by kragen | 2025-04-30 20:27:58+00:00
This says:

> The Technology Behind Remote Mind Reading

> The technology can be broken into multiple parts: the ability to read brainwaves remotely; the ability to decode brainwaves; the ability to beam back signals to the brain to influence it; the ability to apply this from a long distance; a mechanism for automation (to be able to apply it to a large number of victims); and an infrastructure for population-scale deployment.

> Believe it or not, every single one of those exists, and I will provide well-founded explanations in tangible details.

This doesn't seem to be related to reversible mechanical computing; rather, it seems to be a classic schizophrenic delusion. The evidence presented is a rather implausible patent from 01974 and a poster in all capital letters on "psycho-electronic weapon effects".

Presumably at some point this kind of thing will become possible, but no evidence is presented here showing that it has become possible already, and from what I know of the relevant fields, I don't see a way it would be possible today. It certainly wasn't possible in 01974 when the cited patent was published. The inventor was engaging in wishful, or perhaps schizophrenic, thinking.

By contrast, as a delusion, this belief has been a well-known symptom of schizophrenia since at least 01919: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_broadcasting https://archive.org/details/dementiapraecoxp00kraeiala/page/...

> But it is quite specially peculiar to dementia praecox that the patients' own thoughts appear to them to be spoken aloud. In the most varied expressions we hear the complaint of the patients constantly repeated that their thoughts can be perceived. They are said loud out [sic], sometimes beforehand, sometimes afterwards; it is "double speech," the "voice trial," "track-oratory," the "apparatus for reading thoughts," the "memorandum." A patient heard her thoughts sounding out of noises. In consequence of this everything is made public. What the patients think is known in their own homes and is proclaimed to everyone, so that their thoughts are common property. "I have the feeling, as if some one beside me said out loud what I think," said a patient. "As soon as the thought is in my head, they know it too," explained another. "When I think anything I hear it immediately," said a third. People look into the brain of the patient, his "head is revealed." When he reads the newspapers, others hear it, so that he cannot think alone any longer. "We can read more quickly than you," the voices called out to a patient. "Everyone can read my thoughts, I can't do that," complained a patient. Another said, "A person can have his thoughts traced by another, so that people can learn everything." A patient himself had "to whistle" his secrets "through his nose."

So, if you find yourself suspecting that there's a vast secret conspiracy to remotely read your mind, try to remember that that's a common delusion that literally millions of people have had, and most of them had it decades ago before there was any way it was possible, and it probably still isn't possible. If it were possible, there are a lot of more prosocial things that people would use it for: lie detector tests in job interviews and lawsuits, for example, or matchmaking services.

Sometimes combating delusions with reason doesn't work. Delusions can be extremely compelling! But sometimes it does.