The Morality of Nerve Stapling

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-08-23 04:03am

This is something I have been thinking about and so decided to make a thread about it.

Lets say at some date in the near future, A team of Neurologists and Cybernetisists devise and prototype a neurological Implant (which we will call a Nerve Staple) that can do two things...

1-Select Memories and translate them into computer Code for display on a computer
2-Selectivly and Painlessly Delete Memories (NOTE, Physical Addictions to say, Tobacco or Cocaine can not be deleted by this)

They have undergone tests on Laboratory Animals, and the tests have all proved successful and the installation procedure is rather straightforward and safe assuming it is done in a proper hospital environment. Now they have proposed it to the US Government as a correctional tool, deleting the Minds of Criminals. They can produce a sufficient number to meet the US's needs and at a per unity price of about $25,000 US (in Today's money, Doctor's fees for installation not included, which is around that of the Upkeep for a prisoner for one year). There also has not been a substantial increase or decrease in the crime rate.

Now here are the Questions

1-Should we use this technology?
2-Would we use it?

Zor

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-08-23 04:11am

What does deleting the minds of criminal's do? It doesn't punish them for the crime, nor does it rehabilitate them (forgetting you did something does not equal being taught not to do it again); all it does is make them incompetant to defend themselves when prosecuted in court. What possible use could it have?

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-08-23 04:12am

Wait, if they can upload memories into a computer, then they also re-download them into people? I mean, would something like complete personality transfer be possible?

More on subject, would it be possible to reverse the process using such a method? If a man were convicted, but redeemed by new evidence, could his memory be stored safely, and reloaded into his brain?

Personally, I think this is a bad idea, if only because it's always horrifying to consider that somebody else could have more/as much controll over your thoughts then you do.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-08-23 04:14am

Deleting the mind of a criminal does indeed punish them for what they have done. You have erassed, killed the essence of the person who comitted the crime. You also produce a near perfect system which rehabilitates the criminal. No more institutionalization, no more learning more dangerous crime in prison. No more prison over crowding. You download a criminals memory for safe keeping (just in case the police fucked up) and then wipe their memory. You've just erased the criminal. Its now a new person.

Unless your the sort that believs once a criminal always a criminal and that the person was a criminal BEFORE they comitted the crime (say memory was wiped out up to ten years before the crime).

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-08-23 04:17am

What I worry about in this situation is, if the criminal has no recollections of his life as a criminal, will there actually be any incentive for anybody to search for any potentially redeeming evidence?

Of course, I'm probably missing the simple fact that memories can be displayed on computer, so it may be quite a bit easier to find out who's actually guilty, and who's innocent...

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-08-23 04:20am

Zero132132 wrote:What I worry about in this situation is, if the criminal has no recollections of his life as a criminal, will there actually be any incentive for anybody to search for any potentially redeeming evidence?

Of course, I'm probably missing the simple fact that memories can be displayed on computer, so it may be quite a bit easier to find out who's actually guilty, and who's innocent...

If memories can infact be displayed on a computer and examined, they could indeed determine guilt or innocence. If they can't and they have to still consider examining evidence, I would see a new legal branch being developed where you have public defenders still arguing your case and chasing down evidence and leads.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-08-23 04:22am

I didn't think he meant erasing all of the memory of the person. What would be left would not be a person anyways. No knowledge of speach, spelling, writing, etc. would be left. Those things are remembered, not visceral.

Even if you purged everything but what was essential, you'd essentially leave a hollow of a human, with no childhood memories, no remembered home, no remembered family. That would be incredibly cruel, and it would be for a crime that was unremembered. As such, it would subconsciously seem to said person to be an unjust punishment.

Zero · Post by **Zero** » 2005-08-23 04:27am

Either way, I could imagine a quite interesting SF story based off of this exact idea.

More on topic, wasn't there recently a thread that had something to do with whether you could be punished for a crime that you had no knowledge of? Besides this, erasing memory of a crime won't necessarily teach a criminal not to comitt a crime again, it will simply make him forget why he did it. Essentially, by erasing the person who's comitted a crime, you're erasing whatever real reason you would actually have to punish the person.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-08-23 04:28am

wolveraptor wrote:I didn't think he meant erasing all of the memory of the person. What would be left would not be a person anyways. No knowledge of speach, spelling, writing, etc. would be left. Those things are remembered, not visceral.
.

original post wrote:2-Selectivly

-meaning you can choose what to delete, so writing stays, a 6 year old girls daily route goes, knowledge of drug running gets cut and pasted..

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-08-23 04:34am

the .303 bookworm wrote:
original post wrote:2-Selectivly
-meaning you can choose what to delete, so writing stays, a 6 year old girls daily route goes, knowledge of drug running gets cut and pasted..

