Neuroscientists can read your mind.

[jolinar of malkshor]

A TEAM of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act.
The research breaks controversial new ground in science's ability to probe people's minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts.
It raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/we-knew-you-would-read-this-story/2007/02/09/1170524298541.html

Wow...just wow. The stuff that these scientists are coming up with these days is just amazing.

[Table 5]

[I]
Wow...just wow. The stuff that these scientists are coming up with these days is just amazing.

yep, amazing stuff for sure. and yet cnn.com has atleast 6 or 7 stories dedicated to anna nicole smith on their front page. :rolleyes:

[jolinar of malkshor]

yep, amazing stuff for sure. and yet cnn.com has atleast 6 or 7 stories dedicated to anna nicole smith on their front page. :rolleyes:

Tell me about it. Get over it all ready....she was a nobody.

[ken0042]

I for one welcome our Neuroscientist overlords.

[Hack&Lube]

Next stop! Mind scanners at the airport! The end of racial profiling is an absolute invasion of your privacy through invasion of your actual personal thoughts!

[jolinar of malkshor]

Next stop! Mind scanners at the airport! The end of racial profiling is an absolute invasion of your privacy through invasion of your actual personal thoughts!

That would be something wouldn't it. If that technology is ever developed....I pray that our society never gets to that point.

[Incinerator]

a good way to help these neuroscientist nerds to get laid :D

[Hack&Lube]

a good way to help these neuroscientist nerds to get laid :D

No that's their next project. Mind-controlling girls so they can get laid.

[Jayems]

So... it doesnt tell you what intentions it could predict, but it goes on to say that it can possibly tell racial prejudice?

The fact that about 10 years ago, i put my finger into this scanner thing at London Drugs and it was some snowboarding game. And you thought to go left or right and the snowboarder went where you thought, thats pretty much the same thing... just 10 years ago

[photon]

Lol, I played that exact same snowboard game!! No one I've ever spoken with remembers it and thought I was crazy.

[Azure]

Tell me about it. Get over it all ready....she was a nobody.

Maybe to you.... :D

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Well, I wouldn't panic just yet. Cognitive neuroscientists have a way of overreaching when they estimate the implications of what they've discovered. A few points:
1. The test was done on mathematical operations. It's at least theoretically possible that mathematical operations are brain-region specific, but that other operations activate multiple complex brain regions.
2. Knowing what "region" of the brain a specific operation is done means very little--brain regions do all kinds of different things. As an example, you'll see amygdala activation during very different emotional states, AFAIK.
3. Even this crude test was only accurate 70 percent of the time. Hardly a basis for an ethical debate, in my view. For one thing, it's an interestingly high level of error for such a simple operation. What causes that level of error? Individual brain differences? If so, that pretty much makes this a useless tool for "decoding" the intentions of strangers, even if (a big if) it's applicable to things more complex than addition and subtraction in the first place.

My wife is a neuroscientist, so I pick up a few things here and there by osmosis. The current level of understanding of the brain was aptly described by V.S. Ramachandran as "it's as though we knew that the bladder contained urine, but knew nothing else about it."

Having an ethical debate about mind reading would be like having an ethical debate about human cloning immediately after discovering DNA. Let's have that debate in 50 years.

[jonesy]

I know thats not what you really think.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

I know thats not what you really think.

:lol:


Hey, my wife's a neuroscientist. I only think what I'm supposed to think!

[icarus]

What a rip off, paying some neuroscientists to read my mind--I've been reading my own mind for years now!