They had one of these in Little Fuzzy iirc.
If a defendant refused to take the stand and sit in the “Truth Chair” wouldn’t the jury then know for a fact he was guilty?
[Thank goodness this is just hypothetical]
Skald, I will hunt you down and destroy your entire stock of chairs, if I could. These chairs will not just create some mild changes to our legal system, but rather would throw almost every facet of our society into chaos.
We already have drugs that erase recent memory.
Crooks would kidnap people and ask questions such as “what is your bank account number and your pin, and what are your valuables and where do you hide them?” After getting the information they want, they would drug the victim to wipe out knowledge of what they asked and whom did the asking.
Senate investigation hearings already refuse to take “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself” as a valid answer. Do you really want to give the majority party the power to destroy the political careers of many of the minority party politicians? So much for two or more party system–we would quickly have a one party system.
The entire legal system would be thrown into chaos, and most of our laws would have to be rewritten. Look at how quickly our courts embraced lie detector tests. It was only after it was proved that the tests were extremely unreliable that the courts rejected the use of the machines (and they still get used on occasion). If your chairs are anywhere as good as you claim, the courts would embrace them.
Spouses and/or lovers would insist on answers to questions. Many will not like those answers.
Business trade secrets could no longer be secret.
The spy trade, on the other hand, would flourish (for a while, at least).
I could go on, but I’d rather not–I need to spend my time hunting down all your chairs and destroying them.
I would love to sneak them into some big-name chat shows.
The veridicator; sort of. It could detect any lie, or even the consideration of a lie, but couldn’t compel people to speak.
The effects on religion would be interesting, since it can be used to tell if someone really, truly believes this or that dogma. The effects on dictatorships would be interesting too; on one hand, it lets them ferret out dissent; on the other they may be faced with the situation that the dictator discovers that he has, say, 5 people who are actually loyal to him. A dictator can’t kill nearly everyone in the country, especially when the killers are included among the people to be executed. What happens to all those regimes that are ultimately all about enforcing a facade of loyalty?
If we have a 100% effective way of knowing you committed a crime, why would its use be a problem in court.
If you didn’t do the crime, get on the machine and say so. If you did do the crime, go to jail.
Hm. So, let’s say that I’ve got some hot and heavy action going on with the pool boy, but it’s stopped short of P-I-V sex. Husband is suspicious, and pays $50.00 to put me on the SP for one question.
If he asked me “Are you sleeping with the pool boy?”, would I be compelled to answer “Yes”?
Or would I have to say “No, but we’ve gone down on each other quite a bit” or “No, we have never dozed in each other’s presence”?
There is an interesting speculative fiction novel written about such a device: The Truth Machine, by James Halperin. I read it about 10 years ago. The author makes several speculations on the impacts on society of this type of invention. Very good read.
I’m torn. Having a few around, with a lot of oversight regarding their use might be good. Overuse could easily create a lot of social havoc.
Maggie - as I understand, you’re not required to volunteer information beyond ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a yes/no question, and with a question that vague it will come down to how you honestly interpret the phrase ‘sleeping with.’
pohjonen, sitchensis - The complicating factor with this attitude is if somebody is under suspicion of a serious crime, they’re in fact innocent, but also have a huge secret that’s tied up with the relevant facts of the case. If this secret comes out, say, the life they know is ruined. So they’d have to choose between refusing the chair, or a great likelihood of confessing the secret as they exonerate themselves.
I’m not 100% sure this is all negative, myself. It would be a huge change in how people approach questions of privacy, but maybe it should be up to each person how they approach such a situation. For one thing, if the suspect does confess their huge life-destroying secret, maybe that will lead to the exposure of the true criminal, and other people’s lives will be better because of it.
What happens if a politician sits in the chair? You say you tested it on Bill Clinton clones but I’m skeptical. Immovable object/irresistible force.
If a person sitting in this chair were to become lassoed by Wonder Woman, would the effects cancel each other out or would that person suddenly come up with a unified theory of the universe?
I could see a very, very limited use being workable even with the fifth amendment. It’d be more of a truth-verifier than anything else: you take the stand, you get asked a question, and then you either plead the fifth or sit down in the chair to be re-asked. No other use allowed - although how exactly you enforce that is beyond me - I doubt it’d work out well in reality. Maybe treat it the same way you’d treat an illegal search? So if the prosecutor cheats and asks you something else, that’s tainted evidence, and has to be thrown out. I think we’d go nuts with it for a while, and a whole bunch of crappy things would happen, but after a century or two, we’d work it into the legal system better.
