Slashdot Mirror
How Cyborg Tech Could Link the Minds of the World
An anonymous reader writes "Science writer Michael Chorost has written a book that suggests that mankind may one day be able to link individual minds to share thoughts, feelings and perceptions by genetically modifying individuals brains and implanting computers based on neural networks in the body. Here he talks about the implications for human relationships, our sense of self and phenomenon like telempathy and dream brainstorming that this so-called World Wide Mind would make possible."
Great, now Facebook will be modifying my brain's privacy settings with little or no notice.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I had a thought, but I am not sure it is mine
I don't want to die, so box my brain and let me live on the net. I'll even let you use all the wonderful subconscious processing power that is usually dealing with my autonomous functions.
HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
we'll have an executive order giving the government the authority to wiretap your brain and read your thoughts at any time. Without needing a warrant. They'll say it's justified by the threat of terrorism, as usual.
I read this book in high school - it was called "The Light of Other Days" back then.
Learn about Photography Basics.
What are the implications of this technology when applied to porn?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Soon we'll be having a real world Individual Eleven
You mean a scifi writer wrote a book about some scifi concepts? Amazing!
Sounds like how a BrainPal from John Scalzi book Old Man's War universe as used by the Ghost Brigades.
Yes, and I'm actually looking forward to it, at least in a way. Hopefully it will help people understand each other and cooperate on a level previously not seen.
Of course, there are obvious possible downsides, but let's just stay positive here...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
"hey, that's not the same pony-tale you were just riding that flying lizard with, is it?!!!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A huge number of science fiction and fantasy stories have explored this subject. It's not exactly a new idea.
If we discover enough information about brains work to hook into them at that level, we'll be able to build brains. Probably ones that clock a lot faster and definitely have more storage than biological ones.
Never mind Facebook, never mind warrantless wiretapping. The first and worst exploit will be SPAM.
We are the cyborgs. Prepare to be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
I am officially gone from
Obligatory PA ref -
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/12/
And I can't imagine why anyone would want this. Convergence is a terrifying concept, moreso than the general Christian idea of effectively being lobotomized once you reach heaven.
There is no -1 Disagree.
That's Ghost in the Shell. In the world of Ghost in the Shell, most people have a cybernetic implant in the back of the neck that allows them to communicate and browse the Internet.
Of course I fully expect Christians to lose their shit over this.
was pretend i was one of those deaf-mutes
C'mon, we've all seen the damage that it can do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_Consciousness_%28The_Outer_Limits%29 ) - do we really want to rely on someone who can't use this to shut down the network before a botnet or virus attack kills us all?
..it's already there.
I'm doubtful any "world wide mind" will arise anytime soon, but we absolutely could begin experiment with parallelizing rats today, i.e. raise two rats with a high bandwidth link, after one rat learns the maze, the other knows it. And we'd eventually developed massively paralleled humans, literally Beowulf. ;)
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I've always wanted the ability to record my dreams. There is some pretty freaky stuff in there, but there's also some stuff I'd like to keep, and review. ;)
Perhaps.. some day..
On the same subject, at the speed this stuff happens in our little minds, we'd probably need some pretty fast storage devices, or a large array of them to keep up.
As for the sharing of thoughts, it would be nice, but no doubt we'd be bombarded with advertising right off the bat. Better be a good way to turn it off or keep things private.
SciFic Movie [1954] Forbidden Planet where the highly advanced species murderously seeks the final solution of extinction.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Resistance is futile you will be assimilated
but let's just stay positive here...
Why? Our experience with technology is that it gets used for both good and bad. For example, we have stories all the time about governments that wish to control the flow of information. Controlling minds directly is even more effective. And if someone creates a common crackable interface for minds, a simple virus might be sufficient to co-opt most of humanity.
or the obligatory Star Trek Next Generation reference(s) - someone got a book out of this ?
Plugging into some hive mind so I can share my thoughts with 7 billion fucking idiots? No thank you. I'll take the mortal route and hopefully check out with the average 75 years behind me. If I live to 100 I'm jumping off a bridge. Shit just roll me into the pool if I go limp. If I go demented then just tell me there's ice cream on the train tracks. Do whatever is needed to rid the world of my weakness.
