Thoughts Back-up

[CraigD]

We discussed many of the technical details underlying the ideas in this thread several years ago, in the thread 3083 – I recommend reading that thread – although long, and like most hypography threads, ranging wildly from the technical to the philosophical to points between and aside, it discusses and references a good bit if information on the current state of the art – which has, AFAIK, changed little in the past couple of years.

 

In short, IMHO, the greatest obstacle to achieving all these related capabilities – direct recording of thoughts, uploading minds, etc. – is one of neuroanatomical/chemical imaging resolution, which is currently more than a linear factor of 10 too course. Until functioning neurons can be imaged with sufficient resolution, only very crude direct brain-machine interactions will be possible. Such interactions are much less useful for recording thoughts than ordinary means such as via pens and keyboards.

[alexander]

Will lie detector be useless then?

Well actually, lie detectors are fairly useless in today's world too. They are not very accurate as the results vary with how you ask questions, and they can be fooled, because they rely on physical changes in your body, and those can be controlled (if you know how to)

 

Oh, craig, good point, i was thinking about that thread when i read this one....

 

what if it is already happening and we don't know it because everyone has received the memory some wanted us to have? A little like matrix...

if you believe in god, then that's your everyday being anyways :P

 

I have discussed similar issue before, this is a philosophical direction similar to that of "What if everything we think is real, is really juat a part of either somebody else's thoughts or a giant simulation?"

I have discussed that before, you start getting into parallelism, you get caught in loops of world you have created, and at some point, let's just stick to things we know and can prove for the time being :confused:

[CraigD]

Well actually, lie detectors are fairly useless in today's world too. They are not very accurate as the results vary with how you ask questions, and they can be fooled, because they rely on physical changes in your body, and those can be controlled (if you know how to)

I think the US National Academy of Sciences summed up the validity of polygraphs (“lie detectors”) in their recent extensive review and report (summarize and linked to by this wikipedia article section). In short, for nearly all the uses to which they are currently put, polygraphs incorrectly determine that truthful people are lying more often than that lying people are. Belief in their efficacy by people charged with protecting material and intellectual property, including important state secrets, almost certainly resulted in a false sense of security leading to failure to protect these things – nearly every successful thief of such things had passed polygraph screening, often while officials’ attentions were focused on uninvolved people who failed polygraph tests.

 

Not, to my knowledge, included in the studies included in the NAS report, are several independent studies in which it was demonstrated that, in well-blinded tests in which the polygraph operator/interpreter was given false information about a test subject, they usually confirmed the false information – in other words, polygraph results tend to confirm what their operator believe before conducting the test.

 

Polygraphy may retain value as a deterrent, because many people avoid committing crimes out of fear of detection by them. However, this value is more similar to the value of swearing oaths on the Bible than the value of a scientific test. Though people continue to find the ritual of swearing on the Bible comforting and reassuring, few believe that passing this test really assures that the oath-taker’s testimony cannot be false.