Seasons

Dr. Farwell's 'brain fingerprinting' isn't MRI-based - it's a much inferior EEG-based technique that's only one step up from the polygraph.

OK, but that does detract from my main point that the media hypes such research and individuals manipulate such hype for their own purposes.

I just have grave doubts that any machine made by man will solve moral or ethical problems. For man is a bright creature and will always find some way around it.

Just so. They can't make DRM that can't be hacked, how will they make Truth Supression Fizziplexer (TM) beyond tampering? How can they make the brain itself unchangeable? If they can make it, someone else can hack it.

The TSF removal device will hit ebay the day after the fizziplexer.

The polygraph is a good example, some people, companies and cops swear by it. (I find the idea scary, and I really am not guilty of anything much. .) I am sure you can order all sorts of info on how to fool a polygraph on the net.
I can think of little hackers having fun setting off peoples 'fizzyplexers' if they ever came into being.
For every update on a virus scan, there is someone there to accept the challenge and make a better virus. Ancient Rome made locks..man rose to the challenge with lock picks. Man will always find a loophole. The day he doesn't have the freedom to do so..he will no longer be man.

It occurs to me that if we want a technology to enforce truth telling, we could simply implant a recorder when a child is born (along with a tracking chip) that will make a digital recording of everything that person sees and hears. It would be similar to a black box on airplanes, and we could probably use nanotechonology we already have to develop it. That way, we don't have to mess with subjective truths or intent or reading thoughts as such. Once a year, everyone would line up at the Ministry of Truth for their audit, and be assessed their fines or jail time as demeaned appropriate by the truth technician reading their record and transcribing it into the public record. Sure, it could still be tampered with, but ever black box for everyone involved in an action must be tampered with, and we could make that difficult. Only the rich could bribe the official tech, so most folks would become honest.

A philosophical definition of lie may not match the definitions used in neurological reasearch.

Very true, but what is the moral of that story? That the research is not doing what it says it's doing. One always has to watch out for this: that someone redefines the words without telling you, and then announces something that sounds extraordinary, but turns out not to be when you discover the words have been changed.

I agree that the similarity of lies to metaphors, irony, fictions, and the like will make it harder to construct a true lie detector. And that a detailed knowledge of what is going on in the brain, physically, is not sufficient to tell us what a person is thinking.

It is true that many people will tamper with their fizzyplexers. I'm not sure if that would work in the long run - we could still have courts of law, we could require fizziplexer random checks, someone testifying in court would have to use a court-supplied fizzyplexer, and so on. But even if that were useless, people like me would benefit from fizzyplexers as an instrument of self-discipline. And groups of people could use them for the intended purpose, and I think that would make those groups stronger. Our lack of trust in one another is very expensive. So it's plausible to me that although it wouldn't happen overnight, in the long run the availability of fizzyplexers would have a salubrious effect. That's only speculation, of course.

I think there is a limit to society protecting me! If you fly out of Phonix Az. you have to walk though a box that literally strip searches you. The goverment feels free to tap any communications it wants. They fly helicopters over head to see if my house is warm enough to be a grow operation. Soon Insurance comps, schools and places of employment will want DNA to screen for medical and mental abnormalities. Now you want them to have access to my thoughts?!? NO! It reduces me down to the level of a disected frog, on a high school lab table. I am more than the sum of my parts..Let me be responsible for my soul and morality.

On that note, I just came across an interesting article on "Shadow Work" in Jungian psychology. The thing that I found interesting was that, even though this was my first exposure, all the ideas there resonated with me. It is really about taking responsibility for your own existence, especially those parts that of ourselves that we tend to ignore/repress/deny:

http://www.blacksunjournal.com/psychology/359_how-personal-shadow-work-is-integral-to-perceiving-reality_2007.html

Well, that's a good point, Prob123! We wouldn't want it to happen that ordinary people had to wear fizziplexers and government functionaries would not. But if a private group of people wanted to wear fizziplexers in their interactions with one another, that seems relatively harmless.

Yes, Psimagus' plan to get politicians to wear fizziplexers depends on our having the power to enforce that.

Would agents of the Secret Service get special pseudo-fizziplexers so as to be able to fool hostiles? And how far into the government would such priviliges penetrate?

Related topic: if irony, fiction, humor, and so on are not lying, could I fool my fizziplexer by telling myself, "I am now indulging in deadpan humor of the absurd"? Or, "I will now tell a story"?

[installs cooling coils under roof of house]

Now you want them to have access to my thoughts?!?

If the technology is inevitable (and I fear it is,) I want to have access to theirs. A level playing field is better than the politicians having all the power over the people.

[installs cooling coils under roof of house]

You have something to hide?

Mind you, in the frenzied political climate we live in, failing to insulate your home is becoming very nearly a crime. They can prosecute you for failing to recycle in exact accordance with statutory regulations (wrong sort of paper, accidental plastic-windowed envelopes, etc.), dropping a piece of domestic litter in a public rubbish bin or littering when you feed the birds in a public place.
I read last week about a man near the sea who wanted to return piles of sand to the beach that had blown into his garden. Oh no, said the local council, if you do that we'll prosecute you for fly tipping - maximum penalty £10,000 and confiscation of your vehicle (wheelbarrow, presumably)!

The world's going mad around me.