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Comment by USNetizen | Hacker News Reader

These are often used as part of required policy for the US federal government in certain types of security clearances. They seem to be used more as a psychological influence on the person undergoing the clearance than actually working to detect their deception, so I agree with that point in the article.

Case in point, Snowden would have most likely had to undergo at least one of these polygraph tests for the cleared work he did and that didn't exactly prevent anything. Plus, people that are pathological liars can essentially convince themselves that something is the truth which these tests would rarely, if ever, pick up on as deception.

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I think the tests do in fact "work" in two senses. First, tons of people with "compromised" histories unsuitable for cleared work freak out and fail or even outright confess things they were concealing. That there's no real lie detection going on is irrelevant. As an interrogation tactic it still functions to some extent.

Secondly, a lot of nervous nellies fail, even though they're squeaky clean. For a lot of the work where the tests are used you really do want to exclude people who can't keep their cool under a bit of pressure. If you freak out under the kind of questioning done, you're probably going to freak out in a way that reveals information if somebody starts asking about your work.

I disagree, and I think that polygraph tests filter out good people in favor of deceptive people and convincing liars.

>For a lot of the work

For a tiny fraction of the work. Maybe you underestimate the number of jobs that use this quackery.

> deceptive people and convincing liars.

My point is that to some extent this is actually a necessary skill. You absolutely don't want people who can't keep cool and put out a bit of smokescreen and do some hand waving.

Now I understand how our government got to be so corrupt.

But most of polygraph gated jobs are boring office work related to (over)classified topics, not jobs that require deception.

The polygraph acts like the pot use question for many US law enforcement positions. People rightly recognize that it's absurd, but for the wrong reasons. It's not there to select for straight edge people who have never smoked up, but to select for people willing to bend the truth for the sake of making procedures have the expected outcomes. Law enforcement doesn't want the guy who feels compelled to cost himself a job by being honest about a roach when he was 14, not because he did something illegal, but because when asked on the stand whether he's confident evidence bag #14 never left his sight he's likely to let the truth get in the way of the legal machine.

The polygraph foremost is a way to arbitrarily filter people for reasons that interviewer would rather not reveal, and secondly to select for people willing to put up with the theatrics of procedures while being indifferent to their supposed purpose.

>> The polygraph foremost is a way to arbitrarily filter people for reasons that interviewer would rather not reveal, and secondly to select for people willing to put up with the theatrics of procedures while being indifferent to their supposed purpose.

That... That was beautiful!

I like your theory, but do you have any first hand knowledge or is this just logical reasoning?

That's a fine theory but it isn't the reality at all. The people using polygraphs don't have that level of conspiracy cleverness.

Systemic bias doesn't require that everyone in the system (or even anyone in the system) be cognizant of the bias, only that the bias selects for qualities that will reinforce the same systemic processes. People that consent to polygraphs despite their obvious flaws and interact well with people willing to conduct them despite those same flaws are more likely to continue or encourage the use of polygraphs than others. It doesn't require conspiracy. At the same time, the continued use of polygraphs for so long given how public and documented their flaws are allows us to ask what actual selective function they are serving in the system. Besides institutional inertia, the only two compelling explanations are as a proxy for biases of the polygraph operators (which must play a part given that polygraphs are not deterministic, robust detection mechanisms) and as a selective pressure for people who don't have qualms with these types of systemic dysfunction.

You're either severely underestimating how often polygraphs are used, or severely overestimating the level of stress those jobs will be put under.

So basically the best way to pass is to be a PPI–1 psychopath.

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