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We kind of are getting there, though. As an example, there is a growing class of proposals to make the blind sighted again by introducing optogenetic actuators - proteins that modify cellular activity in response to light - into neurons via transfection, and then using patterns of light to induce vision. If that's not an attempt to Write to minds, I don't know what is.
This has also found a good amount of success in practice - this paper describes a patient that was blind and who was given an injection containing a viral vector that encoded for the channelrhodopsin protein ChrimsonR in his retinal ganglia. He was then provided a pair of light-stimulating goggles that translated visual stimuli into a form processable by him and subjected to some visual tests, and when wearing the goggles he could actually attempt to engage with objects in front of him. Of course, stimulation of the retina won't work for other issues such as glaucoma or trauma, so there have also been attempts to stimulate the V1 visual cortex directly, and on that front there are primate experiments showing that stimulating the visual cortex through optogenetics induces perception of visuals (see this paper and this paper).
DARPA has even funded such research in their NESD (Neural Engineering System Design) program, with some of their funding going to a Dr Ehud Isacoff whose goal is to stimulate neurons via optogenetics to encode perceptions into the human cortex. It's certainly in its infancy, but already there is a good amount of evidence that manipulating the mind is very, very possible.
You are describing the USB port. I am talking about the hard drive. Read Consciousness is isomorphic to mind reading. Write Consciousness is isomorphic to mind control.
If you think that the capabilities you're pointing to are actually the precursors to mind reading and mind control, then would you agree that my prediction, if correct, would be significant?
I think we need to talk about definitions of mind control here before we discuss that.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly do think the ability to exact full control over someone's mind would be significant (and terrifying, both philosophically and practically), but I'm also not sure if I see a clear-cut distinction between something like "I can make you see whatever I please through stimulating your neurons in a predictable way" and mind control. If you have designed a system which can predictably induce certain perceptions in someone's mind, how is that not already a restricted form of mind control?
You're describing a method for indirectly manipulating someone by fooling them about the state of reality, correct? And the idea would be that if you make the illusion convincing enough, you can manipulate their choices by lying to them about what those choices are? I would not call this mind control, even if you replace someone's inputs entirely and reduce them to a brain in a jar. You can already lie to and manipulate people pretty well without making them a brain in a jar, and I'm not sure what the full immersion is supposed to achieve. I'm also weakly skeptical that full immersion is possible, both from a practical standpoint and at all. It's definitely far enough away from our current capabilities that I think it deserves a "I'll believe it when I see it."
If you can directly read and write their consciousness, though, that's something different. You don't have to resort to lies or manipulation, you simply see how they are, and make them how you want them. That seems like a completely different thing to me.
I suppose you could make an argument that certain parts of the human nervous system like the retina and/or the visual cortex are deterministic enough to be controlled in this way and that other parts of the human psyche do not function deterministically and cannot be controlled so easily. I think it is somewhat on tenuous ground to state that one's world-model can be predictably influenced but one's personality cannot, the line between the two has never been a clear-cut one, but let's go with that for now and have a look at personality manipulations.
Something that bolsters the idea of consciousness as alterable and deterministic are certain types of brain damage that impact human behaviour in somewhat predictable ways, for example lesions on the periaqueductal gray can cause intentional activity to cease entirely, a condition covered in The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.
Also covered in that book is a condition called Korsakoff psychosis, a condition characterised by amnesia and confusion caused by thiamine deficiency-related damage to the limbic system. One of the main symptoms is confabulation, where memory is disordered to an extent that the brain retrieves false memories. There was a man (Mr S) affected by this who constantly believed he was in Johannesburg and simply could not be convinced otherwise, and believed his condition was due to him missing a "memory cartridge" that could just be replaced. His false beliefs are not only indicative of a change in perception, but also in how he is, in some sense. When blind raters were brought in to evaluate the emotional content of his confabulations, Mr S's confabulations were found to substantially improve his own situation from the emotional point of view - so confabulation occurs not only because of deficits in search and source monitoring, but also release from inhibition of emotionally mediated forms of recall.
Here's another case study from The Hidden Spring: An electrode implanted in a reticular brainstem nucleus of a 65 year old woman reliably evoked a response of extreme sadness, guilt and hopelessness, where she claimed that she wanted to die and that she was scared and disgusted with life. When stimulation was stopped, the depression quickly ended and for the next five minutes she was in a hypomanic state. Stimulation at other brain sites did not elicit this response. In other words one carefully placed electrode completely rewrote her emotional state.
Urbach-Wiethe disease, calcification of the amygdala, impairs people's ability to feel fear through exteroceptive means (though they can still feel some kinds of fear, such as those induced internally via CO2 inhalation). Unilateral injury to the right cerebral hemisphere can cause hemispatial neglect, a condition where the affected person neglects the left side of their visual field; they literally have no concept or memory of vision on the neglected side and can easily read half of a clock or eat half the food on their plate without noticing that anything is missing. They do not feel the need to turn. The entire idea of there needing to be a left side of their visual field is just gone.
If there's a difference between any of that and "externally induced manipulations can greatly affect how human consciousness functions", I'm not sure what it is. Your general critique in this situation could be that these manipulations are not fine-grained enough to constitute "mind control", but the fact that our current known methods of manipulation aren't enough to craft someone into exactly how we want them does not mean that they don't provide evidence in favour of a mechanistic outlook regarding human consciousness.
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