Slashdot Mirror
Indian Woman Convicted of Murder By Brain Scan
Kaseijin writes "Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan claims his Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test is so accurate, it can tell whether a person committed or only witnessed an act. In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé. Scientific experts are calling the decision 'ridiculous' and 'unconscionable,' protesting that Mukundan's work has not even been peer reviewed. How reliable should a test have to be, when eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible? Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?"
... they can reliably read someone's mind to determine whether they committed a crime?
That is mental.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
In the U.S. I would say yes, because we have the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. In Indian law, I have no idea.
At first blush this sounds like a high-tech form of seeing if the witch can float.
Yes, yes you did.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Did anyone else read that headline and think, "She scanned his brain and it killed him?"
I talk about stuff.
This will bring the term "function creep" to a whole new level.
is alive and well...
So, a male centric and predominantly misogynistic country used this new and entirely untested technique to find a woman guilty of murder.
Gosh, what a surprise.
We are talking about a country where women regularly get murdered by the men in their own family, and no-one is punished, after all.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
And I defy your scanner to prove otherwise.
There are 4 billion people on earth. 237 are Scanners. They have the most terrifying powers ever created... and they are winning.
Dang and I thought the DRM in Vista was bad. I had no idea that BEOS could determine if I witnessed a crime.
I knew that it was ahead of it's time but Geesh! Does anyone know what version he is using?
Just goes to show, there is no security by obscurity! Hopefully those Haiku guys will get it up and running soon!
load "$",8,1
You know, the title sounds MUCH more interesting than the actual story.
Na na na na na...
Where's Michael Ironside when you need him?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
..BEOS has always been way ahead of the competition!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I hear the judge has ordered that she be imprisoned inside a giant NeXTcube.
Would a man have been convicted in this case? Or is this just another example of the crap that women still face in most societies around the world?
This machine has not been peer reviewed, and yet a judge trusts it? Sounds like the judge should be removed from their position. And all convictions related to this judge that might be plausibly shown to have been influenced by this judge's ignorance, should be thrown out.
I hope this women is able to appeal.
As to privacy related to memories. Well, I would suggest that this machine isn't capable of reading a person's memories at all. However, I do think that this should be voluntary only. After all, there are many memories not related to the alleged crime that would have to be "read". Not only that (at least in the USA), all information "found" not related to the "crime" should not be able to be used by law enforcement.
I'm sure you could make a Fifth Amendment type argument here (if you are in the USA).
I wank in the shower.
BeOS ?? They should be using Haiku!
With an undocumented feature like that, I'm surprised BeOS isn't still around.
If this would take a bad road then in another 10 years we'll be remote-scanned when we walk around outside (or even at home) and convicted when we have only intentions of committing a crime (which is already true in some countries just sans the remote-brain-scan part). Sounds like Precrime to me.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
You will be a terrorist supporter and friend to the paedophiles. Don't even think of preventing use of this weapon against perverts and terrorists.
Think of the Children (but not in that way... we will know).
In Roger Zelazny's classic Hugo award winning novel Lord of Light, the Brainscan was a key part of the tech that cemented the power of the faux Hindu Gods on a distant colony planet modeled after India....
They would use it to review people up for reincarantion (dying, aged, etc) before transferring their consciousness to a new body and life, one assigned based on the results of said brain scan...
I know this is nowhere near that, just found it ironic such a thing would surface in India. ------- Hey, wonder if it can determine if you saw or committed an act in a past life...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
In Red Dwarf Arnold Rimmer has to undergo a mind scan after which he is found guilty of the 1st degree murder of the whole crew of the Red Dwarf. Kryton is able to get Rimmer aquitted by pointing out that the radiation leak was caused by Rimmer being an incompetent half wit anf the mid scan confused the guilt he felt with culpability, in his own mind he tried and convicted himself... How would this mind probe deal this?
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
Yes, the headline left a bit to be desired.
Nope.
