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Add to NewsvineAndrew Sullivan brings us a link to an amazing invention from Texas Instruments: a device that allows you to communicate wordlessly, via neurological impulses interpreted by a strap around your neck. Watch this:
Voila, the voiceless wireless phone call. Pretty amazing.
Now, I'm not sure how the technology works, but if TI scientists have managed to figure out a way to translate words you think into spoken language, haven't they gone a long way toward, um, mind-reading? Isn't that where this technology is going, beyond its cool consumer application?
It could mean the end of waterboarding. After all, why waterboard a prisoner when, after the technology gets a bit more advanced (its vocabulary is only 150 words now), you can just put one of these devices around his neck and ask questions. More mundanely, how would this kind of technology change routine police interrogations? What does the right to remain silent mean when silence doesn't necessarily mean police can't read your thoughts? What would this mean in terms of corporate espionage, when you could transmit information from a private meeting from the device hidden under your turtleneck?
Lots to think about here. But by all means watch that video. Amazing what scientists can do.
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Maybe, instead of reacting with "God, wouldn't it be horrible if everyone could see what I was thinking!" one could focus, instead, on becoming the kind of person who wouldn't mind being honest and transparent. Just a thought . . . .
Spider Robinson (award-winning SF writer) may not have invented, but popularized, the saying, "Tact is a mutual agreement to be full of shit." I pretend to tell the truth, and you pretend to believe me.
Concealing one's real thoughts, at all costs, is a big important feature of a shame-based culture, of course. What I find bemusing about this principle is that those who practice it actually think they're fooling anybody. Any serious student of human character can soon read minds pretty effectively without the use of a magic machine. It's not that hard to know when people are lying to me--or to themselves.
As others have pointed out, in any case, this machine isn't much of an advance in the mind-reading department. It requires conscious, focussed effort to produce its effect.
Posted by: sigaliris | March 15, 2008 2:45 PM
"Maybe, instead of reacting with "God, wouldn't it be horrible if everyone could see what I was thinking!" one could focus, instead, on becoming the kind of person who wouldn't mind being honest and transparent. Just a thought . . ."
Ah yeah, the perfectablity of Man.
Sig, did you use the same argument in support of the Patriot Act?
Posted by: Max Schadenfreude | March 15, 2008 9:08 PM
Gosh, Max, I'm reading your mind now . . . I'm sensing that I've really irritated you again. What a surprise! I never would have known that without my handy-dandy mind reading machine.
Posted by: sigaliris | March 15, 2008 10:58 PM
Check out the work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who has studied how small movements of facial muscles create the expression of emotions. The New York Times interviewed him: "A Conversation with Paul Ekman: the 43 Facial Muscles that Reveal Even the Most Fleeting Emotions," by Judy Foreman, August 5, 2003. A couple of quotes:
Q: . . . a few people, less than 1 percent of the population, are exceptionally good at using facial expressions, voice cues, body language and speech to tell liars from truth tellers. How do they do it?
A. Most important, they are highly motivated, close observers who, without training, are able to spot subtle cues about concealed emotions that we call microexpressions. These are very fast intense expressions of concealed emotions that most people miss because they typically last less than a quarter of a second. . . . Many of the [Secret Service] agents we studied were accurate 80 percent of the time in distinguishing lying from truthfulness.
Q. Can regular people learn to get better at telling real expressions from fake ones?
A. Much to my surprise, people can learn to do this in under an hour. I have developed a CD which teaches people to do this quickly. I thought it would take a lot longer.
Get used to it, Max. There's really not much you can do about it except to clean out those closets. ; )
Posted by: sigaliris | March 15, 2008 11:14 PM
"Get used to it, Max. There's really not much you can do about it except to clean out those closets. ; )"
LOL! FTR, I cleaned out those closets a loooong time ago. And much to my pleasure found that my inner homosexual was also my inner woman.
YES! I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body!
I can't wait to get one of those voiceless cell phone thingies from Texas Instruments for my pet dolphin.
Posted by: Max Schadenfreude | March 16, 2008 9:12 AM
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