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Hackers' Next Target — Your Brain?
Hugh Pickens writes "Wired reports that as neural devices become more complicated — and go wireless — some scientists say the risks of 'brain hacking' should be taken seriously. '"Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future," said computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington. "But if we don't start paying attention to security, we're worried that we might find ourselves in five or 10 years saying we've made a big mistake."' For example, the next generation of implantable devices to control prosthetic limbs will likely include wireless controls that allow physicians to remotely adjust settings on the machine. If neural engineers don't build in security features such as encryption and access control, an attacker could hijack the device and take over the robotic limb." Relatedly, several users have written to tell us that science may be closer to the science fiction "mind wipe" than previously thought. Put this all together and I welcome the next step in social networking; letting the cloud drive my limbs around town via a live webcam and then wiping the memory from my brain. Who has MyLimb.com parked and is willing to deal?
Go insane. It's the new encryption.
My webcomic
Goddamned, the unintended consequence of techonological evolution is that it makes every conspiracy theory ultimately more likely to do in the future.
This is my sig.
If it means that in the future our government will employ cyber-babes in ridiculous fuck-me outfits to fight crime.
(Still finding it ridiculous that the Major was essentially wearing a one-piece bathing suit and leather jacket as her uniform in the GITS tv series.)
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
HA! They'll have to FIND it first!
Don't they know?!? Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
HA! HA HA! HA!...
God you guys are predictable and boring. "Security issues".
Never mind the security issues, look at the comedy potential for the Nelson Muntzes of the future!
"Hey prosthetic boy, stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!"
If everyone could hack into any person's brain and have sex with whoever they want, then what kind of society would that be like? On one hand, some super hot chicks are going to be pretty busy, but on the other hand, you would be reprogrammed periodically to think that bigfoot was hot.
This is my sig.
.. given human history the fall out of mind hacking may be a good thing, all of our problems come from human beings not being able to seperate truth from falsehood.
please define 'soul'
Brain Hacking I can see happening (taking control of someone's bionics), but doing the mindwipe is what I was taking aim at. TFA talks about rats getting their memories wiped, but I'd want to know more. Does the rat's basic personality stay intact? Did the rat relearn? Did the rat display the same actions after the removal of the enzyme? (That'll teach me to take a moment and think before typing - let this be a lesson to you!)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
you might be right, but I am building a new tin foil hat just to be sure.
1. after all in Soviet Russia tin foil makes people into hats 2. 3. profit!
you must be new here, and so on.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Unless your soul is akin to say, Symantec or Norton's virus protection for your brain.. there to make you feel good, but utterly useless for real world application.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Okay, this only holds true IF we are truly biological machines with advanced programming. If we actually do have a soul, then this whole idea goes out the window (and a whole lot of other, much bigger problems come in).
I don't see how the soul comes into play here.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I have ZERO medical background), but throughout the years there have been examples of conditioned responses and hypnotism. Then there is shock therapy and some drugs to help wipe some thoughts and memories, and let's not forget about sleepwalking and sleepdriving.
If a person gets amnesia, does that mean the soul has left the body?
If a person sleepwalks due to a personal problem or a medication reaction, does that mean during that time there is no soul?
etc
Given enough time and advancement, who's to say that in 100 years that either a combination of the above couldn't take control of a person and wipe their memory afterwards. Especially once we start wiring hackable devices into our nervous system.
The big worry is not hacking, after all I am sure that there will be plenty of security software you can download, but rather the effects of spam.
if you tried to register mylimb.com?
Who else has a clear mental picture of Dr. Strangelove being choked by his own (gloved) hand?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Someone at work mentioned to me recently that it will be a scary day when someone can program your brain. Well I've already seen it happen. My local Walmart is in sort of a high-risk part of town, so the "greeters" will ask to see your receipt if you have any bulk items in your cart that aren't in bags. So people get used to having their receipt handy when they walk out the door. Now yesterday it was kind of busy, and one greeter to check receipts. Guess what I saw? A line of about 10 people waiting to show their receipt before leaving the store. Meanwhile I push my cart right around them (I've already waited in line for 25 minutes just to pay, I'm not going to wait again to leave the store). It appears that those in line were robots that have been programmed (conditioned) so much that they couldn't think of leaving without waiting to show their receipt. Keep in mind that there is not sign saying you have to show your receipt.
Who has MyLimb.com parked and is willing to deal?
Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Am I the only person who notices that every single summary submitter tries to show off his nonexistent ability to be funny? This doesn't help the summary and every time I read a stupid joke in the summary like that, I have a mental facepalm. They make me feel embarrassed for the thread submitter, and it hurts; kind of like watching a really bad performance at a talent show.
Seriously, if you submit a thread, don't put a joke in it, because chances are your joke sucks and isn't funny. There are PLENTY of funny people on Slashdot, but you are not one of them.
welcome our new wireless overlords.
53 49 47 53 20 53 55 43 4B
Oh come on, am I the first pathetic anime geek to mention Ghost in the Shell?
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
Neo will swing in at the last moment and prevent the hack... or is that Wintermute..
Which is why if/when direct brain IO is developed, you won't find me anywhere near it, unless I am in a situation where it is the only option to restore normal faculties (ie: injury or illness). Currently, when a power surge or an attack occurs against my device/computer the damage maxes out at the value of the device (assuming I'm backing up data). If a power surge or an attack occurs via a direct link hooked up to my brain, the damage is total.
That said, the article is still relevant because neuro-tech has great potential to increase the quality and length of life in ways currently not possible. As always, it's important to stop and think about the short/long term consequences of actions (novel thought).
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
At this rate it may have to happen some day. ;)
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
About the only situation i can see such a thing mattering one way or the other is in the situation where you are attempting to control what the target thinks given some input. However even without controlling the 'biological machine' said 'brain hacker' would have access to input (Cochlear Implants) and output (prosthetic limb).