At one point to BeOS was considered a potential successor to Mac OS by Apple, after the collapse of the Copland project, but in the end Apple picked NEXTSTEP, supposedly because of two major issues with BeOS. The first was that Be, Inc. was asking too much. The other was that it was unfinished at the time it was under consideration, notably lacking a comprehensive printing system - which, at the time, was a major issue given Apple's success in the DTP market.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Indian Woman Convicted of Murder By Brain Scan"
My first thought: How do you kill somebody by a brain scan? Maybe they had a piece of metal lodged in their brain that shifted during an MRI.
Ah, but this is just bad editing. It should read "Indian Woman Convicted by Brain Scan of Murder".
Slashdot: amateur editors pretending to be professional.
I honestly think that if someone commits a crime like murder they should be held accountable, period. BUT, there's no way this brain scan thing works. I mean, REALLY. Ask the question again when the thing isn't a bunch of BS.
Also...
:P
...the headline made me think she fried someone's brain with an MRI or something. Might want to see to that.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Murder by brain scan?! And they tell us these tests are safe...
"did you kill x with a baseball bat ?"
now visualize that scenario
can his brain scan tell the difference of truth (you didn't i hope) versus the imaginary (you visualized the dramatic scene posed by the interrogators loaded question)
thought crime
Am I the only one who rad the headline and thought: "Also, I can kill you with my brain."
Ok, so is this guy Edward Nigma, or one of Frank Herbert's characters from Ix? I expect to see this kind of story at the grocery store, next to the reports of aliens eating someone's dog, and sightings of BatBoy.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
My take on it is this:
Show a bunch of people a video with no sound of someone dropped from a skyscraper onto a giant razorblade. A week later ask them if the person screamed. 1/3 of the people say he did. BUT there was no sound, a ha!!! Tricked you, didn't I?!
Kinda dumb... maybe I'm just being harsh.
Actually, I would imagine it would be fairly easy to distinguish a lie from the truth by EEG or fMRI. The pathways for recollection as opposed to creativity (lying), cause activity in different parts of the brain.
'Where were you last Tuesday at 3:00pm?' - If the person tells the truth, they're recalling the events. If they're lying, they're constructing a scenario in their head. The two would be very distinguishable.
That said, it's not without issues: First of all, if I pre-construct a scenario and run it through my head enough, it becomes a recollection and not a creation, I believe. Also, I'm not entirely sure that there's been enough actual studies of using fMRIs and/or EEGs for detecting lies vs. truth, nor how beatable the system is. Until these things have been studied and documented, they certainly shouldn't be used by courts.
There are companies in the U.S. trying to get fMRIs used for precisely this purpose. One example is the company, No Lie MRI.
If such systems can be proven reliable, then I'm all for using them in courts. Not so much to convict people, so much as to keep the innocent from being convicted, which happens plenty in the U.S.
I'm not so sure that it is good to convict someone of a crime, but it is pretty accurate. It is simple to do with a brain scan too.
1) Hook person up to a brain scanner.
2) Show the person random images of places they never seen until their brain doesn't care anymore.
3) Show the person an image of a place they've seen, and it will trigger thoughts.
It is helpful for interrogation. It is a bit spooky to use for crimes.
God spoke to me.
"Scientifically rigous" reliable if that test is to be taken over eyewitness testimony. And, that is what actually happens. If a witness looks at a defendant says "That guy did it." and a fingerprint examiner says "No, he didn't" and a DNA expert says "No, he didn't", the defendant is not going to trial. Evidence and test results are hard facts and is acknowledged as being more reliable than witness testimony. The tests must be scientifically rigorous or they are only as good as the memory of eyewitnesses.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
someone should port ReiserFS to BEOS.
Actually, there were three major issues-- the third being that BeOS didn't come with Steve Jobs.
This device is guaranteed to only give what you judge to be true positives... if you only use it on people you've already decided are guilty.
" Man sexually attracted to children, court told "
"A Canberra court has heard an O'Connor man who has been charged with downloading child pornography from the internet finds young children sexually attractive."
