Well, that’s what the thread’s all about…
I think this would be horrible. If they became as common as car alarm keyfobs, it would change every social interaction we’ve got. Imagine a priest giving a sermon with five or six people in the audience using these things on him… “Nope. Nope. Yep, he believes that. Nope.” Or a teacher, or people on a date, or kids talking to each other in school… It would change everything.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are loyal to dictatorial regimes…
Job interviewers wouldn’t bother to ask you for your Facebook password, they’d go straight to the electrodes.
The private detective market would dry up, suspicious spouses would just down with an ultimatum.
Then this technology and the documentation thereof must be destroyed, its creators and their collaborators discredited, disparaged and finally eliminated, and those who know the details of the operation get a change of identities and “disappear”.
:D:cool:
No, but seriously, it has been mentioned…
And further, let’s remember how “the court of public opinion” tends to disregard nuance – the presumption by a huge part of the public would indeed be that the entirety of any investigation would have to be nothing more than “did you or didn’t you” any more. Or that it must be impossible for both parties to be sincerely convinced of their truth.
Eventually a lot of the public would conclude from all this that since it’s not that simple, therefore this technology is a BS piece of trash that leaves you in JAQ mode anyway.
Right: “Are you really interrogating me about this because you have cause for it? Or are you just out fishing? Can I just walk away from here without saying another word, or not?” That could create some nasty upfront confrontations.
Of course it could be interesting to have it applied in some cases in the civil realm: “Whenever termination of an employee is carried out, all officials of the employer participating in the decision shall submit to Truthpuller System interview to assert that they did not act based on any of the causes outlawed by [citation of acts that forbid various forms of wrongful termination]”. See how much support you get for THAT…
This concept was explored quite well in a novel called “The Truth Machine”.
Honey, does this dress make me look fat?
No
Green light comes on
(thank gawd for technology and grammatical precision)
Also (even though it is a comedy) the Episode “Justice” from Red Dwarf finds Rimmer condemning himself for a crime that he did not commit, because of a mind prove by the Justice World. As other posters noticed, there are many cases (in reality and in fiction) when human memory is demonstrated to not be a very reliable thing.
Kryten: “Who would allow this man, this joke of a man, this man who could not outwit a used tea bag, to be in a position where he might endanger the entire crew? Who? Only a yoghurt. This man is not guilty of manslaughter, he is only guilty of being Arnold J. Rimmer. That is his crime; it is also his punishment. The defence rests.”
Depends on the roll-out.
If the truth or falsehood of non-verbal responses can as well be judged as well as words, no torture is necessary. Just say that silence will be interpreted as yes, and then ask about the letter A.
As for the OP question, deception is tied so deeply into human nature that people might barely be people any more if lies could be infallibly detected.
Being put in a situation where, say, the other person’s cell phone beeps after each lie would be extremely stressful. This is because lying is common, and yet extremely socially unacceptable. Stress would also be greater because no one could ever be trusted with a secret. Distrust would skyrocket. I almost think that living under such constant stress would change human nature – perhaps to the point where the completely effective machine ceased to be so.
Obviously, and I did note so in my post. But, also, as I noted, not nearly as entertaining as hooking someone up to the combination Electric Chair/Educated Egg Detector (Patent Applied For). 
What about the mentally ill or delusional?
“Are you Napoleon?”
“Yes”
“Uh…huh sir he is telling the truth!”
I daresay Aaron A. Aaronson is going to get arrested a lot.
I don’t understand this use of “JAQ.”
The public, upon being confronted that the technology is NOT magical to fight crime and resolve civil disputes infallibly (for various reasons mentioned already), will come to see it as a device that empowers others to come up to you “Just Asking Questions” on fishing expeditions.
Seems like people complain about dishonesty in society, but don’t want transparency.
Ah yes, but will it really change human nature? Human nature cannot change, by definition. It would definitely change human society, we’d have to adapt and the change would be traumatic for sure.
Standard American speech has a lot of hyperbole. The machine would have to parse statements like “this is the best sandwich ever!” It’s unlikely it’s the best one of your life, but you do actually like it a lot.
“Was it good for you too?” “Of course honey.” Bzznt.
One of the main points of lying is to avoid looking like an asshole. So people would have to deal with most people they know being assholes, or people would self-select and filter into groups where everyones agree with each other. I think it’d be considered rude to use the machine in everyday situations, like when Jimbo is regaling everyone with his fishing story or Lindsey is talking about how the hot bartender was totally hitting on her.
There would be a faction of people fighting for it to be normalized in all situations, especially people on the autism spectrum and people not good at reading social cues, sarcasm, etc. If it became accepted for everyday conversations then maybe human interaction would become more robotic, or people would avoid asking questions that invite lies.
Fiction writing would be way harder. Writers would have to invent reasons why it can’t be used, like with cell phones.
I do remember that in the TV series of Robocop they had a way to detect lies by a computerized speech analyzer. The way the writers found a way around it was to have in one occasion a professional politician involved in a case.
The machine reported that it could not be certain if the politician was telling the truth or not! Because the speech and phrases of the politician were by design made to be as ambiguous as possible.