Given enough i/o - controlling the actual machine doesn't really matter.
Realistically, how hard would it be to include an OFF switch on the external interface used for doctor diagnostics?
I mean, for pete sake people, what possible gain would there be in trying to break into a mechanical leg?
Can you take any part of that to the bank? There is no money to follow. There is no information to gain.
Do you see anyone hacking your IP Oven, or you IP Coffee maker? http://workingmomwa.blogspot.com/2008/06/coffee-maker-needs-security-update.html
How does an interface to a prosthetic limb somehow suggest a "mine whipe". Does my pedicure predict a lobotomy?
Come on, people. There is some fool snickering somewhere that the drunken brainstorm he posted somewhere has actually morphed into a story on Slashdot.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Better get in practice... start a shudder club today!
... welcome our new zombie bot-net overlords.
...taking over some wimpy kid's prosthetic arm..."Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!..."
Hasn't Rupert Murdoch been hacking into people's brains for years?
This is why I will not use any machine that changes the content of my brain. I will be happy to use artificial limbs and mind-controlled computers, but not mind-altering computers.
They've found through extensive research that a bullet to the back of the head affects a very thorough mind wipe.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
really? Are people this bored from being unemployed that they need to work on articles like this to pass the time. I'm disappointed with a side of disgruntled.
Ave Molech Setting
Stop hitting yourself! Why are you hitting yourself? Stop hitting yourself!
(For The Simpson's impaired, Nelson is a bully, prone to making people hit themselves.)
Sooner or later someone's going to figure out how to manipulate desire and loyalty at the molecular level.
Then all bets will be off.
Imagine if someone could kidnap you or your family members, implant a device in their brains that would make them forget their previous life and love and serve the kidnapper and do his bidding.
Or maybe I've been reading too much science fiction.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I always wanted to do some "ghost-hacking" and "stealing someone's eyes" like they did in Ghost in the Shell SAC!
If you have soul you've already been hacked. By God.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I point you to Idle Hands and what we can expect when people start hacking limbs.
FYI- Some great shots of Jessica Alba...
Even if your personality remained intact, if the memories responsible for learning skills, values, and relationships were wiped, at best you'd be like a complete amnesiac, at worst, like a young child but without the fast-developing brain of a child.
If your moral values were gone, someone bent on evil could teach you the values he wanted you to have. If your relationships were forgotten you might latch on to anyone who gave you love and attention.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not worth hacking.
We talk a lot here about how Windows gets hacked more than Linux or Mac because it has a higher market share.
What's the market share on a prosthetic limb?
By the way, the style sheets are totally fucked up on IE6. Some of us aren't running nightly Firefox builds, morons. Try testing your code on various paltforms.
What? It's a managed work computer. It is what it is.
No, USB devices aren't permitted either, so Portable Firefox is out.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
If I read this correctly, you are suggesting we wait for a cron jon with sufficient security access, hit it with a buffer overrun, and then wipe the logs after we are done? 0day is going to be the most popular RSS feed on the web!
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I'm not using more than 90% of it anyway. So maybe someone can make good use of the rest.
Sig this!
Thia week on sci-fi brain hacks.
This sounds like something out of a b-movie and it seems like stuff like this has been done / done in parts in many b movies.
If a person is being uncooperative, you may have to "let them go" but you can make a note of who they are then ban them from the store and possibly the entire chain "just because" you don't want their business. "This store reserved the right to not do business with any person" is legal in the USA, unless it's used to discriminate against a group.
If you have cameras blanketing the store and are bored, you can check the security cameras to see if he was just being an ass or if he really did have something (stolen) to hide. If he did steal something, your outdoor video cameras should have his license plate.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, that is indeed likely. Especially since wireless controls are used in the current generation of implants, too. And those are hackable.
Some anti-virus might actually be useful here. Cats been hacking humans for centuries.
there, fixed that for you.
Well, it probably affects a previously-done thorough mind wipe too but I don't think that's what you meant.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yeah, I agree with you. I believe in souls, but that soul is in a physical body, and that body is definitely a biological machine that can be altered or manipulated. The evidence of this is simply overwhelming -- look at mental illness. A person's "spirit" overcoming psychological brainwashing or even more advanced technological control is a nice device for fiction, but in reality we have no reason to think that's the way it will work.
The enemies of Democracy are
and has been known for hundreds of years
I'm tracking other movements in the tunnel. LOCK AND LOAD!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Why would you believe in souls? Where does the program go when you turn it off? That great hard drive in the sky?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"John, *punch* this is Jane, get over here,*punch* NOW!"
"What's going on?!"
"*punch* I can't stop punching myself! *punch*"
"Uhh... what?"
"I *punch* think my arm *punch punch* has a virus!!"
"*sigh* You should've switched to Firefox, like I told you. I'll come fix it."
Brain hacking has been around for a long time. Its primary vector is language.
Marketing, peer pressure, memes, prophecies, and rumors are all brain hacking.
It's just not a direct connection, but given how badly so many things have turned out at the hands of a large informed group, it looks like it succeeds most of the time.
There is only one solution: learn philosophy and critical thinking.
Futurist Traditionalism
tinfoil hat, anyone?
Actually , i don't believe a soul is anything physical . It's has nothing to do with memories.
You remember , because of your physical brain , but you are , because of your soul.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Who has MyLimb.com parked and is willing to deal?
Don't know if he's willing to deal but...
Registrant:
William Orr
5707 Mountain Oak Drive
Braselton, Georgia 30517
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: MYLIMB.COM
Created on: 08-Nov-06
Expires on: 08-Nov-10
Last Updated on: 09-Nov-08
If the soul was all that mattered, then if we smacked our head really hard and our brain was damaged, it would have no effect on our behavior. But we know that people with brain damage are severely impaired both physically and mentally. So if you can disrupt the impulses in the brain you could shut down a human. If you can control the impulses, you can control the human.
