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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

What if one answered with "I answered that question already" -- would they be forced to come up with new questions?

One aspect of a polygraph test is to hammer the same questions over and over at staggered intervals and see if the signal response differs.

They tell you that you must answer yes or no only.

Are you allowed to overlay the "yes" or "no" with different intonations? If not, then you can tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but you can't tell the whole truth in your answers.

> If not, then you can tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but you can't tell the whole truth in your answers.

Polygraph "examinations" aren't testimony where you are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; nor are they actually a mechanism of "detecting lies" (a task at which they are ludicrously useless, per all research); they are psychological ordeals which are employed solely to create stress and cause people to break if they have anything to hide.

Or break even if you have nothing to hide. If you put me under enough physiological stress, I'd probably say anything you want me to say to get me out of it. Different people probably have different tolerance, which is probably what they are actually testing.

So what if you just did yoga or meditate while making huge pauses between the yes/no answers? That way you kill the stress and they can only ask each question once or twice before time is up. Letting them stress you is letting them win.

There are stories of people taking undetectable microdoses of tranquilizers to beat the polygraph. Think of it as the placebo effect countering pseudoscience.

My guess is that they fail you.

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