Reading I NEED HELP ON MY HOMEWORK

Neurotechnology can tell us: If we’re wired to be conservative or liberal, Whether our insomnia is as bad as we think, If we’re in love with someone or just “in lust.”

We can learn how we process risks and rewards and whether we’re congenitally disposed to be spendthrifts or tightwads.

Soon, smart football helmets will be able to diagnose concussions immediately after they occur.

Neurotech devices can also track changes in our brains over time, such as the slowing down of activities in certain brain regions associated with the onset of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and dementia.

Not everyone wants to know if one of those conditions is in the cards for them, but those who do may benefit from having time to prepare.

It’s already begun at work.

In China, train drivers on the Beijing – Shanghai high - speed rail line, the busiest in the world, must wear EEG devices while they are behind the controls, to ensure that they are focused and alert.

According to some news sources, workers in government-controlled factories are required to wear EEG sensors to monitor their productivity and their emotional states, and they can be sent home based on what their brains reveal.

The same neuroscience that gives us intimate access to ourselves can allow companies, governments, and all kinds of actors who don’t necessarily have our best interests in mind access too.

As a legal scholar she finds this terrifying, nothing in the US Constitution, state and federal laws, or international treaties gives individuals even rudimentary sovereignty over their own brains.

“As an ethicist, lawyer, and philosopher, I believe that we can and should embrace emerging neurotechnology, but only if we first update our concept of liberty to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of doing so.”

Does society have the right to prohibit us from slowing down our brains or extinguishing painful memories?

What will it mean if our thoughts and emotions are up for grabs, just like the rest of our data being commodified and sold by corporations?

Should employers be allowed to use that data as part of the growing trend of workplace surveillance?

A few questions

Are there any limits to corporations targeting our brains with their products?

Does freedom of thought protect us from government tracking our brains and mental processes?

Will unlocking our brains open our minds to targeted assaults and hacking, and if so, how do we protect ourselves against that risk?

A few questions

Is embracing neurotechnology necessary for the very survival of our species to compete against the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence?

A big question regarding AI

This book navigates each of these dilemmas and more to help us expand our definition of liberty in the modern era to include our right to cognitive liberty — the right to self - determination over our brains and mental experiences.

Anyone who values their ability to have private thoughts and ruminations — an “inner world” — should care about cognitive liberty.

We are at a pivotal moment in human history, in which control of our brains can be enhanced or lost.

We need to define the contours of cognitive liberty now or risk being too late to do so.

Unpack a new right to cognitive liberty and the bundle of rights it includes — mental privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination — while making accessible the exciting and often startling neuroscience of tracking and hacking the human brain.

“My interest in cognitive liberty goes to the very heart of who I am. It affects you just as deeply, but so far, the issue hasn’t sparked nearly so much concern as I believe it should.

I suspect people are more or less complacent because they don’t yet understand or believe the far-reaching implications of these new technologies.

As an Iranian American with extended family still living in Iran, I have witnessed the chilling effect of government censorship and surveillance on individual liberties, but also the power of technology to mobilize people for change.”

How technology is used is crucial in defining our cognitive liberty.

Exercising a choice to take drugs that changes my brain or to plug in to machines that allow doctors to read it is quite different from if I had been forcibly administered those drugs or if doctors had monitored me without my consent.

With our DNA already up for grabs and our smartphones broadcasting our every move, our brains are increasingly the final frontier for privacy.

Our laws’ ability to keep up with technological change.

Take the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech. Does it also protect freedom of thought?

Does it give us the freedom to alter our thoughts whenever and however we choose, or can the government or society put limitations on what we do with our own brains?

What about the Fifth Amendment?

What does it mean to be protected from self - incrimination when the government can hook you up to a machine and find out what’s in your mind, whether you want to share it or not?

Can companies that we share our brain data with through their applications sell it to third parties? Right now, no laws prevent them from doing so.

We must establish the right to cognitive liberty — to protect our freedom of thought and rumination , mental privacy, and self - determination over our brains and mental experiences.