How about sharing your thoughts with a badass 100k ton fusion tank? Who's weak now?
What do we expect? Now our bosses will be able to read our minds.
IMHO, those who can resist will ultimately triumph.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If not that, he read Altered Carbon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere
For Teilhard, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This concept is an extension of Teilhard's Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard argued the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point, which he saw as the goal of history. The goal of history, then, is an apex of thought/consciousness.
What would happen if you made everyone feel as happy as the global average? What affect would that have on global policy and philanthropy if acting in the common good was in fact also acting selfishly?
So with the ability to directly convey hostility, anger, fear, and an overwhelming desire for upskirt shots, the concept of "thought crime" will become reality. "Mental assault" will be criminalized since your WOULD be able to cause distress in others with just a thought. People who were truly upset with a government would be easily detected and "dealt with".
Personally, I doubt that the tech would work as described. But if it did... consider what a surveillance-based government would do with it.
By amendment to the Constitution, any use of the aforesaid "telempathy" should be limited to online pornography.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
I bid 3 quatloos for your brain.
Fight Spammers!
I can't wait to have my brain hooked up to the hive-mind equivalent of 4chan... Why on earth would anyone think that this is a good idea?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
A shame, you seemed an honest man
And all the fears you hold so dear
Will turn to whisper in your ear...
And you know what they say might hurt you
And you know that it means so much
But you don't even feel a thing...
Emotions! In your brain!
It sounds like the extroverts among us would have more fun with this than the introverted types, which includes me. The idea of constantly being hooked up to a hive-mind sounds exhausting. I suspect that if this concept ever becomes a reality and they wanted more nerds on board, then they'd have to include a switch so that individuals would have the choice to take themselves off-line every once in a while (or only join in when they felt like it).
When was the last time you watched that movie? The highly advanced species were victims of their own "Monsters from the Id." They created a machine that could literally make thoughts into reality, then they went to sleep and their dreams killed them all. They weren't murderously seeking anything. It's not so much a dystopian fable, as it is a direct copy of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Time recently had a cover story on Kurzweil and his prediction of a singularity by 2045. The only problem for all these pipe dreamers is that nobody has a clue about how the brain works. The knowledge needed to interface directly with electronics in a meaningful way is not going to arrive anytime before the end of this century. Crude prosthetics for disabled people, yes, but nothing that would be of value to a normal person (enhanced memory, computation, seamless mind/machine interfacing) will be around in anyone's lifetime.
This is much like the hype in the lead up to completing the Human Genome Project. Grand predictions were made about what it would provide for us and then when it was done, everyone realized that it was a blueprint that nobody could understand in anything but the most rudimentary way.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"We are the cyborgs"???????
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Please watch the movie Zardoz before pursuing this further.
Now, in terms of thinking, this could allow other people to intentionally, uncontrollably interrupt my thoughts without first having direct physical access to me. I don't know about you guys, but I rely heavily on continuous thought, and can't do squat with discrete thought (think long-term focus vs. multitasking). Having an interface that can interrupt my thought process by another would be a bad thing. It might not be so bad if the wire could be pulled, but if the work being done needs information pulled from remote locations, it can be a very risky proposition.
Additionally, even now, people can operate with incorrect thoughts, but they are acquired through the normal inputs and outputs, and must pass through a reason filter in order to be integrated into the mind. The idea of there being a way to bypass that filter scares me to no end; imagine someone being able to plant a suggestion, telling you to do anything they want you to do. Maybe you'd still have the presence of mind to resist stuff you wouldn't normally do, but I've done enough technical work to know that not everybody has this presence of mind, especially when threats or enticements are used ("your computer is infected, download a security upgrade to fix," vs. "You have won $1,000,000, please provide your bank information to have it transferred to your account"). Believe me, it's not just the savvy that would want such an implant.
Next, action. Our minds determine what actions we will take, even if most of the steps are handled by nerve-based autonomous processes known as reflex (you don't have to consciously think about how to walk, you just walk). If I were to be rendered unconcious, so that an attacker could make use of my body, there's no telling how law would apply; I was unconscious at the time, I performed the action, but someone else is responsible. And that's not taking into account...
