I think you’re still missing the point. Even according to its most ardent defenders, the polygraph is wrong %20 of the time. Assuming you answer honestly, and answer all questions the same way both times your odds of winning the money are only 80%.
If this is true (and I have absolutely no interest in watching or participating in this piece of dreck so this is purely theoretical) the best way to “beat the game” would be to admit to enough potentially embarrassing things when you fill out the questionaire, then tell your SO that you lied when you filled out the questionaire so they’d put you on the show. How is the show going to know if you told the
truth in the first place?
I see what you’re saying. That could open the door for some interesting lawsuits if the polygraph was really the determining factor. That just makes me all the more certain that it’s the preliminary questionaire that matters and that the polygraph is just a bullshit prop.
That’s a good idea. It wouldn’t surprise me if people were already doing that.
The nickname “lie detector” is somewhat of a misnomer. A polygraph does not detect “lies” per se – rather, it detects changes in a person’s physiology as they react to stressors, which may or may not indicate that they are lying, depending on a lot of factors that the examiner must take into account.
[slight hijack]
I’m not so sure. While I do agree that polygraphy is questionable at best (I’m not a huge proponent of it, myself), I don’t think that it’s the soul-crushing, power-drunk concoction you seem to think it is. Then again, different agencies use different methods. Normally, your examiner is as interested in your passing as you are. He knows examinees get jittery and nervous, and he’ll know a variety of methods to help them relax and feel at ease. The examiner’s only goal during testing is to get clear readings, with as little noise as possible. The analysis comes after the test is completed. I’m generalizing here, though, because I’ll admit that I’m not familiar with the CIA’s methods – they may very well do things stupidly/differently – but I think it’s a mistake to broadly slam polygraphy due to CIA horror stories, even if I’m not a big fan of polygraphy myself.
Also, the purpose of a polygraph is not to force people to confess to things. If your examiner thinks you’re lying, he’s not going to badger you into confessing your story. He’ll simply say “you failed” and pull your clearance (which will most likely put you under investigation – carried out by law enforcement, not examiners). An aggressive examiner is already going to muddy the reading by becoming a stressor – he has to remain as neutral as possible. Any discomfort caused at all will skew the test. They are not interrogators. The polygraph is utilized mainly as a deterrent to espionage – not to get people to admit to it, but rather to discourage people from commiting it in the first place. You are correct that it’s 100% psychological – that’s sort of the whole point of the thing. “Perhaps I shouldn’t spy against my country because I may get caught during my next polygraph.”
[/sh]
Back on topic, I agree with the assertion that the polygraph is more a prop than an actual game mechanic. A polygraph test, in order to have the most accurate readings, needs to be in an incredibly controlled environment, with a lot of feedback between both tester and tested, and as little external stimulus as possible. Otherwise, there’s a lot of physiological noise generated, which makes it impossible to distinguish between truth and lies. Even in these perfectly controlled environments, questions are repeated many times throughout the session in order to average out the “noise.” (There will always be some noise – breathing, muscle fatigue, itches, etc) You can’t tell from answering any particular question just once whether or not it’s the truth. If you don’t take an average, then you are asking for false positives. You also need to continually restablish the “baselines” by repeating those diagnostic questions over and over throughout the test, as a person’s bodily reactions will deviate as the test progresses (changes in the environment, and changes in the person’s body). The reading for “Is today Friday?” at the beginning of the test and the end of the test will look different, even if the answer stays the same, and the examiner needs to be able to track these patterns and account for them.
For many official polygraphs, the score has to be agreed on by no less than 3 people independently before it’s considered final (they are recorded and sent off for independent review – this also prevents potential abuses by the examiner). Any disagreement results in a retest. Again, the CIA may do things differently, I wouldn’t know. This game show is positively not going for accuracy.
