sackett wrote on May 25^th, 2008 at 5:02pm:


Since you are the one claiming the fantastic, i.e., that the polygraph can accurately detect deception, it is far more logical for you to prove that such a thing can be done, rather than requiring that skeptics prove it cannot be done.

If I claimed to have invented a device that turns water into gasoline, would it make more sense for me to have to prove it works, or for the rest of the world to prove it doesn't?

pailryder wrote on May 23^rd, 2008 at 1:49pm:


So, it's a harder to conduct a test on an intelligent subject than a stupid one?  And it's harder to conduct a test on an informed subject than an ignorant one?  (One can, of course, be intelligent but ignorant of how the polygraph works or stupid but informed about how it works)  Of course it is; it's easier to get good results from a stupid, ignorant person.

Thus the Polygraph Imperative: people who use or depend on the polygraph have a vested interest in keeping as many people stupid and ignorant as possible.  Polygraphers and their clients are among those rare people (religious fundamentalists are also in the same class) who actually want people to be dumb.  The vast majority of the population would prefer that people act more wisely and with more deliberation because, you know, that might help solve problems like the energy crisis, global warming, inadequate access to health care, proliferation of WMDs, controlling government spending, decreasing crime, and the like.   

Polygraphers have decided that they don't mind those problems, so long as people are nice and dumb and easy to polygraph.  And that's why the world would be better off if your guild holds it's next grand meeting in a building with inadequate structural integrity.  You guild started to solve certain problems but instead has become the problem.    The abyss has claimed your souls.

pailryder wrote on May 23^rd, 2008 at 1:49pm:


I agree that there are times when it is not just OK to lie but morally correct to lie.   

I'm not sure if everyone lies in connection with their job.  But you remind me of something that happened at my workplace last week.  I was querying a coworker for advice on how to handle a consumer of our service who was in a lamentable and unfortunate situation and was not pleased with us.  My coworker told me to tell them a reassuring lie in order to smooth things along with the client.  I said "but that's a lie."  To which he replied "Lethe, we lie to these people all the time."  And then we both burst out laughing.

pailryder wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2008 at 11:40am:


LOGICAL FALLACY ALERT: Ad hominem attack.   

Sadly, no attempt to address the points that I raised has been detected.

Anyway, this is what's wrong with your guild: you can't address these points.  Not that you lack the ability, but your dogma forbids you from doing so because to have a coherent discussion you'd need to admit certain uncomfortable facts that call your whole enterprise into question.  That's unfortunate.

I was expecting better from you, pailryder.  An ad hominem attack?  That's the last refuge of the incompetent.  I was at least hoping for begging the question or a red herring.  Usually, the ad hominem attack is the last one trotted out before begging out of the conversation.

Hmm.  Sackett actually doesn't use the ad hominem attack very much; he usually resorts to the two fallacies just mentioned.  My estimate of your intelligence and his had rated yours higher and I'm not inclined to give up that assessment.  Perhaps trying to end debate as you have done is the wiser course of action?  After all, I'm very confident that avoiding uncomfortable discussions is much more important to your guild than is presenting an intelligent case once one has come up.

Anyway, these musings are just for fun and, of course, are not part of my case against the way the polygraph is currently used except insofar as turning perfectly good people (pre-polygraphers) into dumbasses (polygraphers) is generally bad for society.

pailryder wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 11:09pm:


If you were quoting "Moby Dick" I believe the phrase you were looking for is:

Quote:


You may also have been quoting Khan Noonien Singh from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", but he was in fact quoting Melville during that scene on the bridge of the Reliant.

pailryder wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 11:09pm:


There are two paraphrases there.  I did say that polygraphers favor ignorance, that is true--and if you claim that is not true (and if it is true, why take me to task for making a true statement?) I'd be happy to debate you in full on the matter.   

However, I did not say that polygraphers favor the other things (the energy crisis, global warming, inadequate health care, proliferation of WMDs, government overspending, and  increasing crime).  What I said, if you will kindly refer to my post is that (while they may not like those things), they are willing to tolerate them in order to obtain the ignorance they desire.  That is, they want people to be ignorant more than they want to solve those sundry problems.

I thought that was rather clear in the original post:

Lethe wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2008 at 12:11am:


Do you deny that you prefer people to be ignorant of how the polygraph works?  If not, do you deny that it is hard to keep people from investigating that one area of knowledge without discouraging curiosity or critical thinking generally?  If not, do you deny that curiosity and critical thinking are usually very important for solving problems?

If you deny any of those statements, then we'll each have staked out some territory to defend and we can have a discussion to see which of us is more likely to be correct.  Or perhaps you would like to explain how you can encourage curiosity and critical thinking generally without those skills being turned on the polygraph by at least some people (and hopefully the sorts of people against whom the polygraph is used, prospective government employees, have those skills).

P.S. Wrath of Khan is a great movie.  They've all been downhill since then.

pailryder wrote on Jun 7^th, 2008 at 12:42am:


I don't believe I've ever promoted the use of countermeasures against the polygraph.  I think George believes they're easier and more likely to work than I do, but I also think they are easier and more likely to work than polygraphers claim.

Most polygraphers claim that the success rate for countermeasures is pretty close to zero.  But, like yourself, they're always very, very concerned about them.  This fact seems inconsistent with their claims that countermeasures don't work.

