Re: Dangers of human self-modification

From: Philip Sutton (Philip.Sutton@green-innovations.asn.au)
Date: Wed May 26 2004 - 18:13:39 MDT


Hi Michael

You wrote:
> 5 ways to enhance human wisdom that are far more effective, in the
> relevant timeframes, than genengineering:
> 1. Study of evolutionary psychology and heuristics and biases.
> 2. Realtime fMRI feedback.
> 3. Nano-neurosurgery.
> 4. Brain-Computer Interfacing.
> 5. Building a Friendly seed and having it do it for us.

For each of these options what is the path from the output of that
process and the generation of wisdom?? ie. why would doing these
things lead to greater more widespread wisdom?

And in relation to 5. do you mean that we should create an Friendly
seed and then when it has grown allow it to.....??? what?? reengineer
each of us??? Or just make our decisions for us?? Do you envisage
that anyone has the option of not being involved in this process, or
should it be mandatory. My bet is that total wisdom will FALL if an
attempt is made to make it mandatory - because we will move to a
dictatorship and that is just about the dumbest (least-wise) form of
social organisation that we can create!

I liked Tom Bucker's notion of wisdom algorithms. If we could collect a
lot of these it might be easier to see how many depend on 'hardware',
'sofware', data, and practice/model building in-context, social
interaction, etc. Then it might be easier to do something that will be
practical and effective.

Cheers, Philip



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