Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey wasn't gonna suff up all your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: do you ever find yourself like thinking thoughts in a
Speaker 1: in one circumstance or another, and you you kind of
Speaker 1: have that paranoia where you you you hope that nobody
Speaker 1: can read your thoughts. Wall, I mean there's a thought
Speaker 1: bubble over my head at all times? Right, Well, no,
Speaker 1: but I was kind of under that assumption. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you read enough comics, I guess you'd
Speaker 1: fall into the thing. But but there are times where
Speaker 1: you kind of feel like there's a thought bubble. And
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, we all have tells, we all
Speaker 1: have their various subtle and not so subtle cues regarding
Speaker 1: what we're thinking about. Um. But but I have at
Speaker 1: times found myself in situations where I like, I'll think
Speaker 1: of something and I'll be and I'll do like, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope nobody could hear hear my thoughts. Like in reaction,
Speaker 1: I actually know exactly you're talking about it those intense
Speaker 1: moments and you're thinking really really just very intensely about
Speaker 1: something and it seems as though whatever is going on
Speaker 1: in your head is just booming out there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you look up and I know it's that brief moment
Speaker 1: where you think, did they hear inside my head? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or like sometimes like my brain anyway, I'll I'll find
Speaker 1: myself in a situation and I'll think, what is the
Speaker 1: worst possible thing I could think at this this moment,
Speaker 1: And then I'll think it, and that would be like, brain,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? There could be people listening or
Speaker 1: watching in or or reading you. So your concern is
Speaker 1: that it's not an although in the future we're talking
Speaker 1: with twenty years, perhaps even those thoughts, those dark thoughts,
Speaker 1: might be revealed. Yeah, exactly to everyone. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: thought police do not exist as a you know and
Speaker 1: in its sci fi sense yet, But the police, law
Speaker 1: enforcement employers, um family members are of course there are
Speaker 1: interested in what people are thinking. And we continue to
Speaker 1: roll out scientific and pseudoscientific ways to uh to guess
Speaker 1: at what is going on inside someone else's mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, the big mystery for all of us
Speaker 1: is whether or not someone is telling the truth or
Speaker 1: telling a lie. And we want to scratch at that
Speaker 1: as much as possible and genome Sciences and Policy. Laura
Speaker 1: Nita Farrene says that neuroscience is already influencing the courtroom,
Speaker 1: at least with terminology. She had brought up some examples
Speaker 1: at the World Science Festival in the panel on euro
Speaker 1: Science in Law that you attended Brains on Trial. That
Speaker 1: one was hosted by Alan Alda, and it was it
Speaker 1: was quite excellent, And she says that people say things
Speaker 1: like I didn't consciously choose to do the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm accused of. My brain made me do it. My
Speaker 1: brain made me do it, or I have a predisposition
Speaker 1: to addiction and therefore when this occurred, it wasn't my brain,
Speaker 1: it was the brain of another person under different circumstances.
Speaker 1: Is so we already see sort of the leaking of
Speaker 1: neuroscience into the courtroom, into law. So now it's just
Speaker 1: a matter of looking at both the past and the
Speaker 1: present future to try to figure out how all this
Speaker 1: is going to settle in what sort of technology is
Speaker 1: going to shape it. Yeah, that you mentioned of the
Speaker 1: whole my brain made me do it, or there's something
Speaker 1: in my in my brain that may be responsible for
Speaker 1: this and I didn't have a say in it. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because that all gets into this whole the mind
Speaker 1: body problem, the the idea that a brain is a
Speaker 1: physical thing and a mind is a non physical thing.
Speaker 1: Our consciousness is a is a is a creation of mind,
Speaker 1: and our mind is a creation of brain. And uh,
Speaker 1: and we find ourselves saying, hey, I'm a mind. Don't
Speaker 1: don't try the mind based on what the brain is doing. Person,
Speaker 1: Keep the brain, not the mind. Like it gets quickly.
Speaker 1: It is complex as any pondering we may have about
Speaker 1: the nature of consciousness and then the nature of self. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pointing of fingers because you could
Speaker 1: even say, well wait, wait, wait, is the brain messing
Speaker 1: up my mind my concept of reality? Yeah? Um yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's why all this becomes incredibly interesting when you
Speaker 1: start to look at fm r I technology, um and
Speaker 1: and some other technologies that we will discuss today. But
Speaker 1: in order to do that, we have to, of course
Speaker 1: travel back to the past, and actually not even the past,
Speaker 1: because some of these things are already in use. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about science. We're talking about science,
Speaker 1: the use of science in investigations, in interviews and interrogations
Speaker 1: and in criminal investigations and in trials, and we've always
Speaker 1: used science for these means. I mean it's uh, you
Speaker 1: can find examples where we would use phrenology of the
Speaker 1: measuring of skulls, you know, totally bogus, But for a
Speaker 1: brief time, this seemed like a logical way to scientifically
Speaker 1: study what would make one person a criminal and in
Speaker 1: another person not UM fingerprinting. We did a whole episode
Speaker 1: on this. If you want to really get into the
Speaker 1: history of fingerprinting and that the the validity of fingerprinting
Speaker 1: when it comes to criminal investigation, do check that episode out, because,
Speaker 1: as we discussed there, a lot of the fingerprinting science
Speaker 1: isn't as as solid as we used to think it
Speaker 1: it is and UM and a lot of its power
Speaker 1: in the courtroom had to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: it was presented as powerful information. Yeah, it's just the
Speaker 1: cell of it. Also, you've seen you know, truth terums
Speaker 1: have had their day psychotherapy, UM polygraphs, which will discuss
Speaker 1: here momentarily. And now we're increasingly in the age of
Speaker 1: DNA evidence and UH, and certainly DNA events has done
Speaker 1: a lot of good. It is it has been able
Speaker 1: to to reverse decisions that were made based on faulty evidence.
