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Lie Detector Company Threatens Critical Scientists With Suit
An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish newspaper DN reports that the Israeli company Nemesysco has sent letters to researchers at the University of Stockholm, threatening legal action if they do not stop publishing findings (Google translation). An article called 'Charlatanry in forensic speech science: A problem to be taken seriously' was pulled by the publisher after threats of a libel lawsuit." Online translations can be a little wonky; if your Swedish is as bad as mine, this English-language article describes the situation well.
1. socially conservative politics
2. intellectual property laws
civilization is bettered in terms of happiness, health, and financial prosperity as long as the power of social conservatives and corporate oligarchy are held in check. certainly, there is now ay to ever completely defeat these forces, and they do actually do good some good in this world. but they must be eternally pruned, for in part sof the world where their power runs unchecked, corruption and classism, intolerance and tribalism take hold
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wonder when companies will realize that trying to silence people in this modern age will just lead to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
.
Hey, look! I can blast buzzwords and pretend my software works too!
So how much would you pay? Wait, don't answer because this can flash the overall value for each parameter in a separate window! Now how much would you pay?
I know lie detectors have only been more of toys or threats than really useful tools. A trained questioner doesn't need a lie detector. A lie detector is more for them to let you know that they are almost positive that you've lied on the subject.
There are folks that want lie detectors to work like in the movies or have it on their cell phones so that they know when the other person is lying. They'd hate to have it used on them though. I have news for you.
Everyone has a built-in lie detector. It's just how well that it's been trained to work. How would the world be different if we gave elementary school kids the same questioning for lies tools that are usually taught to police detectives? Short answer; not too different. They'd just know faster when the teachers are lost and clueless, and any attempts to bring new information that you know the teacher doesn't have would just be punished faster. We would get politicians that are even better at lying though.
Except that if the lie detector says the scientists are telling the truth, the company can either:
1. Publicly admit that the scientists are telling the truth.
2. Publicly claim that the scientists are lying and, thus, also publicly admit that their own lie detectors are faulty.
Polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, coin flips, sticking your hand in the statue's mouth and Scientology's "E-Meters" all share the same validity in catching lies -- basically none. It's all pretend "science" with cool moving needles and wires, but you might as well be watching a seismograph for all the good it does you. It simply gives government agencies and insurance companies an excuse to call you a liar. "Hey, don't look at me, the MACHINE says you're lying..."
Now FOX has this propaganda puff piece for the TSA called "Lie to Me" going where an actor I like is helping spread nonsense I can't stand.
Can you imagine the revolution society would undergo if "voice stress analyzers" actually worked? "I did not have sex with that woman!" BZZZ! "Saddam Hussein is building nuclear weapons!" BZZZ! "The 700 billion will be wisely spent!" BZZZZ! "I was misquoted!" BZZZ!
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
My point is that this isn't lying, it's the listener lying to himself about what he heard... When Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down this Wall!" he wasn't lying about his unwillingness to tear down the wall himself, he was just phrasing his position in such a way the made everyone hear "OMG Reagan promises to defeat teh sovs!" when in fact Reagan was taking responsibility for no action on his part.
Just the same, when Obama says "Yes we can close Guantanamo!" he isn't promising to do a goddamn thing, he's just phrasing his aspirations for what America could do in such a way that people hear "OMG Barack is gonna close gitmo!"
This is not lying, and treating it like it is is just victimology of the voter against eeeeeeevil politicians.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Am I the only one who was expecting a statement from Nemesysco advertising "Our products are for entertainment purposes only." ?
They couldn't do that as their major contracts are with military, intelligence, and police organizations. Labeling their product as an entertainment device would be to more or less admit that the paper is correct and most likely cost them all of their contracts (and future sales).
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Just the same, when Obama says "Yes we can close Guantanamo!" he isn't promising to do a goddamn thing, he's just phrasing his aspirations for what America could do in such a way that people hear "OMG Barack is gonna close gitmo!"
This is not lying, and treating it like it is is just victimology of the voter against eeeeeeevil politicians.
That is absolutely lying! We're talking about natural language communication here, not a programming language. Words and phrases have meaning that are not necessarily the sum of their individual parts, there is context involved that guides the necessary interpretation of both sides. As in, pedantic literal interpretation is not, and has never been, the sole judge of the meaning of a sentence.
When the words spoken by a speaker are designed to convey a certain meaning to the listeners, and the listeners receive that meaning, then we call that successful communication. When that correctly conveyed meaning is deliberately false, that's a fucking lie!
When the speaker also designs their words to leave themselves a semantic escape valve so they can claim to have meant something else later, that doesn't mean they weren't lying, it means they knew they were lying and thus needed the out!
When Obama said "Yes we can close Gitmo", everyone correctly interpreted that to mean that if he were elected, he would close Gitmo. That is the meaning he obviously intended to convey. If he doesn't close it, then that's a lie*. And if he defended himself by saying that all he had meant was he thought it was something America could do hypothetically, then that makes him a double liar because that obviously is not the message he intended to convey when he spoke!
The only people who think that isn't lying are:
1) People who've sacrificed reason itself on the Altar of Pedantry.
2) Liars who are lying about it not being lying and just like being able to use semantics to escape from obvious lies.
I refuse to sacrifice my ability to detect lies covered with such a thin ruse to either group of people.
* So far so good on this count, but of course I won't be happy until the thing is really truly closed.
The enemies of Democracy are