I am not saying people can't have souls, I am just saying the soul doesn't control our body.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
>>> import soul
>>> import sys
>>> sys.modules["soul"]
<module 'soul' from 'soul.py'>
Along the lines of an eerily plausible story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_(novel)
If you've not read it yet, do so. And remember to vote Cozzano!
Programs, fauna, flora, and flash programmers all go to /dev/null in the end.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I know that plenty of people have contemplated suicide. I have, and I know people who actually followed through.
I think it would be great if the Europeans (you know americans never would) allowed would be suicides to try using the mindwipe drug in doses enough to render one a sobbering idiot. I mean, it would suck having to start over in an adult body, but imagine it like a second chance separate from your past. One has to wonder if the brain chemistry of a depressed state would survive the mindwiping.
Can we just down-peg anything from Wired as "author has read too much cyberpunk"?
Yes, these issues have been anticipated.
no, your worrying about it will only cost you your time and life (stress).
OK, so some weird commands are supposed to make someone do something totally opposed to their basic character?
Sounds like 19th century hypnosis.
It was crap then, it's crap now.
please define 'soul'
It would be hard to do per genus proximum et differentia specifica... Let me just say that it's what creates time and space, enables you to make choices (free will) and controls the body via the brain.
Some people (like Dawkins, IIRC) like to say that the brain is an on-board computer, of sorts, for the body. It's a great analogy, because a computer is blind and inert without someone to either operate it or program it. The soul is the "user", what you experience is the "software", your body is the "hardware".
If they can find my other sock or when I put my car keys then they have something.
it's called advertising.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if we do have this magical 'soul', doesn't that mean it would just adhere to a set of rules that can still allow it to be manipulated? Let's face it, even if something is magic and mysterious, it can still be deciphered (and if it has an influence, then it must be possible to influence it). Hell, there's a lot of people trying to justify the existence of a soul with quantum physics, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say you could hack it with a quantum computer.
Help fight spam
CNN, f-o-x got to some of us people. ... cant ..stop.. the BS. and you don't need to implant anything, the 'cracker box' is the one attached to the TV cable/antenna
there are few that are still resisting. are they the new Uber-nerd black hats?
Your brain has been hacked since birth. It's called "Marketing". Tons and tons of exploits in the wild, including appeals to Emotion, Manipulation of Statistics, Lying to the Gullible, Threats Against Afterlife, Us or Them, etc, etc. Unfortunately, although a security suite is supposed to be installed during adolescence, too many are ineffective copies of Public Education or have installation prevented by previous installations of Sunday School and Parental Brainwashing.
paintball
Ask the program.
I'm posting this anonymous so I don't get in trouble... but we recently were working with some medical displays that are used in hospitals. Specifically these high end displays are used for diagnostic purposes - MRI, CT, X-ray, etc. In other words- very expensive and very very regulated.
While working with the display I managed to guess the default guest access password- my coworker was astounded. In 5 more minutes I figured out that the security schema was using XML to store the encrypted passwords (java based) and with that knowledge I manipulated the fields to use the known password.
Total time to hack the $30k device? 7 minutes.
What could I do in that mode? I could make it fail diagnostics. I could make it pass diagnostics. I could make it pass self-cal when it wasn't. I could introduce local artifacts such that it looked like 'splotches' were seen on an x-ray when there wasn't (thus possibly indicating a tumour). I could mess with the defect maps.
Now a properly administered system would have all this locked down... but all I would have needed was a copy of the service software (web based) and the monitor connection port (usually has two or three).
Scared? I was. And I'm a good guy.
You speak very authoritatively about something that you surely don't know for certain.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You remember , because of your physical brain , but you are , because of your soul.
QFT. It's somewhat sad that people overlook the most basic experience they have... Even Descartes, when he wanted to put every bit of knowledge he had to doubt, still could not doubt that his soul exists. After all - without a soul, we would merely be biological machines (the kind La Mettrie spoke of), which would not be aware of their own existence, but would simply do what their brains would order them to.
Let me use my favourite quote:
"It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions, And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine."
It is that ... by silently critiquing religion, you've fallen into your own self defined trap of "US or them"..
And, we might also note, that "threats against the afterlife" is essentially interchangable with "saving the planet"
This is my sig.
Hacking your brain remotely is also a possibility. See this interview with a further "Stargate" member, that remotely viewed various locations using brain power. http://www.viddler.com/explore/monkeyclaus/videos/1/
Fifth avenue advertisers have this all sewed up. Been doing it for years.
Why bother
The Mind Has No Firewall by Timothy L. Thomas at the Army War Collage.
If you want to take this subject seriously, and I really recommend that you do, then you need a copy of this book:
Controlling the Human Mind : The Technologies of Political Control or Tools for Peak Performance by Dr. Nick Begich; ISBN 1-890693-54-5.
It is a well researched book on what is going on in the field, based on publicly available documents.
For full disclosure Dr. Begich sent me a free review copy of the book when it was released. I have supplied Dr. B. with background material over the years.
Links to the following papers here:
I'll add The Battle for Your Mind to the list.
Might be a politician, or an analyst. They both have managed to make a living out of it.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
How else can you be trained so thoroughly to ignore evidence right before eyes? It's the thing science fiction writers have dreamt about and the Catholic church has perfected in their indoctrination rituals. So complete is the brainwashing that people are willing to hand over their very last penny to an elected official wearing custom made Italian shoes, a pointy hat and living in a great white palace.
`Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he told the meeting. `If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.'
- L. Ron Hubbard
"But I have always thought there might be a lot of cash in starting a new religion...".
- George Orwell
I'm pretty sure we can take care of the machines, but I really hope the immune system isn't watching.
