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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is polygraphs are used as a tool to have people trip over themselves by using it as a prop when the administrator thinks they have something to catch them on.

Now that makes me wonder, if they don’t use fMRI is it because it’s also just a prop but with more studies behind it?

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Exactly. It's just an interrogation technique but you need one less body on the payroll because you don't need a "good cop".

Pretty much every manipulation technique used in negotiation, sales and interrogation is useless if the person it's being applied to realizes it. Polygraphs are about the lowest quality because the machine is right f-ing there for the world to see whereas with other techniques there's at least a non-zero chance that the person using them is being earnest and it's not just a technique.

>Pretty much every manipulation technique used in negotiation, sales and interrogation is useless if the person it's being applied to realizes it.

That is just wholly incorrect. The whole point of marketing is that it works even if you know it's happening to you. Anchoring, a common sales tactic, works even if you know they're doing it to you. You can absolutely respond to it with your own tactics if you know about it, but it still effects you. We really aren't better than our animal brains.

>The whole point of marketing is that it works even if you know it's happening to you.

The point of most advertising is selling an emotion. (Advertising is a subset of marketing) Convincing the buyer to buy a product based on projecting a feeling on or drawing an emotion from that person. This is inherently a lie and thus manipulation. Most people don't realize what's going on.

Let's use Harley Davidson as an example, there are many. Their entire pitch is being a rebel, getting away, being cool, salvaging your youth. It's not, "this is a great machine and good bargain." If most people were wholly objective about purchasing a motorcycle based on utilitarian use and cost, they probably wouldn't purchase a Harley. Advertising to the rescue. It's a brain hack.

What would they buy a 150cc dirt bike?

There are many places where people do buy motorcycles based on utility and cost -- underbones, standards, and scooters between 49 and 250cc are popular. The most popular vehicle in history is the Honda Super Cub.

>You can absolutely respond to it with your own tactics if you know about it, but it still effects you.

Of which ways that it effects a person have you learned?

anecdata: i just rented a house. the listing said x. when i saw the property, the realtor said "rent is ${x+200}". I still felt like i expended my negotiations after clarifying that the rent was actually x. I knew he was fucking with me, but i needed a place to live, and i wanted to negotiate more, but it was hard to muster a negotiation after i felt like I already negotiated.

This is absolutely incorrect. On day one of one of my university courses on negotiation, we did a group exercise that demonstrated anchoring. For those unaware of the concept it's that a final negotiated agreement tends to be strongly influenced by the first position (e.g. price) that is put forward.

After the exercise, we dived into how it worked and how to prepare and counter anchoring. Then we ran a slightly different, but similar, exercise. Even when highly educated students were fully aware of how anchoring worked, and that they were susceptible to it, and knowing ways to ways to counter it, deals still tended to be closer to the initial reference point.

It certainly helps to know ways in which you may be manipulated, but knowledge does not make you immune by any stretch of the imagination.

I read an article somewhere in which a cop told the story of conducting an interrogation using an ersatz lie detector. If he thought the suspect was lying, he'd push a button, and out would come a piece of paper saying "He's lying."

It was a Xerox machine.

That's a scene from The Wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgrO_rAaiq0

The story was around before The Wire.

Yes, in David Simon’s book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, as well as the David Simon series Homicide: Life on the Street.

David Simon also created The Wire.

Fine, it's been around since before David Simon cribbed it:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/next-case-on-the-court-col...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN7pkFNEg5c

This is the opening scene of season 5 of The Wire.

fMRI machines are still quite expensive and require a technician to operate and calibrate. They also require the subject to be sitting/lying still inside the machine while it is being operated in order to get any kind of useful measurements.

Not really sure what the consensus among neuroscientists and psychologists is with regard to weather they are reliable lie detectors or not though.

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