Polygraphs for the elimination of thought-crimes?

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7987821/Mind-reading-machine-can-convert-thoughts-into-speech.html)

I think it is designed to eliminate "hate-thought", which could become hate-speech. It's often used to describe anything that contradicts left-wing radicalism.

Good rhyme, although I disagree with you as many people have a difficulty with thinking aloud. At least I often have had that difficulty and have been fired for it twice.

You're starting to wander in to pdg's territory methinks.

You have a meaningful point to make, but the satire is becoming the message rather than the medium.

MUST. DESTROY. ALL. UNIVERSES.

Well, that must be easy as it's only been expanding for 10,000 years under your model so it's significantly smaller.

I always wondered exactly who'd be in charge of interpreting my "biofeedback" - that seems like a terrible idea to me since to most people I probably seem like I'm chronically akward, sweaty palmed and inappropriately nerve-racked to begin with.

Once a policeman asked for my papers only because I looked nervous. A fMRI machine is more acurate than a polygraph to detect lies. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/noliemri/

a negative social reaction to rude speech is *not* the same as government control of speech, thought control, etc.

Sometimes it's not that everyone else is being overly PC - it's that the speaker is being an a**hole.

Sometimes it may be so, but is that always the case? I've found that, even though I'm not advocating racism or discrimination based on such irrelevant criteria as skin coloration or nationality, just having such keywords of taboo subjects in my posts tend to cause people to assume the worst and treat me as an "a**hole"©. Most of my threads, including this one, have been satirical - this one not even being about racism but instead about censorship. Satire seems to bode as well here as roast beef at at PETA convention.

It was worth reading that article link just to see the phrase "ethics of brain scanning" used. There's a whole new discussion thread right there!

So when a person is freaked out by having their body connected to a lie detector, or their head is inserted into a huge MRI machine and they are being asked horrific questions about child abuse, you think the readouts would indicate something strange?? Seems like a baaaad precedent to be setting up.

Although this thread is being presented as satire it is actually a piece somehow justifying technological totalitarianism in the area of "1984". Thee is no such thing as a "thought crime". It's the dream of a sick mind.

I'm pretty sure parakeet is being 100% sarcastic here and is just illustrating a point that we live in a world where we're all going to disagree about something – therefore we can choose to a) verbally attack/condemn each other in a totalitarian-style madness, or b) allow people to possess and determine their own emotions/thoughts as sovereign human beings.

I'm pretty sure he is advocating for choice B.

Correct.

People are going to disagree and the more the internal act of being offended at the words of another human being becomes more of a crime the more easily the internal act of getting offended will become.

It's sort of like a rich person saying "I'm starving" after just having eaten 2 hours earlier as compared to an unemployed person who hasn't been able to afford to eat for a week saying "I'm hungry". The rich person is more used to eating when they want to that if they were deprived of it they'd feel cheated instantly, whereas the unemployed person getting to eat a meal doesn't happen that often and saying "I'm hungry" for them is an understatement whereas saying "I'm starving" for the rich person is an overstatement.

Likewise, as the internal act of getting offended becomes more and more socially reprehensible, the more frivolous the items taken offense at will be. With more freedom of speech permitted, and unpunished, more offenses are bound to occur but recognition of what actually merits offense will be refined as well.

When I worked at McDonald's, for instance, there would often be customers offended at the slightest of things - like having to wait 2 minutes and 45 seconds while fries cooked in the deep fryer. Compare this to what the employees have to put up with near constantly - angry customers and managers who keep threatening their employment status. The customers enter with the attitude of aristocracy and the mindset that the people who wait upon them are servants, and as such any offense happening within the mind of a customer often leads to threats from the customer and demands that the persons they have taken offense at be executed. They don't know how to control their emotions because they believe the internal act of taking offense to be external and thus seek the removal of the cause of their internal offense. Now it might not be good business to have employees allowed to talk-back to such high minded individuals as that form of customer, as that type of customer would walk out after getting offended to the point, for them, of being homicidal, but if it were a general situation that employees could respond in kind to such customers I think that more people would finally grow a spinal column and have a bit more emotional fortitude.

Oh, FFS! Of course no one has the right to remain unoffended.

However,
Neither do you have the right to say something that tangentially (or directly) offends someone and expect them to remain silent about it. It is neither 'totalitarian' nor 'censorship' to speak up when one is offended; it is still neither totalitarian nor censorship when multiple offended people speak up.

No, but Knocking on my door at 8am to talk about religion should result in the painful execution of you, your family, your friends, your friends' families, everyone you went to school with, your idols, your favourite sports team and all the voice actors who portray your favourite cartoon characters.