Comment by judahmeek
13 days ago
This technique is likely to be utilized in some government interrogation methods now.
An excellent example of research that maybe shouldn't have been pursued, although it's possible that there are a large number of potential recuperative applications as well that I'm not aware of.
I don't think we should stop learning about ourselves out of paranoia. This sort of research could end up just like many powerful tech before (ex. nukes->green energy)
I think the advent of social algorithms and the technologies of that ilk indicate that there are things that shouldn't be explored.
With those examples though, how would we know ahead of time that they "shouldn't be explored?" They sure looked interesting and maybe even potentially beneficial a couple decades ago.
Now, of course, we know those algorithms warp regular users (and by extension societies). Or... maybe they don't? Some research has suggested that just putting this many people in direct communication with each other is the root cause of the problems we see. There could be other ways to fix those without shutting down the internet. How would we know without more exploration?