This article was originally published by Dagny Taggart at The Organic Prepper
Does free will truly exist?
According to a new study, maybe not. It appears that we may have less control over our personal choices than we think. Unconscious brain activity seems to determine our choices well before we are even aware of them.
Researchers at the Future Minds Lab at UNSW School of Psychology in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made BEFORE they consciously declared their decisions. Their findings were published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.
For the experiment, the researchers asked 14 participants to freely choose between two visual patterns – one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes – before consciously imagining them while being observed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI).
They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between the patterns. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Next, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons.
The results were unsettling.
Scientists were able to predict which pattern people would choose before their thoughts even became conscious.
Here is an explanation of the results, from the UNSW press release:
Not only could the researchers predict which pattern they would choose, they could also predict how strongly the participants were to rate their visualizations. With the assistance of machine learning, the researchers were successful at making above-chance predictions of the participants’ volitional choices at an average of 11 seconds before the thoughts became conscious.
The brain areas that revealed information about the future choices were located in executive areas of the brain – where our conscious decision-making is made – as well as visual and subcortical structures, suggesting an extended network of areas responsible for the birth of thoughts. (source)
Professor Joel Pearson said we may have thoughts on ‘standby’ based on previous brain activity, which then influences our final decisions without us being aware:
“We believe that when we are faced with the choice between two or more options of what to think about, non-conscious traces of the thoughts are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations.
As the decision of what to think about is made, executive areas of the brain choose the thought-trace which is stronger. In, other words, if any pre-existing brain activity matches one of your choices, then your brain will be more likely to pick that option as it gets boosted by the pre-existing brain activity.
This would explain, for example, why thinking over and over about something leads to ever more thoughts about it, as it occurs in a positive feedback loop.” (source)
The subjective strength of future thoughts was also dependent on activity housed in the early visual cortex, an area in the brain that receives visual information from the outside world. This suggests that the current state of activity in perceptual areas (which are believed to change randomly) has an influence on how strongly we think about things, the researchers explained.
This study isn’t the first to show that our thoughts can be predicted before we have them.
While these findings might seem shocking, this study isn’t the first to show that thoughts can be predicted before they are conscious.
This study builds on previous research, reports Quartz:
As the researchers note, similar techniques have been able to predict motor decisions between seven and 10 seconds before they’re conscious, and abstract decisions up to four seconds before they’re conscious. Taken together, these studies show how understanding how the brain complicates our conception of free will.
Neuroscientists have long known that the brain prepares to act before you’re consciously aware, and there are just a few milliseconds between when a thought is conscious and when you enact it. Those milliseconds give us a chance to consciously reject unconscious impulses, seeming to form a foundation of free will. (source)
The researchers say that their findings may have implications for mental disorders involving thought intrusions that use mental imagery, such as PTSD. They cautioned against assuming that all choices are predetermined by pre-existing brain activity.
“Our results cannot guarantee that all choices are preceded by involuntary images, but it shows that this mechanism exists, and it potentially biases our everyday choices,” Professor Pearson said.
This kind of research could benefit people with certain disorders – but at what cost?
This kind of mind-reading technology certainly appears to have the potential for abuse and manipulation if it falls into the hands of the wrong people.
What does this mean for privacy? What does this mean for those being interrogated by law enforcement?
The list of ramifications could go on and on.
This is only part of a growing problem with invasive technology.
Just last month, a team of neuro-engineers at Columbia University reported that they developed a system that can translate people’s thoughts into intelligible, recognizable speech.
If you are concerned about how far all of this research is going to go, you aren’t alone. As I asked in Science FACT: Mind-Reading Technology Is Now Reality:
With this rapid progression of technological advancement, one has to wonder…how close are we to technological singularity?
Oh, and on that note – Facebook is really into the idea of accessing user information directly from their brains. Yes, you read that correctly: Facebook wants to read users’ minds. During a February interview with Harvard law school professor Jonathan Zittrain, CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned a brain-computer interface (it would look similar to a shower cap) the social media behemoth is researching.