Yes, you can also delete spacific skills, IE you could take a master marksman and make him into a lousy shot by nerve stapling him.

Zor

dworkin · Post by **dworkin** » 2005-08-23 07:01am

Is the US willing to take the massive trade embargo or resulting loss of scientific progress that comes with nerve stapling

Many would see a nerve stapler as a godsend. No worries about killing offenders/false positives. Vastly smaller prisons and recidivism. Rehab will become a growth industry. Criminal behaviour will become a medical problem that can be 'cured'.

Issue 1: Once you've deleted criminal tendancies, what value system do you 'install', if any? Remember, a sociopath's main problem is a non-functional value system. What sort of sexuality do you give a rapist or pedophile? What do you do if some bright spark finds that it is easiest/most effective to install a 'gay, catholic who likes bowling' personality? Or one that vote's Democrat?

Issue 2: Criminal behaviour will become a disease that can be treated. The question becomes 'when do you nerve staple?'. Is it justified for shoplifting, internet piracy, jay-walking, speeding, bigamy, bag-snatching, phreaking, credit card fraud, being a mime

, burglary, aggravated robbery, vandalism, arson, manslaughter, murder? Do you staple for a 'crime of passion' or for 'premeditateds'.

Issue 3: Do you nerve staple people with mental disorders? The ones that lead to violent crime? The one's that don't? Alcoholism? Kids with ADHD? Autists (see Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon)?

Issue 4: How will you know you've been stapled? If the surgery leaves few/no scars, how the hell will you know? Are you a nice guy because you're a nice guy or 5 years ago did you go batshit and carve up your English teacher and now you've been 'stapled? If there is some mark that's easily identifiable will 'staplies' be stigmatised regardless?

Issue 5: If criminal behaviour is a disease and has identifiable onset markers do you staple all deviant behaviour (see Harrison Bergeron)?

Issue 6: How will criminals react to this technology? Can it be abused?
Could you commit a crime and then have the memory deleted? Your hitman could be provably a model citizen except when he's on a job (ala Manchurian Candidate).

Issue 7: What do you do when the victim meets the staplie later on (B5 episode)?

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2005-08-23 10:21am

This would be quite useless for criminals unless you're willing to wipe their entire memory and have them learn everything from scratch again. So some perp kills a guy. Fine, you wipe his memory of the crime & the planning of the crime. Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. You might have to follow threads & patches of memories back for years and wipe them, because perhaps it was a childhood experience where he got beaten up by a bully that started him on the road to crime. You'll have to wipe that and every related memory to make sure he doesn't go down the same path again. But given the way memories & experiences all interlink with each other, he's going to have a lot of strange gaps in his memory, and who knows what kind of side-effects that's going to have.

I'd say a better use for it would be preventing PTSD. Say for instance you were kidnapped and raped, that's likely something you'd rather not remember. After you get to safety they take your memory of the events and download them for the trial, then after making sure you're physically fine, they wipe everything starting from the day you were kidnapped. You wake up in the hospital and they tell you you had a concussion and were out for a week. You go on with your life never knowing about the rape.

But there's problems with that too. Someone in your family or circle of friends will almost certainly know about what happened, and it's only a matter of time before it slips out and you know too. That's going to lead to issues as well. How bad is hard to say.

Overall, I'd be extremely wary of using the mind-wipe.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-08-23 10:26am

Zero132132 wrote:Either way, I could imagine a quite interesting SF story based off of this exact idea.

Iirc, Babylon 5 did an episode about something like this. The minds of dangerous criminals were wiped by telepaths, and they were released into society with new identities.

More on topic, wasn't there recently a thread that had something to do with whether you could be punished for a crime that you had no knowledge of? Besides this, erasing memory of a crime won't necessarily teach a criminal not to comitt a crime again, it will simply make him forget why he did it. Essentially, by erasing the person who's comitted a crime, you're erasing whatever real reason you would actually have to punish the person.

Wiping their mind -is- the punishment, as mentioned by someone earlier. For all intents and purposes, erasing their memories 'kills' the person that committed the crime. Since afterwards all you're left with is an empty body that has no past.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2005-08-23 10:32am

This device would be completely useless for preventing recidivism unless you reduced most criminals to mental infancy. There's a strong correlation between childhood living conditions and adult criminal tendencies. If some gangbanger commits a murder, nerve stapling him won't make him forget a childhood spent growing up in a shitty neighborhood with no family, immersed in a street culture which demands a violent response for every percieved insult.

