Results"?, WTF?)


Seriously, life will be tough for you.

Interesting post. I've never heard of this field of study so I'm not sure what to think of your analysis, but I appreciate that you put in the effort to do it and post your results here.

I also came to a similar conclusion about Gox yesterday (posted in one of the many posts I replied to yesterday), where I said that I don't necessarily believe that they are directly responsible for the hack or that they are trying to steal everyone's money/btc, but I did get the sense that they were trying to hide something. I haven't watched the video you studied in your OP, but through their posts, what they choose to talk about and what they choose not to talk about, I definitely get the sense that they are trying to cover something up. I just don't know what that is.

Also remember: criticisms are what makes Science great.
Cheers,

I dont know any of that science but yeah that was my gut reactoin.. especially on the satoshi question and the interviewer's mmmmhrmmm = *cough* bullshit *cough*

When u got millions of $$ of other people's money and u seem to be hiding something.. .. it ... doesnt... sit .... well..

And to the 18-22 year old computer guys on here who dont know how to read people... this guy is 100% right... u dont need science to confirm that analysis at all.

that TV interview was the equivalent of a hedge fund manager uttering the phrase 'accounting irregularity'

GET.. THE ... F... OUT.. IF YOU STILL CAN.

to be honest.. we dont know what they're hiding.. it could be something weird ilke his ex-gf got into his computer and that was the cause of it all.. lol.. or they're working in a sting operation to try to trap the hackers, whatever.. something weird.

You're right.  That was my bad.  But my point still stands.  He shouldn't be making accusations like he did about Mt. Gox with a "science" that is hardly universally accepted coming from a Scientist who doesn't publish his research for public review out of some "national security" concern.  Smells mighty fishy to me, as does the fact that nobody else seems to be able to replicate his results (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100526/full/465412a.html) (except thru their own confirmation bias).

night all.

Doesn't stand shit

You are the best example of what an academic shouldn't do:
1) Confirmation Bias
2) Hasty Generalization
3) Denial
4) And being plain ignorant, giving opinions out of their area of expertise (which is none in your case)

Based on your reasoning, how you research and what you ignore: you aren't even in college yet.
You don't even know how to identify primary sources, don't know how to interpret information, and not even know how to deduce properly without formal fallacies (lets not even talk about the informal ones). And you are absolutely oblivious about your cognitive biases.

Stop being such a pain in the ass and grow up. I see you have potential, you are inquisitive and skeptical, that is good. But you lack knowledge (lots of it) and experience (lots of it).

I am telling you for the last time: Paul Ekman is well-known, renowned, respected and even legendary in Academia (FYI that is not a MMORPG, it means the scientific community)
He is not someone obscure who opened a blog and suddenly claims to be Sai Baba.
Ekman has a very long trail in the scientific community, and any academic who is worth their salt will know him since he was the responsible in providing empirical evidence that proved the universality of emotions and facial expressions. Before Ekman anthropologists thought that facial expressions were culturally-dependent. Ekman proved that facial expressions are universal.

Last advise: never spit upwards.

bitsalame - I'm a psychology nerd too, and I've found that it's almost impossible to discuss even basic psychology with most people on the internet. Especially internet forums.

My hypothesis is that internet forums are a social ghetto for neurotic people, and almost any kind of psychology discussion that deals in facts is threatening to someone reading.

It hits home, it makes them think of possibilities they hadn't considered, and is generally just dangerous to their idealized self-images. Half the people in these internet forums think they are automatically informed on any topic because they know how to google, or because they read a crappy news article once.

Their self-esteem defence mechanism (among other things) is always a poorly cobbled together recitation of logical fallacies (which they mis-apply) and shallow wikipedia scans which they misinterpret.

Follow the adage: "Never argue with an idiot. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

Wow just browsing through some of his published journal articles seems he is FAR more known for his work on universals than for lying in general.
Just two examples:
(422 citations) Facial expression and emotion. American Psychologist, Vol 48(4), Apr, 1993. pp. 384-392.
(393) Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 17(2), Feb, 1971. pp. 124-129.
etc etc etc

interesting

Yeah, I know.
I am also fascinated with the "troll" phenomena in Internet... but I am against labeling them as "idiots" (although I call them idiots in their faces, lol), most of them are inexperienced young guys (and I emphasize males).
You can tell that they are still adolescents by the way they ask questions and the way they reason: they are purely theoretical, mainly because they haven't experienced life enough (ie. getting a job, washing their clothes, living alone, making their own food, researching in academia, etc...)
Older people have the "empirical" experience of life so they don't make "stupid questions".

