Neuroscience and its Potential Hazards

[WAB]

I would like to begin this thread with a very brief snippet from the writings of Antonin Artaud, who spent a good long time in mental institutions, and who, shall we say, was perhaps not "wrapped too tight." - [wait for it...]

OR - perhaps he was perfectly sane, in an insane world?

Here is the snippet, which I am going to type out, from the book called "Artaud Anthology", under the heading, "Here is Someone...", published in 1965, by City Light Books (below the asterisks is the quote from Artaud):

***

...I know myself because I'm there, I'm there at Antonin Artaud.

— You may know yourself, but we see you. We see clearly what you're doing.

— Yes, but you don't see what I'm thinking.


***

End of quote. Obviously, the middle statement is by someone on the hospital staff. Perhaps a doctor.

My reason for posting is simple, and some few may remember that this was a sore spot for me. In my opinion, it ought never to come to pass, that a person's thoughts should be in any way read or monitored. IF technology comes to a point where a person's thoughts, imagination, cognitive processes, could be observed by an external agent, then the human race would be faced with a dire dilemma. Use the technology, let's say in criminal investigations, if and when circumstances would warrant such a breach of privacy; or just not go there.

I can envision good uses of such tech, and absolutely catastrophic uses. Given our history, does anyone think we could use it for the good, or do you think it would be exploited by the usual suspects, and make our world even more of a nightmare for millions of people than it already is?

 

[fromderinside]

yup. Scary.

Then again we've had the bomb for over 70 years now and It's only been used in anger twice.

Everybody fears. Human nature is that. Still humans are here in spite of such fears.

That's two.

Do we really need to rehash such argument again?

Wouldn't it be be better to admit the risks, take measures to minimize them, move on?

 

[untermensche]

We are so far away from being able to do something like that you might as well fear the sun burning out.

 

[Speakpigeon]

My reason for posting is simple, and some few may remember that this was a sore spot for me. In my opinion, it ought never to come to pass, that a person's thoughts should be in any way read or monitored. IF technology comes to a point where a person's thoughts, imagination, cognitive processes, could be observed by an external agent, then the human race would be faced with a dire dilemma. Use the technology, let's say in criminal investigations, if and when circumstances would warrant such a breach of privacy; or just not go there.

I can envision good uses of such tech, and absolutely catastrophic uses. Given our history, does anyone think we could use it for the good, or do you think it would be exploited by the usual suspects, and make our world even more of a nightmare for millions of people than it already is?

It would be very difficult today to monitor the thoughts of 6 billion plus people even if we had the technology to read people's thoughts. Too many targets, not enough personnels to do the chore. We also barely have enough capacity in prisons for today's crimes to invent new categories of crimes.

Maybe one day we'll have machines that will do it for us so we could monitor 6 million people and more but then it would be just one of many problems we would have. Such machines would have to be intelligent and if we have intelligent machines we'll have little use for ourselves.

The population will one day decline anyway because more people will stop seeing reproducing themselves as such a fantastic plan. And even before that machines could get to look more reliable than migrants somehow.
EB

 

[WAB]

Thanks fellas. Somehow I knew fromder would reply because we had this discussion lots of times in years past. It's not really something I fear, - in fact I'm pretty sure I'll be long dead before the technology is up to speed for such intervention - just something that seemed rich with possibility for discussion, since this is a forum for such discussion. It's been a long time since I've been really involved here (except as a wannabe comic a while back), and I thought this might be a starting point. Ah well, so it goes!

I'll look around and see where else I can get my feet wet again.

 

[bigfield]

By the time such technology is developed, society certainly will have become a strange and horrifying place to most people alive today, but probably quite pleasant by whatever sentient beings exist at that time.

Point being, the difficulty of making a mind-reading machine is probably underestimated by just about everyone.

 

[bilby]

By the time such technology is developed, society certainly will have become a strange and horrifying place to most people alive today, but probably quite pleasant by whatever sentient beings exist at that time.

Point being, the difficulty of making a mind-reading machine is probably underestimated by just about everyone.

The ultimate safeguard against surveillance is the sheer volume of data involved.

Whether it is some future technology for reading your thoughts, or the age-old technique of having someone follow you and watch what you do, police states have always run into this problem.

To watch one person 24 hours a day takes at least three or four, and more reasonably eight to twelve, dedicated operatives. So if you want to keep tabs on more than about one citizen in ten, you need an economy wherein 90% of citizens are secret policemen. That's simply not practical, unless you can leverage technology to shoulder the bulk of the workload.

