Prediction: even if this requires surgery, unlocking inner thought will be used in criminal proceedings to establish guilt or attempt to be used to prove innocence. It will definitely be used unethically in military/intelligence interrogations until the law catches up.
I'm not sure if this would be able to detect the difference between truthful thoughts about actual memories, and intrusive thoughts that could give the entirely wrong impression.
Yet, they still do use lie detectors, even though the things they detect can be faked, or triggered out of personal alarm or offense. So it is entirely possible, regardless.
Intrusive thoughts is a big one. Most people report some variation of this phenomenon (myself included), and are often horrified by the thoughts or images their own mind produces, very much wanting them to go away. To be judged by that is unthinkably wrong.
Exactly. I have ADHD. The real kind (not the fantasy kind everyone on X seems to have). I grew up on Ritalin. I think they'd have a hard time sorting out "conversational" streams that run through my head. Even when I'm reading something, there is still an excessive amount of internal chatter. I've heard some people hear silence, and that just freaks me out.
It often is "inspired" by what I'm hearing and reading, but not related to how I actually feel about anything in particular. Sometimes I have to put effort into not getting too extreme in those many based-on-a-theme side stories. I'm quite sure this technology would either paint me as someone I'm not, just because of my brain's way of going through a dozen interpretations of whatever it is I'm thinking about, or burn out by the extreme amounts of the internal chatter that entails.
Needless to say, I grew up on nightmares (a common ADHD thing). I eventually ended up learning lucid dreaming to escape them, but still, even my dream world comes up with s##t I would never think of in my waking reality. Those feel so very real to me that I can't imagine this brain scanner thing could tell the difference either.
It depends on your classification of effective. If it is to gather accurate information, it is ineffective. If it is to gather the justification for what you were going to do anyway, it can be most effective.
For a fairly recent example: the US' post-911 War on Terror when they were waterboarding people. This definitely didn't get them any real info, and they found out in the worst way that innocent people will confess when they think they are actively dying.
Prior to this, it was already known to produce false feedback and confessions. The US military has a strange way of repeating history to see if it'll turn out differently "this time." It sadly never does.
