I was listening to Serial and how it would be so easy to know if someone is guilty or innocent if we had a real lie detector. I’m wondering if this, and other benefits outweigh the drawbacks, especially if it fell in the wrong hands.
What say you?
It’s going to depend on how portable it is and how widespread. Will it be the size of a marker and available in every store or the size of a cargo van and confined to the legal system?
Well, torture* would become completely effective. More efficient, too, depending on how creative you are or how sensitive the machine is…
“Does the courier’s name start with the letter ‘A’? If ‘yes,’ scream.”
Taser
Shriek
Machine dings
“Alrighty then! Does the NEXT letter of the courier’s name start with ‘A’?”
Taser
Shriek
Machine buzzes
“Got it…does the next letter of the courier’s name start with ‘B’?”
Taser
Shriek
Machine dings
“Now we’re getting somewhere! Alright, does the third letter of the courier’s name start with ‘A’…?” [Etc]
(I’m kidding, of course; you could probably do the above scenario without shocking someone’s eyeballs. But it’s not as funny.)
*Well, torture-for-interrogation, that is. Torture for punishment or intimidation is really a different field.
It would certainly put all of the politicians out of business.
How would it react to “This statement is a lie”?
It would lead to some very intricate compartmentalization of secret data. You can’t tell what you don’t know. Encryption would become vastly more vital than it is today. There’d be a lot more use of sealed orders. Also deceit and provocation. It would become a vital tactic to “allow” someone to get loose with information he thinks is true.
It wouldn’t change the game all that much. We’re clever bastards; we’d find ways to maintain deception and secrecy.
It might lead to more use of suicide pills if high-ranking personnel are in danger of capture. But, again, if a guy is carrying secret orders, and he disposes of them (old-time Naval couriers kept dispatches in lead-lined books, so they could be sunk) then what can he possibly tell?
Meanwhile, for purposes of ordinary civil cases, it would be a huge boon, and would also be useful for many criminal trials. It would give a huge benefit to the defense position of “not guilty by reason of actual innocence.” If you could prove your innocence, the D.A. isn’t likely to waste his time pressing charges.
It would eliminate the old gridlock of “it’s my word versus his.”
I’m voting it would be a small boon for human civilization.
The first one.
It would mark it as truthful. Either that or it would violently explode, killing or injuring dozens around it.
The end of civilization.
We can’t handle the truth. 
It would have interesting effects on authoritarian regimes. The ones that depend on fear to stay in power would be faced with a quandary; what do you do when you use this super lie detector to detect who is loyal - and the answer is “virtually no one”? On the other hand those that are more successful at creating true believers in the regime/its ideology will be able to find genuinely loyal people fairly easily - and they’ll risk collapsing because they’ve filled all positions of authority with inflexible, irrational true believers.
Not really, since torture is known to cause memory loss and the creation of false memories. And torture becoming a common practice would encourage people to suicide rather than surrender, and you can’t interrogate a corpse.
It’s not a lie, if you believe it.
You would have to change some laws, before you get to ask me a single question as a suspect my lawyer is going to use it on the police, the detectives, and the prosecutor to make sure they actually have a valid reason for asking me any questions at all…not to mention that whole 5th amendment thing.
and Politicians, omfg the end of both parties would be immediate.
Disaster. Human survival is based on the lies we tell ourselves and others.
Heck, if someone asks “Where were you on the night of the 24th?” and your reply is “none of your business”, would that register as true if you believe that the answer is none of their business?
It would be amusing to see what happened when two people were marked as telling the truth on two statements that are wholly contradictory.
Honestly, would this thing even have any effect given how adept people are at believing that things that are wrong are actually right and how notoriously poor people are at being eyewitnesses?
We may be close to this. Although for the near future it would probably be a large machine and therefore could have laws controlling it’s use. It could have dramatic affects on our justice system.
Exactly. Plenty of people think they have seen ghosts and alien spaceships; they aren’t lying, so a lie detector would mark them down as telling the truth. Does that mean ghosts and alien spaceships are real?
The trouble is that so many statements “X” are actually “I believe X”, with the first two words elided.
And, of course, since a lie detecting machine cannot judge objective reality outside of the person it’s examining…
This message brought to you by The Other Waldo Pepper, who owns a restaurant called
None Of Your Business; it’s next to I Was At Home All Evening Reading A Good Book.
Obviously people can refuse to answer (“none of your business”, is the equivalent of this), and obviously it’s only going to show what the person believes to be true, but neither of those things mean that it would have no impact.
An innocent person who’s been arrested for murder could quickly prove their innocence, for example. Sure, it would only show that they believe themselves to be innoncent, and I suppose that a prosecutor could try to argue that they could have alzheimers or something, but if I was on a jury it would take a lot to convince me that the defendant’s memory is that faulty.
I have to wonder if it could ever be totally infallible. Imagine that such devices eventually became small, inexpensive, and easy to use. Maybe it lights up either red or green for a lie or the truth. Could a person use it on themselves to train themselves to lie without triggering the red light?