What if we had the tools to fashion ourselves anew, according to our desires, to make ourselves in our own image? Would we make of ourselves something superior, in some ultimate sense, to what we are at present? Or, would we instead end up as some perverted Frankenstenian-type creation, with three heads two toes and belly buttons that can’t decide whether they’re ‘innies’ our ‘outties’, as per the concerns of many? Would it be a boon to the world, in other words, or its end as we care to know it? Questions, such as these, that were once purely abstract speculations, have become increasingly pragmatic considerations over recent years, as the means by which we alter ourselves grow increasingly powerful and precise. Most significantly, the development of ‘genetic engineering’ technologies have brought the subject of our organismic future into closer examination. To what extent, if at all, should we intervene in the handiwork of Nature? we find ourselves asking. Is it ‘right’ to ‘edit’ What We Are? If not, is it even possible to stop what’s already well underway? Is the future inevitable? Far from academic, how we answer these questions will define Who and What we become, and the world we create — or destroy.
We humans make change. To our environments, to ourselves. Change is what we do, it’s inexorable from our identity as sentient, living-breathing things. It’s therefore not without a juicy sliver of irony that, some couple hundred thousands years into a history defined by change — much of which was at least ‘intentional-ish’ — we find ourselves asking whether it’s in fact a good idea. Whether we should change ourselves is thus, on some level, akin to asking whether the sky should be blue — largely irrelevant. The essential fact is, the sky is blue (at least some of the time) and will continue to be blue, whether or not we think it ought to be. And so it is with us and our propensity for change. Where the analogy between changing ourselves and the colour of the sky breaks (at least partially), is of course in our ability to intervene, according to our judgment. If we think we ought to change, we can change — at least within certain bounds. It’s one of the things that make us so cool. The sky, on the other hand, will simply keep on keeping blue. We can therefore understand our growing concern/anxiety over the ethics of ‘engineering ourselves’ as proportionately reflecting our ability to do so. With great power, as Spiderman’s uncle once said, comes great responsibility. It’s this power, and the burden of its responsibility, that we are beginning to reckon with.
So we’ve been making change since day one, right. That’s not new. What is, then? For starters, the rate of change is definitely unprecedented, a new thing. While there’s some argument over whether innovation has recently stalled, if you take a broader view, it’s clear that the overarching trend is towards an increasing pace of change, novelty. History is, in some sense, speeding up. Nothing happened for the longest time, and then language and the agricultural revolution and writing and then the scientific revolution and then the industrial revolution and the digital revolution. Now there’s so many revolutions it’s hard to keep track of. It’s practically revolution city over here on earth. Shit’s getting weirder by the minute, and the minutes are getting faster by the second — or something. You get me.
Why have things sped up? There are many ways to cut at this question. However, the most parsimonious explanation centres around the ‘metaphysical’ nature of technology. See, technology is fundamentally an agent of change. And change, by its nature, begets more change. Change makes change, and change also makes change. That’s kinda how it works. Thus, as technology becomes increasingly powerful, change becomes increasingly rapid. It’s a feedback loop, a snowball effect. Technology begets more technology which in turn begets more technology and so on ad nauseam. Now we’re snowballing.
Although there’s long been concerns about how our modulating the environment will affect who we are, it’s not until relatively recently that we’ve become concerned with modulating or engineering ourselves directly. Since the rise of the biomedical model of medicine, we’ve been engaging, at least somewhat, with what it means to intervene in the human condition. Moreover, a growing understanding of the physiology of our brains has dramatically altered our conception of ourselves, and increasingly powerful chemical tools for manipulating our neurophysiology — and therefore, our identity, our selfhood — have called into question what is proper and legitimate, versus what’s stupid/unethical. Above all else, however, it was the discovery of the gene and the concept of heredity that brought the subject of human enhancement to the fore of the human dialogue.
In the 19th century, there was a monk who had an interest in all things scientific. His name was Gregor Mendel. He farmed peas, for science. By breeding different varieties of peas together, he noticed a number of things. Most consequently, he observed that the traits or attributes of his pea plants were passed on from one generation to the next. Tall pea plants would breed tall pea plants, ones with certain kinds of flowers, certain kinds of flowers. Curiously, even when he bred tall plants with shorter ones, he noticed that the traits of the tall plants would occasionally be transferred in fill — ‘true’ — to the subsequent generation of pea plants with a kind of mathematical consistency, as in every so often. Rather than being the average of the two parent pea plants, the pea plant children would sometimes be tall, sometimes short. From this, Mendel surmised that their must be some essential, non-dilutable ‘thing’ being transmitted across generations of peas. There must be a thing for tallness, he realised, another for floweriness. A thing for everything. Sometimes, the thing from mother pea would appear in its offspring, sometimes the thing from the other father pea.
