How to Beat the Thought Police

but I was kind of under that assumption. Well, yeah, if you if you read enough comics, I guess you'd fall into the thing. But but there are times where you kind of feel like there's a thought bubble. And to a certain extent, we all have tells, we all have their various subtle and not so subtle cues regarding what we're thinking about. Um. But but I have at times found myself in situations where I like, I'll think of something and I'll be and I'll do like, oh,

I hope nobody could hear hear my thoughts. Like in reaction, I actually know exactly you're talking about it those intense moments and you're thinking really really just very intensely about something and it seems as though whatever is going on in your head is just booming out there. Yeah, and you look up and I know it's that brief moment where you think, did they hear inside my head? Yeah?

Or like sometimes like my brain anyway, I'll I'll find myself in a situation and I'll think, what is the worst possible thing I could think at this this moment, And then I'll think it, and that would be like, brain, what are you doing? There could be people listening or watching in or or reading you. So your concern is that it's not an although in the future we're talking with twenty years, perhaps even those thoughts, those dark thoughts,

might be revealed. Yeah, exactly to everyone. Yeah, because the thought police do not exist as a you know and in its sci fi sense yet, But the police, law enforcement employers, um family members are of course there are interested in what people are thinking. And we continue to roll out scientific and pseudoscientific ways to uh to guess at what is going on inside someone else's mind. Yeah, because I mean, the big mystery for all of us is whether or not someone is telling the truth or

telling a lie. And we want to scratch at that as much as possible and genome Sciences and Policy. Laura Nita Farrene says that neuroscience is already influencing the courtroom, at least with terminology. She had brought up some examples at the World Science Festival in the panel on euro Science in Law that you attended Brains on Trial. That one was hosted by Alan Alda, and it was it was quite excellent, And she says that people say things like I didn't consciously choose to do the thing that

I'm accused of. My brain made me do it. My brain made me do it, or I have a predisposition to addiction and therefore when this occurred, it wasn't my brain, it was the brain of another person under different circumstances. Is so we already see sort of the leaking of neuroscience into the courtroom, into law. So now it's just a matter of looking at both the past and the present future to try to figure out how all this is going to settle in what sort of technology is

going to shape it. Yeah, that you mentioned of the whole my brain made me do it, or there's something in my in my brain that may be responsible for this and I didn't have a say in it. It's interesting because that all gets into this whole the mind body problem, the the idea that a brain is a physical thing and a mind is a non physical thing. Our consciousness is a is a is a creation of mind, and our mind is a creation of brain. And uh, and we find ourselves saying, hey, I'm a mind. Don't

don't try the mind based on what the brain is doing. Person, Keep the brain, not the mind. Like it gets quickly. It is complex as any pondering we may have about the nature of consciousness and then the nature of self. Yeah, there's a lot of pointing of fingers because you could even say, well wait, wait, wait, is the brain messing up my mind my concept of reality? Yeah? Um yeah. So that's why all this becomes incredibly interesting when you start to look at fm r I technology, um and

and some other technologies that we will discuss today. But in order to do that, we have to, of course travel back to the past, and actually not even the past, because some of these things are already in use. Yeah. Now, of course we're talking about science. We're talking about science, the use of science in investigations, in interviews and interrogations and in criminal investigations and in trials, and we've always

used science for these means. I mean it's uh, you can find examples where we would use phrenology of the measuring of skulls, you know, totally bogus, But for a brief time, this seemed like a logical way to scientifically study what would make one person a criminal and in another person not UM fingerprinting. We did a whole episode

on this. If you want to really get into the history of fingerprinting and that the the validity of fingerprinting when it comes to criminal investigation, do check that episode out, because, as we discussed there, a lot of the fingerprinting science isn't as as solid as we used to think it it is and UM and a lot of its power in the courtroom had to do with the fact that it was presented as powerful information. Yeah, it's just the

cell of it. Also, you've seen you know, truth terums have had their day psychotherapy, UM polygraphs, which will discuss here momentarily. And now we're increasingly in the age of DNA evidence and UH, and certainly DNA events has done a lot of good. It is it has been able to to reverse decisions that were made based on faulty evidence.