So he must have done it! Police never try to set up unpopular members of society.
Presumably he'll get a longer sentence as a result of admitting that he's attracted to children.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
H. Beam Piper used a brain scanner (veridicator) to verify truth (lie detector) in courts and making statements. They had strict rules on when it could be used and what could be asked. Gutenberg has Little Fuzzy as free text
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Eyewitness testimony is fallible for the same reason one's own memory for personal events is fallible: everything we 'remember' is constructed from what is stored and seems related, producing the fastest good enough result. The same research supports both. False memory and memory rejection can happen because memory is never entirely accurate. One can even be fooled into "remembering" something someone else supposedly saw but never occurred, convolving both eyewitness report and personal memory. The foremost researchers in this field are often called to testify in court cases where false and lost memory are involved.
As such, if this judge had any sense, he'd throw the supposed researcher in jail and recuse himself after throwing out the verdict. There's no way a "brain scan" can tell how accurate a "memory" is unless it can compare what it's measuring with the perception and cognition during the actual event. And if it could do that, the operator would be there to witness the same event.
The researcher should at very least be investigated for scientific fraud. The same people that would have thrown his work(?) out under peer review would testify against him.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The first thing that came to mind when I read the headline:
All right. We're gonna do this the scanner way. I'm gonna suck your brain dry! Everything you are is gonna become me. You're gonna be with me Cameron, no matter what. After all, brothers should be close, don't you think?
Holy 'effing 1984 Batman!!
If someone calls you a witch there, you get lynched... I'd say a brain-scan is at least a step in the right direction.
That if you want true accuracy, you have to go for the Vulcan mind meld. No one's going to argue about the validity of Vulcan logic.
Reading the headline, I actually thought that an Indian woman committed murders using a brain scan machine.
Harvard neuroscientist Larry Farwell has been doing this kind of thing for years. His work is peer-reviewed, and he has gotten some falsely convicted people out of jail. If the technique is reliable, then society has an interest in determining guilt. DNA testing has been the same way. http://www.brainfingerprint.com/
It kept Hank Pym out of prison...Curse you Egghead!
My other sig is extremely clever...
I am not surprised, in India, facts don't seem to matter too much...
First off, I am Indian and in India.
I am constantly left feeling suffocated by India's hugely medieval mentality.
The last elected government was a strong advocate for teaching astrology in schools.
A large chunk of politicians pick up dates for any noteworthy event based on numerology.
They believe magic tricks by god men are miracles.
Very recently, a leading newspaper had this on the first page: Feeling ill? It could be the planets, says govt study
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
Please don't start the annoying wikipedia habit of including totally generic links, like the "peer reviewed" link in the original article, in articles. It's value subtracting.
The proponents of the machine get it accepted by lawyers using shaky, anecdotal claims; they foist it onto a desperate witness in a dramatic case of murder; then when the judge cites the technology as a deciding factor, they use that as evidence the device has "official approval" and therefore works.
The scientific method it ain't.
Houdini would have been discrediting his own work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini#Debunking_spiritualists
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
...using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé.
I knew there was still a use for BeOS after all these years...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
determined that she weighs the same as a duck.
already have found ways around the 5th I don't see how it would protect citizens from stuff like this. After all, what good is the fifth if they can declare not-guilty of murder and then get locked up on a second trial using a hate crime attack?
Never believe a creative and abusive government won't get the end result it wants, your rights violated, fine, they will sue the property because it doesn't have rights. That is how they managed to pull off seizure laws which basically give the government the right to take what they want and you have to prove otherwise.
Yeah, when the Constitution starts to mean something again for the average citizen other than questions on "Who is smarter than a 5th grader" let me know, seems to have been run over for forty or so years
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And to think I can hardly get my video driver loaded in it...
Another reason to wear the famous tin foil hat at all times!
Yeah, I figured it was a radiation overdose/manslaughter case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What if James Randi has a psychic power of neutralizing other para guys?
