Issues of Artificial Enhancements: Passages from an Essay by David Edmonds
The following passage are from “The Age of Enhancement” by David Edmonds in the British journal The Prospect. (The entire article can be found at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/09/the-age-of-enhancement/
The issue here is that as science advances, new technologies get developed by which we can make changes –that we consider desirable– in various aspects of ourselves. What are the proper principles or rules or limits that should guide the development and use of such enhancements?
*******************
At the heart of the debate there remains unease about tampering with the very things that make humans human. And while we are becoming accustomed to some varieties of enhancement, our capacity to manipulate not just our bodies and our cognitive faculties, but potentially also our core emotions, is taking us into a world of dizzyingly new options. Take sex and love, for instance. If you want to know about the birds and the bees, a good place to start is the vole. To the human eye, these rodents, with their stout bodies and hairy tails, are not the most attractive creatures in the animal kingdom. But fortunately for the survival of their species the male and female prairie vole seem to rub along pretty well. So well, that, most unusually, these animals remain sexually faithful to each other for the duration of their short lives.
The prairie vole has a close cousin called the meadow vole. It looks almost identical but differs in one particular: the male meadow vole is highly promiscuous. It’s this peculiarity that has led the social neurobiologist Larry Young of Emory University to devote the last 15 years of his life to studying voles. He discovered that when prairie voles mate, a hormone called vasopressin is released, and that the cells that respond to the vasopressin—the receptors—are located in the pleasure areas of the vole brain. The vole sees its mating partner as the cause of the pleasure, and thus a bond between the pair is formed. For meadow moles, however, the receptors are in a different part of the brain, so there isn’t the same pair-forming impact of mating. But by introducing a single new gene, one that influences vasopressin receptors, Young’s team managed to change the male meadow voles into loyal lovers.
[This leads, of course, to the question: would it be desirable for humans to use vasopressin to help them keep from going off hiking on the Appalachian Trail?]
**********************
Moral enhancement: a question of trust
Economists use a game of trust to reveal our moral intuitions. Person A and Person B are both given £12. Person A is the depositor, Person B the trustee. Person A can choose how much to deposit with Person B: nothing, £4, £8 or £12. When the money is transferred it immediately triples in value. Thus, if Person A gives Person B £8, she is left with £4, while Person B now has 3×8 + 12 = £36. Person B can then choose to give as much back to Person A as he thinks appropriate. If he were to give back £20, say, he would still be left with more than he began. But he could hand over all £36 or nothing at all.
This game has been used to show that humans are not entirely rationally self-interested. But for our purposes what is interesting is this: when subjects are given the hormone oxytocin they are more likely to hand over a larger share of their money, exhibiting greater trust that the other person will treat them fairly. Boosting oxytocin levels is not a high-tech procedure; the hormone can be delivered by nasal spray. Trust is central to our personal and business relationships, and altering trust levels could alter society in a profound way. Enhancement is not identical to improvement. Pumping oxytocin through the air-conditioning could be used for less noble purposes: companies manipulating their consumers, politicians their voters, or predatory men their dates.
September 12th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
This Media Lens reporter has looked more deeply into the ways our society and consumer culture can be changed, via a pleasure chemical. Add another element to the ways masses of humans look carrying huge carts of “Ramen Noodles” out of Wal-Marts all over. Enough noodles to feed a family of 4 for 2 weeks, if a little ingenuity is used. People all over the Asian world eat noodles regularly, but not w/ red meat that has lived its entire brief life in Feedlots eating chemicals and hormones from other cows, while standing daily in its own excretions. Less industrial “Food Inc.” elsewhere, means fewer additives in the cells of the body. Americans still feel it essential to buy Monsanto Patented Corn, and meat that is anything but nutritious. Veggies also come in cans or frozen will contain a bit of corn syrup, the most fattening food known in Nature. Corn, until just a few years ago could be bought in a variety of colors, all more healthy and less simple sugar. In Mexico, few will eat yellow corn, because their ancestors lived for centuries on white, which is the finest kind. Big Corps in Mex. tried to introduce yellow and there were riots in streets all over the country.
The only riotous behavior we see in the US of Amortization is among those who see the gov’t (no matter who’s) sinking over 66Bn into AIG which has no interest in anything, (yes, again – tedious isn’t it?) but the bottom line.
No doubt Oxytocin is fed through the air conditioning offices of High Financial Chicanery. Makes the agents powerfully loyal to the corporate culture, unless its too greedy or gets caught by the SEC or the OCC. Then, they just move on to the next most profitable office. All those Enron employees who played the Calif. Energy Grid like a roulette wheel had to go somewhere….. Doubtless, they ended up on Wall St (Lehman…to CITI of B of A, etc.) or somewhere in +Corporate Nirvana+. Now, we learn that the Office of Consumer Protection (packed w/ Bush loyalists) took the ‘states rights’ (a hidden cause of the Civil War) away, ending controls of +Usury+ in many states allowing Banks to charge what ever they wish to, in fees and minimum payments on Credit Cards or Debit Cards. Except for a particularly egregious practice by Providian of SF which deposited payments, and failed to enter the amount paid on many accounts, leading to 110% increases in “minimum payments from ‘late fees.’ ” Over 2 years before the OCC chose to act, Providian amassed over 2.5Bn back-dating payments. The Supreme Court finally nailed the coffin of Usury Laws for consumers in 04. Elizabeth Warren notes, there are no effective limits now on what banks/credit unions can add in fees to perfectly honest card users.
I recall how particularly good it felt to go to the Credit U. on many occasions.
Experiments w/ Oxytocin are long out of patent, and surely useful in the Consumptive Culture. Legality is no longer an issue, for the money laundering frat house behavior – which is what Americans who rant are really mad at, without realizing it. Corn Syrup, Bubbles, and pleasure center stimulation. No wonder lots of H.S.grads want to work in the “Financial Sector.”
September 12th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
enhancements might be the beginning of a new level of evolution. i use an anti-depressant for it’s positive effect on my libido, but it has also made it easier for me to handle my congenital temper problem. so i’m a “better” person, or at least much easier to get along with. i wish everyone would take them.
or they could be the means towards more effective totalitarianism. this may become the big issue of the century.
thanks for presenting this!
September 14th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Yes, people have a way of co-opting technologies for other than their originally intended use.
Ask Eckert and Mauchly if they thought that computers would be heavily used for circulating porn and junk mail.
Or Nobel about dynamite.