Brain of tomorrow

[mistergreen77]

It is not the tension between people who live long or short - but between people who have everything and people who have nothing. That is why we were talking about the dialectic or poverty and violence. The situation is already tense.

There is a group out there called extropians (http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm) who want to help bring about the new 'transhuman' species. It is interesting but it seems like they have faith in technology to solve social problems.

"Although we are aware of the value of others, we focus primarily on self-transformation rather than trying to change others. We recognize the dangers of controlling others and so only try to improve the world through setting an example and by communicating ideas. Some of us are intensely committed to the education and improvement of others, but only through voluntary means that respect the rationality, autonomy, and dignity of the individual."

Sounds very rational - but greed is the problem and as the technology becomes available people with very different attitudes will push the transhuman agenda in a very different direction. The direction Wogglus envisaged in the onslaught of technology.

Considering the subject - I can't help adding one more quote.
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. Albert Einstein.

[Zandrav Ibistenn]

In a recent edition of New Scientist there was an article about the relationship between gene variants for the enzyme monoamine oxidase-A (abbreviated MAOA) and aggressive behavior. It would appear that people with less active variants of the gene - MAOA-L - were more prone to aggression and criminal behavior than those with the normal allel. People lacking the gene entirely (who were males because the gene is on the X chromosome) were very much more aggressive than normal people.

The brains of the people with the MAOA-L were examined post mortem, and one brain structure was markedly different than in normal people. The amygdala was somewhat smaller in those with MAOA-L.

The amygdalas in living subjects with MAOA-L were then scanned and were found to (over)react on frightening stimuli. The hypothesis is then, that the amygdala in people with the MAOA-L reacts more strongly and thus makes it more difficult for the individual to inhibit emotional impulses.

Of course, the finding of such genes correlated to violence and crime does not fully explain the phenomenon with which they are associated, and should not divert attention from other factors that also influence criminality.

However, it's very possible that as such genes are found and their effects studied, people will find it more and more unacceptable for children lacking the normal gene to be born, eventually giving the lack of a normal MAOA gene the same status as say Downs Syndrome.

Eventually I think prenatal genetic profiling will automatically lead to eugenics.

[Zandrav Ibistenn]

An excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Stanley Kubrick curiously sums up the discussion so far:

Reading Ardrey's African Genesis reveals he shared Kubrick's bleak view of man, and the growing concern of the juvenile delinquent, as Ardrey writes:

"Society flatters itself in thinking that it has rejected the [juvenile] delinquent; the delinquent has rejected society. And in the shadowed byways of his world so consummately free, this ingenious, normal adolescent human creature has created a way of life in perfect image of his animal needs."
Such a description brings to mind Alex, the delinquent thug in A Clockwork Orange. Ardrey also says society might eventually domesticate man through slavery and cure his innate urge to kill and destroy:

"We and our greater philosophers must grant, I believe, that the masters of a universal society with the aid of a captive science might just possibly succeed in producing, over a long period, a lasting answer to the problem of our animal nature: a universal human slave inherently obedient to other people's reason."
This brings to mind the Minister of the Interior and his proposal for the answer to street violence in Kubrick's film. However Ardrey also believes:

"Whether through sentimental attachment or rational choice, I find myself moved to prefer the wild creatures among who I was born to the more literal Homo sapiens that science and tyranny might produce."

Needless to say I disagree with Ardrey's conclusion. A sufficiently different brain is impossible to understand, but why always assume it would be different for the worse? This is only true if the two brains are compared by the same standard! And the view is prejudiced by the observation that most sufficiently different brains are dysfunctional as the result of damage (split-brain and the schizoid mind etc.).
Is it impossible to imagine a better design than that most prevalent today?