In response, Zittrain said, “Fifth Amendment implications are staggering.”
Zuckerberg’s reply will surprise no one: “Presumably, this would be something that someone would choose to use as a product.”
Despite years of bad press, public outrage over privacy violations, and the loss of millions of users (and counting), Facebook remains determined to infect our lives whether we want it to or not. And if you believe you are safe from the tech giant’s creepy stalker tactics, think again: Even if you have deactivated all of your social media accounts – or never had any in the first place – your privacy is not guaranteed.
Technology is progressing so rapidly it is difficult to keep up.
Nearly every day, reports of new and potentially invasive developments are being announced. Scientists and technology companies claim that this research is for the benefit of society, even while warning us about its potential dangers.
It sure seems like a dystopian nightmare is approaching.
What do you think about this research?
Do you think there is any good that can come of it? In what ways do you think it could be abused? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
About Dagny
Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of a professional journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM.
Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.
Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.
Dagny Taggart also believes John Edward is GOD and you should dig a pit and load it with plastic pails of beans
I wonder if these incredibly nosy assholes will be able to predict which caliber I use on them.
Menzo, I’ll bet they couldn’t predict what I’ll tell them they can do with their so-called mind-reading, LOL.
The following is difficult to digest. But if you educate yourself and research. The answers are clear. Please research.
Next generations are lost. America freedoms LOST.
Donald J Trump is the Last American President.
Everyone to hold office after President Trump will be a Pro New World Order, one worlder, anti American Media approved, CFR approved, International Banker approved, mindless tele prompter reader, like the anti-American, Kenyan, MUSLIM Obama. Obama, the AntiAmerican TRAITOR.
Manchurian candidate for NWO beast system.
TOTAL CONTROL OF THE MASSES is your future:
Censorship. Censorship by tech monopoly mob.
Cashless, all digital transactions
Facial recognition cameras All public roads and places.
DNA sniffers in ALL public places
Forced vaccinations
Travel restrcted and controlled. Visa required for Americans to travel Europe.
You will be forced to stay within your geo fence.
5g snitch, snoop, surviell, track, trace, technology through 5g. Your refrigerator, dishwasher, hot water heater, washer/dryer, will ALL be internet/5g “speaking” with next appliances you purchase. ALL will be reporting on you via 5g/internet
Roads are being imbeded with induction coil loops to detect the transponders in the new cars. ALL new cars snoop on you.
Cameras with license plate readers are now everywhere.
Cell phone trackers were only first phase of mass surviellance.
FaceBook was ploy to fill facial recognition database for tracking EVERYONE. DARPA project.
Google-FaceBook-Internet, ALL are DARPA projects and DARPA funded from the begining. Look it up. Do your research. All is in the open.
Illegal immigrants voting for socialist, The racial demographic shifts in populations, muslim invasion, mexican invasion. ALL will come to a conclusion within next 2 US election cycles.
America as we have known it is Gone.
Immigration-Education Brainwashing-Demographic changes tell the future.
Guns will be banned
Ammo difficult/impossible to find.
Cash will be gone after soon coming economic collapse.
Food may be hard to come by because foriegners are buying ALL the USA farmland. Those crops will be sold abroad to highest bidder. Of course “climate change” is what will falsely be blamed for US food shortage.
That is the future of NWO citizen Amerikka.
But there is hope. Jesus is coming. That is the good news.
Until then Buy: Food-Silver-Gold. Buy land-garden food.
Get what you need NOW for defense. Time very short.
One more false flag idiocy away from brainwashed sheeple demanding ban.
Fact: Christians slaughtered every day in Africa by muslims. Media says nothing. Women raped in europe and anywhere muslims invade. Muslim crimes All covered up by EU governments.
Completely agree!
What, me worry? I’m the wrong race.
