The theory of mindreading isn’t exactly new. It’s one of the most hackneyed themes in science fiction. It’s getting a lot closer to becoming a real issue with new drugs, technologies, and a culture of corporate exploitation.
A new book by a Duke University bioscience professor called Nita Farahany looks at this potential disaster and the good professor obviously doesn’t like what she sees. The Guardian has a useful article explaining her views. You DO need to read this article to see how difficult this subject is rapidly becoming.
Your thoughts could become public in the worst way. This commentary by Prof. Farahany is the core description of what’s possible and what’s coming. It’s likely to be a particularly serious issue in context with the effective collapse of civilization in finance, politics, and a culture that really doesn’t care.
Worse, there’s also extremely big money in the intellectual property and peripherals of neuroscience. That’s a great incentive to develop technologies that could be extremely oppressive and destructive.
This tech as predicted by Prof. Farahany goes far beyond mindreading into active intrusion and cognitive interference. Given the risky terminologies alone that neuroscience is generating, even something as basal as the word “neurotypical”, there are problems.
Simply categorizing people could create some ugly situations. For example – If you do a test and you’re categorized as “neurodivergent”, it could be a problem. This lazy categorization is almost a default. The autism spectrum is another catchall that generates a lot of issues for those so categorized.
This is a vast range of individual conditions in one largely useless and effectively meaningless at face-value phrase. Apply this definition to the number of subsets of neural category in autism. Think what an absolute mess you could create with the right technologies as enablers.
I particularly distrust the idea of “neurodivergence”. Divergent from what? Do you create a norm and say whatever’s not that norm is divergent? Do you disadvantage people by calling them neurodivergent? Probably. The norm, however insulting, is the social baseline.
Tweak the norm slightly so your normal has to be an absolute imbecile, and anyone who’s not an imbecile is divergent. Sounds like China’s surveillance society with built-in grounds for oppressing anyone.
Privacy? Forget it. All of this data skewed or otherwise, can be duly documented. That could be in medical records, assessments, and practically anywhere neuro data can be used. After all, even now – Your medical and cherry-picked personal documentation is who you are, in so many ways.
There’s a much worse problem, and much less visible. All technologies are abused on a routine basis. Not just some of them. All of them. From a box of matches to cybercrime, someone uses them for destructive purposes.
Why wouldn’t neuroscience be abused? Is neuroscience naïve? Does it really think the people running this world into the ground can be trusted with technologies like that?
This is what Prof. Farahany is talking about. The right to privacy can be completely subverted all too easily unless this neuroscience tech is under strict control. This is about as private as you can get, and it’s at least theoretically likely to be at risk. She’s talking about legislation to ensure privacy, but there are other options as well.
For instance:
- Neuro data can be made unacceptable evidence. A bit like a lie detector, inadmissible as evidence on pretty much the same basis because readings can be rigged or simply unreliable and very easy to dispute. This also makes the horrendous turgid adversarial clashes in court over medical evidence a bit more manageable from the legal perspective.
- Any form of “mindreading”, however self-serving, can be made a criminal offense unless under medical supervision for a legitimate medical reason, and peer-reviewed by an independent expert.
- Any use of such technology on employees should be an offense. There’s no reason to believe that lousy micromanagers wouldn’t try it, and no reason to trust them with any level of personal information. These guys don’t even understand basic hygiene, like regulating toilet breaks. Why wouldn’t they abuse such tech in the name of pretending to manage?
- A No Go zone in terms of privacy for mindreading tech or techniques needs to be established and enforced. Like any privacy issue, what’s private should be what you want to be private without exception. For legal purposes, evidence can be gathered from other sources, anyway, like it’s been done for thousands of years.
- For the purposes of psychology and psychiatry, neuroscience does have legitimate uses. That’s not the whole story, though. Those medical records are potentially vulnerable, and the tech could still be abused. Clear guidelines and laws are required. Practitioners and patients need to be protected from allegations of abuse and actual abuse.
Neuroscience is an exponentially expanding science. It needs to get its act together and clarify its responsibilities. This is not negotiable.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
