Bioethicist Jonathan Moreno Talks Jacked-In Soldiers And Military Neuroscience 117
pigrabbitbear writes "Who's driving a lot of neuro research? The military. Much of it is health related, like figuring out how to make prosthetics work more seamlessly and helping diagnose brain injuries. But the military's involvement highlights the basic ethical quandary of neurological development: When our brains pretty much define who we are, what happens when you start adding tech in there? And what happens when you take it away? Jonathan Moreno is quite possibly the top bioethicist in the country, and along with Michael Tennison, recently penned a fascinating essay on the role and ethics of using neuroscience for national security. He also recently updated his book Mind Wars, a seminal look into the military's work with the brain. In this interview he discusses brain implants, drones, and what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world."
Re:Cyberpsychosis (Score:4, Funny)
Because psychosis is a common side effect with hip replacements these days.
It's a game mechanic, and a pretty bad one at that, to try and prevent players from getting every cybernetic enhancement available. Not a comment on reality.
Re:Cyberpsychosis (Score:5, Interesting)
Elizabeth Moon, author of an extensive corpus of Science Fiction, opines for the BBC: "If I were empress of the Universe I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached -- a barcode if you will; an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals. It would be imprinted on everyone at birth. Point the scanner at someone and there it is. ... In war soldiers could easily differentiate legitimate targets in a population from non combatants... Anonymity would be impossible as would mistaken identity making it easier to place responsibility accurately, not only in war but also in non-combat situations far from the war."
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120522-barcode-everyone-at-birth [bbc.com]
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http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/23/0156226/sci-fi-writer-elizabeth-moon-believes-everyone-should-be-chipped [slashdot.org]
Also, in case someone hadn't read that story yet, and is outraged at Elizabeth Moon's comment, they were asked for controversial sound bytes. She just happened to give one that was publicized, and criticized.
http://e-moon60.livejournal.com/442811.html [livejournal.com]
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Heh,
I submitted this on Mon or Tues, too. :-)
I like her LJ...
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Right, because no one has ever cloned an RFID or similar unique identifier.
And all databases are error free.
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And knowing one's SSN allows you to divine their guilt or innocence, or whether their a combatant or civilian.
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If you can ID a person from far away without their cooperation you can usually detect that person from even further away.
Whereas if you have to be next to someone to ID him, either/both of you are dead/neutralized already if he is an enemy.
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I would imagine that the military would have a means of turning it off, while civilians could not.
So if you see someone in civvies who's chip isn't working, he probably ain't a civilian.
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I think she missed the whole point entirely. In order to implement a global coordinated chip-planting program to tag every person on earth, you would need to have either a) governments working together, or b) a single world government. Either way, war would not be an issue.
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This is +5 Interesting because it's interesting that someone could be so naive and stupid.
The scary part is that she votes.
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The idea was that, at some point and after enough mods, you become distanced from your own humanness and humanity itself; at what point do you become a cyborg and no longer human?
A single functional implant makes you a cyborg as long as that implant has some synthetic electrical component.
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Your humanity is greater than just he lump of meat that we're residing in. If I was able to make an AI that reacted the same way as I would, wouldn't that have the same humanity as me? I would say yes, and that's got no meaty bits. Let's say my heart fails and I get a stainless steel / titanium impeller implanted. Would that make me a heartless robot? Look for the "your excuse is invalid" kid -- he's got metal legs and a smile that would melt stone.
Now, I'm already part titanium so this may be the metal
We alter our brains all the time (Score:2, Insightful)
Caffeine affects our brain in a non-trivial way. If we're hungry, we behave differently. So food affects our brain in a non-trivial way. How is ingesting caffeine and food different than adding hardware to our brain?
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It's quite a bit harder to hack into food and control you. It's also a lot easier to revert to your previous state...just change diet.
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Re:We alter our brains all the time (Score:5, Funny)
It's quite a bit harder to hack into food and control you. It's also a lot easier to revert to your previous state...just change diet.
We're talking caffeine here - there is no 'just change' anything.
Without caffeine, life would not be possible.
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The caffeine must flow!
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How is ingesting caffeine and food different than adding hardware to our brain?
It isn't.
And that's why most countries have institutes where doctors determine what's safe and what's not and also what's legal and what's not. Some drugs alter your mind so much that we think we'd better make them illegal. And some things are innocent enough, or even considered a stimulant, so we allow them.