Til then, pray, prepare, produce from the land.
LOL! Coffee hurts going OUT your nose Menzo.
Murka!
Not a neuroscience major here..But
Not all your choices involve a long lead time…
Forgive me for being Capt Obvious here, but when the SHTF in real time and you react to something coming at you, you really do have milliseconds to choose and implement your choice.
Not all choices your mind/brain make can be predicted many seconds in advance, only a certain class of decisions.
And I’m not bright enough to see the implications against free will just because somebody can observe the brain electro/chemistry involved in processing thoughts.
I also have the metaphysical belief (without direct proof) that the mind exists as a separate entity and uses the brain as a processor.
<bb
I read an article where a brain can be monitored for the person’s internal voice while reading. Once the computer learns that it can listen in to your internal voice.
A let down when the implications of a billion dollars spent to hear my internal voice say ” Mmm boobies.” is finally realized.
And unfortunately for me and others, I can corroborate that this is true. And it is already being used in ways by governments around the world that would scare the hell of most people out there… George Orwell’s 1984 is a naif vision of what they already can do with some of their citizens…
Their experimenting with the system in order to massify it… for now its a few hundreds of thousands, soon will be the entire population of their countries… imagine your mind, your thoughts, your creative thinking, your ideas, opinions be recorded and processed to be posterior analyzed and reclaimed by those who have access to it… I have a lot of intellectual property being “collected” for the last 12 years, and imagine that some it, is being claimed by a few of the “chosen” by the system, and they are fanatically protected by the entire system… This happens in a shity country like Portugal, imagine what’s happening in a country like yours…
Interesting idea, that the mind exists as an entity in its own right and that it uses the brain for its own purposes (to some extent). If the brain can detect electromagnetic fields, and create them and modulate them in some way, then it may be a receiver and a transmitter of certain types of thoughts. This would explain certain cases of premonition (in which some particular information was known by someone and perceived as a premonition by someone else), general telepathic phenomena, and other sixth-sense based perceptions. There is some pretty old literature about this. If you think of your brain as being a receiver, and the mind as being universal, some types of thoughts make more sense.
Really, we have several “brains”.
1)The obvious one in your skull, which is thought to contain what we consider the conscious, or rational mind.
2)The enteric brain, which consists of the nerve bundle in your solar plexus area, which acts as an antenna, receiving electrical frequency signals from the external environment, ie:premonitions.
3)The heart brain, which literally is your emotional center.
4)The cellular brain, which is the conglomeration of your body cells, which is thought to contain what we regard as the subconscious mind. This is the signal they are really picking up, the subconscious to conscious signal/decision.
5)The brain that is least understood, is the brain-Consciousness connection of your Soul.
1,2,3, & 4, all have actual neurons, and neural connections. 5 is the spiritual part.
The human body is an electro-chemical system, which can be interacted with, monitored, and manipulated via external means.
There are a number of patents regarding various means to artificially interact with the brain-body via external electrical sources, dating back to the 1950’s.
This topic gets pretty deep, pretty quick, and most people simply refuse to understand it…
Just Me, looks like you are a reader of Joel Goldsmith as well.
#5, probably one of the most difficult things to do in this world..
Your last sentence nails it well, too.
I have not heard of him until now, but did look him up, on your mention. His Wiki page says he created a spiritual movement, and meditated.
Meditation is how you get to #5. Thing is, almost everyone, most books on the topic, say something “Just meditate, and clear your mind”. But, they never tell you HOW to actually successfully meditate. If you are interested, I’ll post a short how-to.
