“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.
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.
aye, even things that aren't true.
The same thing could happen to anyone.
* 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.