Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[Katarn]

This system dangerous (even though it doesn't exist (?)) cuz it would make someone's else's decisions - yours. Even on little scale. What brand you would prefer, what political views you have, etc. pretty much how you said about 'idea-virus'. While concept itself can be used for good, it WILL be used for bad things.

[Urge to re-watch Equilibrium intensifies]

I know, that there people were stripped-of emotions. That's similar.

[Guest]

@Katarn
I think that if this is feasible, it's going to need to be considered from a wide variety of perspectives, and it's better to firmly establish it as something only to be performed by doctors. Not that this has stopped America from doing eugenics before, but they're held to some standard, at least. It would obviously need heavy regulation. When it comes to use in the justice system, there's already precedent - we are explicitly allowed to deny people's rights after a fair trial, and we do so already, by imprisoning, killing, and coercing them in various ways. We already make their decisions for them once it has been proved that they cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves. Equilibrium's state was bad because they treated the whole of society as irresponsible, if you will, and needing to be controlled - obvious totalitarianism. Imprisoning the entire population of a country would be similarly bad, if not worse, but it's an important part of how we separate criminals from the rest of society/punish them. It's also used to treat some people with mental health problems, in some areas (involuntary committal is not practiced everywhere).

Moreover, a corrupt state can already influence your political views and what brands you buy: they can shoot you or imprison you if you're suspected of opposing them, and they can soft- or hard-ban products that compete with the ones they favor. Not to mention that, by controlling the media, they already can very effectively shape your opinions and worldview. I'm not sure it'd be disingenuous to claim that there's only a difference of degree when it comes to directly tampering with someone's mind, compared to directly tampering with what that mind can access. Lastly, I'd question whether or not this would even be a cost- or time-efficient means of controlling the populace when compared to a box filled with rats, for instance. We're talking brain surgery, here - it'd require a specialist, specialized tools and equipment. The main advantage when compared to cognitive behavioral therapies would seem to be the whole implanted skills/memories angle, I suppose. The tech, techniques, and equipment for doing this doesn't exist yet, though, and that means it likely could be kept under wraps and away from various states with a poor record on human rights, much like nuclear technology. Moreover, if America made it proprietary, it could create a wave of medical tourism to here, generating revenue. Which would be completely unethical, but in a different way than mind control.

Anyway, point is, the ability to change how people react to various stimuli without having to torture or drug them first is not itself going to usher in an dystopia. Those ends are already achievable, it's only the means that changes, AFAICT. The ability to create false memories and implant skills in people would be relatively new, depending on how conspiracy-theory-minded you are, but would only be another tool in a despot's arsenal, one I must imagine offers them less power-per-dollar than a paid-in-food grunt with a pair of pliers, or a state-run news network, or a Great Firewall. Not to mention that the latter two also create a lot less backlash internationally and locally than a program of reprogramming dissidents. You could use it on leaders of dissident parties, limiting the scope and thus limiting costs and the likelihood of discovery, and thereby control your opposition. There still would probably be easier ways of doing that, though, plus you'd have to grab said opposition leader without anyone noticing either the grabbing or his/her absence. Could pretend that you had them arrested, and then freed, but remember that you'd be doing this in a world where mind control is now possible, and therefore any person who disappears for a bit and then reappears and starts acting different (less radical, less capable, more radical, whatever) is going to fall under suspicion. Plus, an ineffective opposition loses members to parties with more promise.

Anyway, I'm getting into boring old thought exercises and stuff. IMO the danger is in the abuse, not in the technology itself. Strict regulation can minimize the potential for abuse in most states. There are large potential benefits. Therefore, I think research should be done.

[Guest]

@Memory Modification
Gotta say, I'm kind of a fan of the idea. Not just for relieving PTSD, or the more theoretical sleep-learning/"I know kung fu" skill downloading, but even for the mind-fuckery. People are always lamenting how our justice system fails to reform people, and this could be a possible treatment tool for folks with seriously twisted minds. Sure, it's a bit Clockwork Orange (okay, it's exactly Clockwork Orange), but given that the alternatives are locking them up forever or killing them, I'm not sure that the human rights issue would be as much of a concern at that level. Maybe even for lesser crimes - I mean, what do you call anger management classes and Alcoholics Anonymous if not an attempt at changing the way someone's mind works? We give people antipsychotics and confine them involuntarily if we believe they're a threat to others or themselves - if the tech proves safe and effective on humans, it should be an option. Voluntary, maybe, as an alternative to other systems like the standard "spend years in jail getting indoctrinated into the Aryan Brotherhood, who will teach you important skills you can use once you're on the outside, like how to smuggle heroin in your bum." Not sure people would go for it, though, the mind is pretty sanctified, ya know? Plus, all this is predicated on this kind of thing working on humans and being reasonably safe. And even testing either of those is going to be  minefield.

