The nature of evidence

[Edwardo Piet]

"telling the truth" doesn't imply actually saying something true, it just means saying something you honestly believe.

You can "tell the truth" and say something that is bullshit, and you can lie and say something that is true.

Knowledge indeed implies truth, but it doesn't imply honesty.

A true polygraph test would not only be a lie detect but a belief detector.

When evaluating the social cost of deception, one must consider all of the misdeeds — marital infidelities, Ponzi schemes, premeditated murders, terrorist atrocities, genocides, etc. — that are nurtured and shored-up, at every turn, by lies. Viewed in this wider context, deception commends itself, perhaps even above violence, as the principal enemy of human cooperation. Imagine how our world would change if, when the truth really mattered, it became impossible to lie.

The development of mind-reading technology is in its infancy, of course. But reliable lie-detection will be much easier to achieve than accurate mind reading. Whether on not we ever crack the neural code, enabling us to download a person’s private thoughts, memories, and perceptions without distortion, we will almost surely be able to determine, to a moral certainty, whether a person is representing his thoughts, memories, and perceptions honestly in conversation. Compared to many of the other hypothetical breakthroughs put forward in response to this year’s Edge question, the development of a true lie-detector would represent a very modest advance over what is currently possible through neuroimaging. Once this technology arrives, it will change (almost) everything.

Source: https://antipolygraph.org/blog/2009/01/0...detection/

Full article: https://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html#harrissam

I'm sure you know all this already, Redbeard. I'm just a pedantic bastard and want to make this clear to those who don't know it.