151–160 of 196 posts
The polygraph is pseudoscience. Of course it can be beaten, it doesn't work to begin with. Why the US still puts so much weight on them when they know they don't work is a mystery to me. Just get rid of the damn things and do your homework better.
I know we all know that polygraphs don't work, but: is that true in practice or in principle? I mean, there are papers out there about methods capable of extracting complete words from brainwaves. Does it really seem impossible for a machine with current tech to detect signals of lying with high certainty?
I think a good liar is just exceptionally good at convincing themselves that what they're saying is the truth. I think that even better liars are so narcissistic that they basically believe what they say as it's coming out of their mouth, on account of it being them that is the one saying it. I say all of this as a horrible liar.
Polygraphs are a joke for this reason among so many others: Psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists can fool them because they are able to feel zero (or are incapable of feeling any) biological fear or anxiety (i.e. 'stress response'), while telling complete lies.
There's a great book on the inventor called the Secret History of Wonder Woman: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-Wonder-Woman/dp/080417...
50 percent chance an honest person barred for life. 50 percent chance a criminal gets let through. If that’s true it’s a wonder the FBI managed to get this far and continues to function.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It actually makes sense for law enforcement even knowing the device does nothing because it can be used to give them probable cause to search somewhere they wouldn't otherwise legally be able to search. When the shit hits the fan the company that sold it takes the fall, which is part of what the police were paying for. Perhaps a similar logic is at work for the military, but one would think they'd be more concerned w…
Just like those dogs that indicate the presence of drugs. Except of course when there aren't any. I've had my car searched a couple of times at the Canadian/American border because a dog gave a signal. Given the number of times I've crossed that border the false positive rate must be ridiculously high. Since you don't have much in terms of rights when crossing a border I wondered why they even bother with the pretext…
To find other "bycatch" - cash to confiscate, for example, or the gun that might be forgotten after the last hunting ride, or a pack of medicine without a prescription.
In the end it's a game of probability - assume that out of 1000 cars 1% (10 cars) have something that's not an illegal drug, but still illegal. Now, police are usually banned from warrant-less searches of vehicles for a good reason, so assuming they would follow their own rules, they would possibly only search the one car of the dude with red eyes, and the other potential hits would be missed.
Now, with a "trained dog", they have the legal authority to conduct a warrant-less search - which in turn enables more insidious stuff such as racial profiling the drivers, or simply do a rough check of all cars.
"Drug dogs" are nothing more than an instrument of abuse.
The polygraph is pseudoscience. Of course it can be beaten, it doesn't work to begin with. Why the US still puts so much weight on them when they know they don't work is a mystery to me. Just get rid of the damn things and do your homework better.
The issue is accuracy. In terms of being able to infer lies from skin response, this is an effect that actually exists for many people. The net scientific conclusion is that can work but poorly, not that is is complete nonsense like ESP or something. Being pseudoscience or not is not quite the same question. People claim acupuncture works for them (California is now forcing insurance to pay for it), but it is clearly…
http://skepdic.com/coldread.html
It works as long as the "mark" is naive. As James Randi explained many times.
Which is why intelligence communities want to suppress information about polygraphs that would make people less naive.
Makes perfect sense.
I know we all know that polygraphs don't work, but: is that true in practice or in principle? I mean, there are papers out there about methods capable of extracting complete words from brainwaves. Does it really seem impossible for a machine with current tech to detect signals of lying with high certainty?
However, it would be very expensive to develop the training data for such a system, and it might not work on rare ethnicities. Or other abnormal people, like autists and evil geniuses.
The polygraph is pseudoscience. Of course it can be beaten, it doesn't work to begin with. Why the US still puts so much weight on them when they know they don't work is a mystery to me. Just get rid of the damn things and do your homework better.
Let us never forget this infamous explosives 'detector': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 Sold to law enforcement in military around the world for a while.