You think when we condemn someone to a life or death sentence we're trying to reform them? Why would you think that is the case? These individuals will never enter the general public again. At best we're trying to give the public a sense of safety and family and friends of the victim(s) a sense of peace for the life taken from them. This is fair. Take someone's life you forfeit your own.

[Guest]

@Last
The point about life in prison and death sentences is that we already are fine with denying people's "human rights" - and frankly more important ones than "enjoying an undisturbed illusion of free will." Looking at it from a societal perspective now, though, lex talionis (law of retaliation) is not much more than a diversion for vengeance-seeking victims and the more bloody-minded members of the public. If it has a preventative value, it isn't seemingly all that much greater than that of other laws. So, let's look at it from a protective standpoint - we kill or lock up forever people we think will never be fit to rejoin society in any capacity. With the technology about which we are speculating, this would be an especially incorrect belief (whether or not it's accurate now is open for debate, I suppose, more or less on a case-by-case basis). Therefore, we must weight the value of a human life that could be made into a productive member of society against the desire for blood of the people they wronged. If the point is that the living victims of abhorrent crimes and the families of the dead need to see suffering or death, then there seem to be two easy options: we could torture the perpetrator in the process of reformation by causing them to feel extreme guilt for what they've done, which would likely end up happening anyway; or we could offer the injured people counseling and free treatment of their own to help them get past the trauma. Or both. That's better than what they can get now - seeing an honest admission of guilt and regret from the person who did them wrong, and getting treatment for their suffering. The ability to poke around in people's minds should change how the justice system works, in my opinion.

[Guest]

@OAC Alright, I don't really want to argue it. Though I disagree that the punishment for crimes that recieve life and death should be a second chance. That hardly seems like a punishment at all to me.

Took a crack at human Morning Glory, came out bleh.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f38/17/50/40/26/human_10.jpg

[RoboRed]

Link isn't working for me.

[Guest]

Fixed.

Unrelated anyone else got the HoTS beta? I wanna give it a try with a full team some time.

[Harmony Ltd.]

@OAC Alright, I don't really want to argue it. Though I disagree that the punishment for crimes that recieve life and death should be a second chance. That hardly seems like a punishment at all to me.

Look at it this way:

You were going to kill them, or put them in prison for the rest of their life. Both options cost a lot of money.

In the end it is far more efficient to re-purpose them as productive members of society, in a way such that they'll serve the greater interests of the community if we have a way to do so while ensuring they will not be a danger to others or themselves.

The only reason we have capital punishment as it stands now is only because we don't that capacity yet. Revenge is no basis for justice.

[Guest]

Well, why not give them phones and manuals? Then they can be customer support. There, productive members of soceity. I'm not sure exactly why you or OAC think that being behind bars needs to stop a member of society from producing a product or providing a service.

Hell, I remember a show in which prisoners trained service dogs. It was true that the prisoners eligible for the program couldn't have been convicted of a violent crime, but they were also more useful members to society than quite a few people I know. By the way, the people I'm referencing are not behind bars.

[Harmony Ltd.]

If people have been condemned to capital punishment, wouldn't that mean that they have been deemed "iredeemable" by normal means?

Otherwise it would mean that Capital punishment is misapplied if we condemn to it people who could still redeem themselves.


As for what you suggest, this is already the case. In fact, a very large part of the inmates in the US are used as a discounted workforce sold to a number of companies by the industrial prison complex. Problem being that what little money they earn being almost entirely re-absorbed by the prisons as inmates need to buy a number of needed commodities from them.

Which by the way and considering the demographic composition of the inmate population in the US leads people to compare this situation with another inglorious institution of the United States of times past...

[Guest]

When you're arguing for "reprogramming" a human I'm pretty sure you don't get to argue the ethics of anything. Remember what side you're on. And what does the make up have to do with anything? At all? Does the make up of the population change when we're just fucking with their brains.

The main pro for doing this is that you wanna make productive members of society. Well turns out by your own admission they are productive, they provide a service or produce a product for society.