You speak very authoritatively about something that you surely don't know for certain.
Don't we all ? Besides - if there is anything I am certain of, it is that I have a mind/soul. When I post here - it's a choice made by me and I am aware of it happening.
I only ASSUME that other people MIGHT also have minds. There is no way I can verify that. Just like there is no way to prove that there even exists a physical world that I cannot reduce to things I experience (let alone the assumption that there is a world 1* that I don't experience at the moment 2* that I have never experienced 3* that I can't experience). Perhaps it's just me and a world put before my mind's eyes. Who knows ?
You know what ? Call me crazy but there was some kind of a mental splinter in my mind since I was about four years old. I was told that the world I live in is deterministic, yet there was SOMETHING that I could NEVER reduce to chemical reactions and laws of thermodynamics. Of course, for the longest time, I wasn't even able to express it properly (and it's difficult to get answers when you don't know what the question is). Now I know.
Why are you yourself ? Why are you self-aware ?
If there is a thing we call "gravity" it works the same way everywhere at any time. To different degrees but in exactly the same way. Why the hell am I only experiencing things from a single perspective ? Why is there only a single body I control ?
Death is when my consciousness is extinguished - if I were only a machine, I wouldn't have ever existed at all.
Peace of Mind. Now, if they get into our minds, they'll in-load "Vysyooalyze whyrled peaz", and we'll become the living pea-brains.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It makes people believe absurdities, and commit atrocities.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
C.S. Friedman's "This Alien Shore"
So full of intriguing ideas it should be criminal.
Not exactly the most optimistic view of our future, either, though. Then again, it's about humans.
I am not saying people can't have souls, I am just saying the soul doesn't control our body.
What the hell does it do, then ? Play checkers in heaven ;) ?
If the soul was all that mattered, then if we smacked our head really hard and our brain was damaged, it would have no effect on our behavior. But we know that people with brain damage are severely impaired both physically and mentally. So if you can disrupt the impulses in the brain you could shut down a human. If you can control the impulses, you can control the human.
Let me use the computer analogy again - if your own one that is far from being modern there are some apps it will run poorly and some that it will not even run at all. While this limits the possibilities, it doesn't change the fact that you choose what it WILL do out of what it CAN do.
In short - a body is a tool you use. Some parts you can repair easily, for others it's not possible at this point.
Ummm, no, it really doesn't. Even if we do have a "soul," it has no known effect on how our bodies function. There are, however, records of people's personalities and memories having changed due to brain trauma and chemical alteration. Additionally, the "soul" has nothing to do with your body's motor control. We KNOW that electrical impulses control our limbs, we can trigger them, it's how a defibrillator works.
So exactly what part of this would the "soul" prevent from taking place?
If you have soul you've already been hacked. By God.
My soul and God are on the opposite sides of the epistemic spectrum. That is - there is no way I can deny that I have a mind/soul, but there is absolutely no reason for me to assume that there is a God (in the colloquial meaning). God is as close to a round square as it gets.
There ARE some ways to make the existence of a God remotely possible, but all of them require people to dismiss the naive images (of "devils with pitchforks", as I like to simplify it) most people have...
If I could answer that... well, I wouldn't be on /. I don't know, honestly. I know about the sources and case studies you're referencing. And I can't refute them, it's known fact. I do have sources I could introduce that I could use to argue my opinion but 1) I have no conclusive evidence, only very compelling circumstantial evidence and 2) this is /. - only conclusive evidence is accepted and even then it's debated :-). I suspect that I'm going to end this with a lesson learned: always think first before typing.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
"...an attacker could hijack the device and take over the robotic limb." Stop hitting yourself! I said stop! Oh wait, you can't.
I disagree. Fortunately, since you don't have any proof beyond "I feel" I can smirk my way out of here.
And those would be the BIG problems I mentioned. If it turned out that we did have souls, then what would happen next? What would stop someone from trying to figure out how to hack it, control it, etc? Or my personal favorite: if we have souls, then what created them? And are there more out there? Does that mean that something like Cthlulu exists? Or Satan? Or God? The soul question opens up a whole realm of ugly - it's a lot easier/simpler to believe we're machines because the implications of being powered by an immortal spark of energy that defies the laws of thermodynamics are really, really big. And scary.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I, for one, welcome our "making the guy with a prosthesis next to you jack off" overlords.
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
this sounds like http://phrack.org/phr4ck [phr4ck megazine] hack your brain...
I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. Ho ho ho.
There is a fair chance that you will be greatly disappointed at some moment in the next 30 years or so.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
That this hasn't already happened to you?
Every little mosquito is just coming to inject you with more 'truth' serum so your mind is easier to control and your memory is easier to modify.
See, you forgot that, didn't you.
Bad Guys In Columbia use a plant called the "Scopola".
Brain Hacking 101:
1. Take the root,
2. dry it out,
3. grind it into powder,
4. blow powder into face of victim.
5. take victim to their ATM.
6. victim drains account as required.
7. !!! Profit !!!
8. victim then wonders around till effects wear off.
I find it interesting that you are so easily able to deny that something could not possibly be self-aware without a soul. Do you have any proof, any at all beyond hopes and dreams? Many modern philosophic theories of consciousness eliminate the necessity of the Cartesian theatre (I find Dennet's pretty compelling), and many experiments bear out a reality that would be quite bizarre if an external entity such as a soul really drove us.
As long as we are talking of merely feelings with no basis, I find no evidence to dissuade me that I am anything more than a meat machine with some clever biological and memetic tricks. I see no reason to increase the complexity of the system by necessitating that we have such (odd at least it seems to us) advanced biological machinery that is our brain with such complex parallel behaviour and yet it exists without purpose or meaning because it does nothing. Because requiring the existence of the soul which drives us means the brain is nothing, it serves no purpose. Why do you have it? Why does our body expend so much resources keeping it functioning? Our pure autonomic functions can be handled by the cerebellum and the spinal cord (and probably far less), the rest of it is totally meaningless.
