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The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

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Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#51

Post by meowface »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #45
meowface wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not useless, but yes, they are a form of trickery. It's a psychological technique that tries to make people who are lying or hiding things more likely to be nervous and more likely to confess (or be led down a line of questioning which eventually reveals new information). The actual results from the machine are pretty much just a red herring, but that doesn't necessarily mean the machines have no valid uses.…

> but I would want them to be used if I were interviewing for FBI/CIA/NSA Why? As well as being known to be a form of trickery it's also the case that it is easy to teach someone to manipulate the results at will. All you achieve requiring it for those organisations is that there will be a) some who are rejected unjustly thanks to a false positive, and b) the people you really don't want in there have another bit of…

Yes, undoubtedly there are good candidates who are weeded out due to false positives, but there are probably many bad candidates who are weeded out due to true positives (or don't apply at all because they fear the test). It will lead to bad actors who study the test and pass it, but that's why it's critical that law enforcement agencies do not use a passed test as indication of trustworthiness; merely an initial barrier to entry to be passed. The trustworthiness has to come from a thorough background check and normal interviewing.

As long as the examiners, recruiters, interviewers, and higher-ups fully understand polygraphs are a trick and nothing more, I still think they serve a useful purpose for three-letter agency hiring.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#52

Post by maxxxxx »

monocasa wrote: post #41
maxxxxx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's pretty obvious.

I've had people get visibly angry with me that I'd dare suggest that they do fizzbuzz.

I think every time somebody starts with "And here I thought...." it's something humorous.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#53

Post by Natsu »

kevmo314 wrote: post #39
Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a subjective interrogation with a prop. You tingled his spidey sense. And was he wrong? You pumped gas without paying. Did you acknowledge it as a criminal act or as good fortune or not at all? Look at it from the interrogators perspective.

I think OP's point is that he didn't even remember the event, and the NSA was using the polygraph as a prop to try and get him to fess up to something he believed was trivial, so it was erased from his memory.

That's the thing, they want to know if you would bring up things even if you didn't think they knew about them. They want people who would do that, due to believing the polygraph works.

So they questioned them about this thing they knew about and he didn't reveal it, so they thought he was lying even though he honestly didn't remember it.

It doesn't work out well for people who know how polygraphs work in general or for people who do not reveal things they know about (intentionally or otherwise).

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#54

Post by lostlogin »

Lazare wrote: post #22

The continued use of polygraph "tests", as if they have any validity whatsoever, is honestly a scandal.

They have been in the news recently in relation to the current Supreme Court fiasco. Why are they they a thing? Who likes them?

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#55

Post by lostlogin »

wongarsu wrote: post #26
yayana wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern fMRI technologies can tell if people are fabricating stories. There's actual science behind them I think there was some actual science behind the polygraph too, but just having actual science on poorly informed/motivated participants isn't really enough for tech that will have long term adversaries. I can't recall if 1/3 or 2/3 of myth busters staff could beat the fMRI once prepared and motivated. Initial ex…

Apparently in 3 tries Mythbusters managed to fool the fMRI lie test once. They didn't experiment much with different techniques, I would fully expect success rates to get much worse than that as people get more time to find good techniques for beating the test. https://mythresults.com/episode93

It wouldn’t be hard to make the scan uninterpretable either, which is a seperate failure mode.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#56

Post by paulie_a »

monocasa wrote: post #41
maxxxxx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's pretty obvious.

I've had people get visibly angry with me that I'd dare suggest that they do fizzbuzz.

Because it is an incredibly stupid test.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#57

Post by monocasa »

paulie_a wrote: post #56
monocasa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had people get visibly angry with me that I'd dare suggest that they do fizzbuzz.

Because it is an incredibly stupid test.

That senior devs with decades of experience fail.

I've literally seen someone who supposedly wrote firmware for the space shuttle fail fizzbuzz.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#59

Post by wamsachel »

kevmo314 wrote: post #39
Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a subjective interrogation with a prop. You tingled his spidey sense. And was he wrong? You pumped gas without paying. Did you acknowledge it as a criminal act or as good fortune or not at all? Look at it from the interrogators perspective.

I think OP's point is that he didn't even remember the event, and the NSA was using the polygraph as a prop to try and get him to fess up to something he believed was trivial, so it was erased from his memory.

Yes; the background investigation produced a police report which I hadn't mentioned in my application. At the time of the gas station incident, I didn't know that I had just created a paper trail that would damn my background check.

On one hand I understand how a discrepancy in the background check would raise concern, but on the other hand I feel that the police report easily shows no wrong doing on my part, and that this "blemish" could have been cleared up at the 1st polygraph interview, rather than stringing me along for 3.

Re: The Lie Generator: Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings

#60

Post by Lazare »

lostlogin wrote: post #54
Lazare wrote: post #22

The continued use of polygraph "tests", as if they have any validity whatsoever, is honestly a scandal.

They have been in the news recently in relation to the current Supreme Court fiasco. Why are they they a thing? Who likes them?

Well, they don't have any particular accuracy, but they do allow the operator to generate whatever result they like in a usefully opaque manner.

The linked article discusses a large number of cases of racial bias. Obviously if you want to be biased in your hiring, but you want to hide it, a polygraph is very convenient way to manufacture some cover. (Alternatively of course, some of the police departments may have had no such intention, and merely been the victim of biased polygraph operators.)

As for the recent Supreme Court fiasco, incidents 35 years in the past rarely turn up much hard evidence. A polygraph is, again, a very useful way to manufacture something that looks like evidence. (And that's true regardless of the truth of Ford's claims. Just because polygraph results are fake doesn't mean they aren't accurate sometimes!)

In short:

> Who likes them?

The people who commission them, because they can get the results they want, and the people who operate them, because it's a pretty well paying job.

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