In the past, we seen to be the the Innocence Project and uh, and then we're we're already in this age and of neuroimaging in the courtroom in criminal investigations, and we're only going to see more and more of it over the next ten years. I did want to point out that truth Sorum is actually used in some parts of the world, and truth Sirum is part of something called narco analysis, and this is administering psycho active

drugs for those interrogation purposes. Um. Most people are probably familiar with the term sodium pentathal and this is the quote unquote truth serum. However, it doesn't exactly extract truthful

statements from people. In fact, there's this idea that it might make people talk, but people are still really responsive to suggestions, so they're still going to tell you, um, what they think that you're trying to chease out of them, or they're still conscious that they're expected to deliver something to someone. Yeah, I mean, in that regard, it's not much different from torture. The idea that if you inflict physical pain on somebody, they will tell you anything you

want to hear to make the pain stop. And therefore it's it's it's a largely unreliable form of interrogation. And that's the problem that we're going to discuss two with all these different technologies is that at some point there is a margin of error and there's a problem here interpreting the results. And so polygraphs are a great example of this. Yeah, let's let's get into into polygraphs. Now, polygraphs,

of course the lie detection tests. Most people are familiar with this from TV, where it has been just used to death and every television show imaginable um. And even when it's used in a more realistic fashion, we still are bringing in all these preconceived notions about what it consists of and how reliable it may or may not be. So a polygraph is essentially a seismograph for the nervous system and measures of physiological responses such as heart rate,

blood pressure, sweatiness, um, breathing. Uh So, when you're anxious, you're angry, you're in pain, you're emotionally aroused, these measures spike automatically. Generally it's four to six censers. They're attached to the body um and uh. And again it's breathing rate, pulse, blood pressure, perspiration, and sometimes they'll also record things like arm and the leg movements. And this is being used in the CIA as well as n s A, so

there various agencies that actually used this. The problem with the polygraph is that you can actually beat it. And if you can train yourself to think in a certain manner or to do a couple of tricks, it's not a problem actually to pass one of these. So if they're testing you with this polygraph device, uh, they of course need to have a baseline reading. They need to ask you stuff like, hey, is your name Julie Douglas and you say yes, and they see what that reading is.

They say are you wearing a striped shirt today? And you say yes, yes, And then they say are you the Queen of Mars And you would say no, thanks lgar yes, So whichever the case may be, um and and this would tell let them know, okay, these are what our readings are when she is not lying to us. And then they would also ask you, you know, they would ask you some things too that you're expected to lie, like have you ever killed a bug? Well? I don't

know that's not a good one. Well, have you ever stolen? Have your money stolen money? Yes? Have you ever lied to your parents? No? No? So they yeah, they begin to these universal questions that they know eventually you'll lie on just to get again that baseline of what is a lilakla? What does all I look like with this person? What does the truth look like with this person? And now let's ask him the stuff we want to know.

Have you ever seen the inside of the house? Stuff work safe, you know, things like that, and and see that would be something yeah, they would test for and they would compare that reading to these other baseline readings. Yeah, so what's cool about that line baseline is that is the one that you can gain so that it scrambles everything else. Right now, technically it is possible for someone to to simply not have a strong physical response to line.

People have been light detection tests before with this kind of effect, but it's it's more difficult. This is the kind of thing you would expect Hannibal Elector to do, you know, more advanced control or or or lack of physical involvement with like it's coming out of your mouth. But but yeah, the baseline is is an much easier thing to screw up. And that's where say the thumb

tac method comes into place. So you would put a thumb tack in your shoe and then when or asked one of these baseline questions, you jab that sucker into your toe, which causes some distress, and then it messes up their baseline. It looks like you're getting this high reading for something that is a known truth or aknown lie. Okay, so the first time you lie, you you just name yourself so that your physiological response is just so active

that it just that seismograph goes nuts. So the next time that you lie, yeah, it's not gonna be there is strong. They're like, oh, well that they that didn't mess them up at all. It'll just look at the readings. Now that one of the problems with with this method is that some polygraph tests will testers will make you take your shoes off. So uh, it's it's become that common of of of a method. But who's to say

