2+2=5
- mrymntcpw
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Keep an eye on AI
In George Orwell’s book, 1984, the character, O’Brien, uses a whiteboard to graphically show how the Party’s power to control the mind means they can declare 2+2=5. During the torture of Winston, O’Brien forces him to write this equation, representing the final, complete shattering of his will and intellect. The equation symbolizes the Party’s absolute control over truth, and reality. It’s a motif for the psychological manipulation that allows the regime to force its citizens to accept whatever falsehood it decrees as fact, demonstrating the complete destruction of individual thought.
Let’s move ourselves from 1984 to 2026. How distant are we from allowing “The Party” to manipulate its citizens by using Orwellian techniques? As a means to stay aware of current events, I read the NYT and watch CNN and MS NOW, but occasionally, in an attempt to remain balanced, I watch short segments of Fox News. I am appalled by the disinformation presented by Fox News both directly and in an insinuating manner. Thankfully, I seem to be able to distinguish truth from lies.
Enter the interface between AI and neuro-implant technologies
I direct you to an article in The Weekender by Linda Kinstler
In the U.S. [following World War II], where the Cold War fueled anxiety about potential brainwashing technologies…the director of the C.I.A., Allen Dulles, warned that the Soviet government was conducting a form of “brain warfare” to control minds. In a forthcoming book, Carr traces how the liberal doctrine of universal human rights and freedoms, including the freedom of thought, was positioned as a protective umbrella against communist mind-meddling, co-opting pre-existing struggles against psychiatric experimentation.
[Now in 2026, with the advent of AI and advanced neural interface tools] one of the fundamental purposes of law, at least in the United States, is to protect the individual from unwarranted interference. If neurotechnologies have the potential to decode or even change patterns of thought and action, advocates believe that law has the distinct capacity to try to restrain its reach into the innermost chambers of the mind. And while freedom of thought, conscience, opinion, expression and privacy are all recognized as basic human rights in international law, some philosophers and lawyers argue that these fundamental freedoms need to be updated and reinterpreted if they have any hope of protecting individuals against interference from neural devices, because they were conceived when the technology was only a distant dream.
Farahany, the law and philosophy professor at Duke, argues that we need to recognize a fundamental right to “cognitive liberty,” which scholars have defined as “the right and freedom to control one’s own consciousness and electrochemical thought process” — to protect our minds. For Farahany, this kind of liberty “is a precondition to any other concept of liberty, in that, if the very scaffolding of thought itself is manipulated, undermined, interfered with, then any other way in which you would exercise your liberties is meaningless, because you are no longer a self-determined human at that point.”
Michelle Goldberg for the NYT warns: There’s a huge political opportunity for the party that can stand up for human beings in the face of this alienating, machine-worshiping ethos. For Democrats to seize it, they need both the fortitude to make foes of some of the world’s richest men and the expertise to know how these technologies can be constrained.
Enter Plato
When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence. (Plato, Republic)
As we watch the erosion of human rights unfolding from the Trump Administration, with advanced technologies funded by American Oligarchs, it becomes crucial for us to sharpen our awareness of disinformation so that we are capable of discerning truth from fallacy and continue to believe that 2+2=4.
The truth will stand, when the world's on fire.
-C. L. Woliver and Others
CPW
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