I would hope that "hardware for our brain" would be treated with the same medical methods as any medicine, food product or beverage.
Re:We alter our brains all the time (Score:4, Funny)
Some drugs are fun, that's why we make them illegal.
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Some drugs alter your mind so much that we think we'd better make them illegal.
Why ? I still don't understand why it's illegal to manipulate my own body/mind! Under what authority does the goverment grant itself that right ? Music is a mind alterning stimulus [ http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/09/news/la-heb-music-dopamine-20110109 [latimes.com] ] , but yet we do not ban certain type of music! My point is I will add whatever harware to my brain and I will consume whatever drugs I want...
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And that's why most countries have institutes where doctors determine what's safe and what's not and also what's legal and what's not. Some drugs alter your mind so much that we think we'd better make them illegal. And some things are innocent enough, or even considered a stimulant, so we allow them.
Cute. Did you learn that in school?
I love how everything fits into neat, precise little categories in your world... too bad the real world is about 1000x more fucked up and crazy than your little bubble.
I would hope that "hardware for our brain" would be treated with the same medical methods as any medicine, food product or beverage.
That's a scary thought indeed.
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Dune! (Score:2)
"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion." - Mentat mantra, something added by David Lynch to his Dune film
Re:We alter our brains all the time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also funny that we spend the first 2-3 decades of life being trained and educated in a deliberate attempt to modify our brains...to the point that any parent who wants their child to exist in a "natural" human state would be sent to prison for child abuse. We pride ourselves on being "civilized", and redefine "human" to mean denying our biological nature. Society is founded on that principle, and while as a people we try to modify ourselves to become more intelligent and compassionate, education-turned-indoctrination can also make us into monsters, and even the most liberal societies train us to accept certain injustices.
So when they say technology can change who we are, I suggest that we have been excelling at changing who we are for thousands of years. Whether a particular technique is "good" or "bad" in a moral sense depends on whether it stirs or stunts our capacity for empathy, and whether it encourages us to grow and diversify or enforces a rigid set of behavior.
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I agree with everything up to
Whether a particular technique is "good" or "bad" in a moral sense depends on whether it stirs or stunts our capacity for empathy, and whether it encourages us to grow and diversify or enforces a rigid set of behavior.
Replace "in a moral sense" with "in my moral sense" and it works well enough. The real good/bad discussion is extremely complicated, with too many contradictory criteria for me to name and with very unclear relative weights. You may prize empathy while another person might prize blind hatred (the Westboro Baptist Church comes to mind here), and fundamentally what is to say who is right in some absolute moral sense? Practically speaking I of course ignore questions of foundations
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Yes, but. Do you know what the QUEERS are doing to the SOIL?!?
What will happen??? (Score:3)
Oh, I don't know... watch:
Soldiers
Surrogates
Star Trek: First Contact (imo best modern ST film)
Ghost in the Shell
and any other sci-fi flick
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Timothy Zahn's Cobra books as well (original short story, ``When Johnny Comes Marching Home'') --- though I prefer his _Blackcollar_ books and find them more likely.
William
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Book: Old Man's War (Score:2)
"Old Man's War" was a great book for me. IMHO right up there with Starship Trooper, Forever War and Armor.
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Better yet, don't. The sheer stupidity of that film and the massive cop-out at the ending can send me into a twenty minute fit of nerd-rage. The writers took a good premise, but rather than go into any real consideration of the complicated field of bioethics they just chickened out with something cliche but utterly unfounded.
Re:What will happen??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anthropomorphic Vehicle Control (AVC) -
When the driver *becomes* the vehicle... See's through the vehicles cameras and feels and controls the vehicle like it's their own body.
Currently under development, but you can get an idea what it's like from this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Turing-Evolved-ebook/dp/B007GTWLDW/ref=zg_tr_158595011_4 [amazon.com]
It talks about other vehicles ( aircraft, ground, water etc ) but mostly about DEMONs - Direct Engagement Military Offensive Neurosuit.
That's pretty much where I think it's headed - the book is free at the moment, BTW. Other formats: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34627 [smashwords.com]
GrpA
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Perhaps the driver could become the vehicle in another way. Imagine if a soldier with full battle gear and weaponry could "sprint" for 30 minutes without getting tired. He would be more formidable in many scenarios than most conventional ground vehicles including tanks.
