A frightening Prospect

Neuroscientists have developed a way to scan a persons brain and "read their thoughts." This could have some good uses in the case of crime, however, the technology offers far more insidious possibilities. If this kind of technology becomes prominent, a persons last safe haven of privacy ( their mind) will be gone.

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the queston is how long before the action can they predict it? afacis, people had to make a binary choice (add or substract), which allowed them to calibrate the response, a real world situation is infintely more complex, though and i simply don't buy the claim




prejudice, maybe, resentment, yes, but exactly what distinguishes racial prejudice?

they don't tell, but this line just screams opportunistic riding on the bandwagon of controversy. throw some politics into the mix and you're at list generating ripples.

btw: polygrapg tests are an old hat, this technique is certainly more powerful but also more complicated and therefore does not lend itself to remote use...

I thought this would be a controversial subject as well. That is why I decided to post the article here with hopes of generating debate. However, due to the lack of responce to this thread perhaps it's not as controversial as I thought.

Well well, this will make for a most interesting debate, no?

First off I must say through my many years of self education via many media outlets, The Guardian has always fallen short in the scope of delivering REAL news without tweaking it to fit it's agenda. That is simply my own opinion.

With that having been said, assuming it's true, can you imagine all the things the governments of the world could do with this?

How about the corporate world?

I thinks me scared!

M.Agenda

That is exactly what I was thinking M.Agenda. Big brother seems to be watching more and more these days and they caould make brain scans say any damn thing they want.

Personally I doubt it. I don't think they actually understand what a thought really is. I think you're going to need something else to actually read exactly what a person is thinking.

Troy

I'm tending towards believing that it's only a matter of time before such sensors are hidden throughout cities... in places where people congregate, like workplaces, hospitals p[olice stations, etc.

I was so fascinated by this twist of Minority Report, that I even wrote a little fiction about it here in the Short Stories forum.

This presented article may have come from the guardian, but I watched on the Science channel a few nights ago a discussion on very similar technology and the uses for it. It is very easy to stimulate and predict the neurological functions of the brains electrical responses and actions even creating unreal situations to the brain which it percieves as real via electrodes.

The functioning of the brain is really not so mysterious anymore.

Tom Ridge may be selling it to Homeland Security in his new civilian job. (Opinion only)