3 ms·

One group of concerns is probably around unintentional harms -- for instance, only discovering much later that the process causes the brain to experience unimag

One group of concerns is probably around unintentional harms -- for instance, only discovering much later that the process causes the brain to experience unimaginable pain or fear and without any way to communicate it or take action against it or even escape it by dying. It would be a form of hell that should terrify even the most stalwart of us. The other would be intentional harm. Imagining the technology developing into the hopefully-far future, it's fair to also imagine interest from organizations like the CIA, who are so very fond of finding new ways to cruelly torture people while pretending they get good intelligence from it.

saulrh 9y ago
I'm surprised that nobody's pointed out how... breathlessly far-fetched both of those scenarios are? You'd find out the "unimaginable pain and fear" thing the first time you woke someone up, and standard anesthesia already has this issue. And for the CIA, wouldn't "take out their brain and hook wires into it" kind of constitute "major surgery without consent or medical reason"?
- theonemind 9y ago
  We haven't reached the point of waking anyone up. Presumably, if this progresses, they could perhaps get better/more life-like/normal brainwave patterns, and THEN you have to work out I/O, like communication. So, I don't see that as far-fetched at all in the intermediate stages of developing it in a practical direction. As for the CIA, MKULTRA? Bay of Pigs? Drug trafficking? You seem to imply a simple ethical boundary would stop them. I don't see much historical basis for believing that.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Anyone get that Metallica(?) video going through their head, about the soldier?
- thaumaturgy 9y ago
  They are approximately as far-fetched as the ideas that AI will eventually destroy humanity or GMO crops will cause ecosystem collapse. Which is to say, it takes a new technology and contextualizes it with past bad behavior to try to imagine what the worst possible future looks like. If this technology is developed further and eventually becomes available to more than a tiny number of people, I don't think we can guess what the positive or negative effects on society will be. We never can; we live in a surveillance state, but it doesn't look like Orwell's 1984. We have advanced technology that the dreamers of the 1950s never foresaw, but no jetpacks or flying cars -- just miniaturized, globally-connected pocket computers designed to capture as much attention as possible. The global climate has continued to worsen since alarms were broadly sounded in the 1980s, but most of us that have the luxury of discussing the topic are sitting in nice little homes and offices and blissfully untouched by it all. We have high-tech network-connected systems and a mix of severely concentrated wealth and a much larger impoverished group, but none of this looks like cyberpunk genre fiction. Bad futures tend to happen gently enough for them to seem perfectly acceptable. A lot of people even come to defend them.
digi_owl 9y ago
Gets me thinking of the prison in Minority Report. What do pre-crime do to someone they grabbed for what they were supposed to do if pre-crime didn't intervene? Put them in a stasis tank while they get to watch their supposed future crime on repeat. What would even be the goal of such a prison?

saulrh 9y ago

I'm surprised that nobody's pointed out how... breathlessly far-fetched both of those scenarios are? You'd find out the "unimaginable pain and fear" thing the first time you woke someone up, and standard anesthesia already has this issue. And for the CIA, wouldn't "take out their brain and hook wires into it" kind of constitute "major surgery without consent or medical reason"?

theonemind 9y ago
We haven't reached the point of waking anyone up. Presumably, if this progresses, they could perhaps get better/more life-like/normal brainwave patterns, and THEN you have to work out I/O, like communication. So, I don't see that as far-fetched at all in the intermediate stages of developing it in a practical direction. As for the CIA, MKULTRA? Bay of Pigs? Drug trafficking? You seem to imply a simple ethical boundary would stop them. I don't see much historical basis for believing that.
digi_owl 9y ago
Anyone get that Metallica(?) video going through their head, about the soldier?
thaumaturgy 9y ago
They are approximately as far-fetched as the ideas that AI will eventually destroy humanity or GMO crops will cause ecosystem collapse. Which is to say, it takes a new technology and contextualizes it with past bad behavior to try to imagine what the worst possible future looks like. If this technology is developed further and eventually becomes available to more than a tiny number of people, I don't think we can guess what the positive or negative effects on society will be. We never can; we live in a surveillance state, but it doesn't look like Orwell's 1984. We have advanced technology that the dreamers of the 1950s never foresaw, but no jetpacks or flying cars -- just miniaturized, globally-connected pocket computers designed to capture as much attention as possible. The global climate has continued to worsen since alarms were broadly sounded in the 1980s, but most of us that have the luxury of discussing the topic are sitting in nice little homes and offices and blissfully untouched by it all. We have high-tech network-connected systems and a mix of severely concentrated wealth and a much larger impoverished group, but none of this looks like cyberpunk genre fiction. Bad futures tend to happen gently enough for them to seem perfectly acceptable. A lot of people even come to defend them.

digi_owl 9y ago

Gets me thinking of the prison in Minority Report. What do pre-crime do to someone they grabbed for what they were supposed to do if pre-crime didn't intervene? Put them in a stasis tank while they get to watch their supposed future crime on repeat. What would even be the goal of such a prison?