Why wouldn’t you want the police to ask if the person has ever murdered or raped before? I mean, what’s the worse that can happen? You find out they haven’t ever murdered or raped.
You know what those commies have put in our drinking water Mandrake?! Truth Serum! They are attacking our precious bodily fluids.
Anyway, I’d put it in the drinking water and make sure that all public figures had to drink a glass before talking or making a decision.
I would hope to turn it into gas, and spread it in the air.
Sure it is. The writer is implicitly saying, “in the world that I’m creating within these pages, the alien then ate his face.” True statement.
Yeah, but those are statements about our shared reality, and would be false.
Defendent: (In the world I’m creating in my imagination right now) “I did not murder that woman.”
Prosecution: “Are you certain? You were caught within frame of a live morning news show and were seen doing it by five hundred thousand people. We have the recording right here.”
Defendent: “I say again,” (in the world I created while writing my fictional story entitled “argument for the defense”) “that that’s not me; it must be somebody else.”
Prosecution: “But-”
Judge: “Enough of this nonsense; case dismissed.”
Look, I’ve written some fiction. It’s brilliant work if I say so myself, with some of the most lovingly-crafted Mary Sues around and melodrama that would bring a tear to your eye. But is it true? Heck no. That’s why it’s called fiction.
Why are you fighting the hypothetical? There are far more practical objections to the perfect truth serum.
He’s not fighting it. He’s pointing out a necessary consequence. If such a truth serum exists, while in use, the victim would not be able to create fiction. To state that this is not so is what is fighting the hypothetical.
Define Truth? I know that sounds a bit obtuse, but your truths and my truths may not be equal.
For the most part, I have found most people dont want the truth. They want some pretty package that makes them feel good.
I think he’s ribbing me for saying somebody else was fighting the hypothetical earlier in the thread. Of course, they actually were.
Define “practical objection”. Given that if it’s affecting writers we must be talking about an “it’s in the water” situation where everyone is effected all the time, so we don’t have to worry about one group using it selectively for evil. And I’m not entirely sure the 5th amendment issues are that big a problem. But losing fiction? That’s a huge part of human culture that you’re closing off. Sure we could keep rereading the body of work we already have - but forget reading it to your kids, or in class! Also, if the dosage is strong enough it might even be impossible to reprint these materials, leading to a decomposition of literature as a whole.
Okay, maybe you don’t care about that; perhaps you haven’t touched a fiction book since high school. But what about TV and movies? I don’t know that I’ve seen a show that lacked statements of fact; actors and voice actors will no longer be able to say untrue lines, not that the scriptwiters could have included them. (And “It’s a model” and “My character would be scared right now” don’t do it for me.) Better brace yourself for an uptick in reality TV, people!
Okay, maybe you only watch sports and the news. But what about comedy? Would it emerge unscathed? “Why did the chicken cross the road? I’m not even talking about a real chicken!” “I just flew in from Boston and the airline food was mediocre!” “There once was a man from Nantucket, -probably lots of men from there actually, and I can’t say anything specific about them.”
You’re right, there’s no practical effect to be seen here at all.
Per the OP, as far as this serum is concerned truth is whatever the person thinks is true. Which means that the conspiracy theorists and the people trying to put creationism in schools will still be around. Yay!
A related twist of a question (covering issues that have been touched on several times already): Suppose there’s a machine which is basically a 100% reliable lie detector. It can’t compel anyone to say anything, but will verify with total accuracy whether what the person is saying is true to the best of their knowledge.
If such a machine existed, would/should the 5th amendment be changed to account for it? Is there any benefit to society to a situation where the accused is put under the machine, is asked “did you kill Bob”, refuses to answer, and the judge tells the jury not to infer any information from that refusal to answer?
(Note that in our current system, without a truth machine, if we think someone killed Bob on the evening of Jan 12., we might ask them “where were you on the evening of Jan. 12”, and the 5th amendment means they don’t have to answer… presumably because maybe they weren’t in fact killing Bob, but they were instead off committing some other crime, or cheating on their spouse, or whatever. But with the truth machine, we don’t have to bother with related questions like “where were you on the evening of Jan. 12”, we can jump straight to “did you kill Bob” with zero risk of fishing for additional information…) (And presumably whoever is doing the questioning would be forbidden from asking other questions while the machine was on, etc.)
Well, by my read the biggest motivation behind the 5th amendment (or at least the most important one) is to deter torture. Sounds to me like your lie detector simply makes torture more reliable, and thus would encourage its use on anyone who didn’t immediately answer the interrogator’s questions. Under these circumstances loosening the 5th doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Remember, the 5th amendment doesn’t mean we can’t use people’s confessions in court. It just means we can’t compel them. Such a lie detector (if we had one) should obviously be used to confirm valid confessions or reject false ones, as well as to detect purjury, but we shouldn’t allow the interrogators to break out the thumbscrews just because it would make the screams more informative.
Oh, and there are more reasons to refuse to answer questions than because you did it. For a melodramatic example, you might refrain from answering a question because you want to look guilty, to protect someone else. There are reasons why silence is not to be construed as guilt.
I don’t see how you get from “we have a 100% accurate lie detector test” to “torture is suddenly legal while questioning suspects”. And, honestly, I think you’re being a little overly cynical. Bear in mind, also, that whatever negative effects there might have been, there would be a HUGE positive effect, that being that it would be nearly impossible for an innocent person to be convicted. Not impossible, maybe, but damn close to it.
And once that’s the case, a lot that we take for granted about the entire criminal/judicial system suddenly ceases to be true. A whole ton of the truly important and necessary safeguards in the world we actually live in are there to protect the innocent. When almost anyone who is truly innocent has a basically-literal get out of jail free card consisting of plugging into the truth machine and saying “I didn’t kill Bob”, then the entire game and situation changes.
I mean, let’s take one of the darker hours of American foreign policy of recent years, Gitmo. Add a 100% accurate truth machine to the equation, and assume that the people running it are not (as Der Trihs would likely assume they were) actual psychopaths. What’s the impact of this machine? Well, maybe you might argue that there would be more waterboarding because now there would be a way to confirm what was said under waterboarding. But there would also be a hell of a lot LESS totally randomly innocent people who got swept up for no reason and had 4 years of their life stolen.