I haven’t watched the show, but from what I’ve read/heard, the technical premise behind this show is a sham. It’s all cheap and sleazy voyeuristic thrills, as far as I’m concerned (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing - just disabuse yourselves of the notion the polygraph serves any real purpose at all in the outcome of this show – or if it does, then the contestants are being scammed, bigtime).
What other thread?
I didn’t even see a prop lie detector. My understanding is that there is no prop for the show, and everyone is completely aware that the way it works is the contestant answers publicly, and their public answers are matched against their private lie-detector results from before the taping. Didn’t they even state this explicitly when the first guy got eliminated? (“Your ‘no’ answer from the previous lie-detector test showed deception.”)
Maybe you’re right. I didn’t see the show. I was going by the commercials and the description in the thread. I thought they were supposedly hooked up to polygraphs during the show. If the polygraph happens before the show then, it’s still about matching answers to a preliminary test. In that case, I would guess that they only select people who have either admitted to embarrassing stuff or “shown deception” on the previous test. I would guess that anyone who skates through the pre-show polygraph without “deception” and without admitting anything embarrassing doesn’t get on the show.
I guess the show is a little more protected that way. They aren’t exactly calling you a liar for what you say during the show, only that you had “shown deception” on a pre-show polygraph. Everything is still engineered so that you have to cop to some embarrssing stuff to get the cash. The contestants probably have to sign contracts stating that they will abide by the results of the polygraph.
Haven’t you people been watching what passes for television these past few years? Gameshows that would be over in less than half the time (Deal or No Deal, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, etc etc) fill out time between . . . questions . . . and . . . answers . . . like crazy. Look at how many questions Jeopardy gets through between commercials, and then look at how many cases get opened between each commercial break in Deal or No Deal, particularly in the second half of the show. It’s frankly an embarrassment.
I guess once you hear the question you don’t have the option of not answering?
I watched a little of the first episode … it was fascinating in a train-wreck type of way. It reminded me of the drinking game “Never Have I Ever,” only with a lot of money thrown in.
Yeah, the same questions were asked previously while they were hooked up to a “lie detector”, and the point is to see if they matched or something. Except this time they answer in front of God and Everyone.
Ok, I didn’t purposely watch this show, but while I was making patient rounds, I went into a patient’s room and the weird Toupee Guy was doing his thing. I was like “Wow. That’s a bad (as in ugly and obvious) hair piece.” And the guy’s next question was “Are you a member of the Hair Club for Men?”. We both rofl’d.
I enjoyed tonight’s show, for the most part. At first I found myself not really liking the guy who was on last week, who finished up tonight… I found him to be smug, arrogan-- oh, wait, I think I would look that way on this show, too. The only thing that made me :dubious: was his history of smuggling.
Anyway, assuming that whole father-son thing was real, it was great. From what I gathered, mom had been telling the kid for years that dad had gambled away his college fund. That was truly awesome. I wanted to smack the kid when he pulled his “WE DONT GAMBLE ANYMORE” crap, though. That guy could have, and should have, easily gone on to win $500,000. But the kid pulled out the “no more gambling!” crap… um… what gamble? The point of the show (assuming you forget everything about the accuracy of lie detectors) is that you’re NOT gambling… you’re just being honest.
That, and to me, true gambling is where you have the potential to lose something you brought INTO the game. Even if he lost, the guy brought nothing in, so if he lost and left with $0, you couldn’t say he “gambled everything away.”
Aside from that, the show was much less annoying this week. I honestly like it.
Looks like things’ll get a bit dicey for the beauty queen next week, I’m kinda looking forward to it.
Don’t tell anyone, but I’ll be watching, too.
At first, I was left wondering if the show is scripted. Why wouldn’t the gambler go on? He had nothing to lose. I couldn’t see why anyone on the show wouldn’t go all the way. After all, they agreed to be on the show and knew all the questions they could be asked beforehand. But then I realized that they probably figure that they will be falsely accused of lying at some point, so the show’s producers won’t have to pay out. So, that guy might be a better gambler than I thought.