And comparing it to slavery falls apart when you consider that someone convicted of third degree murder is going to be very limited in where he can choose to work. Unless we're getting rid of the social stigma of murder as well, or even worse we're going to have a murderer protection program where we give them new identities and work to move them where no one has heard of them. And there goes the cost efficiancy you were claiming this would have, not that it was there to begin with. An MRI is a very expensive piece of medical tech running anywhere from 150K to 1.2 million. And that's not considering the skilled workers to run the machine and the even more skilled workers to administer the procedure. And you would still need to house the prisoners as they waited to be processed.

Also why are you so heavily focusing on capital punishment? Looking it up 18 of the US states have abolished it. From what I understand it's not even relevant in France or most of Europe for that matter. So if you murder in the US there's a good chance that you won't get it. How many people even got the death sentence last year? When I looked it up I only found 550 (about half that number was actually executed) though I don't trust the source.

[Tytan]

Lordy. All this arguing over an article about how some scientists may or may not have developed a way to affect how nice may or may not feel about a memory they may or may not have, and will more than likely have no practical applications beyond some water cooler debates.

@Harmony/ prison work force: You forget that all criminals sent to prison, wrongful or otherwise, have been lawfully deprived of their liberties. If they are indeed innocent they can apply for a retrial with a different judge and jury.

The effectiveness of the system doesn't stop it from being THE system.

[Harmony Ltd.]

It seems we have a different vision of what is a productive member of society.

You seem to measure a citizen's "productivity" in term of what economic output it provides for a privately owned corporation.

I see a citizen's "productivity" in society at large as being the sum total and synergetic combination of its social links, services provided, and more generally, all the consequences of every actions. For example, while retired people may be a net drain in dollar value on the economy (a claim in itself debatable), they provide a number of services for the economy in term of taking care of grandkids, participating in their education, sharing their experience, participating in community life, etc...

Society will have invested time, effort and resources on every citizens, no matter their social strata or the actions they took from their own free will.

From there, and if we accept that people being condemned to death or life imprisonment are stripped of their most basic human rights (respectively the right to live and the right to be free of going wherever you want to), then it is only logical that stripping them of their "Free Will", at least temporarily (as long as their reformation isn't complete) is a more desirable course of action; as they'll probably be more productive overall as model citizens in the open world than as a pile of dead decaying meat or locked behind bars.

Regarding technological constraints, they are irrelevant here as I'm talking only in term of hypotheticals and "ideal" states of affair.


@Tytan: this is factually true, yes. However, even if the system was perfect, which we all know it isn't, I exposed why I believe it to be preferable to re-insert, re-educate, and if necessary to re-program citizens rather than to destroy / discard them.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Btw, as far as I'm concerned, this is a discussion / exchange of idea. So it is useless trying to score points as I don't give a rat's ass about that.

[Frost]

To be fair, if committing a  serious, violent crime is "punished" by job training and placement, free medical care and now the fringe benefit of being able to virtually forget/change their past, one has to wonder how crime's exactly being deterred. 

[Tytan]

There's a point. Fuck criminals. They commit a crime, have the state pay a million dollars for their court case, and then they get to go to a fucking free resort where the only downsides are society hates you and there's the possibility of getting a dick in your butt.

relevant:

[Frost]

Yeah, that's something else I forgot-- they have a better chance of getting some ass than I do while they're in there.

[Downloaded Skill]

I can't help but disagree with the sentiment. The whole point of prison is to reform people and not everyone who goes to prison is guilty of a violent crime, there is still plenty of white collar crime and trumped up drug charges. People need to be able to go back onto the straight and narrow and the best way to do that is to give them useful skills so they can get a job and a chance to think about what they've done.

Is the current system perfect? No. Is it broken? I'd say yes, but the purpose of prison is to give people a second chance. If we're willing to so hard on people who have made mistakes to the point where they're not given a second chance then the whole prison system is completely pointless. People with no options to reintegrate into the civilian life will have no choice but to be criminals. Then they go through the entire system again and money was wasted accomplishing nothing. You might as well make every crime punishable by death.

These are people we're talking about, not mindless cattle. Most people aren't hardened career criminals and the stigma and being denied their rights is often a blow enough. Just as often as people make mistakes they can also do better, but if you don't give them the benefit of the doubt, don't give them the tools they need, and reject any attempts at reintegration then you might as well have just killed them and be done with it because they're going to be back in prison within 6 month and have harmed society in the mean time because they had no legitimate means of sustaining themselves.

[Downloaded Skill]

the purpose of prison is to give people a second chance.

