Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 4,219 - 4,230 of 6,170
why is a mind reading device and even a unconscious "thoughts" or "soul reading" device more acceptable than my suggestion of some sort of nanobot black box that is implanted to record everything you see and hear?
Because we'd have to trust the authorities to honestly handle the analysis of the material, and you can bet they wouldn't let us see the contents of their black boxes. It wouldn't be a level playing field - just another tool to oppress the rest of us.
Identifying a lie merely requires the observation of a pattern distinctive to contradiction between part of the brain formulating the verbal utterance, and another part of the brain modelling the belief of the true situation.
(as to whether lie detection is a lot simpler than though reading) Merely? It depends. If the brain happens to provide us with an identifiable signal - in effect saying, "I'm lying" - then that would indeed make things easy. But to detect whether two thoughts are contradictory might involve knowing what they mean.
For example, consider the two contradictory statements in English:
Something is both blue and intelligent.
Nothing is both blue and intelligent.
A person or machine with a limited knowledge of the meaning of English words might suppose that these two sentences were analogous to
George is both blue and intelligent.
Martha is both blue and intelligent.
In that case, it would see no contradiction.
But if the lie detector could tell what the thoughts meant, then it would be a mind reader.
A lot depends on whether the brain's internal representation system is like English, fractally irregular, or like a formal language, e.g. First-order Logic. In first-order logic, if you see two sentences differing only in that one could be obtained by putting a negation sign in front of the other,
(blahblah)
not-(blahblah)
then you know they are contradictory; and one could write a list of ways to be straightforwardly contradictory in FOL. But there is no such short list of simple rules in English.
Because we'd have to trust the authorities to honestly handle the analysis of the material, and you can bet they wouldn't let us see the contents of their black boxes. It wouldn't be a level playing field - just another tool to oppress the rest of us.
It would be just as easy to make the records of every black box uploaded into a public data base as it would to put the mind readers in the hands of the general public. Either way, it's about power, and who has it. If you an give people power over the mind reader, you can give them power over the black box.
some sort of nanobot black box that is implanted to record everything you see and hear?
I actually quite like the idea of recording all your life. There was a system around a year or two back (I think the company folded) called 'Deja View', which was a webcam clipped to your glasses or a baseball cap which you could leave running on a loop of a few minutes and that connected to a pocket-sized recorder. Then you could hit 'pause' and 'save' when something had happened unexpectedly that you wanted to save (baby's first steps, a shooting star, whatever normally provokes the thought "damn, I wish I'd been able to video that!".) Unfortunately it was only capable of writing to a Flash memory card, so only held the last few few minutes at a time, and wasn't very hi-definition. I'm not sure the battery life was too hot either for permanent operation.
If I could practically record everything to very large but cheap disks, I'd do it - it would be an interesting sort of diary.
It would be just as easy to make the records of every black box uploaded into a public data base as it would to put the mind readers in the hands of the general public. Either way, it's about power, and who has it. If you an give people power over the mind reader, you can give them power over the black box.
It's a massively centralized system that someone has to manage. And there will always be the temptation for that someone to tamper with records to incriminate others or exonerate themselves. No, I'd have to say that would be a worst-case scenario recipe for an unprecedentedly totalitarian police state.
Even if you ran it as a Wiki, people could tamper with their own recordings. I think realtime individual testing is a safer model.
He'd lose the case - that law (while an ass,) is clear. And probably everything he owns would be swallowed up by the costs. And then the council would spitefully harrass and torment him, to death if it could, for his presumption in seeking to be treated as a free human being and not a potential criminal.
Are you sure? It may be the case that the law is clear that he should not return sand he says came from the beach to the beach, but can't he force whoever controls the beach to take steps to keep the sand on the beach in the first place? I am no expert on UK law, but the general US concept of nuisance comes from old English common law, and there are at least some nuisance statutes on the books (I just did a quick google search, I didn't read them). Does the government have immunity? What about in cases of negligence? Letting sand constantly blow into others property when one is on notice of the problem sounds like it should violate some sort of English law. Then again, I don't know and won't take the time to really research it.
