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The Battle for Your Brain

The Battle for Your Brain

Freedom of thought in the 21st century.

Josh Cadorette
April 27, 2023

Howdy from Durham,

Welcome to the 2 new subscribers from this past week.

Today, we’re diving into the ethical considerations of accessing the mind.

Thought is the first frontier of expression and the final frontier of freedom.

It’s where our creativity, opinions, and ideas begin and where the intrusion of the digital word ends.

Up until now, our minds have always been a place we can turn to for privacy.

This could change if we don’t act.

That’s according to Duke Professor Nita Farahany and her new book The Battle for Your Brain - Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology.

Farahany makes the argument that we must update the language on cognitive liberty laws to protect ourselves from neurotech.

Let’s break it down.

Nita Farahany is a leading scholar on the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies. She is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, the Founding Director of Duke Science & Society, and the Faculty Chair of the Duke MA in Bioethics & Science Policy.

What neurotech is: neurotech devices are tools that can connect our brains to computers. Algorithms take EEG data (brain waves) and break down our thoughts/feelings. These devices are increasingly becoming available for workers and consumers in our everyday lives.

How ethics plays a role: debates around freedom of speech have always hinged on the words that leave our mouth, keyboards, or pens. Speech has to be vocalized to come under question, and what someone thinks has always remained private - until now.

A couple of applications:

Helping workers stay alert - workers on the Beijing-Shanghai high speed train are required to wear EEG devices while they are controlling the trains so that management can determine whether or not they are awake/alert.
Helping folks meditate better - the most common EEG frequencies during meditation are theta and alpha waves. Companies like Muse offer headbands which provide audio feedback when you are achieving these frequencies to try and guide you towards them.

Both applications above were pulled from Nita’s book. Click here for more info on her book.

Do these 2 examples indicate neurotech’s ability to identify our thoughts word for word? No, the current tech isn’t there yet.

Then, what’s the current threat to freedom of thought?

If you line up someone’s brainwaves with timestamps of when you showed them an image or shared a piece of information with them, then you can gain an understanding of their perspective without them vocalizing it.

To better illustrate, we’ll use a hypothetical example from The Battle for Your Brain.

“Imagine the future of work when brain monitoring becomes more ubiquitous if these laws and norms are not in place. After a banner year at the company, division manager Sue calls employee Pat to offer her a contract renewal with a 2 percent pay raise. Sue knows the company could easily afford and would be willing to pay up to 10 percent to retain her but hopes Pat will take less. Pat takes Sue’s call using her company-issued in-ear EEG earbuds. Pat keeps her voice even throughout the call so as not to give away her emotions and promises to follow up with Sue the next day.

All the while, Sue has been watching Pat’s brain activity and decoding her emotional reaction to the news. Pat’s brain activity revealed joyfulness upon learning of the 2 percent raise and remained joyful throughout the day.

The next day, Pat calls Sue and says that she was hoping for a bigger raise. But Sue can’t be bluffed; she knows that Pat was happy with the 2 percent raise; moreover, she now sees that Pat is fearful as she makes her request for a bigger one. Sue responds that 2 percent is the best the company can do, and Pat accepts the offer. Pat’s attempt to negotiate a better salary was over before it began.”

Nita Farahany

Is neurotech all bad? Of course not. It has the power to do an incredible amount of good.

It could help us identify environments, habits, and behaviors that contribute to our creativity, productivity, happiness, and anxiety so that we can lock in on what does and doesn’t enhance our well-being.

It can also enable bad actors with our EEG data to get a raw, unfiltered look into our deepest thoughts in their earliest formations.

As I’ve said in my previous writing, every advancement in technology has a tall ceiling of the good it can do, but it always carries with it an equally matched basement of despair if we aren’t careful.

So, what do we do?

According to Professor Farahany, we “update and broaden our contemporary understanding of the bundle of rights included within cognitive liberty in international human rights law - including mental privacy, freedom of thought, and extending the collective right of self-determination to individuals.”

That way, we can protect ourselves from ourselves.

What I’m paying attention to:

The Writers Guild of America may be letting AI in the door.

The Writers Guild of America has proposed allowing artificial intelligence to write scripts, as long as it does not affect writers’ credits or residuals.
(Source: variety.com/2023/biz/news/…)
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm)
8:45 AM • Mar 22, 2023