Telepathic Communication is Possible! Or is it?

Part 2/2

Send the message “I am hungry” without doing anything but thinking. Not possible right? You would have to say it or type it.

That statement is not entirely true, but it is possible. The action of simply thinking of what you want to say and having that send to the exact person you want seems to be a vision of the future.

Except for the fact that people can do it now(with certain tools).

This article explains the process of telepathic communication, what we will need to make this a reality everywhere and ethical concerns.

Mental telepathy or the process of transferring thoughts and brain waves from one mind to another has long been believed to be impossible because it would break the laws of science.

One of many experiments that proved this wrong was done by neuroscientist Carlos Grau of the University of Barcelona and colleagues in France and India.

They set up an EEG(Electroencephalograph) headset from subjects in India which was transmitted over the internet to other people in France.

“TMS(transcranial magnetic stimulation) devices, which have been used to treat anxiety and depression, electrically stimulate neural activity in the brain through intact scalps using strong magnetic fields. In this experiment, TMS stimulators were placed over the occipital (visual) cortex at the back of the brain, creating a perceived flash of light, called a phosphene, through neural activations in the visual cortex.”

The subjects in India were trained to generate an EEG signal representing either a one or a zero. A one was generated when subjects imagined moving a hand, while zero was produced when subjects imagined moving their foot.

These ones and zeros were then transmitted from India to France and transferred to the headset of the subject in France. When the subject in India sent a one(moving hand), they were routed to a TMS electrode that caused the light to be perceived, while zeros(moving foot) were routed to a different TMS device whose activity produced no light.

This diagram here shows how the experiment worked.

This experiment should be thought of like a neurological Morse code or binary code. The subject in India would produce ones and zeros(binary code) and would be transmitted through short and long flashes of light in the brain(Morse code).

Ethics

Even if we could somehow implement this new technology, why would we do it and who would get it?

The first question of who gets it is very commonly discussed and there are two very good sides to the argument.

If someone was not able to receive this technology because they could not afford it, we could not simply not give it to them because they would fall behind in society, and they would fall behind in more and more chances to succeed.

How would we pay for it though, we could not buy these for every person for that would cost trillions of dollars.

This would play a large role in making the social divide even bigger. If there was a poor community and no one there could afford it, they would be spending money on certain old things.

The rich city would not be spending money on old things and would then make some cities super high tech and advanced whilst some would be old and bland.

If this happened, we would have cities overflowing with rich people while some other cities will barely have clean water for they have no population which means no money.

As of now, many scientists and Ithink this technology should be reserved for people who have speech, visual, and other problems.

If we go out and give it to everybody, the people who actually need it, would not be able to get it.

We would then have the problems that people would fake having these disabilities in order to get it.

Telepathic communication could have serious impacts on markets like teaching and university for there would be no need to go if telepathic communication could engrave things in your memory.

All this shows how far we will need to come, in order to have a seemingless perfect world of telepathic communication.

Problem

After we look at all the ethical concerns, we have to evaluate, ho much more we need to develop before this can be widespread.

What would happen if you were thinking about sending a flirty text to your partner, and then you think of your mom, and you accidentally send it to your mom.

You would be very embarrassed right? This is a very real possibility. Right now Telepathic Communication has only been studied with two variables, meaning they have only worked with “yes” or “no.”

If this was going to be widespread, we would need a way to make it better and be able to comprehend full sentences.

What if you were walking by someone who stank, and you thought of that. That message then sent because you were thinking about it. In the extreme case, you were killed because the guy was pissed off.

This would be another problem that would need to change. We need to make it possible to think about things without sending them.

The two examples provided above, two of a vast sea of problems. With this being a completely new concept, there are no current solutions so a lot would have to be done to fix it.

This experiment was the first of its kind that could transport thoughts all the way from India to France. There have also been other trials that show it can be done and should be implemented.

There are as many positives as downsides that come with this technology. I think if we reevaluate this field in another 7–15 years, we would have a lot more promising results.

After all the ethical concerns, possible future applications and everything else mentioned in this article, if you had the choice of using telepathic communication, would you do it?