you can't bite your tongue exactly. So there are other means of causing yourself a little bit of physical discomfort um to to allow you to mess with those baselines. Um. Now, there are other bits of folklore that are out there. For instance, some people say that you can take certain drugs, you can rub any perst print on your fingertips, or you can use hypnosis. You can are just wiggling your toes or flexing your arms, coughing. But these these cannot

not to work that well. Oh, I see, So the anti perseprint is so that it reduced the galvanic response, that sweating response. Right. Yeah, But but what I've been reading is that that really doesn't help you any and that's just only one of the things that it's testing for anyway, So you still can't help it if your

heart goes nets. Another thing that I have read is that, um, just it's a mind over matter issue, and that if you can try to um I think really warm and cozy thoughts, calming thoughts while you're lying, is that you may still get a little bit of a you know, some action on that seismograph, but it may not be nearly as pronounced if you weren't trying to essentially meditate during this process. Yes, so it's still used in a

number of agencies. It's used by by employers, but in most states you don't actually see it in courts anymore because it doesn't pass scientific standards of admission in the courtroom.

I was looking at a particular website anti polygraph dot org, which is which is generally aimed at its use by employers and by by these agencies, and they point out a number of interesting things about polygraph tests about how so much of it isn't even about the looking at readings and comparing them, comparing these baseline results to the results of these questions there, but they're bringing in all

the other aspects of interrogation. So for instance, they're looking for things like, oh, did the did the individuals show up late? Do they seem hesitant? What does their voice sound like when they answer no to this question or answer yes to this one? So, and then they're also trying to get subtle admissions out of out of the

subject as well during the course of the test. So in a in a sense, it's still a straight up interrogation, like a straight up police uh you know, bright light in the eyes kind of a thing, except they have this uh, this pseudo scientific method on the table that's legitimizing and all. Okay, So the readings that they're taking. That's a bit of a sham, right, The whole thing is a sham. The idea is that it's a psychological

tool that they can use on their employees. So if that employee knows although I might get tested this month, then maybe he or she is going to mind their p's and ques a bit more. That's the idea by the agents that that's that's what detractors argue, and that's

certainly what antipolographed or argue. So they have a lot of materials on the website, including a more detailed information about how it works and how to beat it and when when I and I say how to beat it again, not just talking about the physical test, but the the the overall testing environment that is used by various agents. All Right, Uh, interesting stuff to check out. Let's take a quick break, and when we get back, we are going to talk about the role of f M R

I and lie detection. All Right, we're back, and we've been talking about the thought police. We've been talking about methods of telling whether a person is lying or telling the truth. Uh, and when. Just as an aside, one individual who famously passed the polygraph test, Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. And of course, now we were in the age of the of m R I S and f m RI I S talking about magnetic residence imaging

and functional magnetic residence imaging. Now we've just we've talked about f m R S a lot on this show because anytime we're talking about the brain and current brain research, we're we're interested in knowing what's going on inside the mind, what parts of the brain are being used to process various things. UH and fm RI I. UH measures brain activity by detecting the changes in blood oxidation and flow

that occurs in response to neural activity. So when a brain area is more active, it consumes more oxygen and to meet this increased demand, blood flow increases to the active area. And the difference between an m R I and f m r I m R I is a snapshot of the brain. F m r I is more of a moving p sure of the brain, so you can see where things are flowing and how the activity

is occurring. Yeah, m R I is more revealing of anatomy as opposed to brain activity with f m R I. So it turns out, of course, fm r I is really really helpful in trying to pinpoint the parts of the brain that are processing information. So if you're looking at a picture, you know that your visual cortex is

going to light up. Um, you know that if you're trying to make a judgment call about something that you're seeing or listening to, then you know that your prefrontal cortex is going to be very busy trying to weigh its options and its judgments. Now, not everything, of course, is that um stupid simple if you will, Because because we've discussed before a lot of times, it's a it's

kind of a puzzle figuring out. We'll have multiple parts of the brain that are involved in a particular task, and then you have to sort of piece together what that means. It's it's not always a situation where it's like you can you can't look at an fMRI I result and be like, oh, well, the part of his brain, part of the brain associated with lying to your grandma about a cookie jar is lighting up. So we know

what it actually occurred. But we do know that a lot of our memory has to do with UH spatial elements dimensions, and so if someone committed a murder inside of a home and UH you were to put say some photos in front of this person of this house, and you could see that their brain was going a little bit crazy to hit the campus and showing that it recognized this room. It already had this blueprint inside

of this person's brain. Then you could begin to make the case that there are some unique identifiers of certain criminal situations that you could mark against an fm R