The health aspects of such a thing is probably the most frightening thing about having such a device in the mind. Every part of the human body has some basic activity that can be harmful if it stopped, even for a short time. A healthy nervous system allows the proper timing signals to be received by the involuntary muscles in the body including heart, lungs, and digestive tract. Without these, neither nutrients nor oxygen would make it to the cellular tissue, especially the muscles themselves. The body would break down, eventually dying as a result.
We do have diseases, but right now, they are limited to physical infections which are localized, and usually contained and expelled by a healthy immune system (autoimmune diseases notwithstanding). Having a direct access to the brain, however, opens up the risk for a much more dangerous form of infection; imagine some really antisocial people coming up with a virus program that can alter the signals going to the heart muscles, such as, say stopping the heart, or maybe increasing the rate to even more dangerous levels. Imagine something that can force the adrenal glands to keep producing. Or perhaps stop the pancreas, inducing a state of diabetes in anyone. Or perhaps disable dopamine production, leading to a number of frightening diseases.
The point is this, if you set your brain up to be affected by computers, then it'll be just as well-protected as any computer is against attack. And unlike a computer, this cannot easily be reformatted, nor can an alternative OS be installed... at least, not without you no longer being you.
The Penguin Producer
Meow, meow, meow, meow.
As cynical as I am, a hive mind would bring the understanding needed for previously unreachable levels of sympathy and social order.
Stepping on people becomes harder when you feel the consequences of your actions.
I don't know what it's like to live in poverty. I have some vague sense that it sucks, but I don't understand the hardship in a meaningful way (i.e, in a way that I'd modify my own lifestyle to attempt to relieve the poverty).
In business, there is no room for trust. Everyone is against you, unless your goals happen to temporarily align. But if I could link with someone, and see that he really does plan on keeping his word, I don't have to draw up a huge contract written in legalese.
A hive mind could grease the gears of society in interesting ways.
Yes, and I'm actually looking forward to it, at least in a way. Hopefully it will help people understand each other and cooperate on a level previously not seen.
While there is some value (a group mind might be able to control a complex machine, say like a factory, far better than a single person or a group of normal humans), for me the real value is a deep connection to my tools. It might be nice for a lark to interface with other minds for a little while, but in the end, I like my privacy.
For example, I find that a paper pad is among my best tools for thinking, even though I now use a laptop quite frequently. A mental tool that allows me to directly put my thoughts to a computing environment would be far more powerful than my current tools of choice.
I couldn't help but think of the Arthur C Clark novel when reading this. It's not the first time the concept of a collective mind has been explored, nor will it be the last. But comparing it to Childhood's End brings up other pertinent questions as well - what effects would a technology like this have on our evolution as a species? What effects might it have on us even within our lifespan? We simply cannot know. We're still completely clueless when it comes to the human brain and, as Animats and others have already pointed out, by the time we have the technology to implant chips in our brain that allow us to receive a stream of other's thoughts or emotions, filter that stream out at any time, detect when emotions we're feeling are not our own and identify whose they are, we'll have done plenty of other things with the technology first.
/. crowd overwhelming focuses on the potential dangers and downfalls of such technology. Then again, when has anyone on /. ever argued for anything that would make them be (gasp) social?
Furthermore, it seems the general reaction from the
BLACK KNIGHT SECURITY SYSTEMS
We'll bite your legs off
Yes, their murderous "Monsters from the Id." provided extinction as a final solution for all their greatness was humanly flawed. Let's not make this a tempest in a teapot.... Like good archeologist/anthropologist we both see the same results, but not the same fictitious path.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I had a thought, but I am not sure it is mine
Loss of self is exactly the problem. Most people probably won't believe me when I say this, but I am a telepath - a reader, not a sender. I read other people's thoughts, usually without meaning to do so. Unlike in the movies, those thoughts don't "sound" any different in my head than my own thoughts. Sometimes they "feel" different, sometimes not. But unless a thought is something completely out of normal range for me ("I'm going to be late picking up the kids," etc.), I often don't have positive confirmation that it is someone else's thought until they verbalize it or act it out.