I am not a PhD. I am just a regular guy who was abandoned on a desert island soon after I was born. I grew up not even knowing what a PhD was. One consequence of this is that for a long time all I could do was try and understand my brain subjectively. I did not have Greek or Latin words with which to label things. So I had to use my own words, words like ‘Uff,’ and ‘poog’ and sounds which I still cannot even spell. So please forgive me for not understanding these things in exactly the same way you do. After all, I did not have the advantage of an Academy education. To you these things appear extremely clear. To me that seems uncharacteristic of the problem. But what do I know? Just about nothing actually. I just make up these explanations the best I can and hope I don’t fall into a deep pit full of vacuous meanings and misguided –but very scholarly– understandings. Thank you very much for not stalking me down and wiping me out for my ignorant ideas. – Rub
I have studied this stuff for a looooong time, and still am 😉 Your ideas are not ignorant, and pretty well stated.
Where exactly was this desert island?
Inquiring poogs want to know…..
You forgot #6 – the primary male brain, which is located, well, you know….
Brain #6 does respond to various stimuli, and literally leads to fluid transfer, or shift really, which causes cloudy perception in Brain #1. Which, as we all know, can get us in trouble, occasionally…
Mr. JustMe,
5G is a mass consiousness WEAPON that will exploit human systems as you have listed.
Mr. rub123,
Not having classic education is to your advantage.
You are far ahead of most people.
I am now speaking about America;
USA public education is NOT education. It is a system that brainwashes, monitors, and destroys free will. Children are taught to be weak sheep to make the ruling class richer. And to be taught NWO Godless communist ideology. Public teachers are mostly leftist. They brainwash the children. Children are INDOCTRINATED not educated by public school. (There may be a few exceptions in some conservative states. But they are the exception.)
University is much worse. You are coaxed into unpayable debt. You are then subjected to endless communist NWO propaganda. It never ends while in university. Continuous brainwashing. While you are being saddled with HUGE debt.
It is a con game to steal your money and future money.
A four year degree is meaningless. You know nothing once graduated. But it does serve the purpose of you getting into debt and now you are vetted because you have made it through the NWO communist brainwashing system called University/College. No one is allowed a decent job in America unless you are vetted to have been properly brainwashed by 4 year college system.
Suggestion:
Get yourself a $4 library card. Go read books. Then go online to watch the free courses online from the India education system, and the free classes online from USA MIT and other University/Colleges. Then watch Educational content on YouTube.
try PragerU.c 0 m and PragerU on YouTube
Very interesting. Some have included the gut as part of the brain system because of its numerous nerve endings there. Not sure if it would fall under #2 or #3.
This is a most interesting topic for me.
Yes, #2, the enteric brain is in the “gut” area. This is what gives that “gut feeling”, when something is wrong, or potentially wrong. Almost everyone has had a “gut feeling” about something that saved their @$$, or could have, had they not disregarded it…
Not very surprising.
Our physical bodies are biological machines.
I’ll use computer terms for neurological parts.
We have I/O, our senses take in,
our system puts out control.
We have memory, some is RAM some is hardcoded.
We have many processors all talking to each other
to some degree or another.
We have a power supply.
We have backups and to some degree self healing systems.
It does not surprise me that using my terms, slap a logic analyzer on to a computational system, see how it works,
and you can predict what will happen in future decisions.
From a mathematical point of view our thinking brain is a collection of sets of things, that is all our memories.
That is why the basis of AI is Set theory.
It takes time to access those sets, hence hesitation.
Training or situational awareness collects some sets closer timewise to action than others. For example my weekly practiced trigger control will be quicker than some one whose last trigger pull was in basic training 40 years ago.
I doubt we will be able to predict the brains outputs in an uncontrolled random environment. My “learned” algorithm for mercy is different from yours for example.
I have no doubt we will be able to read our memories someday.
That will make for interesting social impacts.
Rellik, WOW! That’s some heavy stuff you posted but I still have to agree with what you said.
Cellular memory could be regarded as the “ROM” part of memory.
Relik, thanks for the great engineering analysis. I completely agree.
rellik…there’s no way in hell that you dont know that’s how “active shooters” are being motivated into committing their demonic acts of violence. At least I can take comfort in knowing that you are not one of the people that believes the input stimuli is simply psychotropic drugs and violent video games.
