Saturday, March 22, 2008

RealScoop (vid)

Get the scoop on RealScoop.

According to the developers:

What is this? RealScoop uses advanced emotion-based voice analysis technology to rate the believability of people's statements.

Does it work? Check out the RealScoop analysis on videos with known outcomes and judge for yourselves.

In format, RealScoop is essentially a mash-up of YouTube and a VSA meter. See for yourselves. I've provided two examples, one from each side of the aisle for fairness. (Though I really couldn't give a crap about that. I'm not on either side of the aisle. I'm more like in the very back of the balcony in a crawlspace above the broom closet.)

First, let's viddy the young senator from Illinois:



Did you notice that he went red almost every time he said, different, change or believe? I'm not sure what to make of the other spikes.

Now, fix your glazzies on the malenky lizard himself:



Man, it seems like this guy lies all the time, about everything. Even when he doesn't need to.

(As an aside, did you feel a strange wave of cognitive dissonance while listening to Cheney's statements about Iraq?)

The jury's still out, as far as I see it. Does stress automatically equate to prevarication? What if you were holding a fart or had a cramp or something like that? What if the boom operator was flashing you or you smelled something funny or you have some bizarre word-association phobia? I need to know more.

If it is valid, I think this would be great for common criminals, local politicians and reality TV, but I have a hunch that if this technology were to go mainstream, a whole new generation of highly skilled liars would emerge, adept at spoofing all forms of stress analysis. As far as the big fish go, we'll be right back where we started. We'll still think they're liars no matter what they say.

via Zenpundit

1 comment:

Alan (Evil) Miller said...

Definitely check out the latest Radiolab show: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/?gclid=CPG858fxo5ICFReCkwod7gHnNw