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Comment by mcphage | Hacker News Reader

> Their argument against BCI is that it will be used in government-mandated purity tests to forcibly rally their subjects. But that's a political objective

Then why did you start this thread by complaining that technologists ignore the politics of technologies?

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Because they are. This is a flight-of-fancy, a science-fiction diversion that has no relevance to any real world politics from the last century.

Their "Nazis with a mind reader" scenario explains it perfectly; only a small minority of people were able to lie well enough to escape a regime with 1940s technology. Millions of other people were killed and the Nazis did not need a mind reader to find them. A modern authoritarian state with a mind reader is barely any scarier than a modern authoritarian state without one.

> It's a shame that today's "technologists" are eager to ignore the political axis of technology if it means they get to talk about ESP or Von Neumann machines. It's like I'm watching the field progress in reverse, transitioning from a crowd of self-righteous and skeptical consumers to a mystic and eschatological identity that eschews understanding.

My brother in Christ, the call is coming from inside the house.

Reread my comments, I don't know how you're still confused about this. They are manufacturing a fictional scenario that does not significantly change the power imbalance of an authoritarian state, today or in their hypothetical example.

Today and in the Nazi era, there were functional social controls that served the same purpose and achieved, very clearly, dangerous results. No mind reading was necessary.

Yep, that is what every collaborator tells themselves to justify their actions. “Oh, it’s not like I made any difference, they were already going to kill all those people.”

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