As long as we’re not usin’ ’em…
I wonder how far they’ve got with this business, since I posted this five years ago.
The idea was to create a human “interface” with computers so that somebody at a keyboard somewhere could delete someone else’s thoughts… and also insert thoughts that Big Brother wants you to have.
You put the right thoughts in, you pull the wrong thoughts out; you do the hokey-pokey and you shake it all about…
This is supposed to appeal to us, somehow?
As for the antidote: see Psalm 46. Come to think of it, Psalm 2 also applies–big-time.
Lately I’ve been thinking there’s more and more frivolity among the “Science” community: an awful lot of truly trivial thinking. Anybody else see that?
In answer to your final question: When people run out of real ideas, they turn to trivia or tyranny. Recently, we’ve seen both happen at once.
I mean, here are these characters in lab coats, out to Change The World… and they read comic books and watch cartoons. God defend us.
The structure of the brain is far more sophisticated than anything mankind has ever devised. Any attempts to access specific information in the brain will fail. Our memories and sensations are complex patterns of neurons, so targeting one neuron wouldn’t work. Just sitting still and pointing my eyes in different directions involves an immense amount of processing, and it happens very rapidly. This, alone, is beyond the capability of any man made computer to keep up with. Our vision is incredibly acute and perfectly suited to the environment in which we live.
Manmade devices are amazing, but even the best of these have significant limitations. Computers are good at math, because they don’t require a refractory period and can calculate without interruption. But they are still limited, because they can’t understand, or comprehend what they are doing. We can look at results and comprehend their significance, but a computer has no emotional response and no sense of how a number is used.
My point here is that computers and brains are apples and oranges. Computers are, at best, a very faint imitation of the brain. They can be purposed for specific tasks and accomplish amazing things, but … the level of complexity is far different, from that of the brain. If an electrode is inserted into the brain, it is far too coarse of an instrument to control the activities of individual neurons. Electrode implants have been used for therapeutic purposes, and quite successfully so, but these are not, repeat, not, manipulating thoughts or memories.
He knows whereof he speaks, folks.
Thanks for your insights, Unknowable. You know computers, I don’t.
They can’t really influence thoughts and actions directly by sending impulses to the brain, but they’ve had a certain amount of success at stimulating or repressing emotional reactions. And we’ve already seen what they can get people to do by stimulating the fear impulse.
They don’t need surgery for that. Just lies.
On the TV Show “Blacklist” it was about a company that makes life-like women robots that only the very rich can afford, and how this one billionaire fell in love with his “Chrissy.” He figured out how to program her to strangle U.S. Congressmen during sex play. Welcome to the future.
Yeesh…