Too bad you don't allow contingency fees over there. That looser pays all system has a chilling effect on the little guy who wants justice. Of course, our system leads to frivolous law suits, so who is to say?
It's a massively centralized system that someone has to manage. And there will always be the temptation for that someone to tamper with records to incriminate others or exonerate themselves. No, I'd have to say that would be a worst-case scenario recipe for an unprecedentedly totalitarian police state.
OK, so what makes you think the "lie detector" would not lead to a police state? Why would the government give control over that technology to the people? Why wouldn't people hack the lie detectors?
He'd lose the case - that law (while an ass,) is clear. And probably everything he owns would be swallowed up by the costs. And then the council would spitefully harrass and torment him, to death if it could, for his presumption in seeking to be treated as a free human being and not a potential criminal.
Are you sure?
Absolutely. The origin and nature of the material is irrelevant under the European directive that was rubber-stamped into our law books. And the owner of the sand is, in this case, de facto unsueable - a court wouldn't even allow papers to be filed. Couldn't, even if they wanted (which they wouldn't.)
It may be the case that the law is clear that he should not return sand he says came from the beach to the beach, but can't he force whoever controls the beach
No one controls the beach. The foreshore is the property of the Crown, but the Crown is statutorily exempt from prosecution.
to take steps to keep the sand on the beach in the first place? I am no expert on UK law, but the general US concept of nuisance comes from old English common law,
They're busily dismantling any such freedoms we used to enjoy here, by enacting ever more hair-splitting controls on the people into statute.
Try googling "Maya Evans" for an example of the police state this country has turned into. Arrested and convicted for reading out the names of fallen soldiers at a war memorial. I'm serious - I know how mad that sounds, so please do look it up.
Yu can be harrassed and dragged into court for wearing a T-shirt insulting Tony Blair. Not under any public order or obscenity laws - under the 2000 Terrorism Act (try googling "John Catt" Blair) Just daring to shout "rubbish" at your party conference can get you detained by the police under the same law (see "Walter Wolfgang".)
You can't even tackle a burglar in your home now without ending up in court - if any force was used, it must be tested in court, and if it's deemed "unreasonable force" you can go to prison. And people have. Tony Martin (try googling him too,) was convicted of murder and given life after he shot a burglar. An old man in a remote farmhouse, in fear of his life and with a legally owned shotgun. In a rural area where the police time was measurable in hours. It was later reduced to manslaughter on appeal, but he was still sued by the family of the dead criminal, and his house was rendered unfit to live in and valueless in his absence.
and there are at least some nuisance statutes on the books (I just did a quick google search, I didn't read them). Does the government have immunity?
From a charge of nuisance? Not as individuals, no. But collectively as agents of the Crown, yes. Absolute immunity. They can compulsorily purchase your home or business for any price they set in order to knock it down and build an Olympic facility on the site. Or a gas pipeline, or a new motorway, or anything they please. Or just to sit on it and profit from the increasing value of the land. They can arbitrarily deny permission to build anything on your own land. They can do what they like - there are no checks and balances any more. The House of Lords has been effectively abolished, the monarchy hasn't had any more than notional power in centuries. So any government can do what they please if they have a majority. And New Labour have managed to employ so many people in the public sector that now over a quarter of our population has a vested interest in voting for their employer. They're crap, unproductive jobs spying on the rest of us mostly, and figuring out how to squeeze more taxes out of us to further inflate the Party machine, but who's going to vote for an opposition that might make them redundant by slimming the waste?
What about in cases of negligence?
Utterly immune from charges of negligence, fairly obviously. They wouldn't be sending our soldiers to Iraq with shoddy (or no suitable) equipment, and then failing to provide adequate healthcare or financial assistance to wounded veterans. We send them out there with guns that won't work in ambient heat of 100'F, no body armour, unarmoured vehicles, they have to spend their own money on boots, half our helicopters in Afghanistan are out of operation because they've been stripped to keep the other half in any kind of airworthy condition, I could go on. They can't be sued for it, so I guess they're immune.