Combine this with the fact that our brains share so many similarities with many of the animals around us, yet oddly (at least inasmuch as many humans find it necessary to place themselves on a higher pedestal than everything else around us) they have no soul, ought to make one stop and ponder again why one insists on declaring we have a soul and that is who we are and not the biological machine. Do elephants have souls? They are self aware, they recognise themselves in mirrors. Or do you subscribe to a school of thought where it would be impossible to say an elephant is self-aware yet will deny solipsism in the same breath?
Insert "Snow Crash" and "Feed" novel references here.
Sorry Data, you're just a bunch of pieces pushing one against another. If it weren't for his emotion chip, he might be ok with this.
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
I want to precede this with that I am not purposefully following you around this thread, it's just that as I read it I keep saying your name saying things I find puzzling.
That said, your analogy fails because there is no difference between computer hardware and computer software. Any software program can be converted completely to hardware and execute purely in hardware (see FPGA). At the other end any piece of hardware can be emulated in software. The brain and the soul are not analogous to computers in this sense, no matter how much hand waving and equivocating is done.
I disagree. Fortunately, since you don't have any proof beyond "I feel" I can smirk my way out of here.
You want proof ? Stop for a moment and focus on your mind. You'll feel as if a mirror was to reflect itself. Choose to think about something and then realize that you are conscious of yourself thinking it. Perform an action and see that you both controlled it and received the feedback.
If you're still not convinced - imagine two bodies doing the same thing. One of them is aware of doing it, while the other is simply a machine that is performing the said actions as a part of its program. What is the difference between the two ? It's that "you" could only be one of them - the one that is conscious. Otherwise - there would be no "you" (no person/mind/soul) to speak of.
The funny thing is - both bodies would act exactly the same on the outside. You have no way of determining which is conscious. Yet - you can be SURE that YOU are.
Reducing our minds to our brains is ridiculous. Reducing our minds to the ACTIVITY of our brains is even more absurd (as I like to put it: "it's like mistaking the blinking of a LED with the activity of a hard drive"). If it was possible to prove that our consciousness has a cause and is deterministic in a rigid way - it would be an epiphenomena. It would be like watching a film while being lied to that everything we see is caused by us. At this point - you have to ask yourself: what's the point ? There is no way this could help the Almighty Evolution. Acting AS IF having a mind does. Being AWARE of one's actions doesn't help a bit.
Apply this also to football. I got my uniform, and all the gear, but if I am missing my helmet (Brain Damage) or shoulder pads ( Oh I don't know, bad shoulders?) or if I don't have knee pads (Bad legs), then playing the game (Life) can have it's challenges, but my team mates (Other people) can still cover me, or let me use some spare gear, and I will just have to learn how to play the game my way, with my own challenges. Or my team mates could just Not toss me the ball, or put me on the bench. SO in this case, the player (Me) is the soul. When I leave the game I will still be the same guy that was playing football, I just won't be wearing the gear. (Assuming there is a soul.)
Indoctrinate : to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments Educate : to develop mentally, morally, or aestheti
I wonder if they will be able to tag memories from a certain time onward ala Paycheck. Maybe give a drug that binds harmlessly to all previously stored memories, but also protects those from the wipe...
...
I think a lot of people are going to be in for a surprise when they die. If a soul even exists, it has to be separate from the brain. Your analogy doesn't work. If I smack my head, I can lose my memory. It has nothing to do with me whacking my soul too hard. Therefor, when we die, we probably won't have any memories of this life since that is all stored in the brain. If there is a soul, it is probably just an essence of us. Something completely inhuman. If you think after we die we all have our bodies and are hanging out with family and friends on clouds...I just can't see it happening. The brain has scientific, well documented the features. The soul is probably just a story or it is something beyond human comprehension.
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Hacking the braing has nothing of a novelty. Indeed, it's a common practice and have been used for decades with excelent results.
The only twist is that we do not call it brain hack. As scientists, we feel it too much a bit on the sensationalistic side of the fense.
Indeed, we use the widely academical-safe terms:
-Mass Media
-Advertising
-Propaganda
And with *Paranoia*(TM) we can even get people to do the job of getting info from their neighbour's mind and fetch us the results. But Paranoia(TM)is currently more being sold at our Federal Systems Division. Our busines customers user prefer tracking their subjects emails and search results.
Prof Dr. DooNooEvil, PhD
Researcher with a Larry Brin Fellowship at MIT
Distinguished Senior Scientist
Google Inc.
Also Serving as Chair Member of several of Your Favourites Friendly Media Monsters.
Your ad could be here!
as I like to put it: "it's like mistaking the blinking of a LED with the activity of a hard drive.
It's like mistaking the lack of knowledge pertaining as to how a program executes to mean that there is then something existential and magical about it.
It's that "you" could only be one of them - the one that is conscious. Otherwise - there would be no "you" (no person/mind/soul) to speak of.
I am me, the sum of my function and experiences. Destroy or change either or both, I am no longer me. I am someone else. Maybe I've shifted only slightly (minor hiccup between the brain in the jar and the automaton executing in the field and supplying the data), but I am still no longer the same person, if I ever truly was.
I suppose that we can both agree to a certain extent that I find no issue with believing I am "me" if my function and experience executes on a different hardware platform. However, I will not then deny that my original hardware and function and experience, if it is still executing, is now also "me", though certainly not the "me" that is executing on the new platform. Both are still persons if they continue to function as persons. Of course, I am also willing to extend this ad infinitum: all copies are "me" and persons.
I don't buy into the difference between a conscious person and a zombie. If a person behaves like a person, it's a person as far as I am concerned, at least until we can prove that it isn't a person. Funny, I also like duck-typed languages.
