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New brain scan that can read your intentions -- Pre-cogs, anyone?

guardian.co.uk — 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.

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  • thetripflare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23Can it be adapted so we can work out someone's original intentions really were, a long time after they first acted. ;)

    This would help us decide if global leaders should be re-elected or written-off as loons.
    • yocheo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+27OMG... SCREW GLOBAL LEADERS...Do you not realize the implications of this??? Dating just ***** became 10,000 times easier!
    • Rockyrowks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+43digg down
    • JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11/me goes to the kitchen for some aluminum foil.
      Does anyone here know how to make hats?

      And lets Digg rockyrowks up just to piss him off.
    • Qunjiaofeiyang, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0If so id like to see it applied to women thougt immediatly
    • saska, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9What I'm afraid of is that it'll go all red-bubble-light on me because I *think* about relieving some asshat of his head, but then think better of it.
    • scott1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"This would help us decide if global leaders should be re-elected or written-off as loons."
      What about telepathic Big brother?
    • Ap31r0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Cephos Corporation
      http://www.cephoscorp.com/

      No lie MRI (no joke, smug bastards)
      http://www.noliemri.com/

      check them out
  • Bartboy919, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21Well, it looks like 1984 was off by about 20 years. Nice knowing you,
    • JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Duuuude, we're already IN 1984. We're just conditioned to use sloppy and lazy rationalism along with tons of double-speak and double-think to accept it.

      Think about it. We call ourselves a Free society. It's called the Department of DEFENSE, etc. They fluoridate the water. Ah man. =(
    • Bartboy919, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2When the government institutes the thought police, THEN its 1984.
    • appetite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8It's time to start practicing meditation so I can work on my ability to think about nothing at all.
    • mfratt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Be sure not to commit thoughtcrime.
      This technology would literally allow for the government, as was mentioned, to institute a thought police and pre-cogs.
      We need some ++ungood people to stand up against this Orwellian *****. I try to speak out as much as I can.
    • Ap31r0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yea this seems to be pretty much the end of "free will"


      oh well it was nice while it lasted, life as a governments device wont be to bad, if you call it life.
    • JonForTheWin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@bartboy919
      We do have thought police. They can't exactly go into your head yet and pull the thoughts out of you. But if you express these thoughts there can be harsh consequences especially if you're in a government training camp I mean . . school.

      Like this one kid I know who saw a video of building seven collapse and said out loud in his computer class "Hey now that I've actually ***** LOOKED at this video of building seven collapsing these people saying 911 was an inside job are holding up much better than the news". So he gets sent to the office and they want to suspend him for "violating" the so-called "acceptable use policy" (aka NO FREEDOM OF COMMUNICATION policy) and suspend him unless his parents are willing to have the school do a "psychological" test on him.

      Regardless of if what he said was or was reasonable, he expressed his thoughts then the school and it's cronies went as far out of their way as they could to punish him for even /thinking/ (zomg!) the mass media could be wrong (know that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was completely staged which led to 58,000 American deaths and millions of dead Vietnamese and that's fully declassified but if you mention that in your history class you get in trouble anyone??).

      The FBI in Arizona thinks you are a terrorist if you support The Constitution just look at the fliers they hand out to the local law (another joke-on-it's-face/double-think term since these people don't even know the basis of all law our Constitution and Bill of Rights) enforcement:
      http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/FBIsuspect.html

      I must disclaim regardless if you agree or disagree with what that website endorses those are the actual fliers in their own context.

      Even if the thought criminals we are terrorized under today can't penetrate and punish as they can in the book 1984, we certainly do have them today.
    • RicktheBrick, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Lets imagine a world where everyone has a chip implanted in their brain. This chip would allow instant communications with anyone else on earth. It would not be limited to speech as one could communicate feelings also. One would be able to record feelings for playback later. One would be able to share those feeling too. For instance when one goes to a health provider than they could feel your pain. No experience would be beyond sharing with everyone. For instance, sex, flying into outer space As for free will one would have it for more than 99% of the time. It is only that 1% that gets us into trouble. I for one do not think that free will for that little amount of time is worth it considering the consequences of those activities.
      • elscorcho717, on 03/11/2008, -0/+1You should stop eating mushrooms and sitting on your computer
  • Lixie, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9It's 70% accurate at predicting near-future actions by identifying neurological patterns. I wouldn't be to worried. It's very limited in ability.
    • kingkilr, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10So it won't know I am thinking about midget porn?
    • joshua5, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Yeah -- right now. You apparently fail to realize that this is 70% when the technology is in its infancy. That doesn't worry me, that freaks the hell out of me.
    • appetite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It will never work.

      70% accuracy to tell if you will add or subtract the same number. As you increase the possible choices (beyond arithmetic, all they look at is patches of the brain that light up on the machine), leave room for the chance that people can change their minds and that you can probably trick the system with some training, it can be defeated!