I scan of the brain. Right and and likewise, in the same way you could show evidence pictures, you could also show pictures of suspects faces if you were, say, um, if someone thought that you might have been an accomplished to a crime, if someone thought you might have, say, driven the car that a bank robber used, and then you were shown four different faces of four different bank of suspected bank robbers, and then you can measure their response to that, is there some sort of a familiarity

that's that's that's popping up here? Um. And then also apparently there are three parts of the brain that work

harder during a lie. And that's according to the Steve Laken of a Cephos Corp. Which is a company that's very involved in the development and then the use of f m R I lie detection and so the idea here is that you put somebody in an f M R I and then you give them basic guess and no questions based on whatever you're you're quizzing them about and uh, and you can put all that info through an algorithm and determine what is actually going on in

their mind. At the World Science Festival, Alan Alda aired a little bit of a video from an upcoming PPS documentary that he's done about neuroscience and law, in which he goes into this machine, uh and into Steva Lincoln's machine, and they're trying to figure out whether he took a ring or a or a wrist watch out of a

drawer prior to the experiment. Because he's a big cleft o Allan all the well, well he was he was asked to steal one or the other um and he and he says he was very tempted to steal them both to screw with their results. But but he he went with the ring and they were able to determine, uh, you know, not looking in his pockets, but but quizzing him basically during the whole the Hobbit and Gollum thing,

you know, what's in your pockets? Is I guess and uh, and in the machine was able to determine he's definitely definitely has the ring in his pocket because he responded this way to questions about the ring and or pictures about the ring. Okay, so there are a couple of problems though with fm R I right, And one is that, uh, the problem is our brains in our memory. Recall we've talked about this a thousand times that memory is fallible, that when you take a memory out you can sometimes

change it, or you have false memories of things. Yeah. There, you know, I think we discussed seven key ways that

memories can be made false and uh. And so even if you're even if you're just going into a room, I mean they've in case efter case of people who who either by their own fault, by their own formation of a faulty memory, or by um, you know, slight coercion on the part of the police investigators, end up making a false I D in the lineup, you know, you end up seeing a face and you're like, that's

that's the one. Or in that one case we were talking about where an assault occurred while the TV was playing and the victim ended up identifying the individual on the television as the individual in her apartment assaulting her, right because she happened to be staring at that person while something traumatic was happening to her, and that was coded as the face who was perpetrating this act against her. Yeah, so yeah, I mean that the memory is just it's

a very dicey thing. And yes, as you, as you had pointed out, eye witnesses are notoriously bad at I being the right person. So if you see an image in your an fm R I and you see an image of a person and you think it looks like that could be a familiar person or someone you know, then it may not be. It may just be someone who resembles another person right now. So so there's that whole the whole issue of memory itself has to be taken into account. Yeah, you can't tease out is this

a false memory or a true memory? Now. Now, there have been a lot of tests though with the f R Allie detection somewhere the neighborhood of forty different ones with subjects given stimuli and they're questioned about about the something that that maybe a truth or maybe a falsehood, and uh, supposedly the results are anywhere been nine effective. But but then you get into into this weird area

what is it actually detecting. Is it really detecting a lie, or is it detecting emotional importance UM or or some of their kind of you know, mental process about the stimuli for instance, the ring um all that ends up going with this ring and present I believe they were both his optics. So so it's like a wristwatch and his wedding ring. So the wedding ring has a lot of value to him. It's it's, you know, like anybody's wedding ring. There are a lot of ideas wrapped up