Speaker 1: In the past, we seen to be the the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project and uh, and then we're we're already in this
Speaker 1: age and of neuroimaging in the courtroom in criminal investigations,
Speaker 1: and we're only going to see more and more of
Speaker 1: it over the next ten years. I did want to
Speaker 1: point out that truth Sorum is actually used in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world, and truth Sirum is part of
Speaker 1: something called narco analysis, and this is administering psycho active
Speaker 1: drugs for those interrogation purposes. Um. Most people are probably
Speaker 1: familiar with the term sodium pentathal and this is the
Speaker 1: quote unquote truth serum. However, it doesn't exactly extract truthful
Speaker 1: statements from people. In fact, there's this idea that it
Speaker 1: might make people talk, but people are still really responsive
Speaker 1: to suggestions, so they're still going to tell you, um,
Speaker 1: what they think that you're trying to chease out of them,
Speaker 1: or they're still conscious that they're expected to deliver something
Speaker 1: to someone. Yeah, I mean, in that regard, it's not
Speaker 1: much different from torture. The idea that if you inflict
Speaker 1: physical pain on somebody, they will tell you anything you
Speaker 1: want to hear to make the pain stop. And therefore
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a largely unreliable form of interrogation. And
Speaker 1: that's the problem that we're going to discuss two with
Speaker 1: all these different technologies is that at some point there
Speaker 1: is a margin of error and there's a problem here
Speaker 1: interpreting the results. And so polygraphs are a great example
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, let's let's get into into polygraphs. Now, polygraphs,
Speaker 1: of course the lie detection tests. Most people are familiar
Speaker 1: with this from TV, where it has been just used
Speaker 1: to death and every television show imaginable um. And even
Speaker 1: when it's used in a more realistic fashion, we still
Speaker 1: are bringing in all these preconceived notions about what it
Speaker 1: consists of and how reliable it may or may not be.
Speaker 1: So a polygraph is essentially a seismograph for the nervous
Speaker 1: system and measures of physiological responses such as heart rate,
Speaker 1: blood pressure, sweatiness, um, breathing. Uh So, when you're anxious,
Speaker 1: you're angry, you're in pain, you're emotionally aroused, these measures
Speaker 1: spike automatically. Generally it's four to six censers. They're attached
Speaker 1: to the body um and uh. And again it's breathing rate, pulse,
Speaker 1: blood pressure, perspiration, and sometimes they'll also record things like
Speaker 1: arm and the leg movements. And this is being used
Speaker 1: in the CIA as well as n s A, so
Speaker 1: there various agencies that actually used this. The problem with
Speaker 1: the polygraph is that you can actually beat it. And
Speaker 1: if you can train yourself to think in a certain
Speaker 1: manner or to do a couple of tricks, it's not
Speaker 1: a problem actually to pass one of these. So if
Speaker 1: they're testing you with this polygraph device, uh, they of
Speaker 1: course need to have a baseline reading. They need to
Speaker 1: ask you stuff like, hey, is your name Julie Douglas
Speaker 1: and you say yes, and they see what that reading is.
Speaker 1: They say are you wearing a striped shirt today? And
Speaker 1: you say yes, yes, And then they say are you
Speaker 1: the Queen of Mars And you would say no, thanks
Speaker 1: lgar yes, So whichever the case may be, um and
Speaker 1: and this would tell let them know, okay, these are
Speaker 1: what our readings are when she is not lying to us.
Speaker 1: And then they would also ask you, you know, they
Speaker 1: would ask you some things too that you're expected to lie,
Speaker 1: like have you ever killed a bug? Well? I don't
Speaker 1: know that's not a good one. Well, have you ever stolen?
Speaker 1: Have your money stolen money? Yes? Have you ever lied
Speaker 1: to your parents? No? No? So they yeah, they begin
Speaker 1: to these universal questions that they know eventually you'll lie
Speaker 1: on just to get again that baseline of what is
Speaker 1: a lilakla? What does all I look like with this person?
Speaker 1: What does the truth look like with this person? And
Speaker 1: now let's ask him the stuff we want to know.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the inside of the house? Stuff
Speaker 1: work safe, you know, things like that, and and see
Speaker 1: that would be something yeah, they would test for and
Speaker 1: they would compare that reading to these other baseline readings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what's cool about that line baseline is that is
Speaker 1: the one that you can gain so that it scrambles
Speaker 1: everything else. Right now, technically it is possible for someone
Speaker 1: to to simply not have a strong physical response to line.
Speaker 1: People have been light detection tests before with this kind
Speaker 1: of effect, but it's it's more difficult. This is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing you would expect Hannibal Elector to do,
Speaker 1: you know, more advanced control or or or lack of
Speaker 1: physical involvement with like it's coming out of your mouth.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the baseline is is an much easier
Speaker 1: thing to screw up. And that's where say the thumb
Speaker 1: tac method comes into place. So you would put a
Speaker 1: thumb tack in your shoe and then when or asked
Speaker 1: one of these baseline questions, you jab that sucker into
Speaker 1: your toe, which causes some distress, and then it messes
Speaker 1: up their baseline. It looks like you're getting this high
Speaker 1: reading for something that is a known truth or aknown lie. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the first time you lie, you you just name
Speaker 1: yourself so that your physiological response is just so active
Speaker 1: that it just that seismograph goes nuts. So the next
Speaker 1: time that you lie, yeah, it's not gonna be there
Speaker 1: is strong. They're like, oh, well that they that didn't
Speaker 1: mess them up at all. It'll just look at the readings.
