The ethics of coming-real-soon-now memory and intelligence enhancers. Are they a good thing?
The reason, it seems to me, is that we think cognitive enhancement is cheating. If, somehow, someone gets ahead through hard work, that’s okay. But popping a pill and mastering information after having read it only once seems unfair.
This position makes no sense. Among the normal population are men and women with incredible memories, fast learners of language and music, and those with enhanced capabilities of all kinds. Something in their brains allows them to encode new information at lightning speed. We accept the fact that they must have some chemical system that is superior to ours or some neural circuitry that is more efficient. So why should we be upset if the same thing can be achieved with a pill? In some way, we were cheated by Mother Nature if we didn’t get the superior neural system, so for us to cheat her back through our own inventiveness seems like a smart thing to do. In my opinion, it is exactly what we should do.
From a competitive standpoint (tests, competitions, artistic efforts — or, for that matter, jobs), it’s similar to the argument over physical performance enhancing drugs. Is it “fair” for a kid to be in a spelling bee if they’ve taking an mental performance enhancing drug? What constitutes “fair” in that case? What is it we’re testing for, and why (if we can improve on it) is that valuable? The open arguments over steroids and the like have to do with their adverse health effects (never mind the health effects of, say, rigorous training), but they are more fundamentally about altering ourselves (or other altering themselves) in a way that, by our own work (and short of taking similar drugs) we cannot. Changing what it is to be human, in effect — even if that baseline state not only varies widely between individuals, but has varied over time and is essentially a myth.
I think one reason for apprehension over memory and intellect enhancing drugs is much the same, only moreso. By altering our minds, we’re talking about changing, fundamentally, what makes people who they are. Bodies are one thing. Brains are another. If others change their mental capacities, we feel it’s unfair (even if they started off “better” than we were on some level). The virtues of hard work we’ve been drilled with become less essential (or only part of what it takes to exercise one’s mind). The bar gets raised. And, even more importantly, it raises the question of the meaning of self in a way that’s kind of scary.
An important thing to remember, of course, is that once the djinn is out of the bottle, that’s the end of it. Sports continues to fight a vigorous battle against performance enhancing drugs (with a vigorous debate over what actually qualifies for same, and a never-ending race between those who are looking for an advantage and those who want, for some reason, to keep them from it) — but that’s a venue where you have a limited set of competitors at a limited set of competitions, and in the still more limited set of top notch competitors and contests you can insist on drug tests. Unless, though, you’re going to force all college students to do the same, or all employees at a company, on a regular basis — and give a good reason for doing so — once mental performance enhancers get into the wild, there will be no stopping them. For better or worse.
Except, of course, through self-regulation. Not everyone who competes in sports uses buckets of pills from GNC, let alone illegal steroids. Professionals, perhaps, but not everyone. The costs, and the side effects, are too great. Similarly, folks may likely reach an equilibrium point on memory enhancers (as the author of the article points out, we spend much of our “off peak” time trying to forget about our day — will we really want to remember it better?) and other mental boosters. Are we, as a society, willing to trust that to happen, rather than try to legislate about it? Do we dare? Do we dare not?
(via GeekPress)