into that object. And so uh, to what extent of the fireworks in his head that the fMRI I detects, to what extent of those more um tied into the meaning of the object than to whether he stole it. So you've got memory, you have a motion to deal with. And Uh. The other part of f m R I and it being not so full proof is that you

can game it much like you would polygraph. Yes. In fact, on the panel we we were we were talking about earlier um Nito of Fara honey actually UH was was given this slide detection test and was told come up with ways to beat it, and she actually got got pretty good at it pretty fast, and she had she had a couple of different ways that she was that

she recommends beating an fMRI I lie detection test. Uh. So she's so, for instance, you're shown a picture of familiar faces to see if you know who the bank robber is, for instance, do you recognize this face? And she said that she could instead of focusing on the face, focus on a detail of the picture. You know. It's kind of like, um, we've talked about before, if you

stare something long enough, it starts looking weird. So so she would look at dots, you know, and she would just sort of zone out on those dots and say say, no, I don't recognize this at all. She's being asked about the face, but she's looking and thinking about just a collection of dots that looked totally new to her, indifferent and she's able to fool it that way. And then she recommends you could you could probably do the same thing by sort of blinking out your mind and trying

to think about nothing. All U Ghostbusters where they're told to that whatever their next sigh is will be the form of the destroyer, and then dan Ackroyd's character accidentally as this childhood memory of the state Puff marshmallow Man um or you could basically take the take the route of just thinking of the state Puff Puff marshmallow Man.

If they're saying, you know, here's a question about this crime or or where you were when this crime occurred, and you just fill your thought with marshmallow Man and you may pass well. And she also says that you have to will your self again to see this in a fresh new way and to think to yourself, wow, that's amazing. I've never seen that before. That array of dots fascinating, completely new to me. And yeah, she did that,

and she was able to beat the machine. And of course, one more thing to mention on f m r I s is that currently it would be exceedingly different to get difficult to give somebody an f m R I against their will, because there's a certain you have to be still, you have to cooperate and and and therefore, in its current form, it's not going to be one of these situations where someone's brought in and chains and said, all right, we're scanning that brain of years However, if

you were trying to prove your innocence, then you could spit yourself or if you're going to try if you were guilty and you were going to try to game the machine, you could certainly submit yourself. Yeah, and uh and you know the experts that on this panel, including fair Honey and also Anthony do you the Wagner psychologist and neuroscientists than they said, you know, the next two years,

we're just gonna see more and more on this. We're gonna see uh C F M R eyes used in or attempted to be used to clear people of crimes or to or to you know, see about tough persecution.

And there was a judge on that panel too, and they talked a lot about how judges are trying to get up to speed with neuroscience because they realized that this is seeping into the courtroom and they need to yeah, you know, fluent in the technology and to understand and began to actually sort of craft some of some the laws around that actually, and also the importance they also mentioned of manature juries are are educated about it because

we mentioned the fingerprinting thing, but before about how juries could be won over just by a fancy presentation where it's like, oh, that has a chart that is a picture of a fingerprint and all the swirls. It looks very impressive. You're making an impressive looking case, so I'm gonna buy it. Likewise, you don't want a jury that just because they're rolling out a bunch of neuroscience at you and just you know, hitting you over the head

with it. You're thinking they have the science on their side, so I guess they're right. Well, and then you also have of the instance of when DNA was introduced to courtrooms, and that was very difficult at first because people didn't have a shorthand way to discuss how to determine d

N A if. Now we take it for granted because we have a baseline understanding of it, but back then that was sort of crazy pants to be like, hey, so we're going to match these things off these markers and the following ways, and it was sort of scrambling people's brains. Right, So that's the f m R I. That's one way that we have it, looking in at

the brain and seeing what's happening. But then there's some other interesting areas as well that the use of using this kind of mind scanning technology to see what we're thinking, to to peek inside those little mental movies that we create, be they memories or fabricated uh fantasies or or or things that we would like to do, and actually taking them out of the brain and putting them on on a TV screen for the judge and jury to look at,

printing them out and distributing them to the jury. Right. Yeah, Now, this is something we've we've talked about this before. I think maybe we did it in our wrap up of Big Science for um where and it made a lot

