Will you receive a neural implant?

[Eftsoon]

Will my brain melt if there’s an EMP?

Like a sliver of ice in the mouth of a volcano.

 

[Eftsoon]

Almost all, perhaps all, human inventions can be postive, neutral, or negative in their use. Ultimately it is the choices made by the people who use them that determine which.

Giving anyone the power to fundamentally alter your perception of the world is dangerous. Sure, maybe we have to wait to see precisely how the dice falls, but I can guarantee that giving governments, criminals, corporations etc the keys to your soul/psyche/mind won't end well.

The impact of fake news during the last couple of US elections demonstrate that one doesn't need a computer to be hooked into your brain to corrupt your thinking.

A computer hooked into the brain will certainly grease the wheels. It will make it infinitely easier to control and manipulate populations.

Very few people would have predicted in 1960 the role of the internet we experience today - including both its advantages and disadvantages.

Cyberneticists, futurists and sociologists weren't far off at all.

I wouldn't mind a system that monitored my physcial functions, reported to an AI, then warned me off the cheescake, or called up the ambulance and defibrollator if I ignored the advice.

This is one possible use, but it makes a host of invasive monitoring systems possible. The implant could potentially place us in skinner boxes creating conditions where we can be groomed and made to respond in very specific ways. It's a behaviourist's wildest dream. Adam Curtis has some very interesting documentaries which chart this process.

 

[renniks]

These are set to become commercially available within the next 50 years. Essentially, your phone with all its capabilities (and many more) will be implanted in your skull. You will be able to call everything up with thought alone. VR will also be possible.

AR will be more or less constant (you will see notifications popping up in your field of vision superimposed over the real world)

There will also be read and write capability. People will read the data flow inside your skull and obviously with the right security clearance write to it.

Telepathy will be quite trivial. Memory will be limited only by storage capacity. Eventually these will become far more sophisticated. The VR will become more immersive. 'Superhuman' abilities will start to emerge such as enhanced senses, time lapse, microscopic vision etc. It will start to bed down into your consciousness more and more, affecting thought and perception in deeper ways until there is no division between the machine and the human.

Is this something that Christians should adopt or not?

PS Elon Musk has already invented one called Neuralink


This is absolutely a theological question. This will make us reassess our humanity. We'll be interfacing with machines directly. Once we have them embedded in our skull, there is no escaping. You won't be turning them off. You'll be dependent on it to function. It will be tied up with memory and thinking and emotion to the extent that it'll only be off while you sleep.
Crucially, we'll be giving ultimate power to corporations and governments who will not use it responsibly. The changes that technology has already induced will be mulitplied a thousandfold.

I'd rather die.

 

[seeking.IAM]

Homo Deus (another of his books) touts the idea...
...I would say go elsewhere for genuinely useful content. He is not an authority...

Perhaps not. Yet, I found this to be one of the more interesting books I've read in the last few years and quite thought provoking about how AI could change the world.

 

[Ophiolite]

Giving anyone the power to fundamentally alter your perception of the world is dangerous. Sure, maybe we have to wait to see precisely how the dice falls, but I can guarantee that giving governments, criminals, corporations etc the keys to your soul/psyche/mind won't end well.

I don't know where you are living, but unless you isolate yourself from all human contact then your perception of the world is being changed by governments, etc. If that was merely being naive it would be quaint, but failing to recgonise the current situation is dangerous.

A computer hooked into the brain will certainly grease the wheels. It will make it infinitely easier to control and manipulate populations.

I'll take the "infinitely" as rhetorical hyperbole. The ease of control will depend on many things, legal, technical, social and cultural.

Cyberneticists, futurists and sociologists weren't far off at all.

Indeed, but since there were very few of them in 1960 my statement stands.

This is one possible use, but it makes a host of invasive monitoring systems possible. The implant could potentially place us in skinner boxes creating conditions where we can be groomed and made to respond in very specific ways. It's a behaviourist's wildest dream. Adam Curtis has some very interesting documentaries which chart this process.

All dangers you mention in your posts are potentials, not reality. It is good to raise these points so that appropriate decisions as to licencing, 'installation', safeguarding, etc. can be made, but they are not - of themselves - a convincing argument against the concept.

 

[Eftsoon]

Perhaps not. Yet, I found this to be one of the more interesting books I've read in the last few years and quite thought provoking about how AI could change the world.

I am sorry. My tone was way off. I agree it is interesting.

 

[Eftsoon]

I don't know where you are living, but unless you isolate yourself from all human contact then your perception of the world is being changed by governments, etc. If that was merely being naive it would be quaint, but failing to recgonise the current situation is dangerous.