I’ve never heard of it, but I don’t watch that much TV anyway. Do they really spell the title as “teh”? If they do, I’m kinda glad I missed it.
Turned out I actually liked the pageant queen. I wasn’t too keen on her last week, but I liked her more and more this time. I’m kind of upset she didn’t go on – whoever said (from the couch) that she was a wholesome, honest girl was right. She could have made the $500,000.
I feel like that last “didn’t matter” question would have been answered much differently had she been playing for money. By that point, though, it was pretty much “oh sure, of course not, haha!” That, and I think Fox just wanted to reaffirm to her that quitting was “the right thing to do.”
The second guy… Wow. TOTAL sleaze. I kept praying for him to get kicked off after every question. Most of the questions this show has thrown at people so far have had pretty good justifications… this guy, though? Nope. Total jerk.
I hope that’s the end of his relationship. His girlfriend can’t be happy AT ALL with his performance (especially since he walked away with NOTHING – and deservedly so!)… I only wish he had gotten to the inevitable “have you cheated on her?” question before he flunked out. Did you see mom? Even after the first question, her look of disappointment was just so ominous.
And his idiot friends laughing at what was clearly the inside joke about the ethnic joke question? Remind me again why it’s bad to wish for a rogue studio light to fall and crush someone?
I couldn’t stand the pagent chick. I found her to be an utterly abhorrent hag. Plus she said she was Conservative Christian but she told sold out her father for a little bit of coin. Her last question was total bullshit. Why give her a quetionwhere she doesn’t have to admit to anything? What a waste of time.
Plus, her seahag mother’s attempt to skip over the binge and puke question only serves to confirm that yes, she has done that.
What a horrific grinning skeleton that chick was. And no way she’s a virgin. I don’t care what the polygraph said. She probably just convinced herself that blowjobs don’t count.
I could be wrong, but I’m fairly certain that it was her gorgeous sister that hit the button.
I’m not so quick to believe that she has done that before. Her reaction when the button was hit was more of “wtf? why are you pressing that now? I got this.”
No, the game show’s title is not humorously misspelled. Correction, moderator, if you would?
I dunno about this one…unlike some Dopers, I’m not predicting an avalanche of trainwrecks (although there will probably be a few before this is over). Fox, despite its reputation, knows where to draw the line (witness the couple on Temptation Island that hid a child being sent home); don’t expect anything on the level of armed robberies or organized crime connections. My main concern is the way it’s set up. Half of the questions are absolutely no trouble at all…y’know, the ones where the correct answer is “no”…making ease of progress mostly a matter of luck. Unless there’s some mechanism in place to ensure a relatively even distribution of yes and no answers, which I kinda doubt. Also, if the contestant decides not to answer the question, well, that’s kind of a dead giveaway, right?
IMO, a better system would be to put two statements on the screen, one true and one false, and make the contestant pick the true one. Much fairer, and a lot more cathartic knowing that there is never an easy out. And if (s)he decides to quit, the status of the two questions on the screen will remain a mystery, as it should be.
Me, if I was on, I’d blitz through the thing. I’ve always been lousy hiding things, so I hardly have any secrets, and I’m not the least bit ashamed of my habits. (I tell you who SHOULD be ashamed… 
) Then again, I’ve never been in any kind of committed relationship, I’ve never done anything egregious in the workplace (certainly nothing on the level of stealing from a co-worker or ignoring safety regulations), and all my scrapes with the law have been penny-ante things like parking tickets. So there’s no way in hell I’d be accepted in the first place.
See, that’s the thing about these kinds of shows; they ONLY accept contestants who are going to be challenged. Exactly the same deal with Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader. Of course there are millions of Americans who can win it with their eyes closed…that’s why they don’t get the chance.
All in all, I’m 50/50 on this right now, which puts it in the “probably worth watching if there’s nothing new on YouTube at the moment” category. We’ll see.
I thought they said they were Jewish.
I thought that was her sister.
That’s a great idea!