Monday, November 20, 2006

Mind Wars on Diane Rehm   posted by amnestic @ 11/20/2006 10:58:00 AM
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Caught a little of Jonathan Moreno this morning. He's got a book out called Mind Wars that considers the implications of neuroscience research being funded by DARPA. Here and in another article I read he focuses on modafinil (branded as ProVigil) for USAF pilots. It's supposed to make you alert and cognitively unimpaired with less sleep. Sounds money to me. It is starting to be prescribed off-label to world travelers with jetlag.

When I saw a lecture about DARPA funded computational research to create smart battle robots, somebody asked about Asimov's rules for robots (i.e. don't harm humans). He was kind of laughed off. I think the possibility of robots that could have the type of volition that could back-fire on us is distant, is it something to ignore?

Another weird fantasy popped into my head while he was discussing remote-control. It seems like their might be an idea of giving soldiers neural implants. A nightmare future vision comes to mind of a captured soldier having his forcibly removed and badly patched. Speaking of remote control, check out wireless power.