of a lot of press. And this is the This was a particularly a University of California, Berkeley experiment where researchers a fed a computer with eighteen million one second YouTube clips that the participants in the study of the human participants had never seen, and then they asked the computer to predict what brain activity each of those clips

would evoke. Then they asked it to reconstruct the movie clips using the best matches it could find based on this this enormous volume of YouTube data that it had. You know what I like it that this study is that the it was the co authors who actually volunteered to be scanned, because it took hours and hours of them looking at this one point, looking at movie clips

while their brains were being scanned. And if I understand this correctly, the machine was then fed those YouTube clips so that it could create a separate database to then compare the images of the movie clips that the volunteers saw, right, and this is where the images were reconstructed. Yes, it's kind of basically the idea is attempting to view these YouTube clips through the human mind alone, based on based on the scans, and uh, the the results were were

blurry but astonishing. For instance, I have a human figure appeared in the original clip, then a human form would generally show you. It's not like you'd see the face or anything, but you would see a general representation of a human kind of shadowy looking, yeah, and just very low resolution looking stuff. Yeah. Now, what was really cool is that one of the clips showed elephants walking right

to left. And since there weren't elephants in the YouTube clips that formed the computer's um you know, visual information, it had no idea what to represent. It is just like a blurry, dark form, so it did not have it in its World Brain Dictionary. So you would have to you would have to establish a pretty rich show world brain Dictionary for this kind of technology for it to really be able to to take those images out

of the mind and put them on the screen. But I think what is so fascinating about this and and has such far reaching implications, is that all it was just eighteen million YouTube clips fed into this machine. If you were too and presumably they're doing this building up that database, then they could get a pretty rich world Brain Dictionary going. If they were able to make this

technology mobile. See where I'm going with this, then you could, unbeknownst to someone I'm talking future talk, uh, you know, beam a light at this person into their their visual cortex, get a reflection back and start to read off what this person is thinking of or dreaming of. Well, what one thought that comes to mind here is that would it mean that criminals would have to make sure that they perpetrated their acts with as many elements outside of

the World Brain Dictionary as possible? Would we see like the Rise of U and I think Gret Morrison used this in Doom Patrol a little bit um like DODA criminals where they would have to use like absurdist costumes and tactics, so that nothing that you saw would match up. Nothing that was that that was maybe the basic aspects of the crime would match up, because stealing money, stealing money,

or you know, or or murder is murder. But if enough of the elements were absurd and didn't match up with the World Brain Dictionary, then that would perhaps flaw the visions of it that we could get out of the human mind with this machine. That's intriguing because what I mean, what you're saying is that you would train your brain to begin to We know, the brain can bifurcate itself anyway, right, it can sort of split its tasks.

So and we've seen this with with ventrilo quests. So if someone was committing a crime, they would begin to think of their gun as a marshmallow, refer to it, see it as a marshmallow, and therefore disassociate gun with the crime and associate marshmallow with and that would be It's sort of like quantum code. It's key code, not quantum, but that would be it's key code, right, and you

would have to know the key code. But you this person who is putting someone through the fm R I scanner or this machine uh that that's whetted with the World Brain Dictionary, wouldn't know that you didn't have the key. Is it possible? I don't know, surely. Yeah. Now another thing that that that you have to take into account here, and this is something that that Anthony Wagner pointed out in the World Science Festival talk, is that another potential

issue is how close imagination is to experience. Imagination, as we've discussed in previous episodes, very close to the real experience as a mental event. There is some distinction in scans between memories of experience and pure imagination, but they're

very similar, very similar brain activity. So you might find yourself in a situation where you're using some of this technology we're talking about to scan the brain and see what your reactions are or see what your what kind of mental images mental movies are playing in your head. But then you have to ask yourself, is this a mental image? Is this is this person remembering a murder

they committed. Are they thinking about a murder that they fantasized about committing that they that they they thinking about a murder they saw on TV? Are they thinking about a murder that they read about in the newspaper and just via pure old fashioned human empathy, couldn't help but

