Meet the Folks/Meet the Parents

[PROAc]

There is a new series on NBC. Twice a week or so, three guys will try to win a girl to Hawaii but first they have to passed her parents' test. The last segment featured a polygraph tests where the dad will asked 10+ questions without any pre-polygraph procedures. The polygrapher just give a thumb up or down. The polygrapher looked like the guy who is the announcer on WWF.

[Observer1]

Hollywoodized, Duh!  But as a dad, Wow! What a concept...

[micheal_dovini]

I saw that show as well. All I could think was, " my poly took 4 hours" this guy can tell immediately after asking each question once whether or not they are lying. This just goes to show that most people who have not taken  a polygraph don't know anything about them. Its just good T.V. programming.

[Fair Chance]

Based on polygraph "science", a ten minute screening interview is almost as good (or as bad) as a four hour interview.   Five minutes or five days of questioning does not increase the probability of  more accurate results.  As long as he does not confess to anything, the polygraph is useless.

[Seeker]

Once again the American population is duped into believing that there is an existance of a magical mysitcal thing called a lie detector!
How desperately we seek to find quick fixes at the price of innocents.
Shame on us.

[Skeptic]

Once again the American population is duped into believing that there is an existance of a magical mysitcal thing called a lie detector!
How desperately we seek to find quick fixes at the price of innocents.
Shame on us.

I believe that it is simply human nature to take the "easy road", unless compelling reasons can be found to not do so.  In general, it takes real leadership to convince (or force) large organizations with lots of inertia to do things the hard way.

We want to believe technology can give us methods of lie detection.  Perhaps it will one day.  Until then, we will have to "suck it up" and put in the time, effort and money necessary to do thorough forensic and/or background investigations.

Skeptic

[Fair Chance]

As inferred by many a thread at this website, do we REALLY want a way to read people's minds or "tell the truth?"  I believe that it would truly be a scary power for anyone to posess.  

My question would be, "Who is wise enough to posess this power and not abuse it?"

Not I.

[Marty]

Reminds me of Lord Acton's Dictum:

"power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
http://www.libertystory.net/LSTHINKACTON.html

One consequence of technological advance is the leverage it provides in all sorts of areas. With any luck we won't use it to self extinguish.

-Marty