SF Writers Propose Altering Brains to Accept Orders

[Nealithi]

Everyone assumes a political party will do this and have an opt in function.
I think if something like this were to occur it would happen like smart phones. Make it seem benign and useful, and most importantly cool. And people will pay the company to do this surgery. Once the improvements are shown it will be 'normalized' as previously mentioned. With even people not expected to or thinking they needed this getting into it. Like my seventy year old mother. She swore she would never need a smart phone. All she needed was a phone that could ring and the ringer sound like a bell.
Yeah she has a smart phone full of pictures, games, and yes a custom ringtone now.

Then the company(ies) that put out the implant put out a 'security' patch you may not opt out of. You now have your drone force.

[CharlesPhipps]

Also there will always be a segment of the population, perhaps bigger thsn we would think that would not take those brain implants due to their tinfoil hat theories.

MInd you, it feels like this wouldn't be tinfoil hattery given our current situation...

[McAvoy]

Also there will always be a segment of the population, perhaps bigger thsn we would think that would not take those brain implants due to their tinfoil hat theories.

MInd you, it feels like this wouldn't be tinfoil hattery given our current situation...

Well in my scenario it definitely wouldn't be. But I guarantee they would be treated that way.

Probably the only time the tinfoil hat people are actually right about something.

[Beastro]

So the population will not accept the technocrat's orders to save the world. The answer to some SF writers is to literally change how people think. Not by persuasion, but by mucking about with everyone's brains.

https://www.tor.com/2021/11/23/sci-fi-v ... /#comments

"...The root problem of all these things is Human Nature; so ultimately, that’s what has to change. We have to immunize ourselves against trolley paradoxes and kin selection, we have to eliminate hyperbolic discounting from the human mindset. We have to weed out all these destructive circuits at the neurochemical level.”

That is a great challenge from both the scientific and social standpoint. Watts’ work often revolves around changing Human Nature (e.g. in Blindsight, the Sunflowers cycle stories, “Incorruptible” or “Repeating The Past”), partly or as the main story theme, and he finds inspiration for his fiction in cutting-edge research: “For example, victims of Parkinson’s tend to be less religious than the rest of the population: if you could isolate that one impact, there’s a chance we could weed religious belief out of the human mindset, which would make us a lot less pernicious right out of the gate. Certain types of brain lesions make people a lot more effective at utilitarian choices, make us less moral and more ethical. Amping up the brain’s production of nociceptin could counteract some of the more pernicious, addictive, reward-seeking effects of dopamine—make us less greedy, in other words. So there are hints of a long-term solution. But as far as I know, there isn’t even the whiff of an actual research program on the horizon, and that’s no surprise. Try to get funding for a project whose stated goal is to save Humanity by making it less Human.”

I think I know where James Kirk would tell these goons to stuff it.

And why does he feel this way?

Human Nature.

I've seen the guy talk, and as much as he's interesting, he has a typical scientists mind towards things that people are problems in need of solutions. This sounds a lot like the same old talk of "There's no God, so we need to make one to then enslave ourselves to to keep ourselves in line". Eric Weinstein has much the same drive in his thinking.

I have to ask what his eschatology is here, I bet he has none beyond continued survival, which then raises the question as to why.

Oh, and btw, people how are more utilitarian are psychopaths and they tend to be destructive to themselves and others because they are able to make very good utilitarian choices but cannot make utilitarian moral judgements.

This is why science maintains an increasing odious reputation and I lament it. This is the same old same old like Eugenics with his prejudices on display.

I guess it's a real great thing that SF writers have the power they have influencing public policy.

--

Seriously, this is hardly a new idea. There was the same kind of paternalism with Coherent Extrapolated Volition in the AI futurist community about a decade ago.

The author of the article was lamenting that the SF writers quoted do not have that kind of influence over policy.

I just found it fascinating and disturbing that anyone would express those ideas and find them praiseworthy.

Here he is talking about a experiment someone did once: https://youtu.be/v4uwaw_5Q3I?t=1454

When I watched it my immediate thought was that I could see someone idly pondering what would happen if you stuck wires in rats brains to see if they'd act as a hive mind, but what kind of fucking monster would actually do it?.