Not at the level of raw perception, and not with the kind of craftsmanship that will be made possible by having them jammed inside your skull. I mean this is fine-grain level control over motor function, self perception, emotional reactivity etc. Unparalleled levels of control. To get an implant is to hand over the keys to your consciousness. We haven't mentioned how biological viruses will translate into this new substrate.

I'll take the "infinitely" as rhetorical hyperbole. The ease of control will depend on many things, legal, technical, social and cultural.

Yes, I'm given to that, it's a flaw. I admit it lol. You place so much trust in systems of power and governance. Even if we couold somehow agree that western governments can be trusted to regulate such a technology, we then have to assume that western hegemony will last forever, or that we won't exist under an overt kind of tyranny in the future.
We have to consider the massive privacy violations already committed by tech giants. Now give them the ability to listen into the chatter of our neurons. We'll be gamed upside and down. This offers predictive power over humanity. Such a technology should be resisted by anyone Christian or not.

All dangers you mention in your posts are potentials, not reality. It is good to raise these points so that appropriate decisions as to licencing, 'installation', safeguarding, etc. can be made, but they are not - of themselves - a convincing argument against the concept.

When you surrender your mind - the seat of ego and self - up to unknown entities... this is the danger. If we agree that the kingdoms and governments of this age are headed by principalities and powers, it becomes quite clear why we can't surrender the most intimate parts of us to them.
God has placed boundaries around the mind. This dissolves them.

I think that these technologies have a spiritual dimension in that there is no mediation. With a smartphone, there is a level of feedback, but there is interpretive distance. Tech giants and anyone else watching can only observe behaviour.
With something which can hover over a synapse and map a nerve cluster you have a different kind of interaction. You have the machine convolved with the flesh, so that not only does it become impossible to separate the two, but the machine can now interact at a far lower level.

Any given company can initiate an interaction, say an advert. They can then observe dopamine levels, adrenaline levels, release of enkaphalins, excitation in the pre frontal cortex. They can then tailor their approach and tweak it so that they can get you right in the gizzard. A little more danger, a little more fire, a wider sweep on the panorama. Are the leftists getting too salty? Game them. Hard. Are the right sabre-rattling? We have just the right combination of light and sound to turn them to jelly.
Under such conditions we'd be almost helpless. Will this be regulated? I doubt it. Someone will use it with authorisation. It's just too valuable.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Hugo De Garis and the artilect war springs to mind. That and the idea of the omega point as popularised by transhumanists.

Yes, the Omega Point is an interesting idea - although in practice such singularities don't generally seem to happen; seemingly exponential progress tends to level off, due to physical or other constraints. Moore's Law and population growth come to mind.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Not at the level of raw perception, and not with the kind of craftsmanship that will be made possible by having them jammed inside your skull. I mean this is fine-grain level control over motor function, self perception, emotional reactivity etc. Unparalleled levels of control. To get an implant is to hand over the keys to your consciousness. We haven't mentioned how biological viruses will translate into this new substrate.


Yes, I'm given to that, it's a flaw. I admit it lol. You place so much trust in systems of power and governance. Even if we couold somehow agree that western governments can be trusted to regulate such a technology, we then have to assume that western hegemony will last forever, or that we won't exist under an overt kind of tyranny in the future.
We have to consider the massive privacy violations already committed by tech giants. Now give them the ability to listen into the chatter of our neurons. We'll be gamed upside and down. This offers predictive power over humanity. Such a technology should be resisted by anyone Christian or not.



When you surrender your mind - the seat of ego and self - up to unknown entities... this is the danger. If we agree that the kingdoms and governments of this age are headed by principalities and powers, it becomes quite clear why we can't surrender the most intimate parts of us to them.
God has placed boundaries around the mind. This dissolves them.

sorry to disagree or whatever, you have already surrendered you mind to what you claim as a concept of a god, your argument is rather interesting from that standpoint. Why do you find one authority more acceptable than another?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

If one is interested in the subject of AI and it's impact upon our future, I highly recommned reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. I found it a very interesting read.

I hope it's better than 'Homo Deus', I found that disappointing after 'Sapiens'...

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You place so much trust in systems of power and governance. Even if we couold somehow agree that western governments can be trusted to regulate such a technology, we then have to assume that western hegemony will last forever, or that we won't exist under an overt kind of tyranny in the future.
We have to consider the massive privacy violations already committed by tech giants. Now give them the ability to listen into the chatter of our neurons. We'll be gamed upside and down. This offers predictive power over humanity. Such a technology should be resisted by anyone Christian or not.

