Brain Warfare

[SWJED]

Brain Warfare - An item from yesterday's Inside the Ring (Washington Times) by Bill Gertz.

The Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community are studying ways to better understand the how and why of human behavior to help war fighters deal with insurgencies such as those in Iraq, likely future conflicts and other global problems, said national security specialist John Stanton.

Mr. Stanton has written a paper to be presented at a conference in Portugal next week on the new research area called "evolutionary cognitive neuroscience," (ECN) a subject that captured his interest after he read Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus' revised Army counterinsurgency manual. The manual identifies the fact that the U.S. military needs to learn more about brain behavior relationships in networked, social environments.

Studies in the area "may produce tools that advance humanity's ability to understand and manage itself," he stated.

On the downside, Mr. Stanton warned that the ECN research could lead to the creation of "neuroweapons" that "seek to turn the speed of thought into a weapon, or programs that blur the line between human and machine."

Among the potential weapons are "non-traceable neuroweapons with viral genetic payloads" that could "be used to disrupt the brain and central nervous system."

The field could help social scientists get information from prisoners of war during interrogation and could find ways to minimize violence and ethnic conflict, and prevent or manage warfare, pandemics and poverty.

[marct]

Brain Warfare - An item from yesterday's Inside the Ring (Washington Times) by Bill Gertz.

Interesting, and I would like to read his paper. The idea itself isn't that new - it goes back to Jerry Fodor's The Modularity of the Mind and was picked up by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides and turned into Evolutionary Psychology. The neuroscience version looks like a simple adaptation of their work with a weaponization variant. Still using tailored viruses is tricky and, ultimately, likely to backfire. I wonder why he isn't looking at the software (symbols) instead of the "hardware" (neurons).

[goesh]

- I thought it started when Abbie Hoffman, Allen Ginsberg and the hippies tried to levitate the pentagon)


http://www.jofreeman.com/photos/Pent....html#accounts

"After the speeches, about 50,000 people set off for the Pentagon. It took them about an hour and a half to walk two miles across the Memorial Bridge and down a service road to the north parking lot where a second rally was scheduled.
At the other end a group of hippies was trying to exorcize the Pentagon. The brainchild of Abbie Hoffman, the plan was for people to sing and chant until it levitated and turned orange, driving out the evil spirits and ending the war in Viet Nam. The Pentagon didn't move."

[marct]

John Stanton emailed me a copy of the paper and I just finished reading it. Quite interesting, if light on the theoretical type of details I would personally like (it's more of a concept piece). The "neuroweapons" scenario that plays in the Washington Times article is really a very minor piece in the whole and, BTW, he does quote Cosmides and Tooby extensively .

On another note....

Goesh, the big problem with most of the 60's protesters was that like most incompetent magicians they forgot the material components for their spell. Levitating the Pentagon would require rather a lot of those - just ask Guy Fawkes .

Marc

[wm]

Interesting, and I would like to read his paper. The idea itself isn't that new - it goes back to Jerry Fodor's The Modularity of the Mind and was picked up by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides and turned into Evolutionary Psychology. The neuroscience version looks like a simple adaptation of their work with a weaponization variant. Still using tailored viruses is tricky and, ultimately, likely to backfire. I wonder why he isn't looking at the software (symbols) instead of the "hardware" (neurons).

Good grief, MarcT. Please don't tell me it is the return of the Fodor-Katz attack. Does this mean I have to go dig out those essay's like "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness" and "What is it like to be a bat," or Don Dennett's book Brainstorms?
Next thing you know, I'll be reading articles about "spoon benders" and remote viewers in the Pentagon's basement again.

[marct]

Hi WM,

Good grief, MarcT. Please don't tell me it is the return of the Fodor-Katz attack. Does this mean I have to go dig out those essay's like "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness" and "What is it like to be a bat," or Don Dennett's book Brainstorms?
Next thing you know, I'll be reading articles about "spoon benders" and remote viewers in the Pentagon's basement again.

Yup ! And you had better dust of your copy of The Emperor's New Mind by Penrose, along with anything else you have lying around on the theory of quantum consciousness.

Marc

[nichols]

HA Ha....I'm safe from that, can't damage my one brain cell without me knowing it

Interesting studies are being done from the super pill requiring no rest for 14 days to methods of speeding up the novice to expert time from years to months....all in the name of cognitive science....

[SWJED]

... big time, I bought his book.

[goesh]

I actually met Allen Ginsberg one time but the guy I most wanted to meet was Ken Kesey. There's alot of unexplained phenomena out there, mysterious to behold and it's amusing to hear some of the explanations that strive to keep all understanding on the temporal, mundane plane of manifestation, like crop circles for instance. That wind, pranksters and magnetic currents could create such complexity in a matter of hours is every bit as mind boggling as the Chippewa medicine man I once knew who showed me a black, round rock and told me it was what he used to communicate with other medicine men.