Why do you say that?
Why are people given life in prison? Death in prison? There's minimum and maximum sentencing limits based on crimes. These are not set based on a psychologist's best guess on how long it takes a person to be reformed. You do the crime, you do the time.
Law exists to serve justice, which shares little ideological difference with revenge. These people are being punished. Any attempts at reforming people behind bars is just to attempt to discourage repeat offenses, which helps no one.

Society benefits from punishing its destructive deviants. It helps keep the whole thing stable.

In regards to reprogramming people as opposed to just killing them on death row, we don't even mandate death row inmates be organ donors. It's all very confusing what the morality's supposed to be in that corner of the legal institution.

Can't it do both? I do agree that justice is also one of the primary points of the justice system, but not mutually exclusive. But you can't just focus on the most extreme punishments and then say that the extremes are the primary purpose. A similar logic was used to say that the primary purpose of Planned Parenthood was abortion when it's obviously not. That said I have a strong loathing for minimum sentences. It prevents the use of discretion on the part of judges and provides incentives to lock up just about anyone in addition to biting the tax payer in the rear. Draconian punishments help no one, sensible punishments do.

How does discouraging repeat offenses help no one? The prison system costs money and keeping people out of it prevents those costs. It also allows those people to function to the benefit of society which helps everyone. People who go to prison aren't some chaotic evil corrupters who have no purpose in life other than to cause strife, they're people and sometimes people make mistakes. They pay their time and then return to their lives, hopefully to not repeat those mistakes. Just because some people do doesn't mean the reforming aspect of prison should be tossed to the side.

[Guest]

I see a citizen's "productivity" in society at large as being the sum total and synergetic combination of its social links, services provided, and more generally, all the consequences of every actions. For example, while retired people may be a net drain in dollar value on the economy (a claim in itself debatable), they provide a number of services for the economy in term of taking care of grandkids, participating in their education, sharing their experience, participating in community life, etc...

If this your definition of productivity then why don't murders have negative productivity? Through their actions they have shattered and severed soial links to someone who again through their actions and choices no longer exists society.

If your just talking about ideal than there's no point in even having discussion. Because very clearly your ideal of this is that there is no downside.

[Guest]

Increasingly nihilistic thought experiments:

In other news, Terry Pratchett has died, some nutter German biologist is being forced to put up after he didn't shut up about his belief that measles was psychosomatic, and other biologists (marine ones) are finally getting their collective shit together - by which I mean collecting all the different catalogues of marine life into one big catalogue. Cthulhu is not on this list, but one snail is on it 113 times, apparently - this seems like an oversight. The compendium is called WoRMS, which sounds like some sort of digital-age Necronomicon.

[Frost]

Revenge is a massive part of our culture--a decent look at fiction produced in the last several centuries can tell you that. The notion of a justice, specifically, being a form of "institutionalized vengeance" isn't to deter future crime and make sure prisoners have nice happy, productive future--it's more to provide the aggrieved with a measure of closure and catharsis so they don't decide to take the matter into their own hands. In parts of the world where the justice system is weak, 'cycles of vengeance' can last decades between groups of people. The families of the victims are pretty much why we have a punishment-based system, primarily. 

The notion of "fuck them; we're giving Bob the Serial Arsonist a job at a car wash" sounds all fine and fucking dandy on paper until the Bob the Serial Arsonist turns up in a ditch with his skull caved in, and now his wife's grabbing her gat to go fuck up the people who had an obvious bone to pick with Bob (the Serial Arsonist)

[O. Hinds]

I'll just point out that, once the mind-editing technology has matured to a significantly high reliability and low resource cost, the detrimental-to-society natural feelings of those seeking revenge need not be a problem. Well, of course, once it really got good enough, the crimes would just be extremely rare system glitches to begin with. Assuming that we were even still in interacting meat bodies by that point, as Overlong Analysis Cobalt mentioned.

[O. Hinds]

Um, of course. This technology is one of those that has the potential to allow us to fix human nature. It's on the path to full uploading but likely easier to achieve, and, while it lacks the persistence of genetic engineering, it allows much more on-the-fly reconfiguring.
...I'm guessing from the way you phrased the question, though (and the fact that you asked it at all) that this view is not so common as I had thought?

[Frost]

Yeah, sure. All free will should certainly be an illusion managed by the government's mind-altering technology. It's been too long since I've read Brave New World, after all

[Guest]

Yeah, uh, I'm uncomfortable with Government fucking with my head don't think they should have that kind of power.