Speaker 1: Now that one of the problems with with this method
Speaker 1: is that some polygraph tests will testers will make you
Speaker 1: take your shoes off. So uh, it's it's become that
Speaker 1: common of of of a method. But who's to say
Speaker 1: you can't bite your tongue exactly. So there are other
Speaker 1: means of causing yourself a little bit of physical discomfort
Speaker 1: um to to allow you to mess with those baselines. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: there are other bits of folklore that are out there.
Speaker 1: For instance, some people say that you can take certain drugs,
Speaker 1: you can rub any perst print on your fingertips, or
Speaker 1: you can use hypnosis. You can are just wiggling your
Speaker 1: toes or flexing your arms, coughing. But these these cannot
Speaker 1: not to work that well. Oh, I see, So the
Speaker 1: anti perseprint is so that it reduced the galvanic response,
Speaker 1: that sweating response. Right. Yeah, But but what I've been
Speaker 1: reading is that that really doesn't help you any and
Speaker 1: that's just only one of the things that it's testing
Speaker 1: for anyway, So you still can't help it if your
Speaker 1: heart goes nets. Another thing that I have read is that, um,
Speaker 1: just it's a mind over matter issue, and that if
Speaker 1: you can try to um I think really warm and
Speaker 1: cozy thoughts, calming thoughts while you're lying, is that you
Speaker 1: may still get a little bit of a you know,
Speaker 1: some action on that seismograph, but it may not be
Speaker 1: nearly as pronounced if you weren't trying to essentially meditate
Speaker 1: during this process. Yes, so it's still used in a
Speaker 1: number of agencies. It's used by by employers, but in
Speaker 1: most states you don't actually see it in courts anymore
Speaker 1: because it doesn't pass scientific standards of admission in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a particular website anti polygraph dot org,
Speaker 1: which is which is generally aimed at its use by
Speaker 1: employers and by by these agencies, and they point out
Speaker 1: a number of interesting things about polygraph tests about how
Speaker 1: so much of it isn't even about the looking at
Speaker 1: readings and comparing them, comparing these baseline results to the
Speaker 1: results of these questions there, but they're bringing in all
Speaker 1: the other aspects of interrogation. So for instance, they're looking
Speaker 1: for things like, oh, did the did the individuals show
Speaker 1: up late? Do they seem hesitant? What does their voice
Speaker 1: sound like when they answer no to this question or
Speaker 1: answer yes to this one? So, and then they're also
Speaker 1: trying to get subtle admissions out of out of the
Speaker 1: subject as well during the course of the test. So
Speaker 1: in a in a sense, it's still a straight up interrogation,
Speaker 1: like a straight up police uh you know, bright light
Speaker 1: in the eyes kind of a thing, except they have
Speaker 1: this uh, this pseudo scientific method on the table that's
Speaker 1: legitimizing and all. Okay, So the readings that they're taking.
Speaker 1: That's a bit of a sham, right, The whole thing
Speaker 1: is a sham. The idea is that it's a psychological
Speaker 1: tool that they can use on their employees. So if
Speaker 1: that employee knows although I might get tested this month,
Speaker 1: then maybe he or she is going to mind their
Speaker 1: p's and ques a bit more. That's the idea by
Speaker 1: the agents that that's that's what detractors argue, and that's
Speaker 1: certainly what antipolographed or argue. So they have a lot
Speaker 1: of materials on the website, including a more detailed information
Speaker 1: about how it works and how to beat it and
Speaker 1: when when I and I say how to beat it again,
Speaker 1: not just talking about the physical test, but the the
Speaker 1: the overall testing environment that is used by various agents.
Speaker 1: All Right, Uh, interesting stuff to check out. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we get back, we are
Speaker 1: going to talk about the role of f M R
Speaker 1: I and lie detection. All Right, we're back, and we've
Speaker 1: been talking about the thought police. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: methods of telling whether a person is lying or telling
Speaker 1: the truth. Uh, and when. Just as an aside, one
Speaker 1: individual who famously passed the polygraph test, Gary Ridgeway, the
Speaker 1: Green River Killer. And of course, now we were in
Speaker 1: the age of the of m R I S and
Speaker 1: f m RI I S talking about magnetic residence imaging
Speaker 1: and functional magnetic residence imaging. Now we've just we've talked
Speaker 1: about f m R S a lot on this show
Speaker 1: because anytime we're talking about the brain and current brain research,
Speaker 1: we're we're interested in knowing what's going on inside the mind,
Speaker 1: what parts of the brain are being used to process
Speaker 1: various things. UH and fm RI I. UH measures brain
Speaker 1: activity by detecting the changes in blood oxidation and flow
Speaker 1: that occurs in response to neural activity. So when a
Speaker 1: brain area is more active, it consumes more oxygen and
Speaker 1: to meet this increased demand, blood flow increases to the
Speaker 1: active area. And the difference between an m R I
Speaker 1: and f m r I m R I is a
Speaker 1: snapshot of the brain. F m r I is more
Speaker 1: of a moving p sure of the brain, so you
Speaker 1: can see where things are flowing and how the activity
Speaker 1: is occurring. Yeah, m R I is more revealing of
Speaker 1: anatomy as opposed to brain activity with f m R I.