While the idea of being a telepath may sound cool - and to be honest it has at times in my life proven quite a useful talent - in practice it's also a little disturbing. I'm never really sure if my thoughts are my own, or someone else's leaking into my brain. And even when I am sure they are someone else's, sometimes it's crap you don't really want to hear. Like trying to listen to your own music in your car, but hearing someone else's music in the car next to you.
I have coping mechanisms, though. I can't hear everyone's thoughts, automatically. It's like I have to share "resonance" with someone for me to pick it up, be on frequency, etc. If I'm around someone a lot, I tend to tune in to them. With strangers, it's hit or miss. But the more people I'm around in close proximity, the greater the chances of coincidentally being in tune with someone. Big crowds like in busy malls or airports give me bad headaches (imagine listening to 15-20 radios, at low volume, but all tuned to different stations). So, to avoid the noise, I avoid crowds as much as possible.
To me, the thought of being permanently plugged into a World Wide Mind is comparable to living my entire life in a crowded airport. The idea makes me nauseous. Hearing the crap inside people's heads once in a while is inconvenient, but hearing it from everyone all the time? And where would my thoughts and emotions end, and others' begin?
Remember also, that very few people know I can hear thoughts (only my wife and a couple of very close friends). My wife is used to it, and we're very open and honest with each other, but it sometimes makes my friends a little uncomfortable knowing that I *could* be listening in. How about if you *knew* that *everyone* is listening in? Would you still think the same thoughts, or would you filter your own thoughts the way (some) people self-censor what they post on their Facebook page. And if you would filter your thoughts, would the hypothetical World Wide Mind be expanding our horizons - or limiting them?
Wow, but that's a lot of buzzword bullshit!
I really have to get in on this futurist book scam.
What, no Cyberiad reference? Maybe it's folded into a reply or under my threshold...
As cynical as I am, a hive mind would bring the understanding needed for previously unreachable levels of sympathy and social order.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Dude, you are *not* cynical enough if you can say that.
Stepping on people becomes harder when you feel the consequences of your actions.
How do you know the sociopath (say, a politician) would learn to feel? Maybe processing algorithm of the sociopath would overwhelm *you*, and your conscience would suddenly seem like a quaint relic.
Or even, how do you know that "the sociopath is wrong" isn't just some lie you have taught yourself, and seeing things from the sociopath's POV won't reveal the lie?
Maybe your conscience is an optical illusion.
I don't know what it's like to live in poverty. I have some vague sense that it sucks, but I don't understand the hardship in a meaningful way (i.e, in a way that I'd modify my own lifestyle to attempt to relieve the poverty).
And yet many of those who *do* live in poverty *don't* modify their lifestyles to relive the poverty. I did five years of volunteer work back in my undergrad years, and saw people who had an overwhelming amount of information directly available to them on a daily basis that certain bad choices lead to endless misery, and yet they still made those bad choices over and over again. It's what triggered my long slide into hardcore misanthropy.
But anyway, if this flight of fantasy ever saw the light of day, it would be the end of civilization.
Or it would average us all out, and it would be the last invention.
Many people here don't realize how valuable our secret, inner selves are in terms of just maintaining sanity.
I think it's why some people seem to go a bit nuts after they become famous. Imagine having no privacy whatsoever, even in your own mind.
I can think of few better descriptions for Hell.
No.. seriously... :P
....my 3am Taco craving? Or the number of amusing insecurities that I harbour?
Seriously, my idle thoughts are like a 16 year old girl's Twitter.
As cynical as I am, a hive mind would bring the understanding needed for previously unreachable levels of sympathy and social order.
Sure, and when some don't want to join the hive mind, then what? Social order must prevail of course!
The HUGE problem I see is giving someone access to your thoughts. You can't help random thoughts popping up. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. If you see the phase, "sex with a 3 year old", even though you (hopefully) don't want to think about that, you can't help it, and that vision could randomly come up while sharing thoughts. Would anyone want to risk that?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Beowulf cluster of human brains.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
There was a EP of SG1 with some called the link that was like this.
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Revisions
and there was a The Outer Limits EP with some that was like the SG1 link.called
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_of_Consciousness_(The_Outer_Limits)
Don't we already have a wonderfully diverse way of interfacing with each others brains?
and thanks to how wonderfully and unique each brain is, its impossible to get significantly more direct access to it..
