3 - Making better humans better
Summary
You are to be made into a good boy, 6655321. Never again will you have the desire to commit acts of violence or to offend in any way against the State's Peace.
(Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange)Quite often we find descriptions of already available or merely envisaged cognitive enhancement technologies, both in the popular media and in scientific journals, informed by the assumption that those technologies will eventually be used to benefit humanity. Fairly common are statements such as the following from an article that appeared a few years ago in Time:
Indeed, it would be hard to argue against promoting the use of an intelligence enhancer if it were risk-free and available to everyone. Imagine a legion of cancer researchers on smart drugs, racing toward a cure. Or how about a better class of Wall Street executives, blessed with improved thinking and wiser judgment?
(Szalavitz 2009)That would be very nice indeed. But how likely is it really that things will turn out that way? Legions of extremely smart cancer researchers racing toward a cure? Seems rather too good to be true. Wise Wall Street executives? Sounds more like a contradiction in terms. It appears far more likely that the latter will use their improved brains to find even more effective ways to enrich themselves, and the former may also feel that they have far better things to do than spending all their time and energy on finding a cure for cancer.
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- Better Humans?Understanding the Enhancement Project, pp. 35 - 54Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013