{"id":620332,"date":"2023-03-21T09:48:50","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T14:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/21\/your-brain-may-not-be-private-much-longer\/"},"modified":"2023-03-21T09:48:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T14:48:50","slug":"your-brain-may-not-be-private-much-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/21\/your-brain-may-not-be-private-much-longer\/","title":{"rendered":"Your brain may not be private much longer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you\u2019ve ever wished your brain was more user-friendly, neurotechnology might seem like a dream come true. It\u2019s all about offering you ways to hack your brain<\/a>, getting it to do more of what you want and less of what you don\u2019t want. <\/p>\n

There are \u201cnootropics<\/a>\u201d \u2014 also known as \u201csmart drugs\u201d or \u201ccognitive enhancers\u201d \u2014 pills that supposedly give your brain a boost. There\u2019s neurofeedback, a tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves; research has shown<\/a> it has the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD. There\u2019s brain stimulation, which uses electric currents to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior; it\u2019s shown promise<\/a> in treating severe depression by disrupting depression-linked neural activity.<\/p>\n

Oh, and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on brain-computer interfaces that could pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words<\/a> in real time, which could one day allow you to control your phone or computer with just your thoughts.<\/p>\n

Some of these technologies can offer very valuable help to people who need it. Brain-computer interfaces, for example, are already helping some paralyzed people<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But neurotechnology can also seriously threaten privacy and freedom of thought. In China, the government is mining data from some employees\u2019 brains by having them wear caps that scan their brainwaves<\/a> for anxiety, rage, or fatigue. <\/p>\n

Lest you think other countries are above this kind of mind-reading, police worldwide have been exploring \u201cbrain-fingerprinting\u201d technology<\/a>, which analyzes automatic responses that occur in our brains when we encounter stimuli we recognize. The claim is that this could enable police to interrogate a suspect\u2019s brain; his brain responses would be more negative for faces or phrases he doesn\u2019t recognize than for faces or phrases he does recognize. The tech is scientifically questionable<\/a>, yet India\u2019s police have used it since 2003, Singapore\u2019s police bought it in 2013, and the Florida State Police signed a contract to use it in 2014<\/a>. <\/p>\n

All these developments worry Nita Farahany, an ethicist and lawyer at Duke University and the author of a new book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology<\/em><\/a>. As an Iranian American, she\u2019s particularly scared of a future where governments read minds and punish people for thinking about, say, organizing to overthrow an authoritarian regime. \u201cWill George Orwell\u2019s dystopian vision of thoughtcrime become a modern-day reality?\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

Yet Farahany is no Luddite: She believes we should be free to embrace neurotechnology if we choose <\/strong>\u2014 but only if we also update our laws so we can reap its benefits without courting its risks. She argues that we need to revamp human rights law with a focus on protecting our cognitive liberty \u2014 the right to self-determination over our brains, our thoughts, our inner world. <\/p>\n

I talked to Farahany about the ethical dilemmas raised by emerging neurotechnologies. Should you have the right to enhance your brain however you want? What about erasing painful memories, \u00e0 la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em>? A transcript of our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, follows. <\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

Neurotechnology seems like it\u2019s on a collision course with freedom of thought. Do you think that huge risk is counterbalanced by the benefits we stand to reap?<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

The risks are profound. And the gaps in our existing rights are deeply problematic. So, where do I come out on the balance? I\u2019m a little bit of a tech inevitabilist. I think the idea that you can somehow stop the train and say, \u201cOn balance, maybe this isn\u2019t better for humanity and therefore we shouldn\u2019t introduce it\u201d \u2014 I just don\u2019t see it working. <\/p>\n

Maybe people will say, \u201cMy brain is too sacred and the risks are so profound that I\u2019m not willing to do it myself,\u201d but with the ways that people unwittingly give up information all the time and the benefits that are promised to them, I think that\u2019s unlikely. I think we\u2019ve got to carve out a different approach.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

I hear the idea that maybe we can\u2019t or don\u2019t want to ban the tech wholesale, but I do want to push back a bit on this idea of tech inevitability. That strikes me as a myth that the tech world likes to tell itself<\/a> and all of us. History is full of examples of technologies that we\u2019ve either decided not to build or that we\u2019ve built but placed very tight restrictions on \u2014 nuclear weapons, genetic engineering. <\/p>\n

