The U.S. military is paying scientists to study ways to read people’s minds.

That’s the first line of a story being reported by the Associated Press today.  But what comes next leaves me a bit skeptical:

“The hope is that the research could someday lead to a gadget capable of translating the thoughts of soldiers who suffered brain injuries in combat or even stroke patients in hospitals.”

That doesn’t sound like the kind of things that the military would spend money for.  Interrogation tools directed at enemy soldiers?  Sure, that I can see the military getting excited about.  But ways to help stroke patients?  A nice thought, but not something I think the military would be so interested in.

The story reports that the research involves volunteers wearing some kind of high-tech thinking cap, then being asked to consider a specific word chosen by researchers.  The thought patterns that word creates are analyzed to see if there is enough commonality to make such a device possible.

After blogging for four years, I can already answer that question: there isn’t.  People can hear (or read) the exact same message at the exact same time, and read two entirely different things into it.

Even when it comes down to an individual word, different people will process it different ways.

Don’t believe me?  Okay:  try this one.  Think about a bear.

Go ahead.  Come on, be a sport.  Think about a bear for ten seconds.

I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.  Now tell me this:  were you thinking of a black bear, a brown bear or a polar bear?

Or Yogi Bear?

And if several of you out in the blogosphere had your thinking caps on, and some of you were thinking of a polar bear and some were thinking of a black bear.  Are we supposed to believe that these different things look exactly the same in the brain waves just because the word bear is in there somewhere?

What if, when asked to think of bear, a volunteer misunderstood and thought of bare, as in nakedness?

How is the computer supposed to know?

But let’s assume that all of that is somehow magically worked out.  And let’s assume that for some reason, you end up as a patient connected to such a gadget.

Would you really want everyone to know everything going on in your head?