      I bet it will never get beyond reasonable doubt with unwilling subjects.
  • SpectralSounds, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1I dont know about you. But, I've wanted to strangle my girlfriend before. Should I have to go to jail for these kinda thoughts? New girlfriend maybe, but jail?
  • scrag10, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I usually just say what I'm gonna do so no need for fancy dodads.
    • mortigon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2"I'm gonna go jerk off."

      "Scrag10! How dare you!"

      "Sorry Mom."
    • treed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My mom would have said, "Okay, don't make a mess."
  • helidude20, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15AMAZING ! We can read minds but we can't cure a Migraine.
  • ryogahibiki, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18So basically we're all gonna go to jail for thought-crime.


    Time for the aluminum hats!
    • elevatedflow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Now i want to see the results of when they try to read thought patterns of say, someone who is stoned off their bird. I mean, if sodomy is illegal in your state of residence, but one night, while under the influence, the idea is really persistent. You just enjoyed (shameless plug) a few mood enhancing puffs from your Volcano Vaporizer and you start thinking about how great it would be to get that kinky ... and BAM your local PD bust in and ruin ya fantasy and buzz all at once ... but ... if your under the influence, can you say that you would never have those thoughts sober?? Now thats a real ethical issue that must be addressed in all this~!
  • Aliarse, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Controversially, they may be able to spot people who plan to commit crimes before they break the law."

    What was that film called again?

    If they ever make this so they dont need to be sat underneath a giant scanning machine, were all screwed. I guess the people using it will know im on my way to kill them all if it ever gets that far. On the bright side, what they wont know is how/when/where im going to do it.
    • mortigon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Minority Report

      or the book, 1984 (good book if you haven't read it, and I'm not a book reader)
  • Nirgaul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This article is still very vague about how they matched patterns across different brain scans to find a cognate. Sure, a computer is involved, but what sort of heuristic are they using? Do they have the participants in the test first make a decision, take a snapshot of the neural activity, do some pattern matching, and then have them repeat the process with the exact same stimulus? Do they change the stimulus at all? Does this work in cases where there are multiple decision forks?
  • DeFex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5is that the same machine they used to figure out how much people did not like superbowl ads?
  • kublerross, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3umm this may violate your rights, if youre some secret math wizard who only adds or subtracts, and if they can make you sit super still in a giant machine long enough to complete the scan, while making sure you're thinking about addition or subtraction

    sensationalistic sleaze, fMRI is old news
  • SteveRogers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I can imagine this tech, in the future, assisting/replacing current lie detectors, but the whole "pre-crime" thing is complete *****. People think about doing things they're not supposed to all the time. Maybe not breaking the law, but they still think about things they'd like to do but won't because it's wrong. That self-inhibition is present even if someone thinks of doing something wrong. Thus, it will never happen. Or at least shouldn't happen.
  • omnithought, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Great, so when I'm playing a next-gen Wii game where I stalk and kill someone, cops will show up and take me away for violent intentions?

    ***** the who "pre-crime" *****. Either someone actually commits a crime or they don't. After all, people do change their minds. What is an intention one moment can completely change in the next.
  • caboosemoose, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2First of all it goes without saying, Minority Report was a pretty average film.

    More importantly, though, this has nothing to do with the pre-cogs of the film. They saw the future, not intention. You could intend a murder all you wanted but the pre-cogs wouldn't see it unless it was actually going to happen. It wasn't mind reading.

    Oh, and minority reports had nothing to do with the main plot of the film, neither Cruise's character nor the Director of pre-crime's murders involved one. So that was pretty erroneous naming as far as I'm concerned. And we were told at the beginning of the film all the pre-cogs could see were murders. By the end of the film the female was telling you what you were going to have for ***** breakfast in 3 days.
  • caddar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This has nothing to do with precognitions...
  • DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This technique is only stated as 70% accurate based on testing of a simple scenario.

    Consider that 50% accurate would mean the technology was completely worthless (i.e. no different than random guessing).
  • zapbuzz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0so what we should be practising telekenetics we're all capable.
  • estatica, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It's disappointing to see they only seem to focus the positive aspects of using a technique that can clearly violate individual rights.

    To me it sounded more like a torture technique waiting to gain popular acceptance.
  • dudad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The costs of electricity to run such machines make it unfeasible to ever run it on everyone. Especially when you factor in how many people and how many thoughts would be required to track. And then, the fact that it's only a few fundamental processes and not exact thoughts.. It's not anywhere close to 1984.

    Just because you might know what someone is thinking, never means that you know what to do with it. Sure, you might know that your wife or husband is pissed/happy at you, but it doesn't mean that you'll change your actions.
  • rhoadesb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Duuuude, we're already IN 1984. We're just conditioned to use sloppy and lazy rationalism along with tons of double-speak and double-think to accept it.

    Think about it. We call ourselves a Free society. It's called the Department of DEFENSE, etc. They fluoridate the water. Ah man. =("

    Good wins in the end, just like the old time "goodguy/badguy" movies and TV shows. Work on being a better person a little at a time. You are not helpless as is commonly felt. The power brokers are scared to death that too many may figure that out.
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