I tend to think more in terms of, how can we shape the incentive structure so that companies or governments will be less likely to roll out certain technologies? And of course, part of the incentive structure has to be law. <\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

Let me respond to [the idea of placing] tight regulations around it. Here\u2019s the thing that keeps me from going there: We have an unbelievable burden of neurological disease and mental illness worldwide. Even as our physical health overall improves, our mental health is deteriorating, and depression rates are skyrocketing.<\/p>\n

I think we need urgently to address that. And part of the reason that we haven\u2019t urgently addressed that is because we haven\u2019t invested the same, and put brain health and wellness on the same level, as all the rest of our physical health. And I think empowering people with information to be able to take their mental health and brain health into their own hands could be transformational for those trends. My hope is to find some way to make that possible.<\/p>\n

The dystopian possibilities of this technology are off the charts, but so is the possibility of finally claiming cognitive freedom in the sense of true mental health and well-being. <\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

What exactly is cognitive freedom or cognitive liberty to you?<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

It\u2019s a right from<\/em> and a right to<\/em>. Overall, I define it as the right to self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. That means a right from interference, and a right to access, change, and improve our own brains. That\u2019s maybe why I come out differently than some people who might just say, let\u2019s tightly regulate this or just ban it.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

In terms of a freedom to<\/em>, there are all kinds of cognitive enhancements that people might be interested in. I\u2019m thinking of nootropics or smart drugs, but there are also other types of neurotechnology that people could potentially use \u2014 neurofeedback, brain stimulation.<\/p>\n

Even if we imagine that we\u2019re in a world where these technologies are equally accessible to all, I still wonder: Should workers actually be forbidden from cognitive enhancements because it creates a norm that others might then feel subject to? Will the pressure to enhance become coercive so people end up using smart drugs or devices even though they didn\u2019t want to?<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

It\u2019s a good question. That especially becomes problematic if we\u2019re talking about drugs that are unhealthy, right? Part of the reason that we ban steroids in sports is because we want to protect players in a kind of paternalistic way \u2026 because that can have serious health consequences.<\/p>\n

But I want you to imagine if there aren\u2019t health consequences. Let\u2019s not talk about methamphetamines; let\u2019s talk about drugs that have very clean safety profiles. Then ask the same question of, if everybody feels pressure because everybody else has improved their health and well-being or their cognitive abilities, what\u2019s wrong with that world?<\/p>\n

And if what\u2019s wrong with that world is that we feel like we\u2019ve increased the rat race, and made us all feel like we have to be more productive all the time, then what we\u2019re complaining about is the structures and underlying forces in society, not the drugs.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

I think the issue would be, who gets to decide what counts as improvement? I was once having a conversation with some folks in the Bay Area. We were talking about smart drugs and everyone at the table was saying, \u201cIf you put a pill in front of me right now that could send up my IQ from, let\u2019s say, 100 to 150, I\u2019d want to take that!\u201d I was an outlier saying, \u201cActually, I don\u2019t necessarily want to be smarter. Smarter is not necessarily happier or wiser. And I\u2019m also worried about the implicit coercion thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

For me, it all comes back to the same question: Do you have a right to self-determination over your own brain? So to your question, \u201cWho gets to decide?\u201d \u2014 I think you<\/em> get to decide. I think you should be the one who decides whether or not you enhance or slow it down, or you don\u2019t do any of those things at all.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m writing against the grain, right? There is what I think is a very strong paternalistic drive when it comes to health, even in mainstream academia and bioethics, where people are, for the most part, extremely liberal. And I come out differently. I come out believing that giving people autonomy over their brains and mental experiences is critical.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

There is truth to that, but at the same time, I think you\u2019re writing very much with the grain in the sense that the dominant mode of thinking since the Enlightenment is that the individual is the proper seat of autonomy and decision-making. And you\u2019re very much arguing for individual autonomy. <\/p>\n

I classically think of myself as someone who is very ardently pro that! But I\u2019m also aware that even people like John Stuart Mill, who was really harping on liberty and the individual, were simultaneously acknowledging that we\u2019ve got to have liberty, but only up to the point where it hits upon society\u2019s interests and maybe harms others.<\/p>\n

So far we\u2019ve mostly been talking about enhancing the brain, but there\u2019s this question about whether cognitive liberty means I should also be allowed to diminish my brain. I right away think of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em> and the ability to erase painful memories.<\/p>\n

