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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong
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I would expect a Vow only binds you to tell the truth as you know it at that moment. Nevertheless:
"I vow that to the best of my knowledge in the past XXX. I also vow that if I ever discover evidence that this is false and I had been Obliviated or Memory Charmed to enable me to make this vow today, I will come tell you all about it and submit to your judgement with a specified possible penalty."
So you can at least bind yourself irrevocably to your new position.
Of course not, the high-grade politician doesn't exist who could vow that they'd been honest upstanding citizens all their lives :-)
If IRL we discovered a really reliable neurological lie detector, it would be used by police and courts, but do you really think politicians and CEOs would ever submit to it?
I'd expect some CEOs would submit to it and their stock would be rewarded for it.
To boot, I would be very surprised if people elected politicians who hadn't submitted to the lie detector after it had the cultural time to sink in.
People with foresight would work very hard to discredit it before that happened though.
We might not know if they already had.