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Popular Science recently ran an article about some scientists at Berkeley who have built a working mind reading machine. On hearing this most people think this is awesome news when in fact we should be trying to stop this at all costs.
Scientists, always messing stuff up.
It turns out the neuroscientists have come up with a way to measure blood oxygen levels to the brain. Then a machine interprets that blood flow to draw a rough picture of what the person is looking at based on patterns it has learned from the person in the past.
The technology is called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or as I like to call it, the Screw Up Civilization machine. With very basic shapes the scientists claim that the machine has a success rate of 90%. While this may not sound like a big deal consider that the current success rate from various spoon bending scam artists is about 0%.
I will now do absolutely nothing.
To be fair the machine is pretty simple at this point, well as simple as a machine can get that measures neuron activity in your brain. Even the scientists working on it admit that they can’t yet read actual words or thoughts. Plus the machine has to be calibrated first by learning how your brain reacts to images.
At the same time though the scientists believe they can refine the machine enough to read thoughts within the decade. This means we could have mind reading technology before we figure out a way stop emails from those Nigerian princes needing your help to obtain millions of dollars.
As usual though the Japanese claim they can get even better results with machines that will probably not only read your mind but also wash your cars while playing Japanese pop songs. The Japanese machines can not only work with still images but can actually recreate a rough video of what the person was watching.
The Japanese version will also have super cute accessories.
What the scientists don’t discuss though is the absolute destruction of life as we know it if this technology were to ever become common place. Here are the reasons why mind reading technology would be the worst idea ever.
1. Boobs.
According what we have been told every study ever conducted by every scientist ever has shown that men think about sex every seven seconds. It turns out that thankfully this is actually B.S. In actuality studies show that most men, 54%, think about sex every day or several times a day. The other 46% of men in the survey lied their asses off.
"Sex? Me? Never."
This problem is compounded by the fact that men are visual creatures. We may be sitting at our desks thinking TPS report but if some woman comes by with a low cut top on many of us are going to find ourselves thinking slightly less pure thoughts, at least for a moment.
There is of course nothing wrong with this, these are private thoughts and they cause no harm. But imagine all of a sudden those thoughts are no longer private. What if when that hot new intern came by you suddenly blurt out “Nice rack!”? This is basically what will happen if people had the ability to read your every thought.
Actually what they would probably get is, “TPS report, TPS report, my butt itches, what did I just burp up, who has the record for most runs in September, Nice Rack!” But the end result will be the same. One minute you are a corporate slave, the next you are the defendant in a sexual harassment suit.
Think about clowns, think about clowns , think about clowns....
2. You are a dirty liar.
This is a straight up fact, but you are not alone. We all lie. When meeting someone new studies show that we lie an average of three times in a ten minute period, to a complete stranger. Lies are basically the grease to make social interactions work. Think about that person you know is who completely honest and blunt about everything and consider how popular that person is.
Even when confronted about their lying the people in the studies basically didn’t see anything wrong with it. It’s so ingrained that no one really sees it as being wrong.
Not all of our lies are benign though. While we sometimes lie to make people feel better there are many situations when we lie for personal gain. We tell our bosses we love the idea of more work. We call in sick to catch the big game. Every person ever pulled over for speeding had no idea how fast they were going. In fact for that last one that what lawyers tell people to say.
Mind reading technology? That would screw up everything. Your boss would know exactly what you think of his toupee. Your girlfriend will know exactly how fat those pants, and every other pair of pants she owns, make her look. Cops will know exactly how fast you thought you were going along with how much weed you have in your car.
"Looking good baby."
You would be forced to think nothing but pure thoughts and be on your guard every second of every day but even that won’t work. Have you ever tried to not think of something?
Here, don't think about this for the next 5 minutes.
3. We Need Lies.
Not only are small lies not seen as a bad thing, in certain circumstances they are actually helpful. Put yourself on the other side of the equation. How often have you ever sat around talking sh*t about co-workers or people you go to school with? Now imagine you are the person that people are talking sh*t about.
