The Brain Fingerprinting Debate Continues

from the fight!-fight!-fight! dept

The brain fingerprinting debate continues. First we posted about the idea when Infoseek and Propel founder, Steve Kirsch, suggested it as a way to combat terrorism. Then we posted again when Thomas C. Greene of the Register pointed out how ridiculous it all was. Now, Greene and Kirsch are fighting it out over email. I'm siding with Greene, mostly because his arguments make sense, and don't stink of jumping to conclusions and suggesting really irrational ideas. However, Kirsh also loses significant points for falling back on my least favorite debating tactic: exaggerating things to the point of absurdity, making some bizarre analogy and claiming victory. This debate tactic was best described by Dilbert creator Scott Adams in his newsletter (scroll down to "Induhvidual Debating Technique"), but we all know people who debate like this. In this case, Kirsch goes off on some weird tangent setting up a stupid scenario that Greene tells him is stupid. Kirsch then comes back with some odd thing about how America stands for freedom of choice. Of course, Greene's whole point is that if we go with Kirsch's system we not only lose freedom of "choice" but also privacy.

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