Why some people see through deception (and most don’t)
Seeing through deception is a trained environment, not a gift: sever capture lines, unfuse identity, widen your nervous-system window, and install mechanical disconfirmation.
Why a few see through deception
Not IQ. It’s incentives, identity, and nervous system.
A) Traits that cut through
Epistemic courage — take public status hits; update anyway.
Incentive independence — diversified income; no single patron owns your priors.
Low identity fusion — beliefs aren’t self; tribes are tools, not homes.
Revealed-preference literacy — judge by cashflow, defaults, and power, not slogans.
Affect regulation — tolerate dissonance; don’t self-soothe with pretty models.
Ambiguity tolerance & long horizon — “not sure yet” + scenario trees.
Right-sized skin in the game — stakes that teach without blinding.
Heterodox network — cross-tribe inputs to expose hidden assumptions.
Manipulation surface awareness — app stores, bank Acceptable Use Policies, index rules, grading rubrics.
Institutionalized disconfirmation — red teams, base rates, prediction logs.
B) Why high-IQ individuals still miss
Career risk > truth, model lock-in, social risk aversion, comfort bias, silo vision.
Operating system: turn it into a repeatable advantage
Daily/weekly loop (15–30 min)
Incentive Map (1 page): Who gets paid? When? Who sets defaults? Who can change rules mid-game?
Revealed-preference audit (5 lines): Three costly actions per actor > any statement.
Base-rate anchor: Outside view first; only then story.
Prediction ledger: Assign probabilities; update with outcomes; compute Brier monthly.
Scheduled disconfirmation (1h/week): Argue for the best opposing case; write down what would flip you.
Exposure hygiene: Max single-thesis drawdown you can sleep through; enforce.
Quarterly resets
Pre-mortem on self: “If I’m wrong, where do cracks show first?” Create tripwires.
Network refresh: Add one adversarial high-signal source; prune one echo.
Identity audit: List statements whose falsity would cost you status; interrogate them.
Physiology (non-negotiable edge amplifier)
Sleep, heavy lifts/conditioning, cold/heat, deliberate discomfort → bigger window of tolerance → less self-deception.
Fast filters you can run on any claim (litmus tests)
If my pay flipped, would my belief flip?
Who benefits if I accept this now?
What exact evidence would reverse me?
Base rate for similar claims succeeding?
What’s the payoff for being right-early vs wrong-with-the-crowd?
Failure modes (and the fix)
Pattern overfit (“everything is capture”) → force alternative scoring (at least one benign/stochastic model).
Single-thesis tunnel → calendarized red team; position-size by drawdown, not conviction.
Truth dumping kills access → keep dual register: plain-speak with peers; memo-speak with gatekeepers.
Dopamine bias (chasing outrage) → cap “rage scrolling” minutes; schedule “boring compounders” work.
Field indicators: quick tells someone can see through deception
Asks for defaults, funding, control surfaces before opinions.
Changes mind in public and logs it.
Uses “if-then” triggers instead of vibes.
Separates narrative value (PR) from control value (knobs).
Turning clarity into alpha
Policy-embedded tech: allocate where standards + perimeter power + vendor readiness already intersect (ID, lineage, provenance, supervised payments).
Paperization regimes: harvest carry/vol-sell on wrappers; keep a small sovereign hedge for regime breaks.
Crisis ratchets: buy fear (when enforcement fails loudly), distribute into clarity (when the new standard arrives).
Default arbitrage: invest in what becomes the default (not what people say they want).
Incoherent mandates: when goals conflict (privacy vs safety), the winner is whoever sells knobs (policy parameters + audit trail).
Current outlook: PLTR > Bitcoin > Gold > MSFT > PANW.
Self-diagnostic (5 questions each quarter)
Which belief of mine is currently subsidized (by money/status/tribe)?
What default am I accepting because it’s convenient?
Where did I change my mind this quarter (publicly)?
What tripwire would force me to reduce my top position?
Which adversarial source influenced me most? If none, I’m drifting.
Bottom line
Seeing through deception is a trained environment, not a gift: sever capture lines, unfuse identity, widen your nervous-system window, and install mechanical disconfirmation. Keep the lens fixed (incentives > ideals; control > fairness; stability > truth) and act only on revealed behavior. Do this and you’ll consistently be early without blowing yourself up.
None of this should be considered investment advice.