And people wonder why Michael Crichton left the medical field and kept beating on about this issue over and over in his novels until the day he died.

If you were going to alter people's brains, witch you shouldn't, your goal should be to increase empathy.

No, you can have too much.

People very high in agreeableness suffer greatly from having too much and the world needs unemphatic people who have the callous drive to push to get things done. Life takes all kinds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_ ... ity_traits

[Draco Dracul]

No, you can have too much.

People very high in agreeableness suffer greatly from having too much and the world needs unemphatic people who have the callous drive to push to get things done. Life takes all kinds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_ ... ity_traits

That might have been the case when the biggest threat to people where hyenas and leopards, but the callous drive to get things done has became strictly a liability the moment the greatest threat to people became other people. Praising it as a necessity is just a way to justify handing power to the callous. Also empathy and agreeableness are not the same thing.

Additionally framing compassion as opposed to rationality is something used to justify acts that are both cruel and irrational like means testing for welfare or the endless propaganda about Nazis super science (which didn't exist).

[TGLS]

I guess it's a real great thing that SF writers have the power they have influencing public policy.

--

Seriously, this is hardly a new idea. There was the same kind of paternalism with Coherent Extrapolated Volition in the AI futurist community about a decade ago.

The author of the article was lamenting that the SF writers quoted do not have that kind of influence over policy.

I just found it fascinating and disturbing that anyone would express those ideas and find them praiseworthy.

Here he is talking about a experiment someone did once: https://youtu.be/v4uwaw_5Q3I?t=1454

When I watched it my immediate thought was that I could see someone idly pondering what would happen if you stuck wires in rats brains to see if they'd act as a hive mind, but what kind of fucking monster would actually do it?.

So what? They're literally rats. I'd stomp them to death if I saw them. Well, maybe not if I'm shoeless.

[Mickey_Rat15]

No, you can have too much.

People very high in agreeableness suffer greatly from having too much and the world needs unemphatic people who have the callous drive to push to get things done. Life takes all kinds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_ ... ity_traits

That might have been the case when the biggest threat to people where hyenas and leopards, but the callous drive to get things done has became strictly a liability the moment the greatest threat to people became other people. Praising it as a necessity is just a way to justify handing power to the callous. Also empathy and agreeableness are not the same thing.

Additionally framing compassion as opposed to rationality is something used to justify acts that are both cruel and irrational like means testing for welfare or the endless propaganda about Nazis super science (which didn't exist).

So I take it you did not like the theme of "The Enemy Within"? AS the "good" Kirk is empathetic as can be, but without his ruthless "evil" side, he is indecisive to the point of uselessness.

[Riedquat]

Oh, and btw, people how are more utilitarian are psychopaths and they tend to be destructive to themselves and others because they are able to make very good utilitarian choices but cannot make utilitarian moral judgements.

This is why science maintains an increasing odious reputation and I lament it. This is the same old same old like Eugenics with his prejudices on display.

Science is bare fact with no fundamental morality (in theory, anyway, and that's talking about the knowledge gained rather than the means of gaining it). If people misue it and try to get morals or ethics from it then that's their mistake.

Utilitarianism is a horribly flawed concept because again, it's treated as something desirable in its own right rather than the means to an end. I find the results of a lot of what's produced by people who (rather ludicrously) insist that only utilitarian considerations should be made frequently obnoxious. It's the non-utilitarian considerations that tell us what's worthwhile, a good grasp of facts and utilitarianism helps us figure out how to get them.

[TGLS]

Utilitarianism is a horribly flawed concept because again, it's treated as something desirable in its own right rather than the means to an end.

I'm confused. What's the "it" in this case?

[Frustration]

If you were going to alter people's brains, witch you shouldn't, your goal should be to increase empathy.

No, no, no! Making people feel the pain of others will just motivate them to remove all of the natural consequences of stupid choices, since they generally create suffering in the idiots who make them.

If you were going to muck about in human brains, which you shouldn't, your goal should be to increase the ability to override emotion with rational thought, not make people more susceptible to feelings!

Frank Herbert wrote about the distinct between sentiment and sentimentality. Sentiment is swerving to avoid hitting someone's beloved pet with your car. Sentimentality is swerving to avoid hitting someone's beloved pet with your car and mowing down bystanders in the process.