From: Rüdiger (rkoch@rkoch.org)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 05:02:06 MST
Guess there won't be much opposition to enhancing the brain as long as
it results in higher productivity. Changing the neural dynamics is a
millenium old tradition - this is what alcohol, LSD... is all about.
Those drugs are illegal because they reduce productivity, not because
govt doesn't want us to enjoy.
It's rather devices than drugs that'll bring the real progress (e.g.
direct brain<->machine interfaces). Problems could arise when a number
of users use them as a replacement for recreational drugs (such as 24/7
VR sex), forgetting the real world around them. That's clearly bad for
productivity and govt will thus seek ways to prevent such (ab)use.
Those devices will improve incrementally as they hit the market. There
won't be a clear line at which we can say: "Thus far and no further".
Even if new devices will look scary by todays standards they'll just
appear as a natural increments of the stuff that's in the shops since a
year. A clerk of the year 1902 would find our world disturbing, too.
Does anyone here find Mitsubishi robots scary?
The legal question of identity is quite simple as long as uploading
isn't possible: It'll be handled as now. Society is not going to work
if one can drop all responsibility when enhancing oneself. The same
question arises with all criminals who's crime is many years ago, for
instance WWII crimes. My impression is that society answered this
question clearly: Yes, this 85 year old person is the same as the 31
year old guy who committed the crimes. A person is the same 50 years
later if this person is linked by a continued existence.
-Rudiger
--- Anders Sandberg <asa@nada.kth.se> wrote:
>
> Read and learn the arguments. This is the real battle we need to be
> fighting.
>
> http://www.reason.com/0302/fe.rb.the.shtml
>
> --
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards
> Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se
> http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
> GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+
!y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jan 21 2003 - 17:10:21 MST