..
This is nothing new.
“You have impure thoughts!”
Sister Mary Killer
they can predict what I’m gonna do bullshit I’m no one in the grand scheme of things. The demons and rinos can’t predict trumps next move and it pisses them off to no end. They say he doesn’t have a plan. My ass his plan is to brainswaggle the shit out of the establishment and maga. He says things like will see to keep the media guessing. No way there is this capability. The soviets used to say shit like this to keep the people in check. Always planting the seed that they are being watched. I’d bet same thing happening in North Korea. Guess what not skeerd.
Everyone has free will. But there are malevolent people whom influence our decisions.
The promotion of gender confusion is an example of how media saturates the minds of young parents to admire people who raise boys like girls, and vice versa.
It is insidious psychological warfare.
.
Everyone has free will. But there are malevolent people whom influence our decisions
Yuh Think? ?
Free will and predestination co-exist
You make a free will decision and from that time forward everything is predetermined until you make an other free will decision etc
Honeypot, the people who promote all the LGBT crap need to face some kind of repercussions. No boy or girl should ever be raised to be a FREAK.
My decision after 20 seconds of contemplation is to have a beer…
Yours is a well considered course of action. It’s not for everybody. But I’ve tried it, and it works.
BS
Saaay….this gal been listening to old Art Bell AM Coast to Coast programs, hasn’t she?
The results are expected, what a test subject is actually doing is playing by the rules, ultimately your mind and your will are being controlled, and thereby decisions/actions accurately predicted. This goes for everything where behavior, thinking, or belief is controlled by culture, gov’t, or any type of institution where authority is overtly or covertly exercised over the people. By merely involving yourself in their “processes” you are submitting. The best thing to do is never go along with the program, never play the game, never play by their rules. If enough people wake up and start seeing things clearly this will stymie authoritarians, causing them to utilize excessive resources to achieve their goals. This is why a poor education system, gov’t issued propaganda, and social conditioning are so important to TPTB.
Most of us exercise a great degree of free will, which is a good thing, but philosophically speaking, I’m not sure total free will really exists, and TPTB realize that too. However, no person, no institution, no entity ever has the right to harness a person’s will or mind for their purposes.
I have said it again and again, TPTB believes citizens are nothing more than managed disposable resources.
Mind read THIS F–K OFF
Synchronicity? Mind control? No, but it is voice to skull technology.
My feedback loop says I need to brush up on my psychic warfare skills.
Beam me up Scotty, too weird even for this site.
The Sh*t is about to hit the fan, what’s YOUR plan?
“Plan!? There ain’t no plan!” – Pigkiller, Beyond Thunderdome
Some people are born with “the knack” that neuroscience seeks to duplicate.
“Always After Me Lucky Charms”…
I don’t see the nureo computers as much of a threat …at least not until they start growing arms and legs.
CRISPR on the other hand …well we will just have to wait and see…not like we have a choice.
But know this All technology is ushered in on the premise of the good it can Bring to mankind.
Mind reading and mind manipulation have been around in some form since the 1920s. That was when advanced biochemistry and bio-electronics really took off.
WWII really advanced the field as both the Germans and the Japanese pushed the envelope. Their experiments involved environmental manipulation (seeing how much cold, heat or pain a person can take), to behaviour manipulation (can I get that young woman to go down on that dog?). The experiments were unethical and evil but when the war ended we took all the findings on board and have used them ever since.
Fast forward to today and these technologies are used to control crazy Muslims and to send blacks into a frenzy whenever a good riot is needed. Why do you think we like to cluster these groups into the same neighbourhood? It is easier to do them as a group. It would have been much harder if they assimilated into society.
Seems to me all they have proved is that they can see the delay between when your mental CPU makes its choice and transfers that information via your mental Bus to your output device (mouth, hand, whatever).