For example. when i think "flower" i'm thinking something compleatly different in every concieveable way than whne you think flower. different groups of neurons are firing compaired to you.. the very way i think about "flower" is compleatly unique to myself. the best they could do is interface with the input routs your ears / eyes use to transmit information into your brain, so they could plant a chip, sync it up to your auditory system, and then when they triggered it you would hear a noise as if you were wearing earphones.
this may however allow for intergration into computer systems, so instead of looking at a monitor you could enter a dream state where images would be directly fed to your visual & auditory cortex. this is less about communicating with other minds and more about "entering the matrix". pretty cool none the less.
Yep, that's the first thing I thought too. I browsed the comments just to see if anybody else realised that. :) [this made me want to read the series again... too bad I don't have infinite time... but I would be satisfied with Daneel's lifespan ;) ]
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
The computer has an on/off switch, why wouldn't a brain implant?
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
I meant more the part of us we *never* let anyone see. I'm a firm believer that's an essential part of us- the center that keeps us, well, centered. Yeah, I'm out in psychological esoterica at this point, but, well, it's fun here. :-)
But anyway, if this flight of fantasy ever saw the light of day, it would be the end of civilization. Or it would average us all out, and it would be the last invention.
How about some strong emergence? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and all that. That is, imagine what would happen if a few hundred people linked together, almost immediately utilized their combined abilities to work out what needed to be accomplished and then set about performing those tasks without any needs for verbal or written explanations, instructions or agreements. John just knows what piece he should weld to what other piece, Dave knows exactly how the control software should work and so on. Yes, it would eerily borg-like but also amazing and quite possibly a huge leap forward for mankind. Not that there aren't possible major problems...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
There is also the problem of consistancy. The hive mind awakens, and... is it a democrat? is it a republican? It must be a democrat, that's what the minds say... but no, the other half says democrats are traitorous scum, only republicans can lead the country, even though republicans are militaristic and oppressive religious nuts... AGH! Too much conflict! Just from a two-party political system. Then the mind turns it's throughts to religion - and suddenly has a million different beliefs, all contradictory, and all of which some of it's components believe to be absolutly true beyond debate... and a lot of those components belive anyone who disagrees is a heretic against God and the worst creature imaginable.
Five minutes after activation, the Collective destroys itsself in a fit of self-loathing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_(Foundation_universe)#Galaxia
However Gaia extends the concept to the whole planet, linking in the collective consciousness also inanimate matter. Due to it's size, Gaia has no written records and memories of individuals are stored forever in the global consciousness. Gaia is created to be the precursor of Galaxia, which will include also stars, unhabitated planets and any galactic object, enhancing the mentalic effects that are usually limited by speed of light.
There's an easy million for you to make, and world-reknown. If your ability is real please demonstrate it. I for one would be amazed and excited. JREF million dollar challenge
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The US Government will require everyone to be "Hooked up" as part of a medical plan and then they'll require that the president have access to a button to "shut down the 'net" for the safety of all and to prevent terrorist activities...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
Yes, their murderous "Monsters from the Id." provided extinction as a final solution for all their greatness was humanly flawed. Let's not make this a tempest in a teapot.... Like good archeologist/anthropologist we both see the same results, but not the same fictitious path.
I see what you did there.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Most people probably won't believe me when I say this, but I am a telepath
Most people here would believe you if you had any evidence whatsoever other than a few anecdotes.
Also, shouldn't you be helping out psychologists/neurosurgeons in explaining how the brain works rather than moaning about how annoying it is to you?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The hive mind wouldn't just be Americans, so you wouldn't have the artificial democrat/republican split, and hopefully you wouldn't have any fucking religion at all.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Ever since I first saw Borg depicted in star trek, I've dreamed of some kind of mind-to-mind interaction being possible. Contrary to what many people fear, there is no need to be permanently jacked into such a system, although, like facebook, you might find yourself compelled to use it ceaselesly regardless of actual benefits - because we are social creatures of habit. Still, the ABILITY to commune mind-to-mind in no way prescribes the NECESSITY to be plugged in and enslaved. Advantages are countless - although I personally feel like communication with any degree of fidelity would have to be restricted to symbols - language, math, diagrams, what have you. More subjective things like complex combinations of feelings or stream of mental impressions are likely to have a unique code to represent them in every brain. For codes that we share, like math, natural language, etc., it would be great to be able to communicate these faster and more conveniently than we do today. For verbal communication, people being in different locations can't be on the phone all the time. Instant messaging is great but not for people who don't like typing or with imperfect vision. I can't wait to welcome our new robot overlords who are me!
