Brain Will Be Battlefield of the Future, Warns US 257
Anti-Globalism sends this except from the Guardian:
"In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies. They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person's state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision. ...The report highlights one electronic technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person's ability to tell a lie."
Semper Psi (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, we've already got our own homegrown versions of the Nightwatch, so why not go the rest of the way?
Makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone recently diagnosed with a neurological condition, given drugs to treat it, given drugs to deal with the side effects, and now am on drugs to treat my psychological reaction to it, I've seen first hand how certain drugs can alter your mood and even change your perspective.
One drug they have me on makes it impossible for me to get upset about anything. If we could isolate what it is that makes the brain do that, put it into an airborne form and spray it over an enemy, then we could simply march in and say "We are taking your land, your government and your freedom", and their response would be (in a semi-zombie state) "Oh. Okay. I hope you enjoy it".
All without firing a shot.
Re:Makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, I knew about drugs being able to totally flip over someone's personality, but I wasn't aware of that one. How is it called? Seriously messed up though... Once you stop taking the drug, can you then get upset about things that happened while you were on it?
Transmet Reference (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A new tech field just opened up (Score:4, Interesting)
Amusing, but for the fact that the brain has been the "battlefield", at least in the US, for the last few decades.
Go read the Wikipedia entry on Frank Luskin, the Republican pollster, to see what I mean.
The people Luskin works for, and the people they work for, and the media that works for them, are the enemy on this battlefield. It's taken a while for us to realize that. And the playing field is anything but even, but when I read about things like TED, I find that we've got a few good minds on our side, too.
The biggest weapon they're pointing at us right now could be neutralized if we would just pass a fucking Net Neutrality law.
Phillip K. Dick saw this (Score:3, Interesting)
Go buy yourself a copy of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.
You'll find that control of the mind, and thus the population through mood adjustment on demand, and communal broadcast 'hallucination', play a big part.
I haven't described it perfectly, don't want to ruin the book. Suffice it to say none of this made it into the film. Not that I don't think the film is awesome, its just different in ultimate message.
Survival of the Sickest (Score:4, Interesting)
Aim for politicians, not soldiers (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA focuses on war, but lets talk about the causes, not just the effects of war.
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.
What if instead of "disrupting their ability to tell lies when questions" were applied to political candidates instead of to soldiers? I believe there is a time and a place to wage war, but I'd be more supportive if the motives of our leaders were "filled with light" before they were elected and before we went to war. I'd like to see each political candidate for federal office asked to undergo a standard screen before they were allowed to accept any party nomination. I can even throw out a list of questions that I'd love to see the voters of the US get honest answers to:
It might be assumed from these questions that I'm against the wars and the policies of current elected officials, but the truth is that I agree with some of the policies and actions we've seen from our representatives in the house, senate and president, I'm even proud of them from time to time. At the same time I'm terribly disappointed in their lack of consistency and the feeling I always get that there are reasons and motivations that they hide from the people they are supposed to represent. I'd love to get honest answers about their motivations.
Re:Kit Green is afraid of anxious people. (Score:5, Interesting)
How likely is that? Someone will invent a drug to make you immune to incapacitating drugs, and we'll go back to bullets and explosions.
It'll be like Syndicate where some guy at a computer jacks up your squad's adrenaline levels and compels you to run around in leather trenchcoats killing people and blowing up vehicles, not even feeling the machine gun fire and flamethrower blasts the rival squads are hitting you with. And a cyberpunk background track pounds in your head to set the mood.
In other words... freakin' awesome.
1984 (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not surprising. It derives from becoming paranoid and losing trust on your fellow human beings: "what if someone is secretly thinking of killing us? we ought to have a way to tell!". I hope no one ever gains such understanding, as it would be a serious threat to freedom.
Re:Semper Psi (Score:1, Interesting)
The interrogation of Sheridan in the episode Intersections in Real Time was based on practices documented in real-world Western intel manuals. The practices shown in that were illegal for Americans to perform in the late 90s, but were legal when performed by non-Americans, so long as any Americans involved had plausible deniability. That little bit of dancing around the rules has since been rendered moot; all of the practices in the episode have since been legalized and defined down to "aggressive interrogation", because they fall short of the post-9/11 era's legal redefintion of the word "torture".
A modern-day Psi Corps, as a group of elite mind warriors, comparable to the elite physical warriors of the Marine Corps, is merely one more hole in the puzzle that needs to be filled.
Problem with the Psi Corps is... once you've instituted one, how sure are you that you can control it? The Marine Corps has 200+ years of tradition behind it; its job is to execute policy, not make policy, regardless of an individual Marine's opinion of a policy, he can be depended on to carry it out.
A Psi Corps... being in the persuasion business, would face very strong temptatio---never mind. I was wrong. Relax. Fund the Corps. Trust the Corps. The Corps is your friend.
Re:electricuted = hard to speak, let alone lie (Score:3, Interesting)
I should also add that tDCS has been experimentally shown to boost working memory [nih.gov], memory consolidation during sleep [nih.gov], and verbal fluency [nih.gov]. Is that what you would expect from outright electrocution?
The untapped market (Score:2, Interesting)
The secondary market for this has to be HUGE.
Possible Spin-off:
Can you imagine the female "Does He Really Love Me" market segment? Half the people on the planet. I'm serious. Can you imagine the first person that marketed shoes? Rolling in the big Fortuna now. All those aspiring brides-to-be who need to know the truth.
Who Did They Ask? (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously they asked a panel of, at least primarily, neuroscientists. TFA doesn't mention that the report wasn't an all-around technology assessment, but rather is from the outset a futurism projection of neuroscience: http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12177&page=R1 [nap.edu]
They didn't come to the conclusion, as implied by the tone of TFA, rather it was their starting point and working boundary.
Had they asked a panel of archeologists, the battlefield of the future would probably be inside the Great Pyramid, but The Guardian would fail to note the profession of the report writers, instead simply calling them "leading scientists".
Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Delaying a person's ability to tell a lie is only part of it. My wife, a neuropsychologist and former med school instructor tells me it has been shown that application of a magnetic field to one particular part of the brain makes the subject "aware of the presence of God", or gives him or her the experience of God's presence. Pardon the pun, but this is heady stuff.
Re:Brain battle (Score:2, Interesting)
yeah but george bush has no brain LOLLOLOLOLOL oh man.. hahahhahaha good one.
Re:Delay a person's ability to tell a lie (Score:3, Interesting)
Does it also work to detect when people lie about failing to recall or remember something? Congress would love-fear that.
Yes, I meant a hyphen, not a slash.