Mendel of course discovered something big. We are made of genes, genes that we inherit from our parents. Although today we take this idea for granted, as a trite fact of our existence, at the time it was by no means self-evident. Indeed, we had no idea how we acquired our stuffs. As such, you would expect that Mendel’s findings — published in 1865 — would have taken the world by storm. But for poor old Mendel, that’s not how it played out. On the contrary, his work was published to the sound of crickets. Without Twitter, Mendel’s work remained in obscurity for decades. It wasn’t until around 1900 that his work was finally picked up by the scientific community.
Around the same time Mendel was farming peas, another dude was looking at birds in the Galapagos Islands (who’d you rather be LOL). His name was Darwin. Charles Darwin. In-between sun-baking and swimming (presumably), Darwin was collecting exotic species, for science. At the time, the work Darwin was doing was quintessential biology — what we today call taxonomy, the classification of flora and fauna. Back to the birds, though. Across the islands, Darwin observed a bunch of different types of finch. Some with larger beaks, different coloured feathers etc. He found this curious. Why should there be so many similar, yet distinct varieties of the same bird? Why should God make so many species of virtually the same thing? That would be ridiculous, he reckoned. Excessive. Perhaps, he hypothesised, they weren’t different species of bird at all. Maybe they’re all ‘variations’ of the same species of finch. HUGE.
During his voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, Darwin was of course laying the foundations of his/the theory of Evolution, which he would later publish (in 1859) as ‘On the Origin of Species’. Where Darwin and Mendel’s work converged, some 60 years later, was in the mechanism by which evolution takes place. For evolution to do its thing, for changes to be transmitted from generation to generation, Darwin realised, these changes must be instantiated or embodied in some physical thing. There had to be a physical mechanism, in other words, by which variation could occur and be transmitted across generational lines. For this, Darwin posited the existence of “gemmules” — little particles that the body would emit and send to the gonads so as to be transferred to offspring. Although it was a cute and not entirely false idea, it wasn’t fully on the money, either. Enter, Mendel. What Mendel was studying, remember, were the ‘laws of inheritance’. However, traits of any kind were passed down from parent to offspring must be the same mechanism by which evolution works its magic.
Eventually, the link between the two’s work was made. We are made of stuffs, stuffs we inherit from our parents, stuffs that evolve. The stuffs are genes, the means by which we inherit them the magic of sperm and egg doing their thing, and the ‘evolve’ piece a process of ‘natural selection’. This connection between heredity/genetics and evolution was finally drawn at the beginning of the 20th century, in what’s known as the “Modern Synthesis”.
The theory of evolution — with its notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ — was (and remains) a powerful idea. However, unlike Mendel’s work, which remained in obscurity for decades, the significance of Darwin’s work was almost immediately recognised. With the understanding that there are individual units of our ‘individualness’ — genes — and a mechanism by which those units are selected for, came the idea that we could take our destiny into our own hands — through selective breeding. Like farming peas, we could farm the human population so that the ‘fittest’ were all there was. By breeding only the best stock, we could ostensibly speed up the process of evolution. And so was born the concept of ‘eugenics’.
The term was coined by one Francis Galton, an English polymath interested in, among other things, the concept of ‘human improvement’. Galton was one of the first to fully grock the implications of Darwin’s theory. Not only did it undermine creationist theology, he realised, it also implied the possibility of intentionally guiding the future of our species. “We cannot doubt,” he wrote, “the existence of a great power ready to hand and capable of being directed with vast benefit as soon as we have learned to understand and apply it.”
In 1883, Galton published a provocative book — Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development — in which he laid out a strategic plan for the improvement of the human race. In it, Galton proposed that by mimicking the mechanism of natural selection, we could intervene in the development of human civilisation, and, at least in principle, greatly improve it. Unnatural selection, he argued, was a logical and desirable complement to natural selection. He coined the term eugenics to denote his agenda, ‘the science of improving stock,’ as he put it, “to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.”