Many people here don't realize how valuable our secret, inner selves are in terms of just maintaining sanity.
I think it's why some people seem to go a bit nuts after they become famous. Imagine having no privacy whatsoever, even in your own mind.
I can think of few better descriptions for Hell.
The reason that a lot of people who become famous go nuts is exactly because they had no inner life to speak of beforehand, so there's nothing much to resist the external pressure. The desire to be famous for fame's sake is a sure sign of intellectual, spiritual and psychological emptiness.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You will be Assimilated.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
Reminds me of the Bible verse "My name is Legion: for we are many."- The Gospel of Luke, Luke 8:30
I can get a whole computer chip to be a computer, almost....the size of a small capsule...so what if we used that tech that takes the power generated by our bodies to power this pc....and then let it have wifi/4g integrated, and let it be the same as an iphone...so you can dial out...to another such iphone chip installed inside someone's cranium or base of head....then we would all appear tobe telepathic, but really not, cuz the machine is doing the talking....the only thing yet to be invented is the thought to keyboard, ooops, no, that one is done also, you need a special helmet, but it works...so i guess we are almost there then.....cant wait to be able to call the president directly....!
You may have schizophrenia, and you definitely have a bad case of confirmation bias, but you're not a telepath.
Your account describes that you occasionally know what someone is thinking before they verbalize it, more often with people you know well than with strangers, and more often when there are a lot of people around than with just a few. The first part of that is called "knowing someone" and the second is just statistics. Your dislike of crowds is simply a dislike of crowds.
I'm as much a telepath as you are, to the extent that you described, which is to say not at all. The experiences you are describing are commonplace.
About ten years ago, my lover and best friend died. For months afterward, I could "hear" her in my head with perfect clarity, adding her own remarks and observations to whatever I was doing or thinking about. I did not conclude that I was in communion with her ghost; I just knew her well enough that I knew what she would have said.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
You may have schizophrenia, and you definitely have a bad case of confirmation bias, but you're not a telepath.
Says who? I'm a skeptic, and I don't "believe" in telepathy, but I do know that we do NOT know enough about how the brain works to definitively say one way or the other that this guy is not telepathic. People like you who make grand, sweeping, dismissive statements ("oh you're just imagining it all") for any condition out of the norm are standing in the way of progress, not helping.
From "The last question"
Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man, mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies, each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted one into the other, indistinguishable.
...welcome our Rat Overlords
Says who?
Me, obviously. I'm the one who wrote it, so it represents my own analysis. I don't preface every statement I make with "In my opinion," because that should be apparent. Whose else would it be?
I do know that we do NOT know enough about how the brain works to definitively say one way or the other that this guy is not telepathic.
We've much to learn about how the brain works, but we already know a great deal about how it does NOT work.
People like you who make grand, sweeping, dismissive statements ("oh you're just imagining it all") for any condition out of the norm are standing in the way of progress, not helping.
Right, because anything that can't be definitively disproved is valid and mustn't be dismissed?
I disagree, and will as a matter of policy continue to dismiss extraordinary claims for which there is no compelling evidence, until such time as compelling evidence is presented. People like you, who lend credence to any notion that can't be disproved are the ones who stand in the way of progress.
You're free to interpret reality in whatever manner you choose, of course; I will do the same.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
I guess the author has been watching "Ghost In The Shell - Standalone Complex" on Saturday nights on Adult Swim...
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
We all know about "telepresence" where a remote robot arm or eyes start to feel like your own after long time use. This has been carried further by a prosthestics researcher with two good arms and connects 3rd to his torso for development. He said after some time it feels almost as real as his flesh arms.
I think could get used to more limbs or eyes or looking those those of another person.
Hmm. Interesting hypothesis.