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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 f

by 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.

by saulrh 9y ago

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.