Then he catches them in an alley and sucks their brain out.
No wonder they don't dare to fight him.
Ooops, sounds like i watched too much Heroes...
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I don't know anything about the Indian court system, but taking the questions in general and applying them to the U.S.:
"How reliable should a test have to be, when eyewitnesses are notoriously fallible?"
In a jury system, the problem with an unreliable scientific test is the weight the test would be given by jurors. The jurors can't reasonably assess the reliability of the test in a given set of circumstances, as they are instructed to do regarding witness testimony.
A scientific test by its nature will be given the weight of evidence (rather than testimony), so it should be as reliabile as evidence (not merely as reliable as testimony).
"Does a person have a right to privacy over their own memories, or should society's interest in holding criminals accountable come first?"
If right to privacy ever matters, it's in the context of one's own thoughts. You might be scared to realize some of the things you yourself think.
We have a system to balance the right to privacy (where privacy is reasonably expected) against social interest: warrants. The question is, does this test work in a manner consistent with the restrictions that a warranted search is supposed to follow? For example, if I go looking for some specific thing, can the test be conducted in such a way that I get no information (or at least minimal information) other than what I was supposed to look for; or am I likely to uncover other information incidentally?
He wrote that the ESP sense is
1. Primitive-brain, and
2. NOT words-based.
He showed that the "debunkers" INSIST on verbal reporting of ESP, disallowing any "art" based method
( drawing, showing what it's showing you ),
and that engaging verbal-mode JAMMED the ESP, thereby "proving" that it didn't exist.
( specifically his Everybody's Guide to ESP, which was about $100 second-hand, when I got my copy )
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=blended&link_code=qs&field-keywords=ingo%20swann%20esp&sourceid=Mozilla-search
Ingo Swann ESP
search on Amazon.
From what he, and
Stephen K. Hayes & Charles Daniel ( these 2 are ninja )
have written, there are 3 effective ways of developing ESP:
1. alone, use Strikingly Bold Design cards ... say Single Solid Triangle, small
Blank business cards, with, say, 7 or 8 distinct bold visual things, several instances of each so the "feel" of the card doesn't give it away...
Large Hollow Square
2 Parallel Straight Lines
3 Parallel Wavy Lines...
you get the idea, shuffle 'em, separate one out behind your back, and set it aside, behind your back.
Now, leaving 'em all behind you,
look into a blank white paper, and wait,
while intending *seeing* of that one set-aside card.
You'll probably see some colorless proto-shape appear,
or squirm into/out-of being on the paper.
DRAW WHAT YOU SEE.
if it twists/changes, draw the early and later forms.
After a few minutes, you've got a couple of proto-images, and can grab that card from behind you to compare.
When you start, accept ANY success,
because you're training a sense you've blocked/abused all your civilized life,
and you have to cherish it into living/functioning again.
You will probably find something right, though ( density, proportion, "line"ness or something ) not likely all, in your first while ( days/months, depends on individual ).
Here's the crucial point, though:
Since it's primitive-brain, and the network in one's brain ( for bearing such consciousness ) is
atrophied & delicate, DON'T OVERTRAIN, OR YOU "BLOW" THE SENSE.
iow, do it once a day, every day,
and you'll be eventually able to suddenly *know* that you need to move,
just *before* something bad happens to where you were.
Ninjutsu calls that "biomind"
( Charles Daniel does, anyway - moving out of the way of the attack that you,
by *conventional means* could not possibly have known about,
means being not-hit.
Much better than being super-tough and macho and pounding the
hell out of someone who just chopped you in two )
The second way?
2. Have someone put some super-distinct/bold appearing object on a blank table, or area-of-floor,
in another room.
See/Draw that, same method as above.
Now you're working with more information:
maybe what you're drawing you're getting from their mind, instead of from "space".
Also, their intent may interfere with your seeing.
Again, NEVER overtrain, unless you *want* to burn out sense-capability.
Third way?
