Scientific Breakthrough Inches YouTube Commenters Closer to Being Able to Deliver Racist Thoughts Telepathically

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | September 25, 2015 |

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | September 25, 2015 |

The headline reads:

‘Mind Reading’ is Possible: Scientists Successfully Sent Thoughts Over The Internet

But the what the headline should say is:

Twelve Year Olds Worldwide Celebrate As Vocal Cords No Longer Needed To Be Racist Over Call Of Duty

It does seem that thanks to a group of researchers at the University of Washington we are all suddenly one step closer to becoming a world of telepaths.

One very tiny step, mind you, as thus far the extent of the actual mind reading has been a game of 20 Questions, whereby two subjects were located in different rooms; separated by a mile; and each hooked up to all sorts of fancy machinery that would confuse and irritate the Insane Clown Posse. One of the subjects would ask a ‘yes or no’ question, and the other would in turn focus on one of two differently-flashing LEDs, depending on whether the answer was in the positive or in the negative. The light that the second subject would focus on would trigger a reaction in their brain, which would then be transmitted across to the original subject, with the trick being that only the ‘YES’ light would trigger a strong enough response in their visual cortex. This response would cause blobs of light to appear in their vision, and they would know that the answer had been ‘YES’, while sad, lonely ‘NO’ would trigger no blobs. So, not pickpocketing someone’s mind for their bank details quite yet, but these things do move at a glacial pace.

(This glacial pace is however slightly worrying, as a rival team at Cambridge University announced shortly after this that their entirely different research programme was progressing in leaps and bounds, with one test subject already managing to lift golf-ball sized magnetic materials with just the power of his mind. The researchers reported that the subject had kept reassuring them that he, ‘felt perfectly comfortable in the company of humans!’, before remarking on what an odd thing that was to say.)

Nevertheless, the experiment at the University of Washington is significant, as it is the most complex brain-to-brain experimental procedure performed on humans thus far, with a wide-ranging future potential for good, most notably to help people unable to communicate with others due to conditions like locked-in syndrome.

Or, you know, better ways of smiting our enemies!

Mind-frying ‘enemy combatants’; implanting false memories to convict innocents of crimes; Brainbook ‘poking’ that annoying colleagues’ medulla oblongata to see their heart literally skip a beat. FUN!

The thing about mind-reading technology — if it ever becomes widespread and convenient — is that it will definitely affect different areas of the world in different ways. If you live in England like I do, you just know that the entire nation will be destroyed by it. How? Well, England is powered by three things. These things, contrary to popular belief, are not tea, bowler hats, and Bangledrank Cumblesploof. In reality, they’re: binge drinking, dickheads, and, most importantly, the day-to-day misunderstandings that happen because the English are just too fucking crippled by politeness to speak their mind. It’s a little known fact that each English person has an invisible politeness aura installed at birth that interacts with the politeness auras of others when faced with difficult (AKA ‘social’) situations. The beautiful thing about it, however, is that it is ancient, outdated technology, and it has no idea what it’s doing: I once saw three people walk up to an ATM at exactly the same moment, and it took their politeness auras two minutes to reach a conclusion on who should be allowed to go first. It was like a fucking Entmoot. But it’s that kind of system which is the foundation upon which everything else is built here. If these shackles are suddenly taken off, and everyone knows how to interact with each other quickly and efficiently, it’s going to be anarchy!

And I’m not gonna even start to try and contemplate how it’ll affect the US …