Speaker 1: So it turns out, of course, fm r I is
Speaker 1: really really helpful in trying to pinpoint the parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that are processing information. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at a picture, you know that your visual cortex is
Speaker 1: going to light up. Um, you know that if you're
Speaker 1: trying to make a judgment call about something that you're
Speaker 1: seeing or listening to, then you know that your prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex is going to be very busy trying to weigh
Speaker 1: its options and its judgments. Now, not everything, of course,
Speaker 1: is that um stupid simple if you will, Because because
Speaker 1: we've discussed before a lot of times, it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of a puzzle figuring out. We'll have multiple parts
Speaker 1: of the brain that are involved in a particular task,
Speaker 1: and then you have to sort of piece together what
Speaker 1: that means. It's it's not always a situation where it's
Speaker 1: like you can you can't look at an fMRI I
Speaker 1: result and be like, oh, well, the part of his brain,
Speaker 1: part of the brain associated with lying to your grandma
Speaker 1: about a cookie jar is lighting up. So we know
Speaker 1: what it actually occurred. But we do know that a
Speaker 1: lot of our memory has to do with UH spatial
Speaker 1: elements dimensions, and so if someone committed a murder inside
Speaker 1: of a home and UH you were to put say
Speaker 1: some photos in front of this person of this house,
Speaker 1: and you could see that their brain was going a
Speaker 1: little bit crazy to hit the campus and showing that
Speaker 1: it recognized this room. It already had this blueprint inside
Speaker 1: of this person's brain. Then you could begin to make
Speaker 1: the case that there are some unique identifiers of certain
Speaker 1: criminal situations that you could mark against an fm R
Speaker 1: I scan of the brain. Right and and likewise, in
Speaker 1: the same way you could show evidence pictures, you could
Speaker 1: also show pictures of suspects faces if you were, say, um,
Speaker 1: if someone thought that you might have been an accomplished
Speaker 1: to a crime, if someone thought you might have, say,
Speaker 1: driven the car that a bank robber used, and then
Speaker 1: you were shown four different faces of four different bank
Speaker 1: of suspected bank robbers, and then you can measure their
Speaker 1: response to that, is there some sort of a familiarity
Speaker 1: that's that's that's popping up here? Um. And then also
Speaker 1: apparently there are three parts of the brain that work
Speaker 1: harder during a lie. And that's according to the Steve
Speaker 1: Laken of a Cephos Corp. Which is a company that's
Speaker 1: very involved in the development and then the use of
Speaker 1: f m R I lie detection and so the idea
Speaker 1: here is that you put somebody in an f M
Speaker 1: R I and then you give them basic guess and
Speaker 1: no questions based on whatever you're you're quizzing them about
Speaker 1: and uh, and you can put all that info through
Speaker 1: an algorithm and determine what is actually going on in
Speaker 1: their mind. At the World Science Festival, Alan Alda aired
Speaker 1: a little bit of a video from an upcoming PPS
Speaker 1: documentary that he's done about neuroscience and law, in which
Speaker 1: he goes into this machine, uh and into Steva Lincoln's machine,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to figure out whether he took a
Speaker 1: ring or a or a wrist watch out of a
Speaker 1: drawer prior to the experiment. Because he's a big cleft
Speaker 1: o Allan all the well, well he was he was
Speaker 1: asked to steal one or the other um and he
Speaker 1: and he says he was very tempted to steal them
Speaker 1: both to screw with their results. But but he he
Speaker 1: went with the ring and they were able to determine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not looking in his pockets, but but quizzing
Speaker 1: him basically during the whole the Hobbit and Gollum thing,
Speaker 1: you know, what's in your pockets? Is I guess and uh,
Speaker 1: and in the machine was able to determine he's definitely
Speaker 1: definitely has the ring in his pocket because he responded
Speaker 1: this way to questions about the ring and or pictures
Speaker 1: about the ring. Okay, so there are a couple of
Speaker 1: problems though with fm R I right, And one is that, uh,
Speaker 1: the problem is our brains in our memory. Recall we've
Speaker 1: talked about this a thousand times that memory is fallible,
Speaker 1: that when you take a memory out you can sometimes
Speaker 1: change it, or you have false memories of things. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we discussed seven key ways that
Speaker 1: memories can be made false and uh. And so even
Speaker 1: if you're even if you're just going into a room,
Speaker 1: I mean they've in case efter case of people who
Speaker 1: who either by their own fault, by their own formation
Speaker 1: of a faulty memory, or by um, you know, slight
Speaker 1: coercion on the part of the police investigators, end up
Speaker 1: making a false I D in the lineup, you know,
Speaker 1: you end up seeing a face and you're like, that's
Speaker 1: that's the one. Or in that one case we were
Speaker 1: talking about where an assault occurred while the TV was
Speaker 1: playing and the victim ended up identifying the individual on
Speaker 1: the television as the individual in her apartment assaulting her,
Speaker 1: right because she happened to be staring at that person
Speaker 1: while something traumatic was happening to her, and that was
Speaker 1: coded as the face who was perpetrating this act against her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean that the memory is just it's
Speaker 1: a very dicey thing. And yes, as you, as you
Speaker 1: had pointed out, eye witnesses are notoriously bad at I
Speaker 1: being the right person. So if you see an image
Speaker 1: in your an fm R I and you see an
Speaker 1: image of a person and you think it looks like
Speaker 1: that could be a familiar person or someone you know,
Speaker 1: then it may not be. It may just be someone
Speaker 1: who resembles another person right now. So so there's that
Speaker 1: whole the whole issue of memory itself has to be
Speaker 1: taken into account. Yeah, you can't tease out is this
Speaker 1: a false memory or a true memory? Now. Now, there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of tests though with the f
Speaker 1: R Allie detection somewhere the neighborhood of forty different ones
Speaker 1: with subjects given stimuli and they're questioned about about the
Speaker 1: something that that maybe a truth or maybe a falsehood,
Speaker 1: and uh, supposedly the results are anywhere been nine effective.