In your book, you talk about this specific neurotech technique, DecNef, that can potentially be used to process traumatic memory. A person sits inside a scanner and recalls a traumatic memory. Machine learning algorithms map the areas of the brain that that activates, and then the person basically erases those memories through a process of neural feedback. So the idea is that neurotech may offer hope for healing traumatic memory, or maybe even prevent it from getting established in the brain to begin with.<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

Yeah, I write about this because it\u2019s very personal to me. … I give the example of our second daughter, Callista, who died. And our experience of being in the hospital with her and how traumatic that was and the PTSD that I suffered for years as a result afterwards. And I tried therapy. I tried the drugs [like propranolol, a medication usually prescribed for high blood pressure that was studied \u2014 in vain, it turned out \u2014 to see if it could prevent PTSD by disrupting memory consolidation]. I have not yet tried DecNef, but I would if I had the opportunity to and was still suffering from PTSD.<\/p>\n

It works in the same way that, when you are most symptomatic of intractable depression, you have a particular pattern of neurons firing in your brain \u2014 and then through implicit reactivation of those same pathways, you could rewire the brain by training it over and over again to have a different outcome. The precision with which you can see the activation patterns and then use that information to rewire it is profound.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

It was really striking to me that you wrote that you would try DecNef if given the chance. That set me off wondering for myself personally. On the one hand, it sounds amazing, this idea of neurotech healing traumatic memory or even preventing it from getting established in the brain to begin with.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I was thinking about how my dad passed away about a year ago. In the last year of his life, I was caring for him and it was really intense. I think probably there was some kind of trauma incurred there. And as a result, the past year has been one of the hardest years of my life.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d asked me earlier whether I want to sign up for this thing that will prevent that mental anguish, I might have been tempted. But a year later, having gone through that suffering, I actually think there was a lot of growth that thankfully I was able to come out of it with. More self-compassion and compassion. It reminds me of this concept of post-traumatic growth, where people come out of an experience with new capacities \u2014 the flip side of PTSD. And in the book you also write that as a result of your experience, you feel like you came out with more compassion and you\u2019re a stronger ethicist.<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

Yeah, I don\u2019t think I would\u2019ve used DecNef ex ante. There is something really important about suffering. It has been core to the human condition. It helps us to prevail. So much poetry and music and everything else comes from suffering.<\/p>\n

I say I would have used it because the trauma echoed for years and I couldn\u2019t sleep, and it was vivid in ways that… I couldn\u2019t function. I would never want to forget Callista or what we went through with Callista. But living through it \u2014 from the emotional power of it, to the fear, to the smells, to the echoes of the sounds in my brain \u2014 I did not need it at that level.<\/p>\n

And so if DecNef could help turn it down so that when I remembered it, I could remember as I do now, with fondness … but not literally relive it \u2014 I would, I would do that. I would regain that time to not relive that over and over again.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

Absolutely. That makes a ton of sense. This is something that I was genuinely struggling with while reading, because on the one hand I felt this sense of, I don\u2019t want to cheat myself out of an opportunity for potential post-traumatic growth, but also, I think there really is such a thing as too much suffering.<\/p>\n

The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has a phrase I really like: \u201cNo mud, no lotus.\u201d Meaning, some suffering can be fertile ground for growth. But when he was presented with the question of how much we should suffer, he said, \u201cNot too much!\u201d Because that can just be like a landslide that we don\u2019t know how to pull ourselves out of. <\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

I think that\u2019s right. I hope that people\u2019s choices are to not eliminate experiencing sadness and suffering. I don\u2019t want that. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s good for humanity. I also don\u2019t think it\u2019s up to me to decide for individuals what suffering they do and don\u2019t want to go through.<\/p>\n

Sigal Samuel<\/h4>\n

Absolutely. And I want to underline that treating PTSD or depression is not the same as eliminating suffering. We should absolutely treat things like PTSD or depression. But I\u2019m really not sure about the quest to eliminate suffering, as some people want to do in the transhumanist movement \u2014 the movement that\u2019s all about using tech to usher in a new phase of human evolution. <\/p>\n

You ask in your book: \u201cIf your brain had a switch to turn off suffering, would you use it?\u201d I wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Nita Farahany <\/h4>\n

I wouldn\u2019t. But I would turn down the volume for the years that followed [with PTSD], because I didn\u2019t need it at that volume. <\/p>\n

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