Comments on: On Lying

By: Carl Shulman

Carl Shulman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:29:33 +0000

Employers would use lie detection tests to weed out embezzlers and other ‘undesirables’ from their workforces, but venture capitalists and hedge funds could require that corporate management submit to lie detector tests and ask whether they had violated their fiduciary duties to their companies (pursuing mergers that offered poor return to shareholders in order to increase their compensation, etc), or had violated the law.

Groups like the Gates Foundation could demand truth-in-science from their grant recipients (as they now require the sharing of data) or, even better, require publication in journals using lie detection on authors and reviewers.

With respect to politicians refusing to be tested: we already see politicians bending over backwards to make statements that are not verifiably false in order to give misleading impressions, evading making statements under oath, etc. However, even if politicians initially refuse to submit to testing, lie detectors would make it much harder to dismiss honest whistleblowers.

I agree that removing political slack can be very dangerous, given the irrationality of the voters, but this might be offset by lie detection enabling a much more credible presentation of expert opinion, e.g. claims that Intelligent Design has any greater scientific credibility than creationism would be untenable, and claims that trade with China is economically beneficial could avert the suspicion that the speakers were being paid off by business elites.

In general, one of the most important norms of lie detector use would have involve questions verifying the speaker’s level of knowledge and the effort put into determining truth on the topic.

By: Richard Hollerith

Richard Hollerith — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:13:01 +0000

Also, it’s not like the powerful don’t have other ways to oppress the unpowerful–so many other ways that one can argue that it is the vigilance of the unpowerful that will determine how much liberty they retain rather than the availability of liberty-reducing technology.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:35:31 +0000

Given what I’ve said about privacy and the “Transparent Society”, it might not be surprising that I take a very different view than Eliezer. I think more truth and accuracy will be good things. I think if the existence of such detectors is common knowledge, the demand for their application on the “powerful” will be hard for them to resist against.

By: Hopefully Anonymous

Hopefully Anonymous — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:41:56 +0000

Carl,
Great points. Bringing up peer review committees is an interesting “who’s watching the watchers” problem. Who actually is empirically studying and proposing optimizations of peer review and the role it plays in the production of scientific consensus knowledge?

By: Carl Shulman

Carl Shulman — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 01:26:47 +0000

There seems to be enough conscious deception or selective presentation in science that ferreting out the actual opinions of scientists could be very valuable, especially when combined with inquiries to clarify expertise on a subject. Peer reviewers and tenure committee members could be asked whether they held any personal grudges or other such motivations with respect to key decisions. Researchers could be asked whether they their work was more beneficial than an alternative, by a particular metric (e.g. quality-adjusted years of life saved), and the strength of the evidence in support of that view.

By: Nick Tarleton

Nick Tarleton — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:50:20 +0000

But think of the increased power to enforce bad laws, perform loyalty tests, or other unpleasant things

This is probably only so bad if the lie detector requires the testee to submit, thus encouraging its use by centralized powers (police, employers). If everyone had them, and could test everyone they heard say something, it would probably be a good thing.

And self-deception detectors would be of indescribable worth.

By: Hopefully Anonymous

Hopefully Anonymous — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:50:53 +0000

Robin writes “Eliezer, economic analysis suggests it is no where near as simple as benefiting the powerful at the expense of the powerless.”

I agree strongly. It’s actually a bit of a slight to the readership of the blog to give analysis as simplistic as “A lie detector is a tool for increasing the power of the powerful over the powerless” in my opinion as a reader. I think we’re looking for comentary as propaganda denuded and as empiricism and critical thought derived analysis rich as possible.

By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:52:10 +0000

Also, it sounds strange to portray police having lie detectors as a dystopic thing. The police already has access to a comprehensive arsenal of techniques which it could abuse, from fingerprinting and DNA analysis to house searches and tapping of phone lines. Adding lie detectors to the mix would presumably only add one more technique that could only be used with a warrant. And imagine if criminal cases could be settled with a simple, lie detector-checked “are you guilty or innocent” question, saving countless of hours of investigative work and an untold number of wrongly sentenced innocents… obvious there’d need to be very tight measures to make sure the technicians didn’t distort the information, like multiple independent groups supervising and carrying out the scans, but it would be worth it if it could be pulled off.

Even if the lie detector was reserved for only serious crimes, as it maybe should be, it sounds more like a utopia than a dystopia to me – bring in everybody even remotely suspected of the crime in for a five-minute scan, ask them if they did it or if they know who did it, if they truthfully answer no to both questions then they’re cleared.

By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 21:35:13 +0000

Robin, could you elaborate on that economic analysis?

LemmusLemmus, the difference is that current-day lie detectors aren’t very (if at all) reliable. Eliezer was, as I understand it, talking about a hypothetical 100% accurate lie detector.

By: LemmusLemmus

LemmusLemmus — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:26:34 +0000

Elizer,

there are already lie detectors, and I am not aware of any western nations other than the US in which police use them. If I’m just ignorant, please let me know.