The real difference between us? I have no idea if any of what makes sense to me is true because there isn't much in the way of supporting evidence yet. So while what you say is "truth" what I say is merely amusing conjecture.
You know the funny thing about the placebo effect is that you will never be anything but a meat machine with some clever tricks. Thats the universe for ya...
Dunno if anyone else has posted this but.
Ghost. In. The. Shell.
Finally my own army of zombies, to take over the world!
Now all I need is a white cat and an iron glove. *MUHAHAHAHAAAA*
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
But honey, it wasn't really me! Someone hacked into my brain and *MADE* me do that!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
GHOST HACK GHOST HACK
Who are you? Who slips into my robot body and whispers to my ghost?
*punches own head with robotic arm*
"You're doin' it to yourself man!"
I think it is possible that one of the first "brain hacking" technologies will actually be to do with the voicebox as this will likely be simpler than working out different peoples brain structures.
Everyones voicebox works essentially the same and when thinking words signals are sent to the voicebox that are the same as but not as strong as the sigtnals used to cause speech.
Nasa already have this working for astronauts for speechless communication in space. See here
I think technologies to be able to monitor human thought to be quite scarey and quite useful at the same time. A device that could be placed inside someones throat and self powered somehow may be a deffinate big brother style thing, but it would be great to see this used for good purposes such as monitoring what politicians think when creating laws in parliment.
It just depends on the application.
meridian at tha.net
Well, there's not much going on inside my brain.
I suspect your request for proof is made impossible by your own definitions.
Let's look at your experience, if you are a typical human-like being. You can't say that 100% of your experience points to there being a shared, objective, external reality we share.
Nor can I. I'm assuming you're really there, at the other end of what I write, but the proof is definitely not based on all my experiences. My dreams don't prove reality exists. I can't deduce reality from the times I have been mistaken, or fooled by an illusion, even a simple optical one. My memory tells me that I have sometimes misremembered things in the past. Some of my experience suggests an external, objective reality. Some of that suggests there are other humans who share some perception of that same reality. But certainly not 100%.
On the other hand, I have never once been aware of something I was not aware of. 100% of my experience points to my being something which experiences. I've never not been aware of being a self, not once. Maybe there are times I wasn't aware, but if so, I wasn't I at those times, so I really can't say. I have more evidence for my existence as an awareness than I do for the outside universe, and at least somewhat more evidence for the outside universe than I do that you share some apprehension of it with me. If I'm right about my strong suspicion that there's an external reality and if I have a pretty good grasp of some of its details, you should be able to make the same claims.
So how do I prove anything about the thing I am 100% aware of, using only the portion of my evidence we may share, when that portion is less certain than the thing you are asking me to prove with it. If my experience of an unpersonal, objective, external universe that exists even when I am not aware of it, even when no one else is aware of it either, were solid as bedrock, then I might be able to reason logically from it to my equal reality as a subject, but it's simply not. The thing I'm being asked to prove is already more reliable than the weakest links of the chain of reason I would have to logically use.
Oh, and yes Elephants have souls, as do Chimps and at least some Gorillas. By your definition. Now does my little white cat have Buddha nature?
Who is John Cabal?
actually this article reminded me of a movie i saw a trailer for a while ago, Surrogates. think it had bruce willis. anyway for those who don't know about it its about a world where everyone lives thier lives through prosthetic bodies, ran from thier home.
Now does my little white cat have Buddha nature?
Nope. And for the same reasons we don't.
IANA AI researcher (but I did focus my major on it, and I slept in a Holiday Inn Express). You can reasonably emulate a child's mind with a Kohonen network. We're born with innate traits (instinct) that can be overridden with experience (readjustments of the path-weight values on the graph). If you consider every opinion you've had to be a directed acyclic graph that feeds its end output to a minimum spanning tree of "results vs. consequences," you soon see that you are the sum total of every experience you've had adding into the final decision you make.
Take each opinion you have, feed it into a luckiewicz logic machine, find the tangent and appropriate weights from the baseline. Whichever's greater is ultimately the answer to your binary question.
We're all born with innate desires to survive and propagate, but it's our experiences that shape us, and as we get older and more critical, new experiences affect our opinions less and less outside of a traumatic experience. The more inputs we have been through, the less new experiences can shift our perspective. That's why an 8-year-old can accept that there is no Santa, but a 30+-year-old can't accept there is no Jesus, when both claims are on equal footing in the fiction department.
When CogSci and CompSci truly meet will be the death of philosophy. The only thing keeping the supernatural alive is that we don't understand our own organic computers the same way we understand our silicon counterparts.
Never attribute to Hanlon that which can be adequately attributed to Heinlein.
"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
So anything that is self-aware has a soul? What happens if we genetically engineer a breed of cats that are self-aware. Do they suddenly gain a soul? Why didn't they have one before? Where did their souls suddenly come from?
I'm personally at a loss to answer that question without resorting to the supernatural. Therefore it seems vastly more likely that the cats are self-aware and do not have a soul. So why then are the cats capable of being self-aware and have no soul but we as humans are self-aware and must have a soul in order to be self-aware? Perhaps the genetically engineered lines of cats is superior to us in some manner? Or more likely we never had souls to begin with, and neither do the cats. Souls then do nothing: they do not make something self-aware, they do not drive thought and behaviour. So why would humans have souls if souls serve no purpose?
Oh, and yes Elephants have souls, as do Chimps and at least some Gorillas. By your definition.
Not my definition, it was Vestins.
how about this: (I use the definition that a spirit and body combined equals the soul of a being)
the spirit is both limited (due to the human body's imperfections) and enhanced (without a body the spirit couldn't do what the combination does).
So if there's a chemical imbalance or physical damage, the spirit is in a sense crippled and limited in its ability to function with the body.
