Could your Dreams be used Against You?

We’ve all woken up with our hearts racing, haven’t we? Sometimes our dreams can feel so real, you have an appointment and your late but you can’t find anything. You stand up to give a speech and discover you’re completely naked. You have a bizarre dream about a neighbor or about your best friend’s sister. We get it!

They say that dreams are just our subconscious thoughts. That being naked means you’re shy. That you probably don’t actually want to sleep with your best friends’ sister. Phew!

It would still be pretty unsettling to most of us though, if these dreams could be played back.

If people could watch those weird and wonderful thoughts on a screen somewhere.

Well, that is exactly what scientists are currently working on.

The team plan to use a mobile MRI to record speech, movement and images in dreams. It turns out nothing is private anymore!

I wonder if we will have the same data protection issues we have had with Alexa, will there be companies all over the world secretly viewing people’s dreams? How embarrassing would that be? Think of all of the weird and wonderful things you have dreamt in the past, think of that dream where you are naked in front of your entire class.

When you wake up from one of those naked dreams you are usually pretty thankful that no one actually witnessed you naked and in blind panic. But what if, just by dreaming it, you had provided people with that dream to witness?

What implications could this technology have on our legal system? People lie all of the time. In their heads they know the truth, but they consciously decide to be dishonest. When asleep, your mind replays things. You don’t have the option to lie. Are courts going to be using “dream evidence” soon?

Would it be ethical? I certainly don’t think it could be reliable. A jury may believe it though. If they watched you admitting guilt in your dreams, it could be enough to seal the deal.

With that being said, there is another more terrifying use for technology like this. 

Government officials keep an awful lot of confidential information in their heads, don’t they? If someone were to capture the right person, they may be able to use this technology to their advantage.

Perhaps it could be said that if this technology were to be invented, they may also be able to invent a way to guard against it. How would you train someone not to dream though?