imagine themselves in that murderer shoes. You know. Well, you know what's interesting about that is that there's, um, there's that case of I believe it was a police officer who was in a bunch of chat rooms, um concerning basically eating another human. Do you remember this the cannibal cop. Yeah. Yeah, he actually never killed anybody or ate them as far

as we know. Um, But there was this whole debate about, well, if this person actually sort of going to lunch, having these lunch dates with potential victims, and if he left this trail behind him, this this memory trace essentially this even if it was just his imagination for his fantasy, is he capable of doing it? Capable of stepping over that threshold? So in a way, it's the same sort of thing. I mean, how do you how do you determine whether or not someone actually did the deed or

was about to do the deed. Yeah, when we get into the whole area of the thought crime, is it is it because like, for instance, take take murder. Okay, so murder, so like There's a huge difference between me, say, hearing a story about a husband murdering his wife and then thinking of that and being like, oh, my god, would that be horrible if I did that, that would be the worst, and then I but I imagine myself doing it in some more circumstances. Maybe a huge difference

between that and fantasizing about killing my wife. You know, you know is this is an interesting conversation because I tried to explain to my mom once that, um, growing up, I used to have these awful thoughts and what I did not realize when I was too young to realize that I was just trying to uh, embodying someone else's mind and imagine what something might be like and just sort of take that thought experiment to its degree, to just to see what it felt like to be in

those in that person's shoes. And it used to disturb me because I thought that I was a dark person, not realizing that's part of the creative process or the imagination, and that's, you know, part in person why I am interested in writing room. I'm a writer because I like to put myself into those other situations. So you bring up a really good point you know, just just occupying that that frame of mind, I mean that you're culpable. Yeah, you end up. Yeah, you have to worry about where

about actors? You have to worry about about writers? And then to what extent could you actually plan to murder somebody and carry out a murder by masking it with all of this art, Like say, what if you just simply wrote the short story first and then committed the crime, or you you acted in the one act play, or what if you made sure that the murder perfectly mirrored some sort of a murder that occurs in Shakespeare, Because then it's kind of twofold, because you can say, oh,

of course I have that murder in my mind because I saw it on stage like eight times. Or and also that would have that would prevent them from One of the things we've talked about here is say like showing them the image of a ring and seeing it lights up. Inevitably with any kind of homicide investigation or kind of an investigation, they're gonna be you want to keep the details out of the press because you want new information you can so you can surprise um suspects

with and be like, do you recognize this watch. Do you recognize this footprint? Um? So, and certainly do you recognize this murder weapon. But if the murder weapon is is something iconic, like I said, to what, to whatever degree the crime matches up with something publicly known, uh, then there's less stuff that you could shock them with and and anything you show them with. Or of course I'm familiar with that murder weapon because that is the murder weapon that was used in this movie. You know

that kind of thing. Yeah, So, I mean it is interesting if I were a defense attorney out with probably take the tact of saying, we are human beings. We have theory of mind, um, and this is what allows us to imagine ourselves in other situations. And therefore my client is you know, just putting her himself into this situation. Or what if you were to say, imagine yourself in my clients um shoes, and then everyone does, and then you would just arrest them all because there's ultimated thought

crimes now all right? So, um, you know, on the on the panel about neuroscience and law, they did bring up the Fourth Amendment guarding against unreasonable searches and seizures, and so you know they're extrapolating this to fm R I scans because in a sense you are invading someone's privacy. So then of course it does bring up this whole raft of of topics like what is privacy? To what extent? Do we have access to privacy anymore when you live

within society? Right? And this is especially a big topic right now. It's all over the wondering about N S A and our and are the contents of our our emails and our our our phone calls, etcetera. But yeah, Farahani brought up some interesting points. She said that there is nothing clear cut that would that could protect us against this sort of thing if we were a legitimate suspect in a crime. She says that all warrant is

is a right to the search. Now do we need what we need new language added to our to our warrants? You know? Perhaps, But she says, right now, the Fourth Amendment protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures based on how physically invasive the search. It protects against physical body

and space intrugience, but not intrusions into your secret. So she said, think of a diary, all right, the all the all that the Fourth Amendment protects is the door that stands between the investigators and the diary, not the contents of the diary itself. And an f m R I is minimally invasive in the physical sense, though it's of course, uh potentially very penetrating in the larger sense.