Speaker 1: But but then you get into into this weird area
Speaker 1: what is it actually detecting. Is it really detecting a lie,
Speaker 1: or is it detecting emotional importance UM or or some
Speaker 1: of their kind of you know, mental process about the
Speaker 1: stimuli for instance, the ring um all that ends up
Speaker 1: going with this ring and present I believe they were
Speaker 1: both his optics. So so it's like a wristwatch and
Speaker 1: his wedding ring. So the wedding ring has a lot
Speaker 1: of value to him. It's it's, you know, like anybody's
Speaker 1: wedding ring. There are a lot of ideas wrapped up
Speaker 1: into that object. And so uh, to what extent of
Speaker 1: the fireworks in his head that the fMRI I detects,
Speaker 1: to what extent of those more um tied into the
Speaker 1: meaning of the object than to whether he stole it.
Speaker 1: So you've got memory, you have a motion to deal with.
Speaker 1: And Uh. The other part of f m R I
Speaker 1: and it being not so full proof is that you
Speaker 1: can game it much like you would polygraph. Yes. In fact,
Speaker 1: on the panel we we were we were talking about
Speaker 1: earlier um Nito of Fara honey actually UH was was
Speaker 1: given this slide detection test and was told come up
Speaker 1: with ways to beat it, and she actually got got
Speaker 1: pretty good at it pretty fast, and she had she
Speaker 1: had a couple of different ways that she was that
Speaker 1: she recommends beating an fMRI I lie detection test. Uh.
Speaker 1: So she's so, for instance, you're shown a picture of
Speaker 1: familiar faces to see if you know who the bank
Speaker 1: robber is, for instance, do you recognize this face? And
Speaker 1: she said that she could instead of focusing on the face,
Speaker 1: focus on a detail of the picture. You know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, um, we've talked about before, if you
Speaker 1: stare something long enough, it starts looking weird. So so
Speaker 1: she would look at dots, you know, and she would
Speaker 1: just sort of zone out on those dots and say say, no,
Speaker 1: I don't recognize this at all. She's being asked about
Speaker 1: the face, but she's looking and thinking about just a
Speaker 1: collection of dots that looked totally new to her, indifferent
Speaker 1: and she's able to fool it that way. And then
Speaker 1: she recommends you could you could probably do the same
Speaker 1: thing by sort of blinking out your mind and trying
Speaker 1: to think about nothing. All U Ghostbusters where they're told
Speaker 1: to that whatever their next sigh is will be the
Speaker 1: form of the destroyer, and then dan Ackroyd's character accidentally
Speaker 1: as this childhood memory of the state Puff marshmallow Man
Speaker 1: um or you could basically take the take the route
Speaker 1: of just thinking of the state Puff Puff marshmallow Man.
Speaker 1: If they're saying, you know, here's a question about this
Speaker 1: crime or or where you were when this crime occurred,
Speaker 1: and you just fill your thought with marshmallow Man and
Speaker 1: you may pass well. And she also says that you
Speaker 1: have to will your self again to see this in
Speaker 1: a fresh new way and to think to yourself, wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I've never seen that before. That array of
Speaker 1: dots fascinating, completely new to me. And yeah, she did that,
Speaker 1: and she was able to beat the machine. And of course,
Speaker 1: one more thing to mention on f m r I
Speaker 1: s is that currently it would be exceedingly different to
Speaker 1: get difficult to give somebody an f m R I
Speaker 1: against their will, because there's a certain you have to
Speaker 1: be still, you have to cooperate and and and therefore,
Speaker 1: in its current form, it's not going to be one
Speaker 1: of these situations where someone's brought in and chains and said,
Speaker 1: all right, we're scanning that brain of years However, if
Speaker 1: you were trying to prove your innocence, then you could
Speaker 1: spit yourself or if you're going to try if you
Speaker 1: were guilty and you were going to try to game
Speaker 1: the machine, you could certainly submit yourself. Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: and you know the experts that on this panel, including
Speaker 1: fair Honey and also Anthony do you the Wagner psychologist
Speaker 1: and neuroscientists than they said, you know, the next two years,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna see more and more on this. We're
Speaker 1: gonna see uh C F M R eyes used in
Speaker 1: or attempted to be used to clear people of crimes
Speaker 1: or to or to you know, see about tough persecution.
Speaker 1: And there was a judge on that panel too, and
Speaker 1: they talked a lot about how judges are trying to
Speaker 1: get up to speed with neuroscience because they realized that
Speaker 1: this is seeping into the courtroom and they need to yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, fluent in the technology and to understand and
Speaker 1: began to actually sort of craft some of some the
Speaker 1: laws around that actually, and also the importance they also
Speaker 1: mentioned of manature juries are are educated about it because
Speaker 1: we mentioned the fingerprinting thing, but before about how juries
Speaker 1: could be won over just by a fancy presentation where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, that has a chart that is a
Speaker 1: picture of a fingerprint and all the swirls. It looks
Speaker 1: very impressive. You're making an impressive looking case, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna buy it. Likewise, you don't want a jury that
Speaker 1: just because they're rolling out a bunch of neuroscience at
Speaker 1: you and just you know, hitting you over the head
Speaker 1: with it. You're thinking they have the science on their side,
Speaker 1: so I guess they're right. Well, and then you also
Speaker 1: have of the instance of when DNA was introduced to courtrooms,
Speaker 1: and that was very difficult at first because people didn't
Speaker 1: have a shorthand way to discuss how to determine d
Speaker 1: N A if. Now we take it for granted because
Speaker 1: we have a baseline understanding of it, but back then
Speaker 1: that was sort of crazy pants to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: so we're going to match these things off these markers
Speaker 1: and the following ways, and it was sort of scrambling
Speaker 1: people's brains. Right, So that's the f m R I.