3. MAKE probability-wave happen:
get a set of 4 dice & a mug & saucer.
put one of the dice in front of you, & the other 3 behind you, in the mug.
Set the die in front of you to whatever side you choose/intend.
Behind your back, in the mug+saucer, shake up the other 3 dice, very thoroughly.
When you feel "enough", let the dice stop on the saucer, and bring 'em around.
Did you get one of 'em right?
First few times, it doesn't matter if one only got some sub-something right
( 4 corners! put a 6, but got a 4, e.g. ),
since it isn't your cognition-brain that's doing the doing,
it's your primitive-brain, and it thinks in very basic symbols.
Eventually, though, you will find you get consiste
Our legal system here in the West can be just as bad when it comes to admitting evidence gained from dubious techniques and devices. Nonsense like "repressed memories" actually led to a murder conviction of a man in California nearly 20 years ago. Which was thankfully overturned on appeal.
This happened in India, not the US. Who here is familiar with basic Indian law and how do you know that any such idea of the "right to privacy" exists in India? Don't confuse the world's draconian laws with the freedom we exclusively enjoy here in the US. Even countries that look "free" on the outside like Britain are hounded CCTV cameras every where they go.
This sort of behavior around the word only surprises the ignorant people here who do not even understand the most basic concepts of our republic.
'The Truth Machine' written in 1997 is a sci-fi novel that goes into this idea fairly well, and provides a bunch of other near-future interesting technologies. Not perfect by far, and it's out of print now, but you can get see more info about it or pick it up at Amazon. (The first 1-star rating was quite harsh in my opinion because the tech ideas expressed make it worth at least 3 stars, many of them implementable with today's technologies.)
Sound absurd? It's true.
Please help metamoderate.
The Mythbusters tested this and it did not work 100% and that was useing a MRI.
"The Truth Machine" by James Halperin (I believe). An enjoyable read with a very interesting premise.
I've got nothing to hide, so bring it on!
"In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiancé."
Even if for nefarious purposes, good to see its still being used!
Actually if you bothered to JFG, to would find that the $1,000,00.00 is in an endownent fund account administered by Golman Sachs, so bar the bank collapsing or it getting embezzeled, the money is real qand is going nowhere.
See http://www.randi.org/joom/challenge-info.html for further info
Cultist of the Average Middle-Aged Ones
Anybody remember the Buck Rogers episode where the future government scanned and displayed his memories so they could determine if he committed treason?
I wonder if any of the testing conducted included comparing the scans of actual events versus dreamt events.
Please excuse the technical problems with the parent.
Actually if you bothered to JFG, to would find that the One Million Dollars is in an endowment fund account administered by Goldman Sachs, so bar the bank collapsing or it getting embezzeled, the money is real qand is going nowhere.
See http://www.randi.org/joom/challenge-info.html [randi.org] for further info
Cultist of the Average Middle-Aged Ones
Well, most do advertise themselves somehow.
There's the likes of Uri Geller for example, which make a fortune out of being media celebrity. There are dowsers which land pretty lucrative contracts to dowse for oil. There are guys who contract to find missing persons. There are people selling amulets, electronic gizmos, etc. There are guys like this one who advertises himself as being able to scan someone's brain and see if they murdered someone. I'd imagine it's not for free.
Basically pretty much anyone I've heard about making a claim to be a psychic or to have somehow managed to leapfrog current technology or science, peddles themselves for money.
Even letting aside the cool 1 million dollars from Randi, can you imagine what would it do for their reputation to win that prize and be basically certified as indeed having paranormal skills?
E.g., given how much it costs to drill in one place and see if you find oil, someone certified that he _can_ reliably dowse for oil, would make a bloody fortune. You could ask for a couple of millions just to go dowse in one place regardless of whether you find anything.
E.g., if you got yourself certified that you can find missing persons... well, let's just say some people would currently kill to find Osama.
