The militarization of neuroscience

[seemslikeadream]

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/the-militarization-neuroscience


The militarization of neuroscience
By Hugh Gusterson | 9 April 2007 We've seen this story before: The Pentagon takes an interest in a rapidly changing area of scientific knowledge, and the world is forever changed. And not for the better.

During World War II, the scientific field was atomic physics. Afraid that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, the U.S. government mounted its own crash project to get there first. The Manhattan Project was so secret that Congress did not know what it was funding and Vice President Harry S. Truman did not learn about it until FDR's death made him president. In this situation of extreme secrecy, there was almost no ethical or political debate about the Bomb before it was dropped on two cities by a bureaucratic apparatus on autopilot.

Despite J. Robert Oppenheimer's objections, a few Manhattan Project scientists organized a discussion on the implications of the "Gadget" for civilization shortly before the bomb was tested. Another handful issued the Franck Report, advising against dropping the bomb on cities without a prior demonstration and warning of the dangers of an atomic arms race. Neither initiative had any discernible effect. We ended up in a world where the United States had two incinerated cities on its conscience, and its pursuit of nuclear dominance created a world of nuclear overkill and mutually assured destruction.

This time we have a chance to do better. The science in question now is not physics, but neuroscience, and the question is whether we can control its militarization.

According to Jonathan Moreno's fascinating and frightening new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (Dana Press 2006), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research in the following areas:

Mind-machine interfaces ("neural prosthetics") that will enable pilots and soldiers to control high-tech weapons by thought alone.
"Living robots" whose movements could be controlled via brain implants. This technology has already been tested successfully on "roborats" and could lead to animals remotely directed for mine clearance, or even to remotely controlled soldiers.
"Cognitive feedback helmets" that allow remote monitoring of soldiers' mental state.
MRI technologies ("brain fingerprinting") for use in interrogation or airport screening for terrorists. Quite apart from questions about their error rate, such technologies would raise the issue of whether involuntary brain scans violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

[Runcible Spoon]

1. fucking scary.

KnR. people need to be aware.

[whistle]

2. Monsters of the id

[Jim__]

3. We're just about smart enough to blow ourselves off the face of the earth.

Unfortunately, we're not one whit smarter.

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. The "eventuality of an anomaly"

This pandora's box has been sitting there for some time. The real question is whether the brain can be truly understood without going down some serious rabbit holes as to the nature of reality itself. The simulated reality argument makes this clear:
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
As the probability that the brain and experiences can be simulated increases, the probability that we are already living in such a simulation also increases. This is very hard for humans to see though, as we tend to deny the liquidity of our axioms, such as the existence of a "physical reality" which we can see, even after it has become abudantly clear that all such axioms exist only in our minds.

[aikoaiko]

5. get some

[Octafish]

6. Stanislaw Lem envisioned where all this is leading...

...On day 1,006 of his journey, Ijon Tichy, Space Traveller, landed on a planet in the middle of an open desert covered with shining discs arranged in geometric patterns. He explored the planet, and saw three beautiful cities, all of which were deserted, but with no signs of natural disasters. Finally he discovered a diamond palace where he found several living beings who resembled humans although they had two pairs of ears, ten eyes, and lips in their foreheads. Ijon managed to get one of the people to answer his questions. The person explained that he and the others were the last remaining members of a race of people called Phools. An industrial revolution on the planet put the lowest caste Phools, or drudgelings, out of work, and there was mass starvation. In desparation, the Plenum Moronicum (gov't council of Phools) commissioned the Machine Builder to build an ultimate machine to establish order. The resulting machine transformed every Phool into a shiny disc and arranged them in the geometrical designs on the desert. The Phool Ijon was talking with was one of the last survivors -- he and the others at the castle were simply waiting to be turned into discs and join in the harmony of their planet. Ijon quickly escaped, in fear and disgust.

Heh heh heh.