this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

This has to be the most dystopian thing I've ever read. If the rich and the elites have the power to read our thoughts (outside of a lab) with 80-90% accuracy, I genuinely don't know what the point of living will be. Our eternal enslavement will be completed, they could control our emotions, desires and needs, we would literally become animals.

[–] [email protected] 108 points 3 days ago

...and once again, warnings stating "DO NOT BUILD THE TORMENT NEXUS" go ignored.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Invest in aluminum foil now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It would be good that shit works for that but I don't think so.. let's see what happens when the NSA have access to your thoughts.

Edit: I think they will apply the "if you didn't hide anything then there is nothing to worry about" discourse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (3 children)

They will just use mind control to make sure you physical can not commit a crime

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can they do that to the crime that has affected the greatest number of people and caused the greatest amount of lost money? Because that's wage theft and it's probably the only way I'd be cool with it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Not exactly, they can mind control you into being happy your boss steals your wages tho

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's a movie called "The Last Day of American Crime" which has this premise. It has a 0% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_last_days_of_american_crime

Seems like it'd be a kind of okay option if you were really stoned and actually spent the whole movie on your phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Ouch. At least there's a plot of some sort, unlike some movies.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe it could be possible to connect someone sleeping to the brain of someone else to do mind-control IDK, or do you believe it will be some kind of AI?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Lots of misconceptions here. Brain waves are just the communication between neurons. This is basically internal wiring, everyone is wired differently. Also nothing gets out of your brain on its own, except heat.

A tool like this can only measure regular patterns between humans and compare them. You will only get are interpretations of your brain status. It can't read your memories nor know if you're thinking about eating a burger. At most it will get a "you're hungry" alert. You can train it to be better at figuring you out (or to do other stuff, like controlling a robot), but you won't get more without a very invasive direct link to your brain (and more training). Which is more like torture at this point.

This new law is just promoting fear for something they don't even know if it's possible or not. Very sci fi law.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sci fi or not, I kinda want them to get this one figured out ahead of time. It is kinda like assuming that a convicted felon could never be President. You wouldn't think that rule would need to exist because come on, how could a country possibly want to elect a convicted felon? Its a completely ridiculous notion that could absolutely never happen.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And Im telling you that is practically impossible to read your mind without committing other known already existing crimes. There is a rule already for it, it's called basic human rights.

When I say sci fi law, it's because it's fiction. This new law is against fiction. Your example is for something that's not fiction. Do you understand the difference? Do you think this politician forwarding this law understands it?

This is more akin to those old laws of banning all alcohol.

Want your privacy? Should force/convince your countries to ban cameras first*.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is there a downside to having a law like this on the books?

Also, isn't banning cameras like a mind-blowingly bad idea? That would mean people couldn't do things like record police committing crimes, hell you wouldn't even be able to install a dash cam on your car.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

You're wasting taxpayers money in fiction and pseudoscience. Every law needs at least one real example of something being done in bad faith or at least proven possible (even if the perpetrator fails at it).

The cameras was just a real example of invasion of privacy. By your logic maybe we need to make laws against time traveling ASAP, considering at any moment time travelers will be more relevant than ever.

You need to start making laws for things that really affects your life right now, instead of fictional maybes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean, you said that camera thing like it was some kind of mic drop lol. I'm also not sure what you mean by "my logic", since I don't personally have much of an opinion on the law it's self, I was just curious why someone would be so vehemently against it. I'm not the original commenter that started this chain.

If it's a matter of wasted resources, I guess I see your point, but it's a bit of a reach. I don't know if it's as big of a waste as you're claiming when we have corporations trying to implant customers with brain chips like neuralink, I mean who knows where that technology could go if it ever gets off the ground. Personally I think the Justice system attempting to have a bit of foresight is a good thing.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 days ago

Me: This new law is against fiction. Your example is for something that’s not fiction. Do you understand the difference?

This is what I mean by your logic. Do you understand the difference between fiction and reality?

I mean, you said that camera thing like it was some kind of mic drop lol

Because surveillance never has been an issue /s. Did you just read the last comment and ignore the rest? One is a real problem, the other is fiction. Do you understand the difference?

Personally I think the Justice system attempting to have a bit of foresight is a good thing

Sure man, let's make a law about something we know nothing about, what could go wrong.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

nothing gets out of your brain on its own, except heat.

I heard a recording of a song made by reading a brain that was thinking that song. It was far from perfect, but you could tell which song it was. I'm no neuroscientist, but if that information can already be plucked from a brain, surely that's proof that reconstructing thoughts is possible to some degree?