Do you really want to walk into a room full of people and know that everyone thinks you are a douchebag? Do you want to know your girlfriend’s real number of past partners? None of this is information is helpful.
Yeah, yeah, you're her first. just go with it.
It also turns out though that lies can actually help the person lying, not only to gain extrinsic rewards, but it actually can make them feel better. Students in a study who slightly inflated their grade point averages in an interview were actually found to be the most calm and confident in the ratings done by the researchers.
The researchers concluded that the small lies weren’t really lies for gain. Instead, the students exaggerated a little because they had a healthy dose of overconfidence and surprisingly later raised their grades to match what they had inflated them by.
If this theory holds true this idiot will be awesome one day. Nah.
And if you don’t want to lie to better yourself then think of the children. Research has shown that white lies you tell your kids benefit their development. About 90% of parents lie to their kids and it turns out these little lies help with the kids’ imaginations and protects their innocence.
If we develop mind reading technology we are basically killing our kids’ futures and imaginations and that is something I am not down for.
Think of the children!
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studies show that we lie an average of three times in a ten minute period
Hey, I’m no longer lying when I tell people I’m above average!
A genie once granted me the ability to read minds but I asked him to undo it after I got tired of hearing, “Aw, it’s like a baby’s pinkie.”
And I can read Spencer Pratt’s mind in that picture. I’ve never seen a daisychain that big.
That woman in the chair was really fat.
I saw this in Wired. This is scary and inovative at the same time.
Oh noes! I’m already paranoid about mind-reading! D:<
Btw, can anyone give me the site to upload an avatar to? I used to know it, but I lost it. D:
*comments telepathically*
They should integrate this thing into Bluetooth headsets and hand them out in NY. I’d hire a sniper rifle to go into Times Square, hide out and project this thought all day: “I’m going to randomly shoot a motherfucker in the ass.”
The internet would become an even bigger part of our lives. If they can’t see me then they can’t figure out just how much I’m lying.
Shit. Now everyone will know how shallow I am.
Not an assassin says:
===========================
I’ll take what assassin’s say for $200 please Alex.
Even as an opinion piece, this is poorly researched. It doesn’t seem like you’ve even read the information on the sites that you linked to when citing, let alone understood the technologies discussed therein.
Firstly, you describe this process as a new technology that is a “way to measure blood oxygen levels to the brain. Then a machine interprets that blood flow to draw a rough picture of what the person is looking at based on patterns it has learned from the person in the past.” and call this technology Magnetic Resonance Imaging (and comment on how it will screw up civilization). While your description of it’s identification of blood oxygen (specifically, the hydrogen atoms of the oxygen molecules), the way this is used is extremely different. MRIs, while fairly new in terms of medical imaging procedures, has been around for nearly 40 years(the first image was produced in 1973) and does NOT construct and image of a thought, only a physical image of somewhere in the body (not just the brain). It’s applications are numerous, based on different types of MRIs, but all involve identifying and forming images of different types of normal and abnormal body tissues. It is particularly useful as a non-invasive form of imaging internal tissues that does not involve the harm of radiation in the way that an x-ray image does if repeated often.
The process you are describing does not have a formal name, but may be referred to as Cognitive Pattern Recognition, and is not an MRI, but is an application of a specific type of MRI, an functional MRI (fMRI). Again, fMRIs merely measure blood flow to the brain, and has medical diagnostic applications that pertain to forming an image of responses in the brain, not necessarily reconstructing images that caused those responses. You might well say that “Combustion Engines Will Doom Us All” because a combustion engine is defined as a means by which terrorists propel vehicles loaded with explosive devices to carry acts of unlawful violence.
As far as your opinion piece on the process that I will continue to refer to as Cognitive Pattern Recogntion, I find your predictions to be exaggerated and unrealistic. In the 1930s one could have just as well predicted that the new technology of electronically and optically recording, storing and reproducing a series of images (called ‘Video’) would mean that in the next decade every action you take would be recorded and viewed by everyone. It turns out that no matter how hard one of my coworkers might try, they cannot on a daily basis view every action I have done in the last 24 hours. There is, I suppose, the physical possibility that one of my coworkers has hidden enough cameras on my house, car, work, places of leasure, best friends and my own person to capture every action I take clearly; but I trust that at some point I would discover their doing this, as well as privacy laws and the police enforcement of those laws to be sufficient enough a deterrent to make this quite unlikely.
