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knb comments on Savulescu: "Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction" - Less Wrong
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Even in such a scenario, some rotten eggs would probably refuse the smart drug treatment or the gene therapy injection - perhaps exactly those who would be the instigators of extinction events? Or at least the two groups would overlap somewhat, I fear.
I'm starting to think it would be rational to disperse our world-saving drug of choice by means of an engineered virus of our own, or something equally radically effective. But don't quote me on that. Or whatever, go ahead.
Not just "rotten eggs" either. If there is one thing that I could nearly guarantee to bring on serious opposition from independent and extremely intelligent people, that is convince people with brains to become "criminals", it is mandating gov't meddling with their brains. I, for example, don't use alcohol or any other recreational drug, I don't use any painkiller stronger than ibuprofen without excrutiating (shingles or major abcess level) pain, most of the more intelligent people I know feel to some extent the same, and I am a libertarian; do you really think I would let people I despise mess around with my mind?
On the topic of shingles, shingles is associated with depression. Should I ask my GP for the vaccine for prevention given that I live in Australia, have had chickenpox, but haven't had shingles?
You don't have to trust the government, you just have to trust the scientists who developed the drug or gene therapy. They are the ones who would be responsible for the drug working as advertised and having negligible side-effects.
But yes, I sympathize with you, I'm just like that myself actually. Some people wouldn't be able to appreciate the usefulness of the drug, no matter how hard you tried to explain to them that it's safe, helpful and actually globally risk-alleviating. Those who were memetically sealed off to believing that or just weren't capable of grasping it, would oppose it strongly - possiby enough to base a war on the rest of the world on it.
It would also take time to reach the whole population with a governmentally mandated treatment. There isn't even a world government right now. We are weak and slow. And one comparatively insane man on the run is one too many.
Assuming an efficient treatment for human stupidity could be developed (and assuming that would be a rational solution to our predicament), then the right thing to do would be delivering it in the manner causing the least bit of social upheaval and opposition. That would be a covert dispersal, most definitely. A globally coordinated release of a weaponized retro virus, for example.
We still have some time before even that can be accomplished, though. And once that tech gets here we have the hugely increasing risk of bioterrorism or just accidental catastrophies by the hand of some clumsy research assistant, before we have a chance to even properly prototype & test our perfect smart drug.
If I was convinced of the safety and efficacy of an intelligent enhancing treatment I would be inclined to take it and use my enhanced intelligence to combat any government attempts to mandate such treatment.
I find that claim highly dubious.
30 additional points of intelligence for everzone could mean that AI gets developed sooner and therefore there less time for FAI research.
The same goes for biological research that might lead to biological weapons.
The notion that higher IQ means that more money will be allocated to solving FAI is idealistic. Reality is complex and the reason for which money gets allocated are often political in nature and depend on whether institutions function right. Even if individuals have a high IQ that doesn't mean that they don't fall in the group think of their institution.
Real world feedback however helps people to see problem regardless of their intelligence. Real world feedback provides truth when high IQ can just mean that you are better stacking ideas on top of each other.
So individual autonomy is more important? I just don't get that. It's what's behind the wheels of the autonomous individuals that matters. It's a hedonic equation. The risk that unaltered humans pose to the happiness and progress of all other individuals might just work out to "way too fracking high".
It's everyone's happiness and progress that matters. If you can raise the floor for everyone, so that we're all just better, what's not to like about giving everybody that treatment?
The same that's not to like about forcing anything on someone against their will because despite their protestations you believe it's in their own best interests. You can justify an awful lot of evil with that line of argument.
Part of the problem is that reality tends not to be as simple as most thought experiments. The premise here is that you have some magic treatment that everyone can be 100% certain is safe and effective. That kind of situation does not arise in the real world. It takes a generally unjustifiable certainty in the correctness of your own beliefs to force something on someone else against their wishes because you think it is in their best interests.
On the other hand, if you look around at the real world it's also pretty obvious that most people frequently do make choices not in their own best interests, or even in line with their own stated goals.
Forcing people to not do stupid things is indeed an easy road to very questionable practices, but a stance that supports leaving people to make objectively bad choices for confused or irrational reasons doesn't really seem much better. "Sure, he may not be aware of the cliff he's about to walk off of, but he chose to walk that way and we shouldn't force him not to against his will." Yeah, that's not evil at all.
