Comment by ditonal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ditonal | Hacker News Reader

Step 1 would be to pardon Snowden. He was whistleblowing on an illegal and dangerous program that directly threatened our democracy and took steps to totalitarianism. But instead of honoring that, Obama and his DoJ instead go to SXSW and give insulting, condescending talks about how we should stop working on "cat apps" and come be a drone for Uncle Sam. Why? So you can demand all our expertise but trust none of our judgement? So you can underpay us, give us no voice at the table, but then insult our intelligence by acting like serving these crooks is some noble cause? Lawyers run the country, Congress is all lawyers and no engineers. But then they run into problems related to technology and they say "bring in the nerds". Well, the word you're looking for is experts, and they're in the West Coast making way more money and building real technology instead of bureaucratic bullshit and illegal authoritarian tools of oppression. And maybe smoking recreational marijuana without having to bullshit their way through some bogus polygraph (not that those even work). I can't imagine anyone but the most naive would work for the NSA, FBI, or CIA if they had any other options.

> Lawyers run the country, Congress is all lawyers and no engineers.

“In my years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.”

— John Adams

It's simply a matter of scale. Because the government has accrued so many powers beyond the founding intent, it has become attractive to buy it. As people buy it, the government invests in more powers to keep the gravy going. As long as they do it gradually enough, and make it seem like they have a moral imperative to spend your money because they know better, the state will continue to grow. More power, more corruption; more corruption, more power — until it all becomes too much. If Edward Snowden could offer the government more power to attract more relationship investment from business, then he would have been pardoned in Barack Obama's tenure.

As I have said before, I can deal with almost anything if you pay me enough.

But they don't pay anyone enough to deal with unlimited bullshit. And that's what you get when your boss's boss has no idea what you do or how you do it, and whenever he does the manager's power walk, it looks like you're just sitting there, doing nothing.

The polygraph machine is a psychological trick. The actual lie detector is the operator, just like in Meet the Parents, and the ritual and setting is intended to intimidate you, belittle you, and make you stressed enough for the human to get a read on your reactions.

The test isn't entirely bullshit, but the machine sure is, and I sure wish they'd find a better way to do it without all the gratuitous bullying and humiliation. And since the detectors are human, there's no way to guarantee consistency across tests w.r.t. false positives and false negatives.

Regarding polygraphs, I've heard form a friend who gets administered them routinely, that they are actually fairly effective. By effective I don't mean that they can tell if a person is lying, the science behind them is as far as I know completely bogus, but in the hands of a skilled interrogator they can be very effective at convincing otherwise rational people to admit all shorts of things to the government that they shouldn't, and more importantly, that the government would otherwise have absolutely no way of finding out.

I don't really understand why people have an issue with polygraphs. They're pretty effective for the sole task they're designed for. As long as people don't try to involve them in legal cases (or otherwise use them as a genuine barometer for honesty), what's the problem?

Well, they create a culture of distrust, and when crossed with issues like drug use which may not be relevant to work concerns, it's going to scare high-value prospective employees.

Some kinds of organizations require some level of distrust in their culture. And the issue seems to really lie with how the employer handles past drug use. My understanding is many organizations, including some government agencies, tend to be fairly lenient about admitted past drug use (depending on many factors like how long ago it was and the kind of drug).

I think in an ideal world, questions about past use would never be asked and drug tests would be strictly limited to determining if someone is high/drunk on the job. The fundamental problem is employers losing potentially valuable employees due to their unnecessary and invasive drug policies. The polygraph isn't to blame.

If a culture exists which relies upon distrust, that culture is tightly-controlled, so that such distrust can be usefully exploited by the /elite/ to put the community in check, when required by the elite.

When you combine this with government, you have a recipe for "your life is over" workplace weather conditions. Maybe that storm only blows in once every 10 years, and doesn't take many people... so if you're high-functioning, you might not want to join the island where the heroes are fed to the Minotaur when the political climate goes South, sometimes without warning.

You might want to join the place where the worst-case scenario fail condition is a pink slip and a bad blog post. Naturally.

Because it trains people to think that "passing" a polygraph is positive proof of honesty, and that "failing" is positive proof of deceit.

> As long as people don't try to involve them in legal cases

That's the problem I have with them. We can't say, as a society, that something is ok in one scenario, but say it's bullshit when it matters.

>We can't say, as a society, that something is ok in one scenario, but say it's bullshit when it matters.

Sure we can.

Sometimes carefully crafted bullshit can be ok. For example, when countries conduct diplomacy, or when poker players bluff, or when intelligence agencies need to hire someone and attempt to scare them into telling the truth or trick them into revealing a lie.

The court system is not a place that should tolerate any kind of bullshit (though like most systems, it sadly does to an extent), so it's different.

We have the same issues with polygraph tests as with traditional witch tests:

* swimming test (aka trial by water): throw them chained into water. a witch would stay afloat, an innocent would sink like a stone.

* prayer test: witches cannot speak scriptures aloud, without making mistakes or omissions. but even if you can it was a devil's trick.

* touch test: victims of sorcery would have a special reaction to physical contact with their evildoer

* witch cake: In cases of mysterious illness or possession, witch-hunters would take a sample of the victim’s urine, mix it with rye-meal and ashes and bake it into a cake. This stomach-turning concoction was then fed to a dog—the “familiars,” or animal helpers, of witches, and would spell out the name. It worked with well in Salem, as knowledge of the recipe led to the conviction then.

* witch marks: numb and insensitive to pain. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, supernumerary nipples and tattoos could all qualify.

* Pricking and Scratching Tests on these marks.

* Incantations: very similar to a polygraph test

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-bizarre-witch-tr...

They all worked extremely well over hundreds of years.

> they can be very effective at convincing otherwise rational people to admit all shorts of things

aye, even things that aren't true.

It's important to keep in mind that false, spontaneous confessions are a well-documented phenomena from revolutionary China, revolutionary Russia...

The same thing could happen to anyone.

> Congress is all lawyers and no engineers.

Well, congress is largely responsible for crafting, reviewing, and changing legislation, which is laws, so being a lawyer probably makes a lot of sense. Let's not pretend engineers are incapable of making mistakes, or not fully considering the implications of an action and having to review and fix it later. Engineers are largely kept from making too many mistakes by having evolved a strict set of guidelines to and regulations to adhere to. Many of those same regulations that keep engineers in check were put in place by lawyers.

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