That might be possible if scientists can come up with a cybernetic augmentation that prevents soldiers from getting tired until they run out of fuel[1]. Most soldiers can be very strong for a few seconds, the problem is they get tired.
Possibl
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How about "read"?
"Dogfight" by Swanwick and Gibson. [wikipedia.org] You think the VA's problems are bad now, wait until they have to deal with the ruined shells of combat-enhanced-and-then-demilitarized neurologically damaged veterans. As bad as PTSD and TBI are now, just think of how much worse it will be when most combat veterans have their nervous systems and mental health irretrievably ruined with battle drugs and combat-oriented conditioning and (maybe) implants.
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"top bioethicist "? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"top bioethicist "? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"top bioethicist "? (Score:5, Funny)
We put all candidates in a sealed arena, each one with a fully equipped lab. Labs are only connected by the air they breathe.
The last one standing becomes the new top bioethicist.
It's not very fair, but nobody wants to argue with the top bioethicist.
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Re:"top bioethicist "? (Score:4, Funny)
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They tried that with physicists, but they could only get it to work for spherical physicists in a vacuum.
[GladOS] However empirical testing has discovered that if you put a physicist (*) in a vacuum, their shape does briefly approach spherical. Before exploding. So it's still a pretty good approximation. [/GladOS]
* This technique probably only works with Bad Movie Physicists.
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He got top honours when graduating from Bob's School of Bioethics and Croissant Making.
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Bob's School of Bioethics and Croissant Making.
Mas non! Only evil bioethicists learn croissant making! Do you have any idea how much saturated fat is in one of those things?
Now witness the delicious French destruction your failure of scientific morality and standardised curriculum assessment has wrought upon the world!
You fools! You puffed the pastry up! You puffed it all up!
Re:"top bioethicist "? (Score:5, Funny)
Operating Thetan level? Hmm, does a bioethicist use arcane or divine spellcasting levels?
Not a serious question, of course: if your self appointed job title is "bioethicist", then your self appointed job is to tell people what's right and what's wrong, and that's obviously a priest class.
Do we have any kings left that we can strangle with his entrails?
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I believe the process is to first identify the "bottom bioethecist". Then the other one of the pair would have to be the "top".
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Posted anonymously as post may express more about the author's opinion of bioethics than he prefers to reveal.
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I believe the process is to first identify the "bottom bioethecist". Then the other one of the pair would have to be the "top".
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Posted anonymously as post may express more about the author's opinion of bioethics than he prefers to reveal.
You are mistaken. The top and bottom bioethicist are one and the same. Except after taking LSD. For research.
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Bioethicists are the self-proclaimed philosophers of the digital age. We should pay attention to what they have to say, to a degree commensurate with the volume of their digital voices, and the breadth of the digital footprint- for if they speak loudly and often, surely they must be important.
This guy, he's like Socrates or some shit.
DS9 (Score:2)
This reminds me of Life Support [wikipedia.org], especiallt about your brain defining who you are. That episode was a perfect illustration of this topic. (The linked synopsis isn't very good, I'm afraid).
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Wikia (Score:2)
that's the right specialty wiki for Trek, though sometimes it's interesting to compare the regular wiki article and the specialty wiki article
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Why not reference the synopsis on Memory Alpha [memory-alpha.org]?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Tele = remote
Kinesis = movement
You probably mean telepathy.
Re:Wireless thought (Score:4, Funny)
Tele = remote
Kinesis = movement
You probably mean telepathy.
Tele = remote
Pathos = experience
You probably mean teletubby.
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And if one of your team members is suffering from PTSD or just freaks out?
Actually a live connection to your team members may help. You can be reassured when the stress is just beginning, talking it out is a known way reduce stress, the team is aware - no suffering is silence making it worse, the team is aware - the soldier can be removed from the battlefield pre-freakout, etc.
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Anything you could do with telepathy, you could probably do by talking on a cell phone or other radio. It is basically the same thing.
And to those who would say "What about special forces people and the like who have to be quiet and can't talk?" my response is that problem has already been solved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throat_microphone [wikipedia.org]
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I can barely keep my mouth shut as it is, and you want to make it worse by being able to hear the thoughts that don't make it out of my mouth?
