Isolata Demonstratum – A fact, known with certainty to only oneself, which is used to verify that one’s mind has not been read.
I know something about you that you do not know I know: You have tested god, the universe, reality, the matrix, or whatever you are calling it these days, to see if your thoughts are yours and yours alone. Admit it, you’ve done it.
You may be surprised to learn that everyone else has too. It is a universal human trait. Some do it subconsciously, some have no name for these tests, others more self-aware have taken the time to name them things like “myknownlys” or “horks”, but we all have them.
Horks test for time continuity and/or mind readers. If you’ve told no one your current hork, only a time traveler, or real mind reader (God, supernatural beings, alien, or a super advanced technology) besides you could know it. Don’t be fooled, people with digital access and/or people watching or listening covertly may tell me things like passwords or a ritual I did on a secluded beach, but none have as yet broken my own isolata demonstration, things only I know which I haven’t told a soul, little details which I know with an abiding certainty have never gone beyond my own thoughts.
If this universe is some kind of super advanced simulation, horks are part of the built-in security system. If you are one with me, that is, inside my mind; if you know my soul, or if you have come back from the future, I have a way for you to prove it: pass my current test.
Here’s another thing everyone does: eventually, you leak your self-known-only fact somewhere. As soon as you write it down, or whisper it, say it to yourself so your lips move (almost imperceptibly, but measurably by AI and cameras) or confide in any electronic device, no matter how secure, your hork becomes just a guarded secret, like a password, and not an actual hork.
Sometimes it’s a little game we play that we progressively make it more and more known by various means, giving clues, pretending we didn’t reveal it, when we did, because a part of us really does want to make a pure thought connection with someone.
Are you aware of your own private reality checks?
How would your life change if you had proof of someone reading your mind without being connected to, for example, an fMRI machine, which can, by the way, over time, make good guesses about types of thoughts and feelings you are experiencing.
According to a 60 minutes show, (see video below) while there are idiosyncratic mappings, results are close enough from person to person for an fMRI machine to tell what object you are thinking about.
In a test for the show, a woman who had never had a brain scan was shown images while in a brain scanner and was asked to think about each one. After that, the machine replayed the scans and guessed 10 of 10 items correctly.
This is pretty astonishing, but not a controlled experiment. Were they just scanning the pattern produced on the visual cortex of known images they had trained with many subjects?
Time will tell if real thought reading by machines works.
For now, evidence says no one can read your most private thoughts, at least not remotely. Unless this is a simulation, in which case, your thoughts are just part of the system.
Thoughts?
Xeno
True Strange News
For 30+ years as a news hound and reporter of weird stuff, I, Xeno, have believed it is the duty of Americans to speak up truthfully about what they like and dislike.