When you surrender your mind - the seat of ego and self - up to unknown entities... this is the danger. If we agree that the kingdoms and governments of this age are headed by principalities and powers, it becomes quite clear why we can't surrender the most intimate parts of us to them.

The technology might be developed by the tech giants, but it wouldn't necessarily remain under their control. Anti-authoritarian (and, no doubt, criminal) elements - the 'black hats' - will piggy-back on them, build, or reverse-engineer their own systems; something that has already been attempted with the financial system using Bitcoin - not entirely successfully, but the indications are there.

 

[Eftsoon]

sorry to disagree or whatever, you have already surrendered you mind to what you claim as a concept of a god, your argument is rather interesting from that standpoint. Why do you find one authority more acceptable than another?

Can you please reword your question? I'm puzzled by it.

 

[Eftsoon]

Yes, the Omega Point is an interesting idea - although in practice such singularities don't generally seem to happen; seemingly exponential progress tends to level off, due to physical or other constraints. Moore's Law and population growth come to mind.

But the aim is to use the universe itself as a substrate. The potential is infinite. There are no constraints.

The technology might be developed by the tech giants, but it wouldn't necessarily remain under their control. Anti-authoritarian (and, no doubt, criminal) elements - the 'black hats' - will piggy-back on them, build, or reverse-engineer their own systems; something that has already been attempted with the financial system using Bitcoin - not entirely successfully, but the indications are there.

It seems unlikely that the hardware itself will be blackmarketed.

 

[Ponderous Curmudgeon]

Can you please reword your question? I'm puzzled by it.

You seem to be worried about something guiding your thoughts, but at the same time, you seem to accept that there is something that you cannot argue with "god" that you accept to guide your thoughts. What is the real difference between the memes that are thus generated in this or a techno future?

 

[Tanj]

Cyberneticists, futurists and sociologists weren't far off at all.

Evidence please.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Who knows? Maybe cyborg enhancements and electronic transcendence will lead to the development of new religions based on the mental integration of groups via electronic technologies - literally 'groupthink'. Or maybe the worship of advanced AIs...

This has all been explored in 20th century science fiction.

For an explosive view of a future where organized religion is outlawed, you can't beat Alfred Bester's 1956 book, 'Tiger Tiger' aka 'The Stars My Destination'.

Seems like I read that one once; I've read a lot of sci-fi. I'll have to obtain a copy and read it again. Thanks.

 

[Occams Barber]

These are set to become commercially available within the next 50 years. Essentially, your phone with all its capabilities (and many more) will be implanted in your skull. You will be able to call everything up with thought alone. VR will also be possible.

AR will be more or less constant (you will see notifications popping up in your field of vision superimposed over the real world)

There will also be read and write capability. People will read the data flow inside your skull and obviously with the right security clearance write to it.

Telepathy will be quite trivial. Memory will be limited only by storage capacity. Eventually these will become far more sophisticated. The VR will become more immersive. 'Superhuman' abilities will start to emerge such as enhanced senses, time lapse, microscopic vision etc. It will start to bed down into your consciousness more and more, affecting thought and perception in deeper ways until there is no division between the machine and the human.

Is this something that Christians should adopt or not?

PS Elon Musk has already invented one called Neuralink


This is absolutely a theological question. This will make us reassess our humanity. We'll be interfacing with machines directly. Once we have them embedded in our skull, there is no escaping. You won't be turning them off. You'll be dependent on it to function. It will be tied up with memory and thinking and emotion to the extent that it'll only be off while you sleep.
Crucially, we'll be giving ultimate power to corporations and governments who will not use it responsibly. The changes that technology has already induced will be mulitplied a thousandfold.

Here's an example where a neural implant has had a positive beneficial result. A 65 year old man, paralysed from the neck down, was able to type around 90 characters a minute by visualising the process of handwriting. This is a record for typing by brain/computer interface

Brain implants let paralyzed man write on a screen using thoughts alone - CNET

Fortunately neural implants aren't always about world domination by evil corporations and governments.

OB

 

[That Guy 11200]

Currently, implants get degraded by the immune system until they don't work anymore. I don't imagine they would become common unless this problem is solved.

 

[Occams Barber]

Currently, implants get degraded by the immune system until they don't work anymore. I don't imagine they would become common unless this problem is solved.

Thanks TG. This might help to counter the world-domination-by-implant conspiracy theories we're hearing about regularly.

Do you have a link?

OB

 

[Eftsoon]

Evidence please.

FM 20-30 was talking about posthumanity and transitional tech back in the 1960s