The best sign is when they suggest us to learn "logic" (especially when we provide empirical or correlational evidence), they love debating semantics (as a fallacious rhetoric recourse), they have difficulties recognizing formal and informal fallacies (unfortunately there are adults who never learn), they wonder about what is real and what is not (it might hint some psychosis if they are adults), and my favorite: they try to define technical terms with a dictionary or find "proofs" with Wikipedia (that one is cute).
Profiling them is a piece of cake, if all of above is true: the range of their age are usually around 17 to 20.
Also the internet makes us more neurotic (troll) than in real life fueled by the anonymity because we have no real accountability for bad behavior on the net. The same effect has in mobs in real life, the more diluted our identity, the crazier things we do.

Anyhow, I better be going, I am glad to have found another "psychology nerd", KedP ;)

As far as I understand, that work is legit.  His lie detection, however doesn't seem to be.

It is not really that far your understanding, you gotta admit that.
One thing we can borrow from the world of cryptography is that weak implementation doesn't mean weak algorithm.
The government is not really exemplary in implementing anything.

Lie detection is both an art and a science, and one must have both talent and dedication.
The TSA and law enforcement are mediocre and they select mediocres only (Since you like to google, I invite you to search about how the law enforcement selects only candidates with low IQ)

I'll agree with you there.

The government put a man on the moon back when computers were fancy typewriters.

or did they!??!

'dun dun dun'

There's a mirror on the moon that you can shine light at and it comes back at you.

One question arises from this, should it be true that MtGox has 500,000 BTC (or whatever the amount) in their own exchange.

Is one actually allowed to trade on the exchange you own? If so, the person trading should not have access to anything than public info, otherwise, it is insider trading.

Only if it's a very strong light, otherwise the odds are it will get absorbed on the way or back (or the photons will stray from target bouncing in the turbulent atmosphere and never hit the mirror or if they do they will miss the sensor on the way back)

I don't doubt that you are excellent at novelty detection.


Despite that, you seem to make some very direct claims.


When someone says they are 90% sure of something, they tend to be wrong much more than 10% of the time. A subjective percentage estimate tends to be strongly biased by "gut feeling", which tends not to mean shit in science. I would strongly recommend against using numerical estimates outside of hard science where you have actual numerical data to base such an estimate on. You have one single sample of a magic hand gesture. Your interpretation of this one sample is almost surely biased by the fact that you had already made a conclusion before this additional data became available.


That is hilarious. You have concluded that a particular gesture made by a particular person that you haven't met, that you don't know the mental state of, and that you don't know the motives of, has an exact meaning.


The problem here is that, after all that effort analysing it, I could have easily made the same conclusion without watching the video at all. Of course they did something stupid, their fucking database got leaked. Of course they don't want you to know. Of course they're going to be honest about their business.


Q: Who would keep 100K+ BTC in an online account?
A: Someone who trusts the site and is confident that it is secure.

Q: Who would actually trust Mt Gox, and who is in a position to assess its security?
A: The owner of Mt Gox.

I didn't even watch the video, and I already have a pretty good idea of who owned the account.

Honestly the confirmation bias is not possible because before watching the interview I was actually burning you guys in a pillar, but after watching your interview I realized you guys were honest people who fucked up, but honest nevertheless. My opinion about you guys changed drastically.

Regarding to nodding a lot because of the culture, it doesn't really matter. There are several types of expressions, some are universal and others are culture-specific.
The universal ones are primarily based on emotional and physiological responses, the gestures related to the culture are learned and have specific meanings (For example: the A-OK gesture used in the US means literally "ass hole" in Brazil, "zero" or "money" in Japan and Korea, etc...).

If it seems to be complicated enough, this is just the beginning: you must add the context and the baseline: how often and in what situation you repeat certain gestures. If you cross your arms: is it because you are distancing yourself, you feel threatened or is it because it is cold?
If I detect a microexpression (which is involuntary facial expression in about 1/25th of a second, which reveals concealed emotions) I must ask what actually triggered it.

There are several other details that weights up in the final evaluation.
Up to here I talked only about non-verbal signs, there is a whole another world based on verbal analysis that I haven't mentioned.

Each sign might not be significant by themselves (although there are specific signs that are direct tell-tales of deception), but when factored all together, and if they support each other, the probability of being truthful is strengthened.
In emotion based deceits, when your verbal declaration and non-verbal expression contradicts each other, basically shows that you are being deceitful (simple examples: like saying you are confident with your shoulders crouched or saying you are happy with oblique eyebrows or without the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle)

Adam, when Mark talks about Mt.Gox's account your face is priceless. Your facial expressions goes haywire, and it is the only time in the whole interview where you actually had microexpressions.
Also, something you might not have realized is that you only nod if you agree with something, and thanks to your love to preciseness it becomes a tell-tale: If you had a "red" car and your student said it's "burgundy" you wouldn't nod, you would tilt your head sideways.

Cheers,

How many of the accounts at MtGox were abandoned?  And what happens to the bitcoins that were in those accounts, since they presumably will not be claimed?