What point or question, specifically, would you like me to address, if the above is unsatisfactory?

pailryder wrote on Jun 7^th, 2008 at 2:39am:


That is a very interesting question indeed.

Obviously, the answer hinges on one's definition of what constitutes a correct decision in a polygraph exam.  I think that question can be approached as follows.

First, there are four possible decisions (or "calls") that a polygrapher can make on an exam:

(1) Examinee is deceptive,
(2) Examinee is truthful,
(3) Examinee is using countermeasures, and
(4) No conclusion possible from the available data

Obviously, it is possible for examinees to tell the truth, to lie, and to use CM.  But, in a well-constructed exam, it is not possible for an examinee to neither lie nor tell the truth.  And, of course, the examinee can use CM while telling the truth or while lying.

I think that reaching no conclusion must be regarded as something of a failure of the polygraph, though not as large a failure as reaching a conclusion that is wrong.  That is, it is better to say "I don't know" than to make a positive statement that is false.  Similarly, if the examinee uses CM you can't tell if he or she was lying or telling the truth on the relevant questions; the polygraph has failed to determine what it is ultimately meant to determine.

This brings up my second major point: the purpose of a polygraph exam is to determine if the examinee is telling the truth or lying vis-a-vis the relevant questions.  The purpose of the polygraph is not to determine if someone is using CM; obviously, it is necessary to be able to tell if someone is using CM, but that is only so that it can be determined if he or she is lying on the relevant questions.   

Now, to accomplish it's purpose, the polygraph community has devised various practices and techniques.  Basically, you follow these practices, whose application varies case-by-case, and then other standards tell you how to interpret the resulting charts.

From all this, two possible answers present themselves to the question "What constitutes a correct decision in a polygraph exam?"

First, what we might call the teleological answer: A correct decision is one which says someone who is lying (on the relevant questions) is lying and that someone who tells the truth (on the relevant questions) is telling the truth.   

Secondly, what, for lack of a better term, we might call the process-based answer: A correct decision is one which says an examinee who has produced charts consistent with what is expected from someone who lies (on the relevant questions) is lying; that an examinee who has produced charts consistent with what is expected from someone who tells the truth (on the relevant questions) is telling the truth; that an examinee who has produced charts consistent with what is expected from someone who uses CM is using CM; and that no conclusion is reached on an examinee who has produced charts inconsistent with any other determination.

The important thing to note is this: neither of those two responses is incorrect.

Here is an analogy.  Suppose you were visiting my house and saw a tea kettle on my stove that was boiling and you asked "why is the kettle boiling?"  I could respond "the kettle is boiling because the heat released from the burning propane transfers energy to the water molecules in the pot which become excited and, at 100 degrees centigrade, begin to boil and go from a liquid to a gas."  That answer would be correct in one sense.  However, I could also say "the kettle is boiling because I want tea," and that response would also be correct, albeit in a different way.

I think polygraphers are mostly concerned with the process-based response: their decision is correct if it is in line with what polygraph doctrine tells them about a certain pattern on the charts.  There are many reasons that they prefer this sort of answer.

First, they know all about polygraph doctrine and practice; they spend their careers learning and studying it and become good at applying the principles.  Therefore, they attach great importance to correct practice and come to take pride in their ability to proficiently apply the doctrines.

Second, they really can't measure their success at finding liars and identifying truthful people because it is very rare to have independent confirmation of an obtained result (it can happen, but those cases are the exception).  Since they can't tell how good they are at achieving the ultimate end of the polygraph (identifying who lies and who tells the truth on relevant questions) the must perforce measure their abilities and successes against how well they follow the means by which the end is most likely to be obtained.

Thirdly, polygraphers know that they will make bad calls which condemn the innocent and exonerate the guilty.  If they measure success the teleological way, they'd have to consider these grave failures, which would be very uncomfortable.  However, by defining  success as correctly applied practice they can transfer much of the responsibility for these calls to the polygraph.  "I did my job, my interpretation of the charts was correct; I succeeded at what I had to do, which was ask the questions in the correct way and interpret the results correctly"

However, my position is that the success of the polygraph must ultimately be measured in what I have called the teleological manner: every person who tells the truth on the control questions and is declared truthful is a success, every such person who is declared untruthful is a failure, and every person who lies on the relevant questions and is declared a liar is a success and every such person who is declared truthful is a failure.

Every person who uses CM also is a failure of the polygraph system, in my view, since we don't know (at least via the polygraph) if the person was telling the truth or lying on the relevant questions.  I have discussed this with Sackett, who, of course, disagrees.  But the purpose of the polygraph is to find out if someone did or didn't do the act described in the relevant questions, not if he did the things described in the control questions.  Therefore, we don't care if someone tries to deceive us by lying on the control questions except insofar as it helps or hinders our quest to find out if they are lying on the relevants because, contrary to what the given instructions tell the examinee, lying on the control questions doesn't correlate with lying on the relevants.  In precisely the same way, we don't care about if someone uses CM in and of itself except that it makes it impossible to determine if someone is lying on the relevant questions.  Using CM is no more or less immoral than lying on the control questions.

This leads to a fourth reason why polygraphers generally prefer the process-based approach to measuring their correctness: it leads to a far, far higher success rate.  An inconclusive result isn't a failure on their part to obtain the desired information after consuming significant societal resources, it is a success at correctly interpreting the data.