E.g., telepathy? That's like the Holy Grail for submarine warfare. You'd suddenly have a reliable, instant communication method that works even when the sub is hundreds of metres underwater, and which communication can't be intercepted or detected either. Both the USA and the USSR experimented with it, and both would pay a king's ransom for something like that. I mean, seriously, something like that is worth _billions_ of dollars. Just being able to park even one single submarine next to the enemy's coast, that doesn't have to move or communicate by any detectable means, is something that's an immense advantage and threat by itself.
E.g., reading minds? I bet a few dictators would really pay a king's ransom to know if anyone from their entourage is plotting against them.
Etc. It would be the kind of thing that moves one to the next league.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Holy shit you're not even kidding, "www.attractedtochildren.org". Just because people are hysterical and irrational about pedophilia doesn't mean they are wrong about the basic idea that pedophilia is bad.
Treating pedophilia with images and fantasies of children is probably about as effective as treating anger management issues by punching your pillow (it's proven that it doesn't work, does the opposite in fact).
Maybe people should not act on every urge they get, else society would be full of corpulent murdering rapists.
Hey, lack of any kind of review is working just fine these days for the RIAA and MediaSentry. All you need in India, or here, are ignorant judges - and boy are we seeing too many of them these days!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The brain scan works by displaying four videos of brain waves all running at the same time. They couldn't do this with Windows.
Just like in Minority Report, it can be defeated if you hire someone else to do the crime!
The lie detector currently used voluntarily is also sketchy. It was created by the same person that invented Wonder Women. Come on!
Under the Randi Challenge? A million dollars.
*AND* the fact that you can proudly say that you are the first in HISTORY (of science) to be proved a real psychic, and you could sell your own psy skills for (nearly) ANY price you can ask per minutes. And you can point the finger at all otehr and say "hey they don't want to take randi challenge, they are fake, I am the ONLY true psychic." etc...etc...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
As far as I can tell, once you already imaginated the lie, and start believe in it then it will be a recollection and indistinguishable from a real memory. Heck, tehre are enough study on memory to show that people make up stuff while recollecting and afterward think what they made up is a real memory.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Holding criminals accountable is important, but let's not forget the reason why: it is so that innocents can live in peace. Punishing innocents is the very worst a system can do.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Yeah this evidence is about as useful as polygraph tests. You know, those lie detector machines.
There are reasons that these things can't be used as evidence in court. Because everyone's response to these tests are subjective, and sometimes even controllable.
Say someone close to me is murdered. Every time I think about it, the memories haunt me and I get nervous and essentially can't control myself. When on a polygraph, and the tester asks me if I killed this someone, my blood rates are going to sky rocket and whatever I say will be deemed a lie.
Maybe this will teach women to stay in the kitchen.
How many people in the shooting of the brazillian in London, UK, *knew* the man was running away from police when the footage showed different?
These people didn't see, but reckoned they saw something and constructed a memory collage that sort of fits and, because the police are "trustworthy", this must be true.
The Brain Electrical Zeta Oscillations Signature (BEZOS) has also been used to spot geeky entrepreneurs in their nascent stages.
The USA has had thought crimes for a while now.
to sell your tin hats.
If they are going to be a fashion accessory, then shouldn't they come in more colors other than just plain silver?
The influence of hypnosis allows for the generation of false memories.
Right now I'd feel a lot better if it said 'the One Million Dollars is in a briefcase under James Randi's bed', to be quite honest with you.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
This subject was also covered in many episode of Star Trek. In Voyager if I recall, on a planet where even violent thought was illegal was speculated. In another, someone had false memories planted in them of committing a murder etc...I'm sure there are many examples, let alone from other Sci-Fi stories going back even earlier.
Not only has this technology not been peer assessed, but it would clearly open up avenues for abuse just as soon as people figure out how to hack it....just like ID cards will/would. Image how certainly innocent you can be of something if you can ensure someone else is found guilty by their own memories.
...the money is real and is going nowhere.