I'm not saying developing an AI that has its own man given intelligence doesn't have a "soul" of its own. After all, who are we as lesser life forms of any Gods to judge what is an isn't intelligence, even at our own hands?
You are only thinking all this because of ignorance. If you had read a couple of books about psychology, artificial life, evolution etc. you wouldn't cling so much to your belief in magic and fairy tales (which is what it would seem like to you after having read these books).
I'm at work right now and don't have time to come up with a proper list, but I'm sure you'll find something if you really try.
Mind you I can't prove you wrong, but I find other explanations far more likely than yours with having a "soul" whatever that actually is.
To counter, I have looked at my own thought processes and found no trace of free will. If I 'choose' to perform some task, did I choose it or is that just the illusion that the brain provides? Sure, I could then turn around and do the opposite, but that could still be the chemical response of brain cells. Nothing you are presenting is proof of the argument you are making.
I could also argue that brain/body are the hardware, the software running the brain, semantically a 'soul' but without any comment on divine or natural origin, and the world of experience is input. What makes the 'soul'? Could be divine, could be genetic or learned from bootstrap code in genetics. What causes free-will or even random thoughts? I am partial to the fact that individual photons and electrons are bound by QM, and the brain operates on a combination of electrical and chemical responses. I'm not going to jump off the deep end of 'the quantum brain' since I don't think it would affect whole neurons, but just cause enough noise to act as the brain's built in RNG. Viola, I can make up just as much stuff and claim that it is proof the divine soul does not exist. Only, I'll admit to making it up.
We already have a way to wipe peoples brain. Remember guns? In some parts of the world, any adult can own an instant mind-wiping device. Some countries also posess weaponry that can wipe any existence of a city. People suddenly forgot that we are able to nuke the whole planet of ours out of life at any time?
The Sticky Issue - My TF2 Blog
I don't think it matters. This is "hacking" the biological aspects of the brain/body/implants, nothing to do with the soul, if it exists.
My housemate just came back from the Berlin BCI Workshop and he informs me that BCI has made some huge advancements. I don't think it will be long before this stuff is real. They already have monkeys remote controlling robots with their brains, are already able to extract images from brain readings and are already able to detect stimuli with good accuracy (my housemates own p300 and other reaction detection algorithm is approx. 94% accurate; I've seen it!) so I reckon give it maybe five to ten years and BCI will be fairly common.
I agree with most of what you said, but do have a few comments:
I know that I'm me and I agree that this sense of self is a product of my function and experience. But since I'm (and I assume everyone else is too) aware (that is, my my function and experience contain references to itself and the environment around me), then this poses a small problem: if I duplicate my function on different hardware (another body), will this merge into my current function? Logically, no, there would now exist two instances of the one function and unless both are subject to the exact same external forces, the experiences would quickly diverge - meaning there are now two different people with two separate awarenesses. Since my original awareness exists separately from the new one, then that is not me.
For this reason, I do not believe that the immortality depicted in some science fiction (cloned body with memories implanted, which I believe could potentially be possible in the distant future) would ever actually work - because that clone is not me, that clone has its own sense of "self", I'll still die when my original body dies, theres just someone else alive with the same memories and mannerisms as me, but its not me, its a copy.
Continuing on this train of thought, it makes sense, to me, that by limiting the function (perhaps by restricting its inputs or by removing it altogether) that you can end up with Zombie bodies. I'm too tired to think about what implications this may or may not have, however.
I don't see any way how you having a soal should keep hackers from hacking the prosthetics attached to your body. After all, the prosthetics are nothing but machines; we know that because we build them.
About the mind-wiping: The memory clearly is saved in the brain, not in the soul, or otherwise it could not be affected e.g. by drugs (unless the soul can be affected that way, too, but then the hackers could affect your soul as well). But even if the memory were stored in the soul, and could not be affected, it wouldn't really help you, because all it would mean is that you'd helplessly watch how someone else controls your body.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I call bullshit; is this some new scare tactic from white-hats and the "security" software industry?
whats next? threat levels on symantec's site as relating to your brain?
great just what we needed, more fear mongering!
also "hackers next target" ? id say, if anything, "police/government next target"...
fear mongering articles earn no respect
http://www.twilightcampaign.net
I would say it means that the software (the thought processes) has BSOD'd and the user (the soul) is temporarily locked out. After a quick reboot, the soul is back in control and you wake up, or whatever. The biggest mistake God ever made was to allow Microsoft to make our Operating System.. I'm sure most of our personality and mental disorders are really just driver bugs...
A certain article comes to mind...
...hmmm where did I place it? Ah! Here it is!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/1232206
Anyone here read "Synners" by Pat Cadigan? Remember: It's only impossible in the real world!
All that rant means is im just as likely to have cigarette smoking monkey with a cockney accent, permanently sitting on my shoulder, as I do a soul.
No i can't prove that I don't have both - but i have no reason to believe in either.
I've beaten you at a children's video game. Now you will pay!
MIND CRUSH!
It's been a long time.
So, people wearing tinfoil hats have been right all along. I'll just have to start encrypted thinking.
- Dan
Given sufficient fidelity of the copy, would you rather have a copy of you continue, or not?
If you would like the copy to continue, you are mostly playing semantic games (i.e., whether it is worthy of the label 'Immortality' isn't particularly relevant).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You are only thinking all this because of ignorance. If you had read a couple of books about psychology, artificial life, evolution etc. you wouldn't cling so much to your belief in magic and fairy tales (which is what it would seem like to you after having read these books).
I have read a LOT about what a person is, although - mostly from the wonderful period of time when psychology was a part of philosophy and true to its name (it dealt with the "psyche", the soul). I've also had half a year of "Psychology 101 for philosophers" and half a year of "philosophycal problems in biology", where I was forced to read modern, empirically-focused text on a regular basis.
