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I remember reading somewhere an idea to make the polygraph produce more objective results: Instead of asking for example "Did you rob the bank?" and interpret
by air7 8y ago
I remember reading somewhere an idea to make the polygraph produce more objective results:
Instead of asking for example "Did you rob the bank?" and interpret the response as "lying" or "not lying" they can be asked "Was the getaway car white?" "Was the getaway car red?" "Was the getaway car blue?". By asking several of these you can statistically prove the suspect is guilty if they responded differently to several detail questions about information only they knew. Tthis doesn't help prove innocence (because people can beat the machine) but it reduces false positives and can therefor prove guilt (because it's unlikely a nervous person would randomly be more nervous when the true details are being asked vs. the decoys).
Of course to be done right the operator must be "blind" (not know the answers and subconsciously tip the suspect off) and other statistical safe-guards need to be in place, so how useful in the real-world this is I don't know.
- ap_org 8y agoThe technique you're thinking of is called the Guilty Knowledge Test, which is seldom used. It's discussed at p. 121 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector: https://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf#page=121 https://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf#pa...
- technofiend 8y agoThe rational wiki calls it a presupposition and mentions what I remember from logic class which is to respond "moo" although I could swear it was spelled "mu" when I learned the term. The example I heard was something like "So tell the court: have you stopped beating your wife?" https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Presupposition https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Presupposition
- tsuraan 8y agoI think the correct spelling is "無", but wikipedia lists english spellings as "mu" (from Japanese) or "wu" (from Chinese)[0] 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)
- technofiend 8y agoThank you!