The initial idea for the eugenics program was to breed the ‘best with the best’. Arranged marriages were the proposed mechanism. Galton, for one, fantasised about a world where a record of the best traits in the best families could be maintained by society — generating a ‘human studbook’ of a kind. Men and women, in such a world, would be selected from this record, according to their compatibility, and bred to produce the best, ‘fittest’ offspring. However, for reasons both practical and quasi-scientific, it was decided that such a ‘positive’ eugenics program was untenable. Instead of selecting for society’s best, the way to go — it was held — was selection against the worst; “the selective elimination of the weak”. While there was some concern expressed RE the scientific legitimacy of such a program, not to mention moral implications, others, such as the British novelist H.G. Wells, were convinced of its urgent necessity. Having imagined, in his 1895 book The Time Machine, a society literally divided along racial lines, Wells was convinced that the desire to manipulate heredity in order to create a “fitter society” was a legitimate and indeed positive one. However, he also believed that selective inbreeding via marriage, as was proposed, would likely produce weaker and ultimately inferior generations. Thus he argued, “It is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.”
From here, it’s easy to see how you get Hitler and Nazi Germany. Believe it or not, though, Hitler and the Nazi’s were truly convinced that what they were doing was entirely scientific. Indeed, Nazism, the biologist Fritz Lenz once said, is nothing more than “applied biology”. Of course, Nazism wasn’t the least bit scientific — it was racial genocide, the most grotesque display of (un)humanity. Our darkest hour. Though the Nazi program is certainly the most horrific eugenics campaign in human history, it was not the first. Lesser known, the US had begun a similar — albeit less murderous — experiment some couple of decades earlier. Throughout the early decades of the 20th century, stoked by the same fears of racial degeneration as Galton and his friends across the Atlantic, pro-eugenic sentiment was gaining steam. The leader of the American eugenics campaign was a fellow by the name of Charles Davenport, a Harvard-educated zoologist, who had founded a eugenics-focused research centre and laboratory — the Eugenics Record Office — in 1910. The following year, Davenport published a book that would become the movement’s bible — Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. As a matter of fact, it was also widely assigned as a textbook of genetics in colleges across the country.
By 1912, following the first international Conference on Eugenics in London, eugenics was officially a full-fledged movement. In the US, the American Breeders’ Association had been established in order to eliminate “defective strains” of people, through the creation of confinement centres, “colonies” for the genetically unfit. Committees had been formed to consider sterilisation for inferior/unfit men and women — epileptics, criminals, deaf-mutes, the feebleminded, those with dodgy eyes, bone deformities, dwarfism, schizophrenia, manic depression, or insanity. “Nearly ten percent of the total population… are of inferior blood,” claimed the president of the association, Bleeker Van Wagenen, adding, “they are totally unfitted to become the parents of useful citizens… In eight of the states of the Union, there are laws authorising or requiring sterilisation.” In “Pennsylvania, Kansas, Idaho, Virginia… there have been sterilised a considerable number of individuals… Many thousands of sterilisation operations have been performed by surgeons in both private and institutional practice.”
Buck vs Bell, a landmark Supreme Court case, laid the precedent for sterilisation, providing legal grounds for the involuntary sterilisation of certain kinds of genetically “inferior” peoples. Writing the 8–1 majority opinion, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. reasoned, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.” What ensued was a governmentally-sanctioned eugenics program that lasted decades. All told, approximately 70,000 Americans were forcibly — and legally — sterilised. While that number pales in comparison to the 6 million Jews (and countless others) that were exterminated in camps and gas chambers during the Holocaust, it demonstrates that evil isn’t always as flagrant as we tend to think. Indeed, what makes evil so effective is not its flagrancy but its subtlety, its ability to masquerade as justice or righteousness and thus hide in plain view.
The purpose of providing this potted history of eugenics is to set the scene for the present historical moment, to establish the context in which the current conversation concerning human enhancement takes place, to illuminate the cause of our collective fears and anxieties. Most importantly, however, it’s to remind us of the fact that real lives are at stake here, that what we consider to be ethical and just, as it pertains to engineering or enhancing ourselves, will have far-reaching real-world consequences — as it always has. It’s therefore up to us to ensure the determinations we make don’t repeat the moral failures of our past, that the consequences of our decisions are those we can live with — ideally, those that posterity comes to celebrate.
