Zhodani without Psi

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I did some thinking, more than a decade ago, about various forms of machine aided pseudo-psi (eventually, with great skill, doable even without machines), using subliminal communications and so forth. One of the ideas I had was that you'd "test" someone who exposing him or her to a subliminal stimuli, and noting the reaction (physiology and so forth). In theory, it'd be possible to "interrogate" someone that way, by showing them things that they are expected to react to in one particular fashion if they are good citizens, and so if they fail to react correctly in several cases, you know you've caught a thought-criminal

That is roughly what the Voight-Kampf machines do in Bladerunner. They measure emotional reactions to questions, and the operators know how the reactions of replicants tend to differ from those of born-men.