I dunno. Human recall is pretty sketchy to begin with. People see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear. Everything you perceive is filtered through your brain to fit your understanding of how things work. Just because you ask someone a question and they answer with what they think is the truth doesn’t make it fact. I think it would be fairly useless.
That would be a problem if you were trying to convict based only on witness testimony. Once the witness says “Joe” did it, offer “Joe” the chance to refute it on the chair or go to jail.
What if they say, “I honestly don’t want to answer that.”
Huh? Taking the stand is a voluntary act. You can refuse to take the stand in civil and criminal court. You can only be compelled if granted immunity in criminal court. WAKE UP! YOU KNEW THIS!
Anyway, I vote yes. Money wasted on lawyers would be cut by a factor of 10.
Would it be used in the mainstream if we had it (for court cases, insurance claims, and such)? I doubt it. Lawyering is never about outing the truth, it’s about convincing the jury that your side is less wrong than the other. The legal profession would be dead (or nearly so) if we could put a witness on the stand and know that they’re telling the truth. I have a feeling attorneys would campaign heavily against its use, and they have a lot of money + lobbying on their side.
Would it be used for borderline-illegal interrogation of foreigners? You bet your ass.
Should we use it casually? Hell no. I could get into my reasons, of which many exist; suffice to say that I don’t believe truth has as much value in human interaction as good judgment and tact. We can’t handle the truth. I think something like this in the hands of the wrong person (tie down a politician and ask him policy questions) would more likely destroy society than benefit it. First-world society (at least, the leadership thereof) is built on a neatly interwoven fabric of half-truths.
I always thought that a large part of “the 5th” was a protection against false confessions being beaten out of people. So I would wonder if such a device were truly against the spirit of the consitution here.
By the same token - I thought part of the reason for “just cause” for searches was as a protection against the planting of evidence.
I kinda feel that if a devicce that had no deleterious effects could be used to determine incontrovertibly guilt or innocence it is pretty much in line with the concept of natural justice.
Further, I think people, over time, would start to develop a much more healthy attitude towards mistakes. Rather than, for example, an extra marital affair being a political death sentence it may well become more of a case of “meh - he made a mistake, but it doesn’t change what he wants to achieve or his political stance”
I think we need a little more truth in the world. All of the negatives that people are bringing up about this machine is great: we’ll adapt to it. And by adapt, I don’t mean that we’ll try to figure out how to beat the system, but that humanity will just have to accept that people aren’t the same in private as in public
Think about it: what’s the bad thing about forcing all politicians to undergo the Chair? Yes, ask him policy questions, see what he knows and doesn’t know. And America will just have to accept that nobody knows enough about taxes or health care or the economy to have a foolproof plan. Instead of being tricked about it as people are right now, we can find out if a politician really does believe in the shit he believes.
I would love this chair even though I have secrets I want to keep too. Every married couple should have one, if not to use, then simply the threat of using it. Either people will have to stop cheating or, as I think, their spouses will just have to get over the fact that some people have a wandering eye or isn’t as sincere as they appear to be. But we’ll adapt. Less lies keeping the facade of polite society up is always going to be great. Less self delusions about who and what people are should make for more honest self-introspection. If you can’t lie to yourself and others, then you have to force yourself to accept who you are and who others are. I see short term damage for society followed by long term and permanent benefits
I think it might throw the fifth amendment out the window. And I think that’s a great idea.
The fifth and sixth amendments are there because we have imperfect mindreading technology. Police do their best to determine the facts of a case, but unless the police were on the scene, they can’t know what exactly happened. To avoid police abuses designed to force false confessions, we put a lot of protections in place for the accused.
But this chair eliminates the possibility of false confessions (with proper questions–that is, you’d need to have some questions to avoid the possibility of brainwashing). So why do we need protection against self-incrimination?
Use the chair. Get rid of the guilt-or-innocence phase of trial by jury. Get rid of the protection against self-incrimination as relates to the chair. Don’t hold onto outdated judicial principles when a technology comes along that renders the principles obsolete.