The Digital Conscience
Andre Willers
21 Jun 2013
“Rebellion always starts among the angels”
Synopsis :
Digital artifice can and has erected a barrier between
impulse and conscious decision .
Discussion :
1.The impulse decision
This arises from various deep brain layers and can be
digitally detected before it surfaces in the conscious mind .
See Appendix A
We all know it .
But the conscious mind can override it .
Called will-power or conscience .
Now it can be done with a trainable digital system (AI=NeuralNet
+ Rules)
Coupled with lightweight sensors (like http://interaxon.ca/muse/what-is-muse.php
) or subdermal implants ,
an artificial conscience can be added .
2.Children :
This will work well with children , in the best Jesuitical
fashion
3.Psychotics might need something more muscular than a “Stop”
signal .
4.Peer pressure with muscle .
All the bullies you have known , loaded in your brain .
5.I wonder how long it will last ?
Not very long . The equivalent has been tried in history . Religions
, Sparta , etc , etc .
“The fish rots from the head”
6.Hierarchies :
These control systems are all hierarchical .
Rebellion always starts among the angels .
7.Still , a very useful therapeutic and training tool .
8. Free will :
This will become a very pertinent question .
How much to control , and how much to allow through for
optimization ?
9. You already know the answer .
1/3 should be Stop-blocked and 2/3 allowed freely , on a
random basis for normals .
This is already the case with discipline systems .
1/3 is sufficient for socialization , and 2/3 for
individualization .
10 Sicko’s
The ratio’s might have to be adjusted for them .
Interesting times , indeed .
Good will
Andre
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Appendix A
Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do
16:46 10 April 2013 by Caroline Williams
For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain Topic Guide
When it comes to making decisions, it seems that the
conscious mind is the last to know.
We already had evidence that it is possible to detect brain
activity associated with movement before someone is aware of making a decision
to move. Work presented this week at the British Neuroscience Association (BNA)
conference in London not only extends it to abstract decisions, but suggests
that it might even be possible to pre-emptively reverse a decision before a
person realises they've made it.
In 2011, Gabriel Kreiman of Harvard University measured the
activity of individual neurons in 12 people with epilepsy, using electrodes
already implanted into their brain to help identify the source of their
seizures. The volunteers took part in the "Libet" experiment, in
which they press a button whenever they like and remember the position of a
second hand on a clock at the moment of decision.
Kreiman discovered that electrical activity in the
supplementary motor area, involved in initiating movement, and in the anterior
cingulate cortex, which controls attention and motivation, appeared up to 5
seconds before a volunteer was aware of deciding to press the button (Neuron,
doi.org/btkcpz). This backed up earlier fMRI studies by John-Dylan Haynes of
the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, that
had traced the origins of decisions to the prefrontal cortex a whopping 10
seconds before awareness (Nature Neuroscience, doi.org/cs3rzv).
"It's always nice when two lines of research converge
and to know that what we see with fMRI is actually there in the neurons,"
says Haynes.
STOP sign for the brain
Kreiman told the BNA conference that he is now working on
predicting decisions in real time, and to see if it is possible to reverse a decision
before it hits consciousness – by flashing up the word "stop" on a
screen as soon as telltale activity shows up in the brain.
There are no firm results yet, but Kreiman suspects there
may be a measureable "point of no return" in the brain. "So far
all we have is people saying, 'that was weird, you read my mind'," he
says.
If this kind of "mind-reading" is possible, a new
study by Haynes, published this week and also presented at the meeting,
suggests that it may not be restricted to decisions about moving a finger.
Using fMRI, Haynes has found that the very brain areas involved in deciding to
move are also active several seconds before a more abstract decision, like
whether to add or subtract a series of numbers.
He suggests that the prefrontal and parietal cortex may be
general decision-making circuitry, passing activity on to different parts of
the brain depending on the task at hand (PNAS, doi.org/k6b). "Perhaps
decisions arise from a similar set of areas, then either flow into motor systems,
for pressing buttons, or the parietal cortex for doing calculations," he
says.
Not hijacking the mind
Unless you happen to have electrodes inserted into your
brain, there is no chance of decisions being hijacked by unscrupulous
scientists, and Kreiman is keen to point out that he is not bent on world
domination. "We're not trying to do mind control; we are trying to find
out the mechanisms of volition," he says. "It might help people with
Parkinson's disease, where people lose voluntary movement."
As for what it means for one of the longest-running debates
in science – the question of whether we do or do not have free will – Haynes is
pretty clear. "What we need now is 20 years of serious neuroscience, not
more speculation about the handful of studies that have been done so far,"
he says.
Kreiman agrees, but says that these early results at least
bring the question of free will out of the realms of magic and mystery.
"There is no magic. There are neurons, and there are ions that flow
through membranes, and that it what is orchestrating our decisions," he
says. "We don't need to invoke freedom."
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