The real threat to personal freedom from technology is not mind-reading (even if that were to become practical); it is automated surveillance data analysis. If a software agent can monitor millions of citizens via CCTV, audio, and communications intercepts, and can be smart enough to identify, and alert the secret police to, any transgressions from the enforced norm, then dystopia is technically achievable, regardless of their inability to read your thoughts. If they care what you were thinking, then they can likely torture it out of you; But frankly, they don't need to care about people's thoughts, just their actions.

If you can only think of revolution, but even the slightest hint of acting upon the thought lands you in a gulag (or against a wall with a blindfold and cigarette), then the tyrant has nothing to fear from you. Thoughts are dangerous only because they result in action; take away the possibility of action, and your thoughts become irrelevant.

 

[WAB]

"If they care what you were thinking, then they can likely torture it out of you..."

Torture is the absolute worst way to discover what someone is really thinking. Under torture, the person in torment can be convinced to admit to anything, to agree to anything, and to completely comply with whatever narrative the torturer wants the victim to comply to. Torture is the most extreme use of force, and force has absolutely NO rational use save for retaliation. Torture and truth are oil and water - they do not mix.

The man who beats his wife can get his wife to agree to anything the big bastard wants her to agree with, if only to get the pain to stop! "I'm right, aren't I baby?" "Sure, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry..." she sobs, through a bloody fat lip.

Jesus H Christ!

 

[bilby]

"If they care what you were thinking, then they can likely torture it out of you..."

Torture is the absolute worst way to discover what someone is really thinking. Under torture, the person in torment can be convinced to admit to anything, to agree to anything, and to completely comply with whatever narrative the torturer wants the victim to comply to. Torture is the most extreme use of force, and force has absolutely NO rational use save for retaliation. Torture and truth are oil and water - they do not mix.

The man who beats his wife can get his wife to agree to anything the big bastard wants her to agree with, if only to get the pain to stop! "I'm right, aren't I baby?" "Sure, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry..." she sobs, through a bloody fat lip.

Jesus H Christ!

So what?

As I said, they don't care.

 

[Bobinius]

You're right. This is a real danger. And I think it will be inevitable. Frightening but very likely to become real. And the quantity of data is in no way a limit or inconvenient. Facial recognition is already here. In the Economist you can read an article about AI inferring sexual orientation from the face of the person with around 80% accuracy (when some selection criteria are respected). What's scary is that that technology only needs to be possible and waiting to be used. Anyone could be susceptible to this kind of scanning. An extreme way of fulfilling Mark Zuckerberg's "privacy is no longer a social norm". I can see no way of stopping this when it will become available.

 

[Kharakov]

Whether it is some future technology for reading your thoughts, or the age-old technique of having someone follow you and watch what you do, police states have always run into this problem.

If they can read your thoughts, they might be able to plant thoughts, although the hard wiring of your brain might make it so planted thoughts have to be continually reinforced until they become hard wired into your brain.

To watch one person 24 hours a day takes at least three or four, and more reasonably eight to twelve, dedicated operatives. So if you want to keep tabs on more than about one citizen in ten, you need an economy wherein 90% of citizens are secret policemen. That's simply not practical, unless you can leverage technology to shoulder the bulk of the workload.

Cloned temp consciousnesses (angels, cough cough) with reporting mechanisms. If you're paranoid enough, you'll just copy yourself into everyone. Make a Jesus Borg or something to subvert democratic countries, although have the remnants of the original personalities influence the way the Jesus Borg "individuals" act, so as not to give away your presence. Trump.

 

[WAB]

Torture is the absolute worst way to discover what someone is really thinking. Under torture, the person in torment can be convinced to admit to anything, to agree to anything, and to completely comply with whatever narrative the torturer wants the victim to comply to. Torture is the most extreme use of force, and force has absolutely NO rational use save for retaliation. Torture and truth are oil and water - they do not mix.

The man who beats his wife can get his wife to agree to anything the big bastard wants her to agree with, if only to get the pain to stop! "I'm right, aren't I baby?" "Sure, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry..." she sobs, through a bloody fat lip.

Jesus H Christ!

So what?

As I said, they don't care.

So what? Holy crap, what an answer.

 

[WAB]

If they can read your thoughts, they might be able to plant thoughts, although the hard wiring of your brain might make it so planted thoughts have to be continually reinforced until they become hard wired into your brain.