[Downloaded Skill]

What is it with you people and assuming the only crimes worth considering are the heinous crimes like murder and arson when the majority of crimes are drug charges and comparatively minor violent crimes like assault and burglary? You can cite the worst all day but the reality of it is not everyone who goes to jail is a serial killer or an incarnation of evil. Treating the majority of people badly because of a minority issue is ridiculous. It's hyperbole trying to justify a worldview when the statistics don't match it. This is Kattlarv logic and I thought you two would hold yourselves to higher standards than that.

Even if revenge is a part of our culture it does not make it right and a majority of these crimes aren't going to inspire vigilante justice. Why are we pointing at the 10% of crime to justify not changing ANYTHING when the 90% of crime is utterly banal run of the mill stuff. Are burglars and drug users or possessors going to get lynched in the streets? I don't think so. Even if there were heinous crimes are people really going to be seeking vengeance in the 15 to 25 YEARS it will take someone to get out of jail, if they even do get out of jail? How will they know if they got out on parole? People don't live in fear or anger for years out of their lives, once the measures are taken and security or justice is assured they move on. Remember the terror people had about flying when 9/11 happened? The measures were taken and now most people don't even think twice about flying. These assumptions are tenuous at best and only serve to prevent people from trying to fix anything. It promotes stagnation and lets these problems fester. It's cynicism like this that prevents anything from changing.

[O. Hinds]

No, no, I agree. We should all be absolutely flawless :D
The definition for which should be readily apparent, as well.
There could hardly be a more simple and straightforward application of this technology, nor vision of the future.

Oh, certainly there would be multiple competing ideologies (assuming that one group didn't manage to get such a lead with this technology that no one could catch up), but the worst case scenario there seems to me to be at least not much worse than the current status quo, and possibly a bit better.  If one ideology wins over the others, then there won't be anyone still disagreeing that whatever they say is the right way is indeed the right way.  Of course, there's the risk that, through blind bad luck, the victorious ideology would be one bad at survival, but, again, the long-term prospects for current-status-quo humanity don't look too good either.

Getting to that point would be a bit difficult, of course.  Despite lawmakers being, along members of the security services and regulatory agencies and the like, natural second targets after criminals and the mentally ill, most of them probably would not vote to have their minds altered to improve their honesty and loyalty.  One would also probably need multiple modifying groups per ideology in the beginning so that they could check each others' work and keep an eye on each other.

Edit:
If possible, we should be condensed into a single consciousness, as well. Or, at least, something like it. A hivemind, if you will.
Yes, this sounds quite splendid, indeed!

Well, I don't think I currently have enough data to speculate on how close that would be to optimal, but I could certainly see it being a good idea, yes.

Yeah, sure. All free will should certainly be an illusion managed by the government's mind-altering technology. It's been too long since I've read Brave New World, after all

As I mentioned earlier, I still somehow haven't gotten around to reading it. I did mention it earlier in this conversation, though, as, based on what I've read of it, that sort of thing certainly seems like a possibility. This could be better, though, depending on how well the technology can be developed.

Regarding free will, well, that's another philosophical debate, but personally I think it's already an illusion, and one that could stand to be under better management.

And yes, I realize that you (plural) are saying these sorts of things in jest...

Yeah, uh, I'm uncomfortable with Government fucking with my head don't think they should have that kind of power.

You'd want to get the government itself done before the general population for just that sort of reason.

Of course, there's a lot still in this that I'm not sure how to make practical, but the technology itself is nowhere near ready anyway and might not be before something else comes along. Still, so very much potential... which apparently I and the rest of you were thinking about rather differently?

[Guest]

Dead people shouldn't have rights; they're a not-walking, not-talking misnomer, in that they're not people (defining what a person is is a whole 'nother thing, but I don't think we'll find a viable school of thought that believes the dead should count).

Let me stop you right there, are you advocating for Necrophilia and Graverobbing? If the dead have no rights then who is this a crime against? Should it even be a crime? I would definitely say yeah.

[Frost]

First off, Skill, if we're going to have a civil discussion, calm your tits and ease up on the fucking butthurt. 

Secondly, theft, disorderly conduct, and other non-violent crimes are given lighter sentences than violent crimes--in a lot of cases, a virtual slap-on-the-wrist to keep them from doing so again. Such crimes, motivated by greed and oftentimes desperation, are hardly going to be deterred with job placement and education programs for the criminals.

And your "point" about vengeance is.....exactly what we're trying to say. Imprisonment and punishment of the victim would deter the aggrieved from seeking vengeance--it's the convicted, violent criminals being given advantages and perks that would provoke retribution.

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