Without having read any of the referenced sources or earlier threads, I will make the obvious cynical prediction: Society would quickly be reduced to a flaming morass of chaos – just like all employers demanding all employees Facebook passwords only much more so. A whole new ethic would be needed – an ethic that ain’t gonna happen, and ain’t gonna work.
There will be blood in the streets, until the machine is destroyed, or civilization is truthed back to the stone age, whichever comes first.
I would say that successful people would become incredibly adept at half-truths and diplomatic emphases and delicate shades of truth.
I can easily tell the truth and only the truth…but unless you allow me to speak uninterrupted for the next fifty years or so, I am not able to tell the “whole truth.” Just deciding where to start telling the truth would allow for a great deal of influence on how my testimony would be perceived.
If, however, the machine went further, and denied a person the ability to intend to deceive – then we become a society of insects and quickly stagnate, decaying in a long, sad spiral to racial extinction. Without the ability to deceive, the human social intellect cannot exist.
Somewhat related to the OP. It reminds me of one of the stupidest things I have ever read. Written by an academic judge or lawyer IIRC.
They were against the use of a truth machine. Not because of civil rights or privacy issues. Not because of social problems it might cause. Not even because it might not be absolutely 100 percent accurate.
No, such a thing would be bad because it would undermine the “sanctity of our jury system” or some such. Yeah, 12 random people basically making an educated guess is infinitely better than knowing what the hell actually happened.
(Actually, I’m completely whooshed by your comment, and would love an explanation. But even in my ignorance, it’s funny…and I do like frogs. A “Truth Machine” would back me up on that. Brekekekekek.)
I would probably make a killing teaching people to follow what I like to call the “Way of the Giant Space Weasel”, named for the putative path Obi-Wan Kenobi took through his Jedi training. While he never really outright lies, I’m pretty sure that at no point in any of six movies does he ever manage to tell any one person the entire unvarnished truth, particularly if they had to ask him for it.
I’d feel kind of dirty teaching people how to use psychology and logic as voodoo black magic, but I think lying around on giant bags of money would go a long way towards easing my tortured soul.
Trinopus: It’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference. Arthur once meets a man who had encountered the truth to the universe. He said he particularly liked the bit about the frogs.