Actually, it is going somewhere. The prize is being discontinued in March of 2010.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Current technology and our understanding of how the human brain works is no where near what is necessary to even qualify as evidence in any type of court case. We've only scratched the surface of understanding the human brain. We're just starting to be able to use sensors to pick up on thought and use it to control something; even then it's not that great. Even if this device can somehow read a person's memory, can it truly tell the difference between a memory of an actual event or a memory of something else like a dream?
We can't discuss prosecuting someone based off of their memories or even thought until we do one of the following. Option one is to completly understand the human brain and be able to decifer between a real event and a made up one. Option two is to create a PI License and certification test for astral projection in order to read someone's book of life with at least three of these certified people testifying in court. Though here in the US that wouldn't work too well since there's this Fifth Amendment to the Constitution that stipulates someone doesn't need to self-incriminate themselves. IMHO memories, thought, and even the book of life fall under that classification.
Am I the only one that at first glance I thought BeOS became mainstream in India overnight and now we are prosecuting based off of it?
Brain Scans are for Star Trek. And the cultures that have used them in judiciary systems are always evil.
Therefore, India is in danger of antagonizing most of Slashdot's audience. Including me.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I am currently using this very machine on myself to read my own mind in an attempt to determine if i actually believe this story or not
If we can lend credence to psychics in the movies, then what is the reason we can't lend brainwave scans credence in the real world?
Wow. That question hurt my brain. Let me respond to it with another question: If we can lend credence to heroic superpowered mutants in the movies, then what is the reason we can't lend fairy godmothers credence in the real world?
In fact, let me go one step further and generalize it: If we can lend credence to X in the movies, then what is the reason we can't lend Y credence in the real world?
In fact, let me go another step further and answer it for you: Because one is the movies, and the other is the real world!
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
"Tenser', said the Tensor; 'tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun"
Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan is eligible for the million-dollar prize offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation if he can show that his Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test works as he claims. In my opinion,
Judge S. S. Phansalkar-Joshi decided to accept a claim unsupported by solid evidence, and this Foundation is alarmed that such quackery is acceptable in a court of law -- in ANY country. I predict that Mukundan will NOT apply for the prize, because he knows his claim would not be sustained.
To calibrate the device, it is hooked up to a known constant source (adolescent male mind).
Please, someone with mod points, mod the parent funny.
>> In June, an Indian judge agreed, using BEOS to find a woman guilty of killing her former fiance.
Who would have thought that BeOS was so versatile! I wonder if I can download the scanner from BeBits.com...
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
I all into question the proceedure cause not tested, 100% science. And if same test mythbusters did with mri is flawed. However, if the proceedure is peer tested, tried and true test I say all the power to those who wanna use it and to tough to those who break the law. If this is only to confirm other evidence is showing (eg. dna evidence, witnesses, alot more cirmunstancial, etc...)
Sorry, we're fresh out of women's rights.
Vote for Palin: Nobody expects the Alaskan Politician!
And now for something completely different.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
The only place you are truly free to be yourself the only sanctuary where you can do whatever you want is your mind. Everywhere else no matter what you are forced to a degree to mold your behavior and do what the rapidly changing and fickle whims of society and your 'betters' want you to do. But you don't have to think what they want you to think. Invading the mind is dangerous, once we sacrifice this boundary, you will have to begin to think what others want you to think. There will be no more privacy, there will be no place where you are free to be yourself, and no place to rest.
True, but it did come with a Jean-Louis Gassee, which, arguably, worked the same way.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
minority report to the max dawg.
Memories are notoriously inaccurate. It is a known fact that even memories of events with a big impact, the kind of events that are memorised best, usually bear only a passing resemblance to the actual event. Most of what a memory is is actually reconstructed, that is to say, you kind of start with a few kernels of truth and then fill in the gaps. And memories get distorted over time. They can easily change, be implanted, or fuse with memories with one or more shared givens. This is why eyewitness testimony is not usually allowed in court anymore where I live; a former rector of my university did a great deal to investigate reliability of eyewitnesses and to raise our consciousness to what he was shocked to find.