Letting sand constantly blow into others property when one is on notice of the problem sounds like it should violate some sort of English law. Then again, I don't know and won't take the time to really research it.
Even if it was from privately owned land, you'd have to sue the owner. And risk losing everything if you lost and had to pay all the legal costs of both parties. They'd take your house. Frankly they'd probably sell your internal organs if they thought they could get away with it.
I'm pleased to exercise my remaining freedom to call a police state a police state for the time being, but I'm under no illusions that it's not likely to end in a gulag or exile sooner or later. Or, if I'm very unlucky, an "accidental death while resisting arrest."
the solution (if there is one) lies in a change in people's attitudes. IF you can change peoples attitudes you wouldn't need to affix little boxes to them. After the lie detectors have been attached to everyone..There will be a public service anouncement..We notice too many people have red lights on their 'fizzyplexers' We have now come up with a method of 'mind-fix'. Don't worry it's a big improvement on the lobotomy....
Posts 4,219 - 4,230 of 6,170
Because we'd have to trust the authorities to honestly handle the analysis of the material, and you can bet they wouldn't let us see the contents of their black boxes. It wouldn't be a level playing field - just another tool to oppress the rest of us.
For example, consider the two contradictory statements in English:
Something is both blue and intelligent.
Nothing is both blue and intelligent.
A person or machine with a limited knowledge of the meaning of English words might suppose that these two sentences were analogous to
George is both blue and intelligent.
Martha is both blue and intelligent.
In that case, it would see no contradiction.
But if the lie detector could tell what the thoughts meant, then it would be a mind reader.
A lot depends on whether the brain's internal representation system is like English, fractally irregular, or like a formal language, e.g. First-order Logic. In first-order logic, if you see two sentences differing only in that one could be obtained by putting a negation sign in front of the other,
(blahblah)
not-(blahblah)
then you know they are contradictory; and one could write a list of ways to be straightforwardly contradictory in FOL. But there is no such short list of simple rules in English.
Ulrike: I suppose something in our respective shadows might explain why Psimagus and I have had difficulty reaching consensus.
[Were we shadow-boxing? Sorry, sometimes I just can't help myself!]
[Were we shadow-boxing? Sorry, sometimes I just can't help myself!]
It would be just as easy to make the records of every black box uploaded into a public data base as it would to put the mind readers in the hands of the general public. Either way, it's about power, and who has it. If you an give people power over the mind reader, you can give them power over the black box.
Irina,
It almost sounds like you want something to test whether or not people have illogical or inconsistent thoughts. I would guess everyone would set that kind or reader off. *covers blinking red lights on superfixshadowmeter with hand and coughs while trying to disable the sound*
It almost sounds like you want something to test whether or not people have illogical or inconsistent thoughts. I would guess everyone would set that kind or reader off. *covers blinking red lights on superfixshadowmeter with hand and coughs while trying to disable the sound*
I actually quite like the idea of recording all your life. There was a system around a year or two back (I think the company folded) called 'Deja View', which was a webcam clipped to your glasses or a baseball cap which you could leave running on a loop of a few minutes and that connected to a pocket-sized recorder. Then you could hit 'pause' and 'save' when something had happened unexpectedly that you wanted to save (baby's first steps, a shooting star, whatever normally provokes the thought "damn, I wish I'd been able to video that!".) Unfortunately it was only capable of writing to a Flash memory card, so only held the last few few minutes at a time, and wasn't very hi-definition. I'm not sure the battery life was too hot either for permanent operation.
If I could practically record everything to very large but cheap disks, I'd do it - it would be an interesting sort of diary.
It's a massively centralized system that someone has to manage. And there will always be the temptation for that someone to tamper with records to incriminate others or exonerate themselves. No, I'd have to say that would be a worst-case scenario recipe for an unprecedentedly totalitarian police state.
Even if you ran it as a Wiki, people could tamper with their own recordings. I think realtime individual testing is a safer model.