To watch one person 24 hours a day takes at least three or four, and more reasonably eight to twelve, dedicated operatives. So if you want to keep tabs on more than about one citizen in ten, you need an economy wherein 90% of citizens are secret policemen. That's simply not practical, unless you can leverage technology to shoulder the bulk of the workload.

Cloned temp consciousnesses (angels, cough cough) with reporting mechanisms. If you're paranoid enough, you'll just copy yourself into everyone. Make a Jesus Borg or something to subvert democratic countries, although have the remnants of the original personalities influence the way the Jesus Borg "individuals" act, so as not to give away your presence. Trump.

- emphasis mine.

There are angels. There are Thrones, Principalities, Dominations, etc. Milton, who was blind, was given knowledge of the whole angelic hierarchy. No kidding.

 

[bigfield]

Cloned temp consciousnesses (angels, cough cough) with reporting mechanisms. If you're paranoid enough, you'll just copy yourself into everyone. Make a Jesus Borg or something to subvert democratic countries, although have the remnants of the original personalities influence the way the Jesus Borg "individuals" act, so as not to give away your presence. Trump.

Just like God, Big Brother is watching you...masturbate.

 

[WAB]

Cloned temp consciousnesses (angels, cough cough) with reporting mechanisms. If you're paranoid enough, you'll just copy yourself into everyone. Make a Jesus Borg or something to subvert democratic countries, although have the remnants of the original personalities influence the way the Jesus Borg "individuals" act, so as not to give away your presence. Trump.

Just like God, Big Brother is watching you...masturbate.

bigfield, are you stalking me?

Oooooh, baby!

O Prince, O Chief of many Throned Powers,
That led th' imbattelld Seraphim to Warr
Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds [ 130 ]
Fearless, endanger'd Heav'ns perpetual King;
And put to proof his high Supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or Chance, or Fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat [ 135 ]
Hath lost us Heav'n, and all this mighty Host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and Heav'nly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns, [ 140 ]
Though all our Glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow'd up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conquerour, (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Then such could hav orepow'rd such force as ours) [ 145 ]
Have left us this our spirit and strength intire
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of Warr, what e're his business be [ 150 ]
Here in the heart of Hell to work in Fire,
Or do his Errands in the gloomy Deep;
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminisht, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment? [ 155 ]

- Johannes Miltonus


He has better things to do, littlefield.

 

[Angry Floof]

There's also  Neuroethics

 

[fromderinside]

There's also  Neuroethics

 

[WAB]

There's also  Neuroethics

 

[ronburgundy]

A far more probable danger than people actually being able to use tech to know other people's thoughts is the danger that people develop the pseudo-science belief that they can actually do so.

The danger will come more from the error in such beliefs and their difference from the actual thoughts of others than from malevolent desire to misuse such knowledge.

An interaction of genes, and every experience a person has shapes what their brain is doing to give rise to a specific thought.
Plus, every thought a person has changes their brain and changes the neurology that gives rise to that thought the next time. While a general emotional state or general type of mental process may appear as a similar pattern across people, no two people have the same specific brain pattern underlying the same specific thought. You can entirely lose parts of your brain that are giving rise to your current thoughts, and yet over time your brain can rewire to give rise to those thoughts again despite wholly different neural connections being involved. IOW, there are an infinite number of possible neural patterns that could lead to the same thought and highly similar patterns that between persons or the same person in different contexts can lead to different thoughts. This will make any reliable inferences from brain pattern to thought less plausible than most of what is in even the silliest of science fiction.

If a person is put in a highly constrained context and forced to make simple choices over and over while brain data and behavioral outcome data is collected (thus training a computer to simulate that person in that context), then it is plausible that we'll be able to use brain data in a highly similar narrow context to predict their thoughts about that particular decision and thus their action.
But for all the reasons above, being able to simply grab a person off the street, throw a brainscan helmet on them and know their thoughts is far less plausible than the storyline of the recent planet of the apes reboot.

Anticipating the "but everyone said that X was impossible" response: Of all the things that people have said "it won't happen", 99.9999999999999% of those things haven't happened. That response stems from the same fallacy that because someone won the last lottery, it means it is plausible that you will win.
Also, there is a difference between the close minded notion that it won't happen just because it's hasn't yet and the rationally based prediction that our wealthy of knowledge about what it would require preclude it from being plausible. IOW, its a lot like saying that we are unlikely to see ants suddenly over night become as self-aware and capable of analytic thought as humans. That isn't being close minded. It's recognizing the facts that make it implausible, in that case the facts about the long term evolutionary development of a physical brain that all relevant science shows is neccessary for those mental processes.