Then there is the technology of brain scanning, which is only in its infancy. So it isn't even feasable to scan what a person thinks he remembers, let alone judge whether that's accurate. Brain scans can only measure things like energy consumption, signal strength and bloodflow at the moment. Decoding actual memories and thoughts is still beyond our technological capabilities. You can maybe (maybe!) detect if someone recognises a photograph with some kind of accuracy, but you certainly can't determine if someone killed someone, let alone who. The fact that the technology hasn't been peer reviewed yet should raise a big red flag, people.
And then there is the ethical angle. Where I live this would be called forced testimony, which is illegal. To put it in a form that most of you will recognise: it would take away people's right to remain silent. Essentially, testimony extracted with a brain scan is similar to testimony extracted with torture and should be (and is, where I live) just as illegal.
...the fact that people recall things incorrectly, believing that is what truly happened. This happens a surprising amount on Law and Order :P
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
i saw the article and thought - professional or personal?
Edgar Cayce showed that proving oneself to one man does nothing to prove oneself to another. With the ready availability of his life story (have you seen how many books have been written about him?) it's no wonder that any other psychic would not go the way of being tested, even if they had genuine powers themselves.
Note also that all ability, psychic or otherwise, is a gift from God(dess) to be used for the benefit of others, and using them for other reasons tends to have negative consequences for the practitioner. Cayce would get headaches if his ability were misused (e.g. on horse races), and others have reported a temporary loss (of months or years) of their abilities.
So it ends up being virtually unprovable because those who have a strong enough power to be readily proven have the most to lose in a test.
According to the results there *IS* a baud rate, but the rate is *VERY* low. And it's a highly noisy channel.
I believe that they transmitted a 12 digit number over a period of around a month...though not constantly, of course. But a couple of hours every night. And no intermediate results.
If those are unpracticed figures, there's a ton of room for improvement. Consider the grace of a child's first steps against a professional dancer.
To be fair, I believe this challenge has been available for quite some time now, whereas the current situation with the banking industry is pretty new. Any potential takers have had a lot of time to take the challenge.
But in direct response to your quip, I think one million Euros in a suitcase would be far preferable to one million Dollars, given the state of the US currency.
well it is better than hipnosis,and this will be the wave of the future for crimes of violence. however i think that it is to early for this test and others like it to be accurate.remember the inventions of the late 1800's with electric current applied to the body for different purposes.they were soon thrown out.
Shouldn't be proof of anything because when I'm being asked to think about cookies being taken from the cookie jar, I think about eating ice cream.
People can't always control what they're thinking about and you can never prove what they are thinking about.
I'm sure some cool application will come forward for this new technology however.
I found some footage related to the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmJC3ZaXBEc
This is a classic case where the prosecution are a bunch of lazy asses and think the latest toy can replace good detective work. On something such as a murder case it's either get good evidence or you must drop the case. This would be a shit storm of epic proportions here in the US. BTW brain scans cannot be used to prove innocence or guilt heck they were able to fool them on myth busters.
The answer is - they can't. It's as accurate as a magic eight ball. But someone has to pay when a murder is done, and it's her unlucky day.
Yes! A witch! A WITCH!
And let's burn her! She's a witch!
Burn her! BURN HER!
or at least bring back the noble practice of Suttee!
- Aaron A. -
Bringing Pinoqachole to the natives since 1643.
To be attracted to anyone of the opposite sex that can concieve a child is completely natural. We evolved that way. Perverted is doing sexual things that can not produce a child. ( like kissing or whatever ) Now preferring barely pubescent folks if you are grown is a little perverted. Obsessing over them is perverted. The thoughts are natural and nothing to be ashamed of. Acting on it however would be profoundly stupid since there are many other options and the sanctions are extreme. If someone is ONLY attracted to those who are illegal then they should work not on becoming unattracted toward the illegal objects of their desire but instead on learning to appreciate legal-to-get-it-on-with folks.
I stand corrected.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana