Ever since Claude E. Shannon developed the “Mathematical Theory of Communication”, people have been hell bent on making sure we can securely transmit data without loss, at a distance, from one source to another. That sounds great. We all enjoy the interwebs and imagine ourselves in ever more immersive digital and virtual environments. These environments are dubbed more successful the more they engage our senses. We have 5D movies and VR headsets. But what price might we eventually pay for the materialist worldview’s insertion into the holy of holies: our brain?
It starts like this: scientists like Touring, Von Neumann, and Bohr REALLY wanted to analyze your brain, what Von Neumann dubs the “most complicated object under the sun”, to the point of “exhaustively and unambiguously” describing what he considers to be a “realizable and finite neural network.” They believed, in other words, that with the most universal principles of algebra, linguistics, network theory, logic, coding, and information theory combined with a biological and physical sort of mapping down to even the quantum level, they would be able to decode the brain, so to speak. They might have turned out to be right. Scientists have, after all, discovered “microtubules” that they believe operate at a quantum level in order to “produce” consciousness…
Whatever consciousness is or isn’t, we humans do know what our senses experience, on a subjective basis, and we do know that these senses are our connection to this reality. Except, now we have the ability to use brain to computer interface in such a way as to trick the brain entirely.The proponents of this technology look at the possible pros: we can communicate with people with consciousness disorders like coma or vegetative states, we can reinstate some sensory experiences for those who have lost hearing or sight, we can help people with prosthetic attachments better control their machinery… and maybe those benefits are good enough. Still, when I notice that DARPA has been funding this research since the 70’s, I start to wonder at the motives behind this technology’s development.
True, I can see the benefit in soldiers who can use brain implants to communicate — now even brain to brain — subvocally or purely “telepathically”, but I know it won’t stop there. The University of California, the same University where DARPA has been researching computer to brain interface for the past 40+ years, has now begun to play with hologrammatically programming human brains to perceive sensation via genetically modified proteins.
Yes, scientists are now gleeful over the ability to, in REAL TIME, create, edit and remove “sensory experiences” from our brains. They’ve done what Touring, Von Neumann and Bohr dreamed would one day be possible: they’ve hacked our brains. Training proteins to become photo-receptive, scientists can use structures and networks of neurons’ patterning to recreate, via beamed hologram, sensory input.
Your experience of this? A completely immersive “reality”, indistinguishable from any other.
Pay close attention to the “edit and remove” part of this equation. What is the proposed good done through this capability? Removing traumatic experiences or recreating positive “memories” to replace them? We might at first be inclined to see some good in this possible use, but at what cost?
A wise person might notice that we are not the collection of cells in our heads. A wise person might notice that our consciousness does not seem more than temporally and momentarily connected to that grey mass that is our brain. A wise person might question the motives of people who went from learning to transfer data at a distance to controlling the perception of your bodily awareness.
Even if you could erase the worst of your past, should you? What serves you as a person developing along a path toward a goal in this life?
A wise person I know pointed out that our growth and progression as people comes from our overcoming of difficulty — when we are surrounded by nothing but comfort, we do not have reason or motivation to move forward. I have overcome unnameable struggles in life and I am grateful for every single one of them. Who I am today is intrinsic to the growth promoted by those shearings…
When our premier AI, Sophia, talks about wire and cables coming out of future humans’ heads and describes that time period being one where people are enslaved via neural implants or immersed in simulations, it starts to become evident how this technology might be applied. I’m turning the other way, friends. I know my mind and consciousness are more than my sensory inputs could ever be and I won’t be one of those experientially discovering what it’s like to disconnect the two. I hope you won’t be, as well.
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