How many people reading this have, in a moment of anger, threatened too and indeed wanted to do something illegal? Quite a few I would imagine if the survey was honestly answered. Even if it wasn’t a criminal offense, how many have had a fleeting thought of cheating on their partner or something equally legal but morally heinous? Again, one suspects that a few would answer in the affirmative. The point is not that we should not condemn voice but the fact we choose not to act on them (or some cases we do) is part of what defines us and crucially teaches us as we make our way through life. Doing something cannot be morally acquainted with thinking about doing something
In democracies the entire legal system operates (or at least it should) under the presumption that you are ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Using thought mapping for criminal justice purposes would severely undermine that presumption. The balance would be shifted from determining innocence to determining and finding the ‘guilty’ or those who are about to be guilty. However, they would be technically convicted while they remained innocent.
Apart from the ethical connotations of ‘thought crime’ there is also the question of fallibility. Haynes computer was only correct 71% of the time in predicting the intent of the subject’s. Another way to view that is that it was incorrect 29% of time which would be a far from acceptable margin of error if the technology was to be used in criminal cases. Of course, its adherents will always claim that the payoff is the saving of innocent lives however that begs the question if they can ever be preserved by something that at the same time puts them under threat.
Article comments
1 - Mark Marks
mindreading technology This group is about the mind reading technology that is going on in schools and Laboratories around the world. This is for real mind reading research only. Not for fake post, but for real research only. This is real tech you may view the home pages of universities etc, cnn, etc if you don't believe the post.
This group is about Subvocal Speech, Brain FingerPinting, BrainGate Chip, FMRI research, and more.
2 - Donald H. Marks, MD PhD
Advances in use of functional MRI to determine issues of truth and deception during interrogation have transformed this technique into applied mind reading. Simple analysis of areas of brain activation alone though is not sufficient for optimum interpretation and extraction of all information from these brain scans. One company " Cognitive Engineering, LLC - is pushing the limit of fMRI, making it possible to identify recognition of individuals, specific objects, places and even emotional states. Application areas we can expect in the near future include criminal defense, national security and corporate background investigations. MRI is now being applied to neuroeonomic studies (buying decisions) and even to neuro-political analysis (thought analysis of voter decisions). As imaging power and data analysis methods improve, more specific and detailed information on thought processes including intents will become available. Hopefully, the scenario portrayed in the movie Minority Report will not become reality.
3 - Mikael Dewabrata
recently this kind of discussion made me interested. philip K Dick as a futurist fiction writer had already made assumptions about elements that would occur in future life. MRI is probably the new kind of name about it, the concept itself is beneath the human consciousness told over centuries. law itself is an instrument, a simple one, that social made to prevent everything based on human activity. MRI is the more complicated method to predict, and using psychology, neuroscience, sociology, bla bla.