Speaker 1: That's one way that we have it, looking in at
Speaker 1: the brain and seeing what's happening. But then there's some
Speaker 1: other interesting areas as well that the use of using
Speaker 1: this kind of mind scanning technology to see what we're thinking,
Speaker 1: to to peek inside those little mental movies that we create,
Speaker 1: be they memories or fabricated uh fantasies or or or
Speaker 1: things that we would like to do, and actually taking
Speaker 1: them out of the brain and putting them on on
Speaker 1: a TV screen for the judge and jury to look at,
Speaker 1: printing them out and distributing them to the jury. Right. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: this is something we've we've talked about this before. I
Speaker 1: think maybe we did it in our wrap up of
Speaker 1: Big Science for um where and it made a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of press. And this is the This
Speaker 1: was a particularly a University of California, Berkeley experiment where
Speaker 1: researchers a fed a computer with eighteen million one second
Speaker 1: YouTube clips that the participants in the study of the
Speaker 1: human participants had never seen, and then they asked the
Speaker 1: computer to predict what brain activity each of those clips
Speaker 1: would evoke. Then they asked it to reconstruct the movie
Speaker 1: clips using the best matches it could find based on
Speaker 1: this this enormous volume of YouTube data that it had.
Speaker 1: You know what I like it that this study is
Speaker 1: that the it was the co authors who actually volunteered
Speaker 1: to be scanned, because it took hours and hours of
Speaker 1: them looking at this one point, looking at movie clips
Speaker 1: while their brains were being scanned. And if I understand
Speaker 1: this correctly, the machine was then fed those YouTube clips
Speaker 1: so that it could create a separate database to then
Speaker 1: compare the images of the movie clips that the volunteers saw, right,
Speaker 1: and this is where the images were reconstructed. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: kind of basically the idea is attempting to view these
Speaker 1: YouTube clips through the human mind alone, based on based
Speaker 1: on the scans, and uh, the the results were were
Speaker 1: blurry but astonishing. For instance, I have a human figure
Speaker 1: appeared in the original clip, then a human form would
Speaker 1: generally show you. It's not like you'd see the face
Speaker 1: or anything, but you would see a general representation of
Speaker 1: a human kind of shadowy looking, yeah, and just very
Speaker 1: low resolution looking stuff. Yeah. Now, what was really cool
Speaker 1: is that one of the clips showed elephants walking right
Speaker 1: to left. And since there weren't elephants in the YouTube
Speaker 1: clips that formed the computer's um you know, visual information,
Speaker 1: it had no idea what to represent. It is just
Speaker 1: like a blurry, dark form, so it did not have
Speaker 1: it in its World Brain Dictionary. So you would have
Speaker 1: to you would have to establish a pretty rich show
Speaker 1: world brain Dictionary for this kind of technology for it
Speaker 1: to really be able to to take those images out
Speaker 1: of the mind and put them on the screen. But
Speaker 1: I think what is so fascinating about this and and
Speaker 1: has such far reaching implications, is that all it was
Speaker 1: just eighteen million YouTube clips fed into this machine. If
Speaker 1: you were too and presumably they're doing this building up
Speaker 1: that database, then they could get a pretty rich world
Speaker 1: Brain Dictionary going. If they were able to make this
Speaker 1: technology mobile. See where I'm going with this, then you could,
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to someone I'm talking future talk, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: beam a light at this person into their their visual cortex,
Speaker 1: get a reflection back and start to read off what
Speaker 1: this person is thinking of or dreaming of. Well, what
Speaker 1: one thought that comes to mind here is that would
Speaker 1: it mean that criminals would have to make sure that
Speaker 1: they perpetrated their acts with as many elements outside of
Speaker 1: the World Brain Dictionary as possible? Would we see like
Speaker 1: the Rise of U and I think Gret Morrison used
Speaker 1: this in Doom Patrol a little bit um like DODA
Speaker 1: criminals where they would have to use like absurdist costumes
Speaker 1: and tactics, so that nothing that you saw would match up.
Speaker 1: Nothing that was that that was maybe the basic aspects
Speaker 1: of the crime would match up, because stealing money, stealing money,
Speaker 1: or you know, or or murder is murder. But if
Speaker 1: enough of the elements were absurd and didn't match up
Speaker 1: with the World Brain Dictionary, then that would perhaps flaw
Speaker 1: the visions of it that we could get out of
Speaker 1: the human mind with this machine. That's intriguing because what
Speaker 1: I mean, what you're saying is that you would train
Speaker 1: your brain to begin to We know, the brain can
Speaker 1: bifurcate itself anyway, right, it can sort of split its tasks.
Speaker 1: So and we've seen this with with ventrilo quests. So
Speaker 1: if someone was committing a crime, they would begin to
Speaker 1: think of their gun as a marshmallow, refer to it,
Speaker 1: see it as a marshmallow, and therefore disassociate gun with
Speaker 1: the crime and associate marshmallow with and that would be
Speaker 1: It's sort of like quantum code. It's key code, not quantum,
Speaker 1: but that would be it's key code, right, and you
Speaker 1: would have to know the key code. But you this
Speaker 1: person who is putting someone through the fm R I
Speaker 1: scanner or this machine uh that that's whetted with the
Speaker 1: World Brain Dictionary, wouldn't know that you didn't have the key.
Speaker 1: Is it possible? I don't know, surely. Yeah. Now another
Speaker 1: thing that that that you have to take into account here,
Speaker 1: and this is something that that Anthony Wagner pointed out
Speaker 1: in the World Science Festival talk, is that another potential
Speaker 1: issue is how close imagination is to experience. Imagination, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed in previous episodes, very close to the real
Speaker 1: experience as a mental event. There is some distinction in
Speaker 1: scans between memories of experience and pure imagination, but they're
Speaker 1: very similar, very similar brain activity. So you might find
Speaker 1: yourself in a situation where you're using some of this
Speaker 1: technology we're talking about to scan the brain and see
Speaker 1: what your reactions are or see what your what kind
Speaker 1: of mental images mental movies are playing in your head.
