My Comments on the article “100% Honest, Transparency, Disclosure – is this the future that we want?”, related to the futuristic scenario when mind reading technologies become available.

Submitted by Neeraj Mital (not verified) on Sun, 05/13/2012 – 8:24am.
The article is fascinating and thought provoking. However, I mostly differ. Here is my take on the implications of mind reading technologies.

I can think of following scenarios and their combinations.

1. No privacy. We have full access to every one’s all thoughts. – This is complete intrusion of privacy and will clearly lead to disaster. In a simple scenario, we could mind read anyone’s bank pw and transfer money.

2. Full privacy. We have ability to open ‘gates to selective thoughts’ to the world. This is equivalent to grabbing the mike and making an announcement, or posting a message on internet, except that it makes that process more efficient. Technically speaking, it is another way of ‘broadcasting’ a message.

3. Full privacy with ability to transfer selective thoughts to selected audience. This is equivalent to one on one or small group conversations or like having a phone conversation. Again, it makes this process more efficient (eliminates need for talking), but nothing more.

There also seems to be some mix up in the article between how we human being like to communicate, vs. how we can communicate. Let’s take author’s example of two people pairing up for relationship. This process can be fairly instantaneous even today; if everyone in a meeting took the mike and announced the person(s) they wanted to partner with. But we as humans don’t do that. Finding right partnerships is not complicated because we don’t have means of communication, which mind reading technology can solve. Finding right partner is complicated because we are psychologically complex beings to begin with.

Neeraj

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