Science marches on...

[Insp. Clue!So?]

Cancer cured? Great, three steps forward.

This story? 2 steps back...

"A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future.

The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way." Guardian story (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2009217,00.html)

[vhawk01]

Why is this 2 steps back?

[Insp. Clue!So?]

"The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future."

The tremendous potential for abuse is obvious. I'm sure you're familiar with the coming use of RFID tags on various items. Imagine a world in 20 years where those are replaced by brain interrogators. As we've seen in the wake of 9/11, any traumatic incident will provide a window for the powers that be to install whatever "security" technology is at hand at the moment, privacy and freedom issues-be-damned. Seems to be a common tendency no matter if you're in China, Calais or Chicago.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]

"The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists' ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future."

The tremendous potential for abuse is obvious. I'm sure you're familiar with the coming use of RFID tags on various items. Imagine a world in 20 years where those are replaced by brain interrogators. As we've seen in the wake of 9/11, any traumatic incident will provide a window for the powers that be to install whatever "security" technology is at hand at the moment, privacy and freedom issues-be-damned. Seems to be a common tendency no matter if you're in China, Calais or Chicago.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I can see the potential for abuse, but I see the potential for abuse in the majority of new technologies, and I don't consider them to be steps backwards. Maybe I am a Pollyanna, but I don't think any furthering of our knowledge of how the world works can be seen as a step backwards. It comes with responsibility and danger, but I think its a great step forward.

[Insp. Clue!So?]

As a general principle I'd agree but the idea that the world will know what you think, how you act etc. before you do yourself would seem to be a deal-breaker to things like individual freedom.

Perhaps future people will think that is a good thing; I don't know. It doesn't strike me, a knuckle-dragging 21st century [censored] sapiens, that way, but I could be wrong. But at a glance it's very scary, and on the evidence we will most certainly not use it responsibly.

What if someone figured out how to make a fusion bomb with a grade-school science kit? Such a discovery would be a tremendous advance for our understanding of the world; it would also likely lead to instant cataclycism as every schizo with a high-school diploma suddenly realizes the true meaning of the phrase "Let there be Light!". So I think you have to agree your principle has its limits given our current state of evolutionary development.

[Insp. Clue!So?]

BTW, notice how childish things like censor-bot software are on adult discussion boards? The censored word in the prior post is of course aich oh em oh, part of the formal definition for modern human (meaning "wise" or "knowing" man). These and other ways to "protect the children" or whatever are great ways to march us down to least common denominator hell.

[Prodigy54321]

unless you are one of those people who think that there is something special about the human brain, that decisions are based on what's in your soul or something, this is/was inevitable.

nearly all things have potential downsides..mostly relating to abuses..but just like everything else, we do our best to curb these abuses.

I don't consider this a step backwards at all..to me, ANY knowledge of the truth is a good thing.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
Cancer cured? Great, three steps forward.

This story? Fifteen more steps forward...

[/ QUOTE ]

C'mon, man. Get with the cult of progress already.

Really, this may be abused in certain limited situations (criminals), but it also means we're much closer to, well, all the cool stuff. Including cures for mental illness and motor/sensory defects, intelligence enhancements, mind read-uh, longevity increases...

[Insp. Clue!So?]

It may well have been inevitable. I think it will also ultimately mean the end of concepts like "me".

Now it is entirely possible this might in some long-run sense be a "Good Thing" for the race, but I don't think many contemporary humans would see such a development that way.

It would at very least mean the end of poker. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
As a general principle I'd agree but the idea that the world will know what you think, how you act etc. before you do yourself would seem to be a deal-breaker to things like individual freedom.

[/ QUOTE ]

I tend to agree on merits that this has quite the potential for invasive use, however that would occur in the embryonic phase of such a technology.

It'll be very dependent on whether the use of such a technology is widespread and nobody is immune from the consequences of this technology. Hardly likely given the tendencies of ruling classes. There's the rub.

You would have to strike a very careful balance between the safety of the majority and the virtues of individual freedom. In this day and age, individual freedom gives you the ability to do many things, both constructive and destructive.