Treatment vs Enhancement
The ethics of human enhancement is typically framed in terms of the distinction between treatment, on one hand, and enhancement on the other. Treatment is fine, the argument (and our intuition) generally goes. Enhancement, however, is taken to be a completely different kettle of fish. For some reason or another, it’s then held to be unethical and thus undesirable. Now this is a curious fact. Why should we take issue with something that would necessarily entail an improvement of our condition? Keep in mind, if it didn’t entail an improvement of our condition, by definition, it would not be an enhancement. Perhaps the shadows of our history, rather than the valid philosophical logic, explain the intellectual orthodoxy against enhancement. Morbid as our history of ‘enhancement’ is, however, it is not in itself reason enough to argue against it in the future, at least not on solid philosophical grounds. While our past should give us pause, encourage us to reflect on the true source of our motives, and pursue the issues at hand with ultimate humility, it should not prevent us from engaging earnestly in the subject of enhancement. Despite its marketing rhetoric, it’s clear that the ultimate source of the eugenics of the 20th century was not a sincere desire for improvement of the human condition, but instead fear, prejudice, and hatred — the very worst of our kind. It is by no means self-evident that any and all attempts at enhancement in the future must be similarly motivated. On the contrary, the desire to improve our kind can be — and often is — legitimately motivated by very different energies. It would thus be a great tragedy if we were to let the moral repugnance of our past colour our conversation in the present. We must learn what we can from the past, certainly, but we cannot view it as predictive of the future. History is history, the future is another thing. Like our own personal pasts, they only recur if we let them.
The distinction between treatment and enhancement is largely arbitrary. Like the distinction between health and disease, the distinction between treatment and enhancement is equal parts grounded in facts about human physiology and equal parts cultural construct. We take no issue at treating ‘disease’, yet enhancement could easily be framed as treating disease also. It all hinges on how we define disease. If we take disease to mean the divergence from population-based physiological reference ranges — i.e. health norms — then treatment consists only of managing ailments that are associated with some biometric that exists outside of those ranges. If we take disease to mean the absence of health, however, then treatment could reasonably be conceived of as anything that promotes health. Treatment and enhancement, in the context of such a definition, would be one and the same.
That’s not to say that there’s no way to draw a distinction between treatment and enhancement. Indeed people draw such a line all the time and the world keeps spinning. It’s just to say that there’s no ‘ultimate’ basis for the separation, no underlying metaphysical divide, if that’s your flavour. Proof of this is just how historically/culturally contingent and malleable our definition of disease — and thus treatment — is. Many conditions we treat today would have once been viewed as merely symptoms of the ageing process or the result of perfectly natural causes and thus not to be intervened on. In some sense, they are therefore enhancements. It’s only because our definition of disease is malleable and contextual, that interventions that were once enhancements are today treatments.
In fact, there’s no need to get quite so cosmic in order to illuminate the arbitrariness — certainly blurriness — of the treatment/enhancement divide. Consider exercise. Is it treatment or enhancement? If you’re already sick, perhaps exercise is treatment. But if you’re ‘disease free’, then how could it be treatment? It must be enhancement, then. And yet no-one takes philosophical issue with exercise. Nor any other ‘natural’ mode of enhancement — meditation, ice bathing, healthy eating etc.
Clearly, our issue is not with enhancement per se, but certain kinds of enhancement, or enhancement via certain means. Meditation is fine. But neural implants, well, that’s another thing. Exercise, no problem. Genetic engineering so that you don’t have to exercise, yeah, not so much. So, what’s the difference? Why do we find certain kinds of enhancement perfectly fine, while others morally unacceptable?
Authenticity
In the ‘enhancement literature’ there is this concept called ‘authenticity’. Authenticity means many things to many people, but in this particular context, it refers to the idea that there is something essential to our condition that makes us who and what we are, and that thing, whatever it is, is Good. If we were to intervene in ourselves, beyond a certain point, we would lose our authenticity, it’s argued, and that would be Bad (it’s also argued). Exercise and meditation and so on are perfectly fine, therefore, because they don’t corrupt our authenticity. They leave our super special human essence in tact. Neural implants, however, would (perhaps) make us something entirely different. It would render us wholly Other.
The trouble with authenticity arguments is that authenticity itself is an incredibly hazy notion, almost impossible to pin down. What is essential to our humanity, and what does it mean