Similarly, no matter how advanced the process of constructing representations of mental images (and potentially words and thoughts) from blood flow images in the brain becomes; the fact is that even if the cost comes down from multi-million for an MRI unit that would fill an average living room (without furniture), I will likely be aware of the elaborate process that I would need to go through in order to have my every thought read. Similarly, this technology will not be usable at whim, but would be restricted by law in it’s applications, which would certainly involve a level of consent .
I am not saying that this technology does not have the potential to be abused, but that to get to this level of abuse would already take several other methods of unlawful detaining and coercion of a person, you couldn’t possibly hear the thoughts of every friend, coworker or stranger on sight. Day to day life will not be changed by the additional use of an established, highly expensive medical imaging technique.
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORK.
John should have his own blog on Uproxx. What he writes is totally entertaining and worthwhile.
These mind-reading things aren’t really in use yet, right? He can’t tell what I’m really thinking, can he?
@John yeah sorry, I didn’t realize I was writing an article for the New England Journal of Medicine. Thought this was a pop culture/humour blog.
For my next article I will try to make sure I have double blind tests and have it peer reviewed.
wtf? BOOBIES ARE ON EVERY FEMALE!!!! MEN ARE SLOBS!(BOOBIES)
men r slobs?gabbie,you’ve not seen the women round my way,it’s not a pretty sight.lol
Calm down.
1. you know people who can’t control what they say because they usually don’t have anyone around to hear it? your just like that in your head. that’s because no one is around in your head to say nice rack doesn’t mean you couldn’t control yourself if you had to
2.see above you can control your thoughts to believe what your saying so instead of lies being uncovered they will simply need to be taken to the next level.
3. why do we need lies? this could be the step to remove the word lie from our volcabulary isn’t that a good thing?
and seriously. even if this technology is ubiquitous i doubt it will be given to children especially young children who are young and impressionable. your computer could take a kid to a porn site in 2 seconds but parental controls prevent that from happening. same thing could happen.
4. who’s to say the general public will ever get there hands on this in the first place?
You know – what the people are hearing is 10 to 20 years -old. In 1975 hell 1985 if you told us we would be walking around with cell phones – communication devices – lap tops and internet capacity with GPS tracking and goolge maps we would have said your nuts.
How about cloning? Nano Bots and computer surveillance: Radar that can look through buildings in 3D. Rockets that can fly at 6times the speed of sound. Cars that with computers in them and ones being designed to drive themselves welcome to hell.
Yes the security nuts can and will use it – even if it is misguided and 70 percent accurate. Like a lie detector test – you can be found guilty or in doubt.
So I ask you have you ever had bad thoughts about the USG?
Have you ever heard anyone with thoughts against Capitalism?
Have you ever read the communist manifesto? Did you agree with any of it?
Have you ever thought about a 16 year-old girl sexually?
Have you ever lied in court or to an officer?
Have you ever taken Drugs of any kind?
Do you owe money to the IRS?
Yes this stuff can be used on you sweet as -even if it is only 60% accurate.
They will only get better at it – why – total power!
In 1979 my father told me he knew men who were working on and thinking about how to read areas of the brain – anger, sex, joy and delight and fear. By 1985 I heard they were pretty successful at that – that was 25 years ago.
Big Brother! No Damnation on earth is what that is!
This is one of the most idiotic articles I’ve ever read in my life. The author tries his best to show that lying benefits societies. NO, it seems to benefit a pathocratic society, but ultimately leads to it’s demise. Lying is amoral for good reason, it’s because it doesn’t benefit our species. It complicates matters, pushes it under the rugs, and causes calamity, eventually.
I’d much rather remain an honest individual who has a few true friends, then an amoral, mindless idiot who lies constantly.
Shame on you for writing this trash.