Not to mention that, in reality, a lot of stupid decisions negatively impact people other than just the person making them. I'm willing to grant letting people make their own mistakes but I have to draw the line when they start screwing things up for me.
I find it interesting that you make a distinction between people making choices that are not in their own best interests and choices not in line with their own stated goals. The implication is that some people's stated goals are not in line with their own 'best interests'. While that may be true, presuming that you (or anyone else) are qualified to make that call and override their stated goals in favour of what you judge to be their best interest is a tendency that I consider extremely pernicious.
There's a world of difference between informing someone of a perceived danger that you suspect they are unaware of (a cliff they're about to walk off) and forcibly preventing them from taking some action once they have been made aware of your concerns. There is also a world of difference between offering assistance and forcing something on someone to 'help' them against their will.
Incidentally I don't believe there is a general moral obligation to warn someone away from taking an action that you believe may harm them. It may be morally praiseworthy to go out of your way to warn them but it is not 'evil' to refrain from doing so in my opinion.
In general this is in a different category from the kinds of issues we've been talking about (forcing 'help' on someone who doesn't want it). I have no problem with not allowing people to drive while intoxicated for example to prevent them causing harm to other road users. In most such cases you are not really imposing your will on them, rather you are withholding their access to some resource (public roads in this case) based on certain criteria designed to reduce negative externalities imposed on others.
Where this issue does get a little complicated is when the negative externalities you are trying to prevent cannot be eliminated without forcing something upon others. The current vaccination debate is an example - there should be no problem allowing people to refuse vaccines if they only harmed themselves but they may pose risks to the very old and the very young (who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons) through their choices. In theory you could resolve this dilemma by denying access to public spaces for people who refused to be vaccinated but there are obvious practical implementation difficulties with that approach.
I might be wrong in my beliefs about their best interests, but that is a separate issue.
Given the assumption that undergoing the treatment is in everyone's best interests, wouldn't it be rational to forgo autonomous choice? Can we agree on that it would be?
It's not a separate issue, it's the issue.
You want me to take as given the assumption that undergoing the treatment is in everyone's best interests but we're debating whether that makes it legitimate to force the treatment on people who are refusing it. Most of them are presumably refusing the treatment because they don't believe it is in their best interests. That fact should make you question your original assumption that the treatment is in everyone's best interests, or you have to bite the bullet and say that you are right, they are wrong and as a result their opinions on the matter can just be ignored.
Gene therapy of the type we do at the moment always works through a engineered virus. But then as technique progresses you don't have to be a nation state anymore to do genetical engineering. A small group of super empowered individuals might be able to it.
Right… I might have my chance then to save the world. The problem is, everyone will get access to the technology at roughly the same time, I imagine. What if the military get there first? This has probably been discussed elsewhere here on LW though...
I'm not sure quite what you're advocating here but 'dealing with the 10% of sticklers in a firm but fair way' has very ominous overtones to me.
Those people don't get jobs or university education that they would need to use the dangerous knowledge about how to manufacture artificial viruses because they aren't smart enough in competition to the rest.
Well, presumably Roko means we would be restricting the freedom of the irrational sticklers - possibly very efficiently due to our superior intelligence - rather than overriding their will entirely (or rather, making informed guesses as to what is in their ultimate interests, and then acting on that).
My feeling is that if you rendered politicians incapable of lying it would be hard to distinguish from rendering them incapable of speaking.
If to become a politician you had to undergo some kind of process to enhance intelligence or honesty I wouldn't necessarily object. Becoming a politician is a voluntary choice however and so that's a very different proposition from forcing some kind of treatment on every member of society.
I think I'd feel bad about the resulting fallout in the politicians' home lives.
Simply using a lie detector for politicians might be a much better idea. It's also much easier. Of course a lie detector doesn't really detect whether someone would be lying but the same goes for any cognitive enhancement.
Out of curiosity, what do you have in mind here as "participate in society"?
That is, if someone wants to reject this hypothetical, make-you-smarter-and-nicer cognitive modification, what kind of consequences might they face, and what would they miss out on?
The ethical issues of simply forcing people to accept it are obvious, but most of the alternatives that occur to me don't actually seem that much better. Hence your point about "the people who do get made smarter can figure it out", I guess.