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I say it would just be noise that would distract from any military operation, especially considering how fast ones emotions change in high-stress situations. The information that would be useful is specific information, knowing your buddies general mood is useless chatter. Knowing your buddy is dead or wounded though is vital information.
Being bi-polar I may be rather biased since even knowing my own moods doesn't help me worth a damn.
Also, some of the ex-military I know may have some rather paradoxical r
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Why would you want to do that (transmit emotions)?
1) There are already brain computer interfaces.
2) There's already wireless communication
3) Wearable computers, displays, sensors are possible
So sending messages to your team using thoughts is not a big step. Why would sending emotions be better in a battle than sending messages?
Once you have that controlling devices remotely would just be a matter of sending the right messages to the right stuff. Then you have your telekinesis too.
See also:
http://hardware.sl [slashdot.org]
I'm not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
As it is now, the greatest tool(weapon) we have lies between our ears, more powerful than the fastest jets and the biggest bombs, and anything that improves it to perform certain tasks better is an option. So genetic manipulation, chips in brains, anything. Because if you don't, then someone else will and then you lose.
I'm guessing most of this is done in secrecy to prevent public outcries.
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It's not so much "ways of killing people" as it is "ways of making sure no one else can wantonly kill or subjugate you".
And maybe grabbing all the oil and installing a puppet government while you are at it. Face it, it's "ways of killing people" to justify military spending the can't be paid for while more important things get no funding whatsoever.
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It is amazing how much money can be found when it comes to ways of killing people - even indirectly e.g hey soldier, boy go 'n kill all those colored folks, and hey if you get your brain shredded by an IED on the wa, we can (sort of) put you back together again.
History proves that pacifism fails. Unless there are non-pacifists around to protect the pacifists.
This reminds me of (Score:2)
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first thing i think about is skill wires from SR
Novel Idea (Score:1)
How about just ending all wars? Then we won't need prosthesis for soldiers. Plus you can give me back some of my tax money spent on war welfare.
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How about just ending all wars? Then we won't need prosthesis for soldiers. Plus you can give me back some of my tax money spent on war welfare.
Now you're talking real changes in human brain development and activity. Like at lobotomy levels. Unfortunately, conflict seems to be pretty hard wired into the human brain.
That doesn't sound true at all (Score:2)
Steven Pinker on the Myth of Violence [ted.com]
Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.
No two (relatively) liberal democracies have ever waged a war against each other.
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No two (relatively) liberal democracies have ever waged a war against each other.
I seem to remember the previous form of that statement being "no two democracies". Interesting how extra disclaimers have had to be added. Seems a little "no true Scotsman" to me.
Don't know what people are complaining about (Score:2, Insightful)
I got this brain implant from the government and I feel fine. In fact, I feel better than fine. When I watch sitcoms, sports, and reality shows--it's bliss.
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Your brain implant obviously needs to be upgraded to the newest version of the NewSpeak dictionary.
"I got this brain implant from Big Brother and I feel good. In fact, I feel plus-good. When I watch sitcoms, sports, and reality shows--it's double-plus-good."
when military tech hits the civilian world. (Score:1, Troll)
what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world?
It does already, and as long as it keeps doing it in Muslim countries I'm all for it.
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what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world?
It does already, and as long as it keeps doing it in Muslim countries I'm all for it.
And if you run out of resources before you kill everyone else? US military spending is unsustainable and pushing the national debt to insane levels. High tech comes at a high cost and brain implants are not going to change that.
Novel concepts (Score:3, Funny)
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From now on, if you want to start a war on a developed country, you should do it on a Tuesday. That's the day the soldiers are down for their Windows Updates.
Imagine what something like stuxnet could do to soldiers with brain implants.
GITS (Score:1)
Ghost in the shell tackles this issue nicely in a sci fi way.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution anyone? (Score:1)
load of crap (Score:3)
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It's a supreme tragedy for the human race that eugenics has been so powerfully (perhaps inextricably) linked with the policies of Nazi Germany. We're fools for not being able to dissociate the two and take an objective look at the idea.
Why is it 'bullshit' to think that we just MIGHT be able to apply our knowledge of genetics to improve the condition of the human species across multiple future generations? Think about cystic fibrosis for example, a hereditary disease resulting from genetic contributions