Everybody LiesSeth Stephens-Davidowitz
Everybody Lies
Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz · first published 2017
20mentions
9recommended by
15HN commenters
2017–2025first – last mentioned
60% recommend33% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Uses Google search and pornography data to show what people actually do versus what they say in surveys. It offers insight into hidden behavior and honest self-assessment in data-driven research.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society.
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…had seen any), they would probably say one thing. If you examine what kinds of videos people look at, you'll see another. (This theme, with actual data from pornhub, is explored at length in the book "Everybody Lies" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.) Both routes (asking and instrumenting) have their uses.
on “Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links” ↗…Project" by Michael Lewis -"Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb -"Pre-suasion" by Cialdini -"The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright -"The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks -"Everybody Lies" by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz -"How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams -The "Freakonomics" Trilogy
on “How Booking.com manipulates users” ↗…out and live your best life solo. That is all you can do. ~50% of first marriages fail, and the numbers get worse for second (67%) and third (73%) marriages. Most of this is luck anyway. (I recommend "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/...)
on “AI 'dream girls' are coming for porn stars' jobs” ↗…myself. Am I just in denial? Is some level of wishful thinking necessary? What are my blind spots? I'm no smarter about any of this stuff (The Human Condition) than anyone else. ICYMI, I enjoyed the book Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28512671-everybody-lies Please share any books, links, observations you have. TIA.
on “Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?” ↗Don't have kids so no direct experience but I read the book Everybody Lies which looked at google search trends and was just fascinating and I do think mentioned that many people actually do regret having kids (and also a lot of women wonder if they're male partners are gay).…
on “Ask HN: Do you regret having children?” ↗Stories are powerful avenues because they involve human emotion. Unfortunately, human nature is dark in its essence, conditioned to lie, so the truth will always be tinted. Recommended book: Everybody Lies, by Google data scientist
on “The best way to get ahead is now to lie” ↗The book Everybody Lies gets into actually looking at the data on this and comes to a different conclusion: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/maybe-internet-isnt-tearing-us... What data tell us: "In the United States, according…
on “Social media bubbles may threaten democracy” ↗Fwiw there's some discussion of this in the book Everybody Lies. Look into that. Perhaps follow up with the author. His name escapes me atm.
on “Ask HN: Any open source code/materials on predicting future crimes based on data?” ↗> The search engine part is especially nonsense Maybe you need to read "Everybody Lies": https://www.harpercollins.com/products/everybody-lies-seth-s...
…using a condom," the number of people who make the claim in order to signal something about themselves is much smaller than the number actually engaging a behavior. See further Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are ( https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/... ).
on “A small town that kept Walmart out now faces Amazon” ↗Humans can be spontaneous yes, but not exactly random. In aggregate, human behavior from online activities is predictable [0] according to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKL...
on “Google Home Beats Amazon Echo in Q1 2018 Smart Speaker Shipments” ↗…14 seconds to 10 minutes and 13 seconds. https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/09/everybody... Book: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/...
on “Porn site to pay $12.7M to women who didn't know videos would be posted” ↗…about what data suggests this, since getting honest answers about sexual activity from the public is a famously difficult challenge. As an entertaining example, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's big data book Everybody Lies mentioned a study that asked people in the United States how frequently they had sex, and how frequently they practiced safe sex with a condom. If the resulting data was accurate and projected across…
on “On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness” ↗…political speeches. But Pennebaker's current rulesets apparently aren't available. And I didn't have the gumption to figure how to use the tools which are available. Another book about truthiness is Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/... There's got to be some overlap, right?
on “Investors use AI to analyse CEOs’ language patterns and tone” ↗…associated / related Google search data*? The bottom line...accepting self-reported data at face value is a true fool's errand. The Science is clear on this. Let's just leave it at that for today. * "Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and what the internet can tell us about who we really are" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (a Harvard-trained economist, former Google data scientist) http://sethsd.com/everybodylies/
on “People have been having less sex, whether they’re teenagers or 40-somethings” ↗