Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

The nerd in me finds brain interface research super-exciting and even participated in studies in the past. The human is scared shitless at times. What if these things eventually work? I cannot imagine a world in which "mind reading" is not going to be terribly abused (and I am a rather nice and reasonable guy in general).

And the things that scare me are just the few things that we can easily reason about already, not even the things that we do not yet know being possible with it. Surveillance states turned up to eleven, psychological violence up to eleven, interrogation, torture, ethically challenged tech bros going full-Zck on people's minds. Could maybe one mind invade another brain and use it to enhance its capabilities (suppressing the mind that resided there so far)? A few brains interacting so closely that they create an a lot more intelligent thing - outpacing everyone who is not willing to subject themself to that (what would that do to society?)? What happens when the interface fails biologically (for invasive methods of interfacing), like developing inflammation, bleedings, scar tissue? Technically failures like the interface device dying, broken or unreliable connections or even just batteries running low? Before you dismiss the latter, imagine how you feel when you involuntarily cannot use your phone and scale that up by a lot - as you would not be losing a tool but a part of yourself.

Enough anxiety about the future for now - have a nice day instead ;)

I like Kevin Kelly's point of view, which he talked about recently on David Perell's podcast:

"When the first humanoid picked up a rock and turned it into a hammer, either to make a shelter or to kill his brother, he suddenly had a new choice he never had before. That choice is good. You see what I’m saying? Even the choice to do evil is itself a good. Which means that if there’s a 50/50 wash between good and evil, the fact that there’s another choice gives it a 1% edge.

So there’s 51% versus 49%. So that’s why I say that given everything, even the choices to do evil are a good, that we have 51% good and 49% bad. That 1 or 2% Delta, the tiny, tiny little bit better, the incremental creep of goodness and betterment compounded yearly is civilization. All we need is to have 1% better. What we need to do is create 1% more than we destroy. Then we have civilization. And by the way, 1% it’s almost invisible. Look around the world and say, half of it’s crap. Yes, it’s true. There’s only a 1% tiny bit, but that 1% difference, that little tiny bit, is all that we need. And that little tiny bit comes from, even the evil choices are choices and those choices are good. It’s good to have a choice."

Kevin Kelly

Or alternatively the ability to control minds reduces the number of choices you do good as it consolidated power in fewer people. Therefore under your model it increases evil.

This is assuming you're the hominid making the choice and not the hominid to whom to the choice is applied.

I agree. Imagine having your senses overwhelmed by images and sensations of the most terrifying shit you can’t even imagine. And the way governments excuse their repeated attacks on encryption - no safe harbour - who can’t see that directly translating to mind reading?

A scifi author wrote about "the mechanism" where just formulating a bit too clear intent against another person resulted in disabling pain and multiple infractions would result in reprogramming.

Now, that same mechanism would prevent most actions that could initiate said intent too.

In the stories, this is not abused, and serves humanity reasonably well.

We are so damn far from any sort of state where things like this make sense. They can, will be abused.

I experience the same emotions. The opportunity to share experience more directly is super compelling!

But yeah. Major league downsides.

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