On 4/25/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > This intrigues me because of something in my WIP, _The Seven-Year > Mirror_ -- one of the subplots involves using schizophrenics as > information couriers. The reason is pretty simple. In the 2K+ > -year-distant future there's a sophisticated machine called "Rosetta" > that can read thoughts. What it does is flash a long series of > (essentially) test patterns at a subject, including sensations, aromas > and flavors, and the subject's responses are charted and mapped to a > general consciousness model. When enough data points are in place, that > subject's conscious mind becomes more or less transparent to Rosetta, > and whenever s/he has a conscious thought it appears in a visualization > device. > > The idea is that schizophrenics, whose brain chemistry and structure > are at variant from the norm, can't be read in Rosetta, which makes > them essentially totally secure couriers of information. (The details > of embedding the information and wiping it are also covered in the > story.) > > What's funny about this is that I came at it from a totally different > angle than the biological; I was looking at it as a simple > cryptographic problem, just noodling a couple years back with a few > random concepts. If we all have more or less the same *basic* idea of > what a cat is, and furthermore how it's different from a dog, then it > seems to me the only *real* organic difference in how those thoughts > are held has to do with individual neural layout, since of course brain > structures are not identical. > > However, they might well be very *isomorphic*, which got me wondering > whether it wasn't possible to, in essence, compare enough scrambled > signals against a baseline, thereby getting an idea of what ... well, > what a given idea was someone was holding. Which meant, to me, that > with enough data points and a large enough neural mapping database, > pretty much anyone's thought patterns could be mapped, though not with > 100% accuracy or clarity. At least not yet. > > So what would be the way to prevent that mapping from working? It > seemed obvious to me: A one-time pad. One-time pads are used to > scramble a coded message and are then discarded (hence their name); > with a genuine one-time pad encryption, a message is irretrievably > obfuscated. The only way to decrypt it is with a key, and if that key > is lost, so it the message, forever. This is because with a real > one-time pad any single character in the message could be replaced by > any other character. A note the length of this one would probably never > be deciphered, even if the universe lasts another fifty or so billion > years and there was an infinite number of compute cycles to commit to > its cracking.
Ehh. You are correct that no mathematical approach can break one-time pads, since there is no connection between symbols for the math to undo, but if you had an infinity computer (or a decent approximation), you could simulate all possible senders and receivers and break it that way. > So the more I thought about that, the more it seemed that only people > with actual organic abnormalities might be possessed of a different > enough neural map that a Rosetta device couldn't "read" them. They'd > have to be conscious, capable of more or less high function, but also > organically variant. That pointed to schizophrenia. > > The tragedy of it, of course, is that in such a future it's in > government and corporate interests *not* to treat or cure > schizophrenia. I love it when dilemmas like that get dropped in my lap; > they really punch up a story. > > -- > Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books I'm afraid I'm not following why the schizophrenics would be unreadable: if 'Rosetta' is flashing all its inputs and storing the (arbitrary) responses, simply differing from other humans wouldn't make much difference, I would think- the differences could be as random as one pleases, and they would still be compensated for. Now, if the Rosetta's were working from a precomputed table of action/reactions to decipher the thoughts, then I could see why neurologically atypical individuals would be useful. ~Maru Perhaps the Rosettas could vary in capacity? Dumb, miniature ones working from hash tables, and expensive sophisticated realtime ones? _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
