I only caught a bit of the show, I didn’t know they had the questions on the front end, but still, yes, if you are confident in your ability to trick a lie detector it might be worth a huge amount of money to try.
The Mythbusters episode was actually pretty interesting, because they tried many different spoofing techniques like jabbing yourself with a pin, clenching your bowels, biting your tongue, meditation, deliberate emotional responses.
IIRC they only did 2 or 3 runs of three of the people (Kari, Grant, & Adam). Grant was able to fool the detector during one of the trials by using visualization and meditation.
The examiner’s tactic, which was actually very effective, was simply making a long-ass exhausting test for such a simple investigation. In other words the “Did you steal this” question was tested rigorously in a little room for 8 hours, I could see it being very difficult to consistently spoof for such a long time without letting your guard down.
Hat’s off to Grant!
Most reality TV shows aren’t at all like what gets shown on the TV screen, as has been discussed around these parts quite a few times. What’s to say they didn’t have a guy pretend to be a regular joe with a premade history, some deep dark secret, scripted to trip up the Lie flares at the right dramatic moment?
Great premise, stupid show. I hated the unnecessarily long pauses after each question AND after each answer and the ridiculously dramatic background music. They should rapid-fire the first round. I was very disappointed and won’t be watching again. They didn’t even show one damn question from the commercials! Lame, lame, lame.
If that’s a great premise, I’d hate to know what would constitute a bad one.
I think the issue, in real life, is that people who are attached to the machine quite often have something to lose by giving the wrong answers. So you might be detecting a lie, and you might just be detecting that the person is stressed out that you’re asking questions that could incriminate him of something, even if he didn’t do it. While as in a test for TV, anyone strapped to it really doesn’t have to worry all that much so it’s more likely that what is detected is the stress of lying, rather than general stress.
I missed the beginning (and the end and most of the middle). What’s to stop the person manning the lie detector from just saying you’re lying before you hit the big money? It’s not like opening the encyclopedia and proving to Regis that elephants aren’t native to Alaska. In this case, you seem to have no recourse if the show screws you over.
I told my wife that I’d just warn her ahead of time that I was going to answer “yes” to everything, no matter how incriminating, asinine or factual. That way I shouldn’t have cause to be nervous about my answers. The rest of TV watching America can kiss my $500,000 ass 
Polygraphs are bullshit, of course, and if all you had to do was beat a polygraph it would be free money. I suspect that the polygraph in this game is little more than a prop and that answers during the show are merely matched up to answers given during the initial screening. If you said you’ve fantasized about nailing your wife’s sister in the initial test and then change your answer during the show, they “buzz” the polygraph.
If you give only Boy Scout answers in the initial test, you don’t get on the show.
If all you had to do was beat a polygraph I 'd be signing up tomorrow.
Welcome to the polygraph show.
Here is your first question.
Can you beat the polygraph?
No.
BZZZ! You are lying!
And in tying this to the TV show in the OP, isn’t that the episode where they asked Grant if he had ever built a “female” robot? TeeHeeHee.
There was also a Slate srticle to this effect: [EMAIL=http://www.slate.com/id/2112734/]Can I beat a lie detector?
Well, there are polygraph tests and there are polygraph tests.
A skilled interrogator will ask all sorts of questions, and look at the responses, and refine the questions and try to make the subject trip up, and so on.
But if they’re a skilled interrogator, they can do all that without looking at the squiggles. I suppose the squiggles might be helpful, just like noticing that little twitch in the corner of the subject’s eye, and so forth.
But the main value of the polygraph is so when the interrogator thinks the subject is lying he can point to a section of squiggles and tell the subject that the machine says he’s lying, and then the subject confesses because “you can’t beat the machine”. It’s a way of psychologically manipulating the subject.
Just watched the show on Fox’s website.
The parts I like best are when I feel there is a kind of ‘‘reckoning’’, where the contestants and their loved ones are obviously getting some cathartic value out of telling the truth. A good example would be the gambler admitting he’s lied to his girlfriend about how much money he’s lost gambling. He seemed to be an honest man struggling with a bad addiction. I felt that was a very empowering episode for him and his family.
But when that jackass guy was accused of lying about stuffing his underpants, you just felt sort of outraged because it was obvious he was telling the truth. His answers were unsatisfying because you sort of knew he was a sleazy man and you didn’t really want him to win but you didn’t really want him to be unfairly disqualified either. And the way they mischaracterized events in commercials really irritated me. The pageant queen ‘‘leaves her family heartbroken.’’ Are you kidding me? They were running around screaming with joy at the end.
I think the show has some emotional appeal to me, but only if they keep putting more people on like that gambling guy. I’m a sucker for the weepy mushy stuff, which is why I look forward to watching the Latino family.
There is no way in hell I would ever be on that show. There are way too many humiliating truths about my life – not stuff I necessarily did wrong, but stuff that is none of anyone else’s business. I am an honest person and I dislike the way some of the questions are ambiguously worded–it would be very easy to take just about anything out of context with questions like, ‘‘Have you ever contemplated stealing money from the bank you work at?’’ Fuck, I’ve ‘‘contemplated’’ robbing a liquor store, taking over the world, and smashing my furniture up with a baseball bat, but that is nothing like saying I would ever actually do it.
In general, I don’t yet know if the show will hook me. It could go either way.
Caught some of this last night when I was studying, and I agree. That guy was totally not lying about the underwear. He had already admitted to more embarrassing stuff. His girlfriend was on board, even–she didn’t seem to care much about his answers, she just wanted to see him make more money. In short, what a crock!
I also agree. He admitted to stealing another server’s tips, flirting via text message with other women, changing a tab to increase his tip, and “something” he was ashamed of in the military. I don’t buy the stuffing underwear thing being a lie. I think his denial was truthful. The other stuff was much more embarrassing, and shoddy behaviour.
Mum didn’t look too pleased with him after a while, either.
Not to mention the ethnic jokes! :eek:
I’m really hoping she dumps him. What a (broke, and probably now jobless) douchenozzle.
As an aside, I’m starting to wonder what the really big questions will look like. Some of the “easy” ones were pretty bad. I bet he would have had to admit to actual cheating. And maybe he was dishonorably discharged. What else? He had an MFM threesome with a hooker in Bangkok? He has herpes? He eats cocaine off America’s gravestone?
That would be “Colombia,” I say just for clarity.
Polygraphs are bullshit. Not so much becasuse they can’t detect lies, but because they can’t detect the truth.
On the one and only occasion I took a polygraph to get a job, the examiner spent a lot of time on questions about drug use, which didn’t surprise me much because I knew in advance that the store manager was in rehab (it was a family business, and he was a member of the family). When I asked the examiner after the test how I did, he told me he had detected “deception” in relation to the drug questions. I laughed in his face – I’m so square when it comes to drugs, it saddened my college roomies. I’ve never done anything stronger than alcohol and tobacco.