So - yeah. Psychology is not major, but I'm no ignorant either.
I was trying not to disrupt the discussion, yet at some point it became apparent that in most cases modern psychology can "explain" everything, yet predict next to nothing. Better yet - in most cases both action A and action ~A were considered rational, while different theories were applied to explain why. While it doesn't prove anything straight off the bat, it was sometimes hilarious to observe.
For your own amusement: we were to read a part of Geoffrey Miller's "The Mating Mind" (one of those wonderful books that might render the reader asexual if taken seriously), where he reminds the readers that the stereotype of "Man: the Hunter" had been proven wrong quite some time ago in the book "Woman: the Gatherer". Basically - in those wonderful, primitive times, men WERE hunting, yet most of the time they were NOT successful at it. To top it all up - they were hunting huge beasts, where their chances were minimal, while women were hunting bunnies and gathering food. Not only hadn't men provide the basic form of nutrition - a successful hunt was split among everyone in the group/tribe, so we can't even say that women traded sex for meat. In short - "hunting" was a prehistorical form of SPORT, entertainment. To further add insult to the injury - Miller claims that not only did women not find it irritating that they were the ones to gather food, hunt, take care of the kids, saw clothes, etc; they actually were attracted to those lazy bastards that were successful. At this point it's twisted, but conceivable, as we MAY find an evolutionary use for such behavior (despite of the fact that man taking less risks would provide a steadier "income"). What stunned me was the conclusion, that "this is why women find succesful sportsmen so attractive". They DO ? Really ?
My first thought was that there are very few people into sports (actively, at least) and those that are aren't exactly perceived as SO much more attractive (I know I can't back up this claim - but bear with me). Then, in a flash of understanding, one question came to my mind: is Miller American ? Why, YES, he sure is. And that explains a LOT, because I've heard a lot about how Americans treat sport (I sure you know this better than I do) - cheerleaders, high school baseball teams, etc. The problem is - it's NOT a universal behavior. It's culturally-dependent. I'd venture a guess that in Europe most sport fans are male and women... don't really care.
Of course - we could also discuss how poets, spiritual leaders, rich guys and men with power are found attractive by women, which leads to the conclusion that the Pope is the hottest hunk on the planet... but that's a lot more likely ;).
The point is - while physicists try to form laws (like gravity) that are universal and explain the world, empirical psychologists try to do the same with human behavior... and fail miserably, because for every "rule" they create there are hilariously counterintuitive cases. They mostly deal with this, saying that people who act differently are "insane". While this is a safe move, in the long run it suggests that the world's going more and more crazy.
Then again - I spoke a while ago with a
in other words, Freudian Slip.
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss
Soul: "Music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music with blues".
There you go.
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Given sufficient fidelity of the copy, would you rather have a copy of you continue, or not?
If you would like the copy to continue, you are mostly playing semantic games (i.e., whether it is worthy of the label 'Immortality' isn't particularly relevant).
Not really. It's like a difference between reincarnation and having a clone. In the first case - it's you and you live on. In the second - it looks the same but has a mind of it's own.
Although - I know why you're too blind to see the difference. I also find it hilarious that you admit you don't care if you're dead (i.e: mind-less) or alive as long as your body remains intact and does some things...
At this point, I'd like to point it out explicitly: there is a difference between phenomenological and functional consciousness. The first one is the one you experience on daily basis, no matter how much you'd like to be a zombie.
Also - remember that correlation =/= causality. If certain states of the brain occur with certain states of the mind, either can be the cause, as well as we might have a third thing (for example: will) that can be the cause of both or one (with the other being affected by the former).
You might also want to consider the famous "Black and White Mary" example.
There is a fair chance that you will be greatly disappointed at some moment in the next 30 years or so.
Not really. There ARE some bright minds at my university and I doubt all of them would say that "my strong sense of independence and free will are good forms of adaptation" (especially - seeing how well such intuitions allow me to adapt to the rest of the society ;)). After all - if there are people with the audacity to put everything they've learned to doubt, they are most likely studying philosophy. The rest of the world seems to be mostly brainwashed (as much as I hate the term) either by religion or science. I honestly don't know what's worse...
I am me and he is he, but we were me. That we cannot both continue to be me doesn't require that we both have souls, it is a natural product of our divergent experiences.
And I'm not sure why you are insisting that phenomenological consciousness requires an external component, for example, everything in your link is well explained by a person being the unique sum of their function and experience (there is no need to separate the user from the experience, which is where you started).
From what I can tell, you are willing to argue forever that you have a soul, because it makes a bunch of interesting philosophical questions more comfortable. On the other hand, there is some chance that we are in violent agreement, with you simply insisting on using a loaded word.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
My thinking was more that the edifice of reason you have built around this is going to be smashed by reality. It is unlikely you are really detached enough from that edifice to completely escape disappointment.
Philosophy is interesting. You talk about putting everything learned to doubt; to a large extent, this is an interesting exercise in thinking, but not particularly productive (for instance, the ground is there, it is independent of your belief in it; sure, pondering the relationship between your belief and the ground is interesting, but only to you, the ground isn't worried about what you believe).
So philosophy, which is a tool we reach for when faced with the intractable (to learn about something we first have to decide what we want to learn, and then we have to decide how we should learn that, and so on, thinking about thinking), has been turned onto the highly tractable and made into a game. The results of that game are interesting, but they are not hugely consequential (which is why things like existentialism are so silly).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Just make the logging very verbose so that hackers can be picked up and make the penalty for hacking devices that have to do with nuero shit super high like 10 years in jail.
You can define it however you want, but you don't have any facts to back up your theory. If there is a soul, it has little to do with our intelligence or motor coordination. We know this because we can see the effects when someone damages their brain. It really isn't that complicated.
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