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/neuroscientist-pink-floyd-music-brain-activity

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Nice article, but it's more like reading stimulus reaction while reconstructing it in a form that's similar to the original. But it has flaws. Based on the recordings you can make out pretty much any existant song (or memorized recording) but not original thoughts. Everyone can remember the beats of a song, but also everyone makes word associations in different ways, depending on which concepts sticks.

Very cool for an interface tho. It would be possible to use it as base for composers, if it's possible to interpret original hummings, or beats (what would I know, I'm not a musician), which would require training.

But there is a catch

Continuing to probe musical perception is likely to be difficult because the brain areas that process it are hard to access without invasive methods.

nothing gets out on its own

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It's concerning how this pseudoscience is getting so much traction, and we'll be left with a bunch of nonsensical privacy regulation. Granted I'm happy to err towards too much privacy regulation, but can imagine other privacy issues getting less traction.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It isnt pseudoscience, theres some papers out there on locked in syndrome and they have a system that is very good at reading thoughts with something like 75-85% accuracy. Requires very sophisticated and large equipment to use though, and it has to be trained on each person individually (through things like yes/no answers with blinks or focusing on saying one word, so its not some sort of thing that can just be automatically done, it requires a great deal of consent and concentration on part of the staff and the patient). Its very possible this could be downsized and made more available in the decades to come, its still in the early phases.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

Maybe this isn't pseudoscience anymore.. I must admit I need to see these stuff working in person to believe it but according to the video this is definetly interesting at least or it could open a new era in human civilization.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

Never has the art of occlumency been so necessary

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Jokes on you, not thinking!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You think they wouldn't be able to controll that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Enligthement and spiritual awakening are states of no-mind.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

mmo festive "sexual" cartesian theatres coming for disney world from japan with loving kindness

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Excuse me, what kind of technology...?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

Letting your neighbour know exactly what you think about his wife.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Watch the video, there is more information about it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I just read the article and will definitely be watching the video when I can. What a wild story.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I believe it should work with some kind of brain waves(telepathy?), apparently some kind of device you put in your head and it read information from your brain, the spooky question would be if there is a way to make a device like that to be able to read information from someone's brain remotely. IDK this looks like a bad idea but anyway it's already here, according to the information I believe there will be more places where law get updated about it.

Edit: maybe it could be used for interrogation also, I mean you could know if someone it's saying the truth or not by reading their brain.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Reading thoughts remotely is a no-go, you need very precise measurements of the brain's electrical activity and that just can't be done with distant sensors.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

No, the sensor will be in the brain, it will just transmit encrypted packets of the information it collects over WiFi or microwave.

If they can read your brain, this is a very simple exercise

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Maybe there are people who have more powerful brain waves or something.. like some kind of abnormality who can make they more likely to be remote targets..

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm no expert in biology but the way I understand it our brains all work in roughly the same way, so I don't think that would be possible.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 days ago

Yeah TBH I didn't know a fuck about that, anyway let's see what happens in the coming years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Brains transmit/change state (a.k.a. think) using electricity. It's basically a flesh computer. You can't read thoughts without being able to measure the brain's electrical/chemical activity. If you had any theoretically possible mind-reading (and by extension mind-controlling) technology, it would still need to physically connect to your neurons or something...

That being said, I don't imagine it'd be too hard for sci-fi future folk to stick a chip in every newborn's brain from the get-go. But that's a future too far from now, we'll all be dead by then probably.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Kinda like how they threw that lady in jail in India based on brain scans. It wasn't remotely done, but that didn't matter.

Also, Davos 2016 had a discussion on all the "social justice" applications they could use brain scan technology on. Nevermind stuff like roughly reconstructing the movie you just watched. And, by now, they've had plenty of time to come up with more fun ways to apply this technology.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

How about the power, to move you?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You're going to have to drag my corpse into a lab to put any neuro any-fucking-thing in or on my head.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

Maybe it wouldn't be necessary to do it..

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago

Says the dude who uses telepathy and forces to force people to say things.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Advances in artificial intelligence are leading to medical breakthroughs once thought impossible, including devices that can actually read minds and alter our brains.

Pauzaskie says our brain waves are like encrypted signals and, using artificial intelligence, researchers have identified frequencies for specific words to turn thought to text with 40% accuracy, "Which, give it a few years, we're probably talking 80-90%."

Researchers are now working to reverse the conditions by using electrical stimulation to alter the frequencies or regions of the brain where they originate.

But while medical research facilities are subject to privacy laws, private companies - that are amassing large caches of brain data - are not.

The vast majority of them also don't disclose where the data is stored, how long they keep it, who has access to it, and what happens if there's a security breach...

With companies and countries racing to access, analyze, and alter our brains, Pauzauskie suggests, privacy protections should be a no-brainer, "It's everything that we are.


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