So to make parallel to the Fourth Amendment, than in order to access the door, then you would have to be served the search warrant so that you would be able to at least I suppose prepare yourself. Yeah, I guess. I mean it's it's we're entering entering a new age here. We have new new issues that are coming up. Uh and uh, and certainly we're gonna have to change the language of warrants and language of laws and the language

of rights. Interesting territory. All right, Well, on on on that thought, let's let's call over the robot and see if we have any listener. Man. All right, So we recently did an episode on sensory deprivation uh tanks isolation chambers. So we did two episodes on them, actually, and we said, hey, we know that some of our listeners have entered the wounded tune wet box as well, So let's find out

what they had to say about it. Um, here's one from Taylor Taylor wrights In and says, Hi, Robert and Julie. My mind was blown by the fact that Robert did not mention the movie Altered States during your podcast on Century Deprivation Chamber. He is usually very eager to mention when your topics are featured in books or films, but he never mentioned it. It's a great movie starring William Hurt and has everything to do with what you are talking about, Robert, I view, I haven't seen it. I

think you'd really dig it. It's about a scientist who gets carried away with his own research into SDCS and pul cybin. The movie gets very strange and far out with what happens to him. Just watch Annual see Uh. Indeed, I've I've been familiar with Altered States for a long time, but have never actually watched. I thought I would find time when we were researching these, but the two hours did not present itself. And you know, um, we actually discussed it. Uh. In are sort of like, hey, let's

do this topic. Oh yeah, yeah, They're like, oh we should do this, there's Altered States. But yeah, William hurt um and brain scans actually would corroborate this. Yeah. Cool, we'll we'll pull out the brain scans later undatory here yeah, and here's another one on the censory deprivation chambers from Lisa. Lisa writes in and says, Hi, Julie Robert, I was so surprised to hear your podcast on sensory deprivation chambers, literally a few days after I tried it for the

first time myself. My first float was on. It was last Sunday, June ninth, and I'm going back for repeat experiences coming Sunday. Um. A new facility for this called float House opened up in Vancouver a month ago, and I was both excited and a little scared to try it out. I was excited because I've been practicing meditation for a little while now, and I've heard that floating is a way to deepen the meditative experience. I was a little scared because the whole thing seems a little weird,

with reports of hallucinary experiences. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The facility itself was very clean and spot like. Each tank was in a private room with a shower, towels, robes, slippers, shampoo and conditioners, etcetera. Were all provided. While I did not experience any hallucinations or anything I would call transcendental, I did really enjoy the experience. It was extremely relaxing to lie in the warm water and meditate for ninety minutes.

I was a bit worried that the time would be too long, but it was just right. I could have stayed in there longer. Actually, it was a challenge not to fall off to sleep, as I was so comfortable. When I got out, all the muscular aches and pains in my shoulder and back had melted away. I can't wait to float again this coming Sunday. I hope you both enjoy your upcoming floats. Lisa, Vancouver, all right, very cool.

All right. Well, you know we have more mail on this topic that we will get to in the future episodes, but we thank everybody for writing in about them and continued right in with your experience with with any topic we were talking about. For instance, if you have something you would like to share about the science of lie detection. Have you ever taken up or administered a polygraph test?

We'd love to hear about that, and certainly if you've if you've undergone FM or I or any of the anything of this nature, we'd love to hear about that as well. And what are your thoughts about the future of the thought police? Are you a little paranoid about all this so you feel okay with it? How? What do you think the world will be like in ten twenty thirty years regarding our ability to peer inside a

human mind and our legal authority to do so. You can find us a various places to interact with us on these topics. Uh Whorse. The Mothership is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, but we're also on Tumbler, We are on Facebook Stuff to Blow your Mind on both of those, and our Twitter handle is below the Mind. You can also check out our YouTube channel, stuff to Blow Your Mind and make sure to drop us a line at below the Mind at Discovery dot com for

more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com