I think it's an interesting transitory phase between the "there are still gray areas in society where anything goes and the risk of ultimate consequence is low" to "everyone and everything is watched so I should moderate my actions" to "what the [censored], everything's being recorded anyway, I'll do what I want."

A unnoticed benefit that hasn't been brought up in this thread is the potentiality for memory recording. If you can track it down to the smallest bit, there exists the potential to capture a person's entire life from womb to tomb.

If societal hiccups are all that stop in the way of such an optimistic staircase of technological evolution, I think there's a positive benefit to it.

If violence and a predilection for antisocial activity that can bring harm to oneself or other individuals can be detected, the one or two generation hiccup while more information is collected about such and then a structure built in where curing or easing of those tendencies are made possible, I don't see the long-term damage to h. sap.

[NotReady]

[ QUOTE ]

It would at very least mean the end of poker


[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe those people with the tin foil hats weren't so kooky after all.

Hmmm, I think I've got some Reynold Wrap left.

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
It would at very least mean the end of seduction. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Guy looks across a room, sees a girl he finds attractive. Takes two steps, she goes laconically, "Don't even think about it."

Hmm. Hidden consequences. Sigh.

[Phil153]

A man's thoughts are his private sanctuary. Violate that and the last true freedom is swept into history.

I can't believe the nonchalant attitude of the supposedly intelligent people on this board. The great intellectuals of the Enlightenment must be rolling over in their graves.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
A man's thoughts are his private sanctuary. Violate that and the last true freedom is swept into history.

I can't believe the nonchalant attitude of the supposedly intelligent people on this board. The great intellectuals of the Enlightenment must be rolling over in their graves.

[/ QUOTE ]
Its great we can extend that old chestnut to: if you ain't planning to do something wrong you've got nothing to worry about.

but lets not fall for the contemptuous idea of some religons that because some progress doesn't suit our beliefs it's a bad thing.

chez

[m_the0ry]

I've read this story publicized from a few different sources and I'll tell you why I'm not concerned at all. And frankly I think this story is a crock of scientific bullsh*t.

1) Implementing these devices in anywhere but an extremely confined and controlled environment is almost impossible because it uses NMRI technology. NMR involves incredibly intense magnetic feilds that would instantly kill anyone using a pacemaker and severely wound/maim anyone with keys or a pocketknife on their person (see story about boy killed in MRI machine when room was not cleared of ferromagnetic materials properly).

2) Complexity/information theory. To see what a person is thinking, one must at the very least have a complete resolution on the neuron level. Otherwise information is lost and you don't really know what's going on. The blue gene computer, capable of almost 3 teraflops per second (and currently the most powerful supercomputer in the world), is theoretically capable of simulating the behavior of 10,000 neurons (which will be implemented in this project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain). The human brain contains 10 million times that quantity. The neurons also mesh together roughly increasing complexity by another 3 or 4 orders of magnitude. That means computational power needs to increase by a factor of about 10^10 for modelling a single human thought to be practical.




What that machine does is sees activity (in a person lying still, on a bench, wearing a moo-moo) in parts of the brain, and reveals information along the lines of, "Oh, this part of the cortex lit up, he's most likely thinking about an image". Nothing even remotely close to, "Oh my god this man plays online poker for a living throw him in jail!".

[MaxWeiss]

Do we even know the validity of this... I mean, it's form The Guardian! Come on.

[Insp. Clue!So?]

[ QUOTE ]
I've read this story publicized from a few different sources and I'll tell you why I'm not concerned at all. And frankly I think this story is a crock of scientific bullsh*t.

1) Implementing these devices in anywhere but an extremely confined and controlled environment is almost impossible because it uses NMRI technology. NMR involves incredibly intense magnetic feilds that would instantly kill anyone using a pacemaker and severely wound/maim anyone with keys or a pocketknife on their person (see story about boy killed in MRI machine when room was not cleared of ferromagnetic materials properly).

