Synthetic Telepathy Experiment

This paper is from 2014, but I came across it from this recent article. What caught my eye was the gush about human "telepathy" - I used the word myself - but this is no such thing. The research is about creating a synthetic brain-to-brain interface (BBI): A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans.

Indeed, reading the paper, even the word "communication" is tenuous, in that the sender and receiver do not actually exchange any information; they make no decisions. The receiver is actually just a zombie "following orders" from his transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) device that delivers its "orders" through a magnetic field. The receiver is merely reacting to the magnetic field and has no knowledge of the consequences of his actions.

The experiment was partly funded by the US Army Research Office, so we can see where this is going: either human-to-zombie or human-to-robot communications, thereby using the judgments of a human and the disposable hardware of, say, a combatant out in a field of fire.

Not quite "telepathy".

If you look at the data, you'll also see how incompetent some of the participants were!

One other thought: you know the unwarranted belief that magnetic fields have no effect on humans? So how does TMS work? How does MEG work? Would you like rogue synthetic magnetic fields to decide your actions for you?

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_{image: plosone CC}