Kazuaki Shimazaki · Post by **Kazuaki Shimazaki** » 2005-08-23 10:33am

aerius wrote:This would be quite useless for criminals unless you're willing to wipe their entire memory and have them learn everything from scratch again. So some perp kills a guy. Fine, you wipe his memory of the crime & the planning of the crime. Is that enough? Maybe, maybe not. You might have to follow threads & patches of memories back for years and wipe them, because perhaps it was a childhood experience where he got beaten up by a bully that started him on the road to crime. You'll have to wipe that and every related memory to make sure he doesn't go down the same path again. But given the way memories & experiences all interlink with each other, he's going to have a lot of strange gaps in his memory, and who knows what kind of side-effects that's going to have.

If the killing is only the last link in a massive chain, then perhaps breaking only one or two and installing a few nice memories would be enough.

But there's problems with that too. Someone in your family or circle of friends will almost certainly know about what happened, and it's only a matter of time before it slips out and you know too. That's going to lead to issues as well. How bad is hard to say.

While it won't be too good, merely being told you've been raped is probably going to be a lot less traumatizing than having the film series in your mind to replay every night for the next twenty years.

Mrs Kendall · Post by **Mrs Kendall** » 2005-08-23 10:48am

I was thinking it would be a good solution, like aerius suggested, for people with PTSD. But then I got to thinking that his point about someone in the family or friends knowing about it and the fact that it would eventually be told to the person who's mind was wiped which would totally make the mind wipe a waste of time and energy and money of course. I also thought for people like my husband who had physical scars as well and mental problems with his PTSD he would just have to look down at his arm or other scars and say what's the fuck happened to my arm and someone would have to tell him, that alone would probably happen within the first few minutes of waking up.

Also would this mind wipe be totally wiped like say my husband had his mind wiped to get rid of his PTSD, does this include his memories of everything that happened since then or is this just situation specific? If his mind was wiped totally from 6 years ago then he wouldn't have the wonderful memories of our children being born and our wedding day, and all the other positive memories he has, which would suck royally.

Now for the criminals I don't know yet, I haven't decided if it would be a good tool to use or not.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2005-08-23 02:01pm

If where going to delete the brains of people, we should just save 24,999 dollars and some cents and execute them via firing squad. By deleting and replacing the mind you are killing that person anyway.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-08-23 02:13pm

It was already mentioned that deletions would not be to the entirety of the brain. Furthermore, execution doesn't release a model citizen into society where there was once a criminal.

I could see stapling programs where a criminal was entirely deleated, then given tailor-made memories and released into society. The perfect cure. For minor crimes, such as theft, the want of X object could be deleated. For smokers, perhaps they could forget that they have a history of smoking. Most people dont' take up smoking at age 45, so if they don't remember doing it as a kid, they won't re-start.

Of course, no one would want such programs being controlled by any one entity. It could easily be abused. Government programs could make a former murderer into the citizen of their choice.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-08-23 03:00pm

Wait a minute, Zor, isn't "nerve stapling" just one of those dumb things you made up?

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2005-08-23 03:05pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Wait a minute, Zor, isn't "nerve stapling" just one of those dumb things you made up?

Thats exactly what he did, I think he even says that in the OP.

Zor · Post by **Zor** » 2005-08-23 03:22pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Wait a minute, Zor, isn't "nerve stapling" just one of those dumb things you made up?

Mods, i beleive this falls under the definition of Trollery.

Zor

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2005-08-23 03:25pm

Zor wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Wait a minute, Zor, isn't "nerve stapling" just one of those dumb things you made up?
Mods, i beleive this falls under the definition of Trollery.

Zor

Do you know the definition of "shut the hell up"? When I need a spastic retard to help tell me what is and isn't trolling, I'll be sure to ask you first.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-08-23 04:10pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:If where going to delete the brains of people, we should just save 24,999 dollars and some cents and execute them via firing squad. By deleting and replacing the mind you are killing that person anyway.

Unlike execution, someone could be revived if found to be innocent. Furthermore, unlike execution those nerve stapled could still be useful members of society.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-08-23 04:12pm

aerius wrote:I'd say a better use for it would be preventing PTSD. Say for instance you were kidnapped and raped, that's likely something you'd rather not remember. After you get to safety they take your memory of the events and download them for the trial, then after making sure you're physically fine, they wipe everything starting from the day you were kidnapped. You wake up in the hospital and they tell you you had a concussion and were out for a week. You go on with your life never knowing about the rape.

But there's problems with that too. Someone in your family or circle of friends will almost certainly know about what happened, and it's only a matter of time before it slips out and you know too. That's going to lead to issues as well. How bad is hard to say.

Overall, I'd be extremely wary of using the mind-wipe.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"

PrinceofLowLight · Post by **PrinceofLowLight** » 2005-08-23 07:15pm

I could see people doing it recreationally to renew surprises and experiences. Imagine being able to watch TESB again without knowing Vader is Luke's father.