2) Complexity/information theory. To see what a person is thinking, one must at the very least have a complete resolution on the neuron level. Otherwise information is lost and you don't really know what's going on. The blue gene computer, capable of almost 3 teraflops per second (and currently the most powerful supercomputer in the world), is theoretically capable of simulating the behavior of 10,000 neurons (which will be implemented in this project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain). The human brain contains 10 million times that quantity. The neurons also mesh together roughly increasing complexity by another 3 or 4 orders of magnitude. That means computational power needs to increase by a factor of about 10^10 for modelling a single human thought to be practical.




What that machine does is sees activity (in a person lying still, on a bench, wearing a moo-moo) in parts of the brain, and reveals information along the lines of, "Oh, this part of the cortex lit up, he's most likely thinking about an image". Nothing even remotely close to, "Oh my god this man plays online poker for a living throw him in jail!".

[/ QUOTE ]

Today no doubt. But if the tech proceeds in a manner similar to, say Moore's Law, we could be there by mid-century or sooner. And you wouldn't necessarily need perfect resolution for the alleged abuses to begin...in fact, the more ambiguous the better from certain perspectives.

No, these aren't things you'll be buying at Walmart next week, but absent some show stopper which given our current ignorance is still certainly possible, doesn't it seem pretty likely that such devices will eventually be commonplace? And since "eventually" might not be so far off, it's worth thinking about the implications sooner rather than later.

[Insp. Clue!So?]

[ QUOTE ]
Do we even know the validity of this... I mean, it's form The Guardian! Come on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh I don't know, The Guardian is more or less equivalent to your typical US rag...which sure isn't saying a whole lot when it comes to science reporting, I'll grant you.

I wish the guy would at least have mentioned the name of the study, though it should be easily trackable given the provided details. Anyway, as others have mentioned, something similar is likely coming down the pike eventually even if the story were wholly bogus (which I doubt...over-hyped, perhaps).

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
What that machine does is sees activity (in a person lying still, on a bench, wearing a moo-moo) in parts of the brain, and reveals information along the lines of, "Oh, this part of the cortex lit up, he's most likely thinking about an image". Nothing even remotely close to, "Oh my god this man plays online poker for a living throw him in jail!".

[/ QUOTE ]

While this definitely supports your point that there's no reason to be concerned, it doesn't mean this technique is [censored]. There are probably dozens of applications, and most are probably not psychiatric. The technology may also help us understand how the human brain works, and have benefits we aren't currently aware of.

[madnak]

[ QUOTE ]
And you wouldn't necessarily need perfect resolution for the alleged abuses to begin...in fact, the more ambiguous the better from certain perspectives.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, then tell me why the polygraph hasn't resulted in widespread abuse. Polygraph results are 90+% effective, yet they aren't even admissible as evidence. From everything you're saying, we should expect the polygraph to be the bane of all humanity - why is it barely a blip on the radar?

[m_the0ry]

madnak makes a good point. Without resolution it isn't admissable in court and would have no influence on sentencing or evidence.

log(10^10)/log(2) * 18 months = ~50 years until supercomputing models can model human thought. If we believe moore's law will hold for this period of time then we necessarily believe that the technological singularity is unavoidable (because it is an emergent property of a purely exponential model for technology).(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity).



Moore's "law" is a way of modelling technology before the inflection point that will happen in a few years. Using Moore's "law" after that point in time is similar to modelling a population by an exponential curve instead of a differential equation. Using the former also leads to a population "singularity" where there is essentially infinite population with immeasurable growth on the earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth_graph





I guess what I'm trying to say is moore's law is wrong.

[madnak]

It's more than that - estimates of the processing power required to emulate a human brain are typically much too low. In particular those presented by the futurists. The idea that "doubling gets you places fast" is deceptive. If you currently have 2 cents and you double that amount each year, but you need to have $10^8,000 before you will have access to the money, you're in for a very long wait.

[DougShrapnel]

I'm pretty suprised at most peoples adamant dislike for "reading" other persons minds. If true, This would be the greatest scientific finding of our lifetime, why do you all hate truth and enjoy lies?