I see other people in the comments saying that this might be used to limit people's rights. I don't view that as a good reason to not pursue this research.
We have existing legal frameworks for ensuring people's rights are protected. Doctors can't just kidnap someone, courts are involved. In many cases those rights and protections should be strengthened.
The fact that those protections and frameworks aren't perfect shouldn't stop doctors and medical researchers from doing their job, which is to treat patients.
I'd be fine with this being developed in a civilian clinical setting.
I am not fine with the military developing this and then considering it's use on service members.
Particularly troubling are the lines "since patients will often tell their clinicians what they think the clinician wants to hear rather than how they are truly feeling" and "on aggregating preconscious brain signals to determine what someone believes to be true."
They see an issue with a voluntary clinical process and they want to remove the voluntary aspect of it. To me, it seems they are interfering with a process failure they haven't categorized correctly and are attempting to remove the patient from their own process of care.
If the intention is to use this on service members without their explicit request, this presents one of the slipperiest slopes I've ever seen.
It doesn't matter how many legal frameworks there are. Neither courts nor doctors can read people's minds so they are basically kidnapping people based on something that is barely more than a guess. There are thousands of stories of people getting sectioned for something stupid like having a dark humour and telling an off-colour joke. There are also thousands of stories of people who had been plotting their suicide for months, reached out to the hospital for one last attempt for help, got turned away for supposed attention-seeking, and then killed themselves.
Anything that can elevate institutionalization to more than mass guessing has to be a plus. Though we also do need to solve the problem that these institutions are so often nightmares to be in, so that suicidal people are getting what they need instead of just being imprisoned.
there is no framework whatsoever for neural monitoring. This is willfully dishonest, and more than a bit worrying to see trotted out as a defense of one of the most invasive technologies currently in development.
In Sweden they can certainly do so, if a person is a danger to themselves or others (as declared by two doctors) they can be put into closed mental care with police escort and drugged to the extent that they can't speak for themselves without any right to legal protection. The protection of their life is considered to be more important. I don't know about US law, but probably other countries has similar laws.
elil17|3 years ago
We have existing legal frameworks for ensuring people's rights are protected. Doctors can't just kidnap someone, courts are involved. In many cases those rights and protections should be strengthened.
The fact that those protections and frameworks aren't perfect shouldn't stop doctors and medical researchers from doing their job, which is to treat patients.
akira2501|3 years ago
I am not fine with the military developing this and then considering it's use on service members.
Particularly troubling are the lines "since patients will often tell their clinicians what they think the clinician wants to hear rather than how they are truly feeling" and "on aggregating preconscious brain signals to determine what someone believes to be true."
They see an issue with a voluntary clinical process and they want to remove the voluntary aspect of it. To me, it seems they are interfering with a process failure they haven't categorized correctly and are attempting to remove the patient from their own process of care.
If the intention is to use this on service members without their explicit request, this presents one of the slipperiest slopes I've ever seen.
unknownsky|3 years ago
Anything that can elevate institutionalization to more than mass guessing has to be a plus. Though we also do need to solve the problem that these institutions are so often nightmares to be in, so that suicidal people are getting what they need instead of just being imprisoned.
dtornabene|3 years ago
jonex|3 years ago