When the War on your Mind Goes Hot
From influence, profit, and power there are innumerable reasons why some and institutions would want the ability to manipulate your thoughts. Of course, an efficient tool to learn how to control other’s thoughts is to be able to read them in real-time. When it comes to online platforms a great deal of the mind-manipulation is done indirectly.
Ranking algorithms, Censorship, and financial incentives will all radically transform how people individually act as a group, but there will always be more direct forces that can be used. The problem with direct mind control devices is that they are difficult to understand. Just like social media, the applications are likely going to appear entirely harmless and innocuous to mask nefarious intent.
In this piece, I want to use an example to illustrate brain transparency. Which is the primary application of mind-reading technology. Instead of using indirect means to learn your thoughts; such as likes, comments, or what sites you visit, instead insights can be gleaned directly from your mind. With advanced technology and sophisticated understanding of how the brain actually works, mind-reading technology is far closer than one would imagine.
Brain Transparency
Without even asking, I’m very sure you can identify the patterns embedded in the two AI generated images below. From a distance, you can clearly see the pattern, but when you tune in to the fine details you can see that the image doesn’t look too unusual without the extra context.
Image Source
Like any other illusion, it works because your brain works to identify patterns. Some patterns (like text) are more universal than others. If you wanted to construct a system that wanted to understand the person better than they know themselves, you could test them in a variety of ways with specific patterns that only resonate with specific people…
If your childhood involved countless hours spent capturing, training and battling Pokémon, there may be a wrinkle in your brain that is fond of images of Wobbuffet, Bulbasaur and Pikachu.
Stanford psychologists have identified preferential activation to Pokémon characters in the brains of people who played Pokémon videogames extensively as kids.Stanford researchers identify brain region activated by Pokémon characters
This leads one to ask: Could patterns be deliberately placed to then further manipulate people in ways others wouldn’t notice? Like a perfect dogwhistle. Effectively turning everyone into a sleeper agent that can be identified, and manipulated. It’s not just what you know, but how you know it. It’s also what you don’t know, or can’t recognize. Everyone is different. There will always be ways to precisely target people with this knowledge, for either marketing, manipulation, or even psychological torture.
Far from being mere memes on the internet, once people start putting electrodes on their heads, the game changes dramatically. We have already seen how social media deteriorated people’s ability to connect and communicate with each other, advanced mind-reading technology makes direct mind control a lot more of a pressing concern. It’s possible that profit-seeking algorithms for social media have already had this effect in some form, but with devices that receive direct input from our minds, the results can be much more extreme. Tagging people based on what patterns their brains recognize is only one out of countless ways advanced technology can learn how people think.
Applications
As an example, let’s pretend that I run a major communication platform. Let’s name it after a single letter of the alphabet. X (for eXample) is a place where people believe they can participate in the digital town square. As the operator of X, I have access to all the users information, as well as devices they’ve purchased from me. Instead of using machine learning to ban or censor users, I merely work to please users who fall for my preferred (or sponsored) propaganda, and frustrate those who aren’t properly learning from the propaganda. I introduce a new fictional character that represents the values I’m pushing. Those who can’t immediately recognize that character must be avoiding the propaganda, so they must be nudged or corrected.
There really isn’t much of a debate on if this technology should be used to control people. Instead, we have technocrats gleefully announcing all the social problems that would be solved if we merely put all of our minds in the capable hands of the powerful. Many simply dismiss practical application of cutting-edge biology as sci-fi, which leads ethical considerations to be debated after the damage is done.
Did you happen to watch Nita Farahany’s presentation at Davos about Brain Transparency?
Did you ever wonder why she wasn’t booed off the stage?
It’s because everyone there implicitly accepts this sort of heinous rhetoric. They’ve gone all-in on these technocratic fantasies of theirs. They don’t even hide it. They’re actively normalizing ideas that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
There’s something about this topic that is downright terrifying to the soul. Those who recognize what’s at stake can clearly see that a terrifying system of mental control has already been constructed. Speculating on future harms may seem fruitless when the already applied forms of conditioning, propaganda, and punishment have taken control in serious ways already. The difference this time is that dissenters are much easier to identify.
Those who cooperate with the regime can be marked in their minds, in a way that is very difficult (if not outright impossible) to fake. If there was ever a time to take the time to truly reflect on how you’re using your thoughts and what impact there having, we may be approaching the end of the line. This is why I’m highly concerned about the adapt or be left behind messaging embedded in discussions about machine learning tools, and potential cybernetic augmentations. What someone thinks is opting-in for career advancement may in fact come with some extremely invasive strings attached. One may want to reconsider the entire point of “getting ahead” when the price is complete control over your words, actions, and even thoughts. I have a feeling, that in the long run, these consequences will vastly outweigh potential benefits.