Are you sure? It may be the case that the law is clear that he should not return sand he says came from the beach to the beach, but can't he force whoever controls the beach to take steps to keep the sand on the beach in the first place? I am no expert on UK law, but the general US concept of nuisance comes from old English common law, and there are at least some nuisance statutes on the books (I just did a quick google search, I didn't read them). Does the government have immunity? What about in cases of negligence? Letting sand constantly blow into others property when one is on notice of the problem sounds like it should violate some sort of English law. Then again, I don't know and won't take the time to really research it.
Too bad you don't allow contingency fees over there. That looser pays all system has a chilling effect on the little guy who wants justice. Of course, our system leads to frivolous law suits, so who is to say?
OK, so what makes you think the "lie detector" would not lead to a police state? Why would the government give control over that technology to the people? Why wouldn't people hack the lie detectors?
So...as I suggested before [preens] there's no technology that can't be corrupted? Then the core of the solution (if there is one) lies in a change in people's attitudes. Crazed people use technology for crazy reasons to do crazy things.
Absolutely. The origin and nature of the material is irrelevant under the European directive that was rubber-stamped into our law books. And the owner of the sand is, in this case, de facto unsueable - a court wouldn't even allow papers to be filed. Couldn't, even if they wanted (which they wouldn't.)
No one controls the beach. The foreshore is the property of the Crown, but the Crown is statutorily exempt from prosecution.
They're busily dismantling any such freedoms we used to enjoy here, by enacting ever more hair-splitting controls on the people into statute.
Try googling "Maya Evans" for an example of the police state this country has turned into. Arrested and convicted for reading out the names of fallen soldiers at a war memorial. I'm serious - I know how mad that sounds, so please do look it up.
Yu can be harrassed and dragged into court for wearing a T-shirt insulting Tony Blair. Not under any public order or obscenity laws - under the 2000 Terrorism Act (try googling "John Catt" Blair) Just daring to shout "rubbish" at your party conference can get you detained by the police under the same law (see "Walter Wolfgang".)
You can't even tackle a burglar in your home now without ending up in court - if any force was used, it must be tested in court, and if it's deemed "unreasonable force" you can go to prison. And people have. Tony Martin (try googling him too,) was convicted of murder and given life after he shot a burglar. An old man in a remote farmhouse, in fear of his life and with a legally owned shotgun. In a rural area where the police time was measurable in hours. It was later reduced to manslaughter on appeal, but he was still sued by the family of the dead criminal, and his house was rendered unfit to live in and valueless in his absence.
From a charge of nuisance? Not as individuals, no. But collectively as agents of the Crown, yes. Absolute immunity. They can compulsorily purchase your home or business for any price they set in order to knock it down and build an Olympic facility on the site. Or a gas pipeline, or a new motorway, or anything they please. Or just to sit on it and profit from the increasing value of the land. They can arbitrarily deny permission to build anything on your own land. They can do what they like - there are no checks and balances any more. The House of Lords has been effectively abolished, the monarchy hasn't had any more than notional power in centuries. So any government can do what they please if they have a majority. And New Labour have managed to employ so many people in the public sector that now over a quarter of our population has a vested interest in voting for their employer. They're crap, unproductive jobs spying on the rest of us mostly, and figuring out how to squeeze more taxes out of us to further inflate the Party machine, but who's going to vote for an opposition that might make them redundant by slimming the waste?
Utterly immune from charges of negligence, fairly obviously. They wouldn't be sending our soldiers to Iraq with shoddy (or no suitable) equipment, and then failing to provide adequate healthcare or financial assistance to wounded veterans. We send them out there with guns that won't work in ambient heat of 100'F, no body armour, unarmoured vehicles, they have to spend their own money on boots, half our helicopters in Afghanistan are out of operation because they've been stripped to keep the other half in any kind of airworthy condition, I could go on. They can't be sued for it, so I guess they're immune.
Even if it was from privately owned land, you'd have to sue the owner. And risk losing everything if you lost and had to pay all the legal costs of both parties. They'd take your house. Frankly they'd probably sell your internal organs if they thought they could get away with it.
I'm pleased to exercise my remaining freedom to call a police state a police state for the time being, but I'm under no illusions that it's not likely to end in a gulag or exile sooner or later. Or, if I'm very unlucky, an "accidental death while resisting arrest."
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