surprised the article didn't bring this up, but anyways, let's defuse this entire idea with a very simple thought experiment so that we'll never have to think a

surprised the article didn't bring this up, but anyways, let's defuse this entire idea with a very simple thought experiment so that we'll never have to think about it again. the tech they have measures brain activity in different regions. great. the article mentions in experienced personnel there is less activity which would indicate conscious planning and more activity which would indicate doing. or maybe it's backwards. it doesn't really matter. what it's really saying is that people who are more experienced are more efficient at performing a task on a neurological basis, which is measurable. but the efficiency of a brain circuit at performing a task is irrespective of whether that task turns out correctly or incorrectly. you can learn how to do things incorrectly. your brain's efficiency for performing a task in a certain way increases the more you do things that way, regardless of whether the outcome is what is desired. so, here's the thought experiment: we have one master surgeon who is known for getting great patient outcomes via consistently meticulous, premeditated, and intentional application of tradecraft, and another surgeon who is awful, having killed half of their patients. the awful surgeon is very experienced -- just as experienced as the master surgeon, in fact. the master's perfectionism leads the master to see small flaws in each of their executions, driving them to do better next time via careful applications of past lessons. in contrast, the awful surgeon thinks they're pretty good, but that the patients they've had who died were more or less beyond helping or perhaps that another member of the surgical team did something wrong. the awful surgeon never really learns from mistakes, and spends most operations thinking about dinner rather than thinking about how to help the patient. who does the brain scan say is more skilled? on the basis of the science described in the article, it's the awful surgeon every time. the awful surgeon doesn't put in as much conscious effort, leaving them to rely on the incorrect patterns that they've learned and never engaged with, which is what the scan will see. in contrast, the master surgeon's attentiveness will be perceived as inefficiency and lack of skill, even if the corresponding motor regions are as efficient as the awful surgeon's. to put it differently, this isn't a "we can do more technology and get around this" so much as a fundamental drawback of the tech itself. you'd need to introduce other data to even start to make a case for the scans as corresponding to skill, and even then there are plenty of other issues.