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The book (for the latecomers, "The Truth Machine" by James Halperin), to its credit, doesn't try to explain HOW it is done, you just understand that it has been done. It is a good read, no matter what you believe about the future; but it develops a lot of the threads discussed here-- AI, nanomachines, alt. medicine, cloning, cryogenics-- as secondary plot to the main. (Each chapter, 3 - 5 years later than the previous, starts with related and unrelated current headlines to keep the reader up to speed).
While I don't think that it is technically impossible, one of the things that bothered me is that the machine would "flicker" when it detected a partial truth or a withholding of facts, which expands the complications of such a machine infinitely.
As far as the sociological aspects of such a machine, one aspect was an initial wave of suicides. In this book the market embraced it, however, to eventually having "wrist truth machines" for when a girl asks her man if she looks good today.
I wonder. The other thing, of course, is that kind of invention would be so dangerous to the people in power (such as our Perjurer-in-Chief =) ) that it would probably be squashed and destroyed immediately. At least, it would be denied federal funding.
Stephen Adamson
www.spiritone.com/~stephenk
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> JKC has noted that evolution has put a tremendous amount of effort into
> detecting and concealing lies, so a perfect truth machine is unlikely.
>
> I say exactly the opposite: Evolution has put so much effort into lies
> that there's probably a module of the brain devoted to lying (anyone
> know if someone's looked for it?), and thus it might be very easy to
> detect activity with an fMRI. Evolution baffles verbal and kinesic
> perceptions, but would have absolutely no reason to defend against
> neuroimaging. The inventor might not even need much cognitive science;
> a neural net might be very easily trainable to decode "lying" brain activity.
>
> Biofeedback could probably suppress the "lying" cues, but not the
> resulting "subject is using biofeedback" cues.
>
> Do I swear it would work? Of course not. But as a science-fictional
> premise, it is completely plausible. What is not plausible, IMHO, is
> that this invention would result in an age of world peace. Widespread
> violent chaos followed by totally new forms of government would be my guess.
>
> The effect would be to strengthen all forms of power. Democracies could
> enforce honesty; dictators could enforce obedience. The democracies
> would win, but first there'd be an interregnum in the democracy -
> politicians and bureaucracies, faced with en masse unemployment, would
> band together and do anything to hold onto power. (The modern U.S. is a
> factionalized oligarchy with the demos holding the balance of power, and
> the oligarchic factions competing to please the demos. The threat of a
> truth machine might cause the factions to unite against the demos, like
> term limits but more so.)
> --
> sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
> http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
> Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
> everything I think I know.
-- Check out my website! http://www.spiritone.com/~stephenk/ --------------DD5E0B3707DB1CA81FA0FB02 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> The book (for the latecomers, "The Truth Machine" by James Halperin), to its credit, doesn't try to explain HOW it is done, you just understand that it has been done. It is a good read, no matter what you believe about the future; but it develops a lot of the threads discussed here-- AI, nanomachines, alt. medicine, cloning, cryogenics-- as secondary plot to the main. (Each chapter, 3 - 5 years later than the previous, starts with related and unrelated current headlines to keep the reader up to speed).While I don't think that it is technically impossible, one of the things that bothered me is that the machine would "flicker" when it detected a partial truth or a withholding of facts, which expands the complications of such a machine infinitely.
As far as the sociological aspects of such a machine, one aspect was an initial wave of suicides. In this book the market embraced it, however, to eventually having "wrist truth machines" for when a girl asks her man if she looks good today.
I wonder. The other thing, of course, is that kind of invention would be so dangerous to the people in power (such as our Perjurer-in-Chief =) ) that it would probably be squashed and destroyed immediately. At least, it would be denied federal funding.
Stephen Adamson
www.spiritone.com/~stephenk"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
JKC has noted that evolution has put a tremendous amount of effort into
detecting and concealing lies, so a perfect truth machine is unlikely.I say exactly the opposite: Evolution has put so much effort into lies
that there's probably a module of the brain devoted to lying (anyone
know if someone's looked for it?), and thus it might be very easy to
detect activity with an fMRI. Evolution baffles verbal and kinesic
perceptions, but would have absolutely no reason to defend against
neuroimaging. The inventor might not even need much cognitive science;
a neural net might be very easily trainable to decode "lying" brain activity.Biofeedback could probably suppress the "lying" cues, but not the
resulting "subject is using biofeedback" cues.Do I swear it would work? Of course not. But as a science-fictional
premise, it is completely plausible. What is not plausible, IMHO, is
that this invention would result in an age of world peace. Widespread
violent chaos followed by totally new forms of government would be my guess.The effect would be to strengthen all forms of power. Democracies could
enforce honesty; dictators could enforce obedience. The democracies
would win, but first there'd be an interregnum in the democracy -
politicians and bureaucracies, faced with en masse unemployment, would
band together and do anything to hold onto power. (The modern U.S. is a
factionalized oligarchy with the demos holding the balance of power, and
the oligarchic factions competing to please the demos. The threat of a
truth machine might cause the factions to unite against the demos, like
term limits but more so.)
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/AI_design.temp.html
http://pobox.com/~sentience/sing_analysis.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.--
Check out my website!
http://www.spiritone.com/~stephenk/
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