Speaker 1: But then you have to ask yourself, is this a
Speaker 1: mental image? Is this is this person remembering a murder
Speaker 1: they committed. Are they thinking about a murder that they
Speaker 1: fantasized about committing that they that they they thinking about
Speaker 1: a murder they saw on TV? Are they thinking about
Speaker 1: a murder that they read about in the newspaper and
Speaker 1: just via pure old fashioned human empathy, couldn't help but
Speaker 1: imagine themselves in that murderer shoes. You know. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what's interesting about that is that there's, um, there's
Speaker 1: that case of I believe it was a police officer
Speaker 1: who was in a bunch of chat rooms, um concerning
Speaker 1: basically eating another human. Do you remember this the cannibal cop. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually never killed anybody or ate them as far
Speaker 1: as we know. Um, But there was this whole debate about, well,
Speaker 1: if this person actually sort of going to lunch, having
Speaker 1: these lunch dates with potential victims, and if he left
Speaker 1: this trail behind him, this this memory trace essentially this
Speaker 1: even if it was just his imagination for his fantasy,
Speaker 1: is he capable of doing it? Capable of stepping over
Speaker 1: that threshold? So in a way, it's the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I mean, how do you how do you
Speaker 1: determine whether or not someone actually did the deed or
Speaker 1: was about to do the deed. Yeah, when we get
Speaker 1: into the whole area of the thought crime, is it
Speaker 1: is it because like, for instance, take take murder. Okay,
Speaker 1: so murder, so like There's a huge difference between me, say,
Speaker 1: hearing a story about a husband murdering his wife and
Speaker 1: then thinking of that and being like, oh, my god,
Speaker 1: would that be horrible if I did that, that would
Speaker 1: be the worst, and then I but I imagine myself
Speaker 1: doing it in some more circumstances. Maybe a huge difference
Speaker 1: between that and fantasizing about killing my wife. You know,
Speaker 1: you know is this is an interesting conversation because I
Speaker 1: tried to explain to my mom once that, um, growing up,
Speaker 1: I used to have these awful thoughts and what I
Speaker 1: did not realize when I was too young to realize
Speaker 1: that I was just trying to uh, embodying someone else's
Speaker 1: mind and imagine what something might be like and just
Speaker 1: sort of take that thought experiment to its degree, to
Speaker 1: just to see what it felt like to be in
Speaker 1: those in that person's shoes. And it used to disturb
Speaker 1: me because I thought that I was a dark person,
Speaker 1: not realizing that's part of the creative process or the imagination,
Speaker 1: and that's, you know, part in person why I am
Speaker 1: interested in writing room. I'm a writer because I like
Speaker 1: to put myself into those other situations. So you bring
Speaker 1: up a really good point you know, just just occupying
Speaker 1: that that frame of mind, I mean that you're culpable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you end up. Yeah, you have to worry about where
Speaker 1: about actors? You have to worry about about writers? And
Speaker 1: then to what extent could you actually plan to murder
Speaker 1: somebody and carry out a murder by masking it with
Speaker 1: all of this art, Like say, what if you just
Speaker 1: simply wrote the short story first and then committed the crime,
Speaker 1: or you you acted in the one act play, or
Speaker 1: what if you made sure that the murder perfectly mirrored
Speaker 1: some sort of a murder that occurs in Shakespeare, Because
Speaker 1: then it's kind of twofold, because you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: of course I have that murder in my mind because
Speaker 1: I saw it on stage like eight times. Or and
Speaker 1: also that would have that would prevent them from One
Speaker 1: of the things we've talked about here is say like
Speaker 1: showing them the image of a ring and seeing it
Speaker 1: lights up. Inevitably with any kind of homicide investigation or
Speaker 1: kind of an investigation, they're gonna be you want to
Speaker 1: keep the details out of the press because you want
Speaker 1: new information you can so you can surprise um suspects
Speaker 1: with and be like, do you recognize this watch. Do
Speaker 1: you recognize this footprint? Um? So, and certainly do you
Speaker 1: recognize this murder weapon. But if the murder weapon is
Speaker 1: is something iconic, like I said, to what, to whatever
Speaker 1: degree the crime matches up with something publicly known, uh,
Speaker 1: then there's less stuff that you could shock them with
Speaker 1: and and anything you show them with. Or of course
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with that murder weapon because that is the
Speaker 1: murder weapon that was used in this movie. You know
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, So, I mean it is
Speaker 1: interesting if I were a defense attorney out with probably
Speaker 1: take the tact of saying, we are human beings. We
Speaker 1: have theory of mind, um, and this is what allows
Speaker 1: us to imagine ourselves in other situations. And therefore my
Speaker 1: client is you know, just putting her himself into this situation.
Speaker 1: Or what if you were to say, imagine yourself in
Speaker 1: my clients um shoes, and then everyone does, and then
Speaker 1: you would just arrest them all because there's ultimated thought
Speaker 1: crimes now all right? So, um, you know, on the
Speaker 1: on the panel about neuroscience and law, they did bring
Speaker 1: up the Fourth Amendment guarding against unreasonable searches and seizures,
Speaker 1: and so you know they're extrapolating this to fm R
Speaker 1: I scans because in a sense you are invading someone's privacy.
Speaker 1: So then of course it does bring up this whole
Speaker 1: raft of of topics like what is privacy? To what extent?
Speaker 1: Do we have access to privacy anymore when you live
Speaker 1: within society? Right? And this is especially a big topic
Speaker 1: right now. It's all over the wondering about N S
Speaker 1: A and our and are the contents of our our
Speaker 1: emails and our our our phone calls, etcetera. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Farahani brought up some interesting points. She said that there
Speaker 1: is nothing clear cut that would that could protect us
Speaker 1: against this sort of thing if we were a legitimate
Speaker 1: suspect in a crime. She says that all warrant is
Speaker 1: is a right to the search. Now do we need
Speaker 1: what we need new language added to our to our warrants?
Speaker 1: You know? Perhaps, But she says, right now, the Fourth
Speaker 1: Amendment protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures based on
Speaker 1: how physically invasive the search. It protects against physical body
Speaker 1: and space intrugience, but not intrusions into your secret. So
Speaker 1: she said, think of a diary, all right, the all
Speaker 1: the all that the Fourth Amendment protects is the door
Speaker 1: that stands between the investigators and the diary, not the
Speaker 1: contents of the diary itself. And an f m R
Speaker 1: I is minimally invasive in the physical sense, though it's
Speaker 1: of course, uh potentially very penetrating in the larger sense.
Speaker 1: So to make parallel to the Fourth Amendment, than in
Speaker 1: order to access the door, then you would have to
Speaker 1: be served the search warrant so that you would be
Speaker 1: able to at least I suppose prepare yourself. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's we're entering entering a new age here.
Speaker 1: We have new new issues that are coming up. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, and certainly we're gonna have to change the
Speaker 1: language of warrants and language of laws and the language
Speaker 1: of rights. Interesting territory. All right, Well, on on on
Speaker 1: that thought, let's let's call over the robot and see
Speaker 1: if we have any listener. Man. All right, So we
Speaker 1: recently did an episode on sensory deprivation uh tanks isolation chambers.
Speaker 1: So we did two episodes on them, actually, and we said, hey,
Speaker 1: we know that some of our listeners have entered the
Speaker 1: wounded tune wet box as well, So let's find out
Speaker 1: what they had to say about it. Um, here's one
Speaker 1: from Taylor Taylor wrights In and says, Hi, Robert and Julie.
Speaker 1: My mind was blown by the fact that Robert did
Speaker 1: not mention the movie Altered States during your podcast on
Speaker 1: Century Deprivation Chamber. He is usually very eager to mention
Speaker 1: when your topics are featured in books or films, but
Speaker 1: he never mentioned it. It's a great movie starring William
Speaker 1: Hurt and has everything to do with what you are
Speaker 1: talking about, Robert, I view, I haven't seen it. I
Speaker 1: think you'd really dig it. It's about a scientist who
Speaker 1: gets carried away with his own research into SDCS and
Speaker 1: pul cybin. The movie gets very strange and far out
Speaker 1: with what happens to him. Just watch Annual see Uh. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I've I've been familiar with Altered States for a long time,
Speaker 1: but have never actually watched. I thought I would find
Speaker 1: time when we were researching these, but the two hours
Speaker 1: did not present itself. And you know, um, we actually
Speaker 1: discussed it. Uh. In are sort of like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: do this topic. Oh yeah, yeah, They're like, oh we
Speaker 1: should do this, there's Altered States. But yeah, William hurt
Speaker 1: um and brain scans actually would corroborate this. Yeah. Cool,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll pull out the brain scans later undatory here yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's another one on the censory deprivation chambers from Lisa.
Speaker 1: Lisa writes in and says, Hi, Julie Robert, I was
Speaker 1: so surprised to hear your podcast on sensory deprivation chambers,
Speaker 1: literally a few days after I tried it for the
Speaker 1: first time myself. My first float was on. It was
Speaker 1: last Sunday, June ninth, and I'm going back for repeat
Speaker 1: experiences coming Sunday. Um. A new facility for this called
Speaker 1: float House opened up in Vancouver a month ago, and
Speaker 1: I was both excited and a little scared to try
Speaker 1: it out. I was excited because I've been practicing meditation
Speaker 1: for a little while now, and I've heard that floating
Speaker 1: is a way to deepen the meditative experience. I was
Speaker 1: a little scared because the whole thing seems a little weird,
Speaker 1: with reports of hallucinary experiences. I wasn't quite sure what
Speaker 1: to expect. The facility itself was very clean and spot like.
Speaker 1: Each tank was in a private room with a shower, towels, robes, slippers,
Speaker 1: shampoo and conditioners, etcetera. Were all provided. While I did
Speaker 1: not experience any hallucinations or anything I would call transcendental,
Speaker 1: I did really enjoy the experience. It was extremely relaxing
Speaker 1: to lie in the warm water and meditate for ninety minutes.
Speaker 1: I was a bit worried that the time would be
Speaker 1: too long, but it was just right. I could have
Speaker 1: stayed in there longer. Actually, it was a challenge not
Speaker 1: to fall off to sleep, as I was so comfortable.
Speaker 1: When I got out, all the muscular aches and pains
Speaker 1: in my shoulder and back had melted away. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to float again this coming Sunday. I hope you
Speaker 1: both enjoy your upcoming floats. Lisa, Vancouver, all right, very cool.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, you know we have more mail on
Speaker 1: this topic that we will get to in the future episodes,
Speaker 1: but we thank everybody for writing in about them and
Speaker 1: continued right in with your experience with with any topic
Speaker 1: we were talking about. For instance, if you have something
Speaker 1: you would like to share about the science of lie detection.
Speaker 1: Have you ever taken up or administered a polygraph test?
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear about that, and certainly if you've
Speaker 1: if you've undergone FM or I or any of the
Speaker 1: anything of this nature, we'd love to hear about that
Speaker 1: as well. And what are your thoughts about the future
Speaker 1: of the thought police? Are you a little paranoid about
Speaker 1: all this so you feel okay with it? How? What
Speaker 1: do you think the world will be like in ten
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years regarding our ability to peer inside a
Speaker 1: human mind and our legal authority to do so. You
Speaker 1: can find us a various places to interact with us
Speaker 1: on these topics. Uh Whorse. The Mothership is Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, but we're also on Tumbler,
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