Debate biofeedback

The Problem: How do you tell when a politician is telling lies? His lips move.

Solution: Politicians should be connected to lie detectors (emotion detectors, or emotion amplifiers) when ever they speak in public. We have all see the needle going back and forth frantically in the movies, when someone is lying, but JHC outputting the biofeedback to produce “color visualizations and musical accentuations.” This would be so cool. I wish I had a lie detector so I could play with it. When the lie detector “knew” someone was lying it could play ominous music, and visa versa.

"So the invention would be a lie detector that is meant to complement the rest of the output of a politician. If the politician was giving a speech the lie detector would play visualization on a screen behind the politician and maybe change musical chords underneath the speech -- maybe changing modes according to different input. This could be advantageous to politicians because it would give them a higher bandwidth connection with their constituents (JHC)."

Reasons to agree this is a good idea: 1. It will allow politicians to REALLY communicate -- to really give people a detailed picture of their emotional process.

2. This will make politicians like rock stars.

3. Watching them will be much more entertaining, and educational.

4. Once people learn to use these biofeedback machines themselves they can start to follow leaders who really feel like they do, not just say the right words

5. There is new “Cat Scan” technology that makes lie detection fool proof.

6. Even the threat of lie detectors will stop people like Nixon from going into politics. Even if it doesn't stop all of the lying, it will serve the same purpose of the radar gun. People drive slowly knowing that they might get caught.

7. The idea of being emotionally, and intellectually naked in front of millions would be very hard to turn away from, and I think he is right.

8. Good honest politicians would become stars.

9. This product would not be too difficult to make. We have all seen these things being used in the movies, like “Meet the Parents” and almost every spy movie.

10. We should use technology to our fullest advantage. We should have instant re-play at our football games, and if you want to be a politician in our country, you should have to wear a lie detector when ever you speak. We have the technology to stop people from lying to us, why the heck some one hasn’t thought of this earlier.

The opportunity lies in figuring out what the needle is saying. Just like judges in the Olympics you could have retired, trained people continually give their estimate, on a scale of 1 to 10 of how confident they are, that the person is lying.

Reasons to disagree:

1. It might not be good for foreign relations if Bush was to say," we value the opinions of the French" and it says that he is lying with a chance of error of 0 percent.

“People who put themselves up for election are the ones I'd least like to have any power." We need to find some way of promoting good politicians, and discouraging bad politicians.

Perhaps a panel of retired judges would approve 3 questions from the media that the judges feel are relevant. The have new lie detectors that use cat scans, but politicians are pretty busy people, and I don't know if they could make weekly stops to the hospital for that.

If the equipment isn't too expensive, maybe they could just set it up in their office, so it could go quick. Or maybe the news outlet that had the rights to air the test/results would have to purchase it.