OT 2 party political system

[Fyron]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
automatic lie detecter tests for polititions whenever they say something.

That would be horrible. Politicians have to be able to lie to the public, or else they could not do their jobs. Keep in mind that there are a lot of things that it is good for them to be able to lie about. It is a necessary part of the job.

[Phoenix-D]

narf, you are aware that lie detectors don't work that well, right?

They give lots of false positives, and people who know the system can breeze right through a test without a problem.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
automatic lie detecter tests for polititions whenever they say something.

This would be great - if it were possible to make them work reliably. Do you know why lie detectors aren't admissable evidence in court? It is because 90+ percent of the time, lie dector test come out in favor of the person who is paying for the analisis of the results of the test. This applies to two conflicting parties hiring different "experts" to analize the results of the exact same test with the exact same data. Even though both analyists are experts in the field. Lie detectors are so bad, that about the only Groups that actually use them anymore are talk shows and some paranoid government agencies.

[Edit] Even if you do get a reliable lie detector, there is still the 1% problem.

It goes something like this:
Assumption 1: test has a 1% false positive rate, and a 1% false negative rate (a.k.a. 99% accurate)
Assumption 2: 1% "positive" population (in this instance, 1% liars [and it would be about that after a reasonably short time under such circumstances])
Result: fully 1/2 of the positives are false!

Don't believe me? Do the math:
Total Population: 10,000
Liars = 1% of total = 100
Truth-tellers = 99% of total = 9,900
False positives = 1% of Truth tellers = 99
True positives = 99% of Liars = 99
Total positives = True positives + false positives = 198
True Positives / Total Positives = 99/198 = 1/2

On a side note, you also miss one of the liars, but at that level, it is rather insignificant.

This is also a common argument against random or blanket drug testing.
[/Edit]

[ June 01, 2003, 09:38: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[jimbob]

Captain Kwok: Yeah, those of us who were politically alive (ie >18yrs old) before the GST have no love for the PCs. What I don't understand is how they've survived in Eastern/Atlantic Canada - the HST is running at what, 20% !?!? (for those who don't know the HST, it's the "harmonized" federal and provincial sales taxes. Harmonized because it's easier for multiple branches of the government to screw purchasers when you only have one office collecting it all )

My concern is that the Liberals are simply not accountable - how can they ever lose an election? I'd rather have the Yukon Advocacy of Ganga Smokers League And Commune (YAGSLAC) run the country than have the Liberals another term. We simply need the Liberals to be hungry enough to be honest, and it really doesn't matter who takes office in the interim - I mean how badly can the country be screwed up in a five year term anyways? It takes a good 3.5 years just to come to grips with the sprawling beaurocracy (sp).

[narf poit chez BOOM]

no, i didn't know lie detecters where that ineficient.