Wow, thoughtcrime is ceasing to be fiction. Even in the original 1984 novel, they could only be detected when those thoughts manifested as actual words and action. This goes further.
I fear for how much restraint we will show when we become technologically able to detect thoughts that are deemed reprehensible in current society. Some ideas that were considered reprehensible in the past have become part of ordinary norms in the modern day; I still don't consider ourselves today to be infallible in always making those decisions correctly.
For now, even having ideas currently considered most heretical/reprehensible is still legal, as long as it never leaves your head - but I'm not quite confident it will stay that way in the face of mounting pressure.
First thought: I think that given the polarization in politics these days, everyone is likely harboring a thought crime according to someone.
But generally we are not an authoritarian society thus we will likely not start this type of witch hunt. Other more authoritarian countries may -- those that already do a lot of arbitrary arrests, and forced disappearances, thus will unfortunately make those state agencies more effective.
Second thought: The first people to get subjected to stuff like this is the same ones who are most likely right now to interrogated or have their social media inspected when crossing the border. This will just be a continuation of that existing trend. If you do not allow your neural state to be monitored and inspected in response to various stimuli you will be turned away at the border. Give it 5 years.
Third thought: There would be a lot of health and education opportunities. See brain patterns changing over time -- like a fitbit-like attention/focus score based on passive 24hr monitoring rather than active testing (e.g. brain training.) One could use those metrics to optimize your live to maximize your brain efficiency. Second, long-term one can see how patterns change during development and it may lead to better detection and understanding of mental illness, especially austim, bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and ADHD. One could likely see early warnings of these and do interventions and judge their effectiveness better than just self-reports.
> But generally we are not an authoritarian society thus we will likely not start this type of witch hunt.
...until you notice the UK police arrests about 8 people a day for tweets saying things like « It’s ok to be white » or calling a transgender a man [1]. The understanding of what is bad has gone from actual crimes to just saying a positive thing about a group that the majority thinks should never be talked about positively.
> If you do not allow your neural state to be monitored and inspected in response to various stimuli you will be turned away at the border. Give it 5 years.
5 years?!
Not even 10. We are very far from that, even excluding practicality.
It is possible now. Just not in great detail. It can not tell exactly what you are thinking but given responses to various stimuli it could infer where one non explicit loyalties lie. It would essentially be a super lie detector.
This makes about as much sense as being intolerant to intolerance.
You’re free to privately believe that privacy shouldn’t exist. That is materially different from trying to eradicate privacy to cement state control over a populace — in an age where the State has almost immeasurably great power to track, monitor, and police its citizens.
While I don't consider the paradox of tolerance to be invalid, what I see happening is people using Popper as an excuse to be intolerant towards people they dislike, declaring that their target party is "intolerant" so they're allowed to be - or even have to be - intolerant towards them. Hence, the total amount of intolerance in the world increases either way. It seems like quite a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
I guess it depends on what you mean by being intolerant. Preventing them from being violent or telling them that their views are wrong is one thing. Rejecting people for expressing their views is another. Both Neo-Nazis and ISIS recruit from those who feel as outsiders for whatever reason. Making them outcasts for having been recruited just serves to radicalize people further, locks them into their echo chambers and prevents them from rebounding into normal society.
I don't know. I can't even say if society stagnating is bad. I think society improved over the centuries and millennia, but of course I agree that the values I was raised into are the right ones. I don't have objective measures to verify this. I think I have good reasons and could argue them for hours, but in the end it's no different than arguing religion. The best chain of reasoning is worthless if the axioms are chosen arbitrarily.
We're currently moving towards prohibitting the communication of some thoughts (e.g. "hate speech"). That trend will be just as effective at preventing societal change/causing stagnation. :(
I fear for how much restraint we will show when we become technologically able to detect thoughts that are deemed reprehensible in current society. Some ideas that were considered reprehensible in the past have become part of ordinary norms in the modern day; I still don't consider ourselves today to be infallible in always making those decisions correctly.
For now, even having ideas currently considered most heretical/reprehensible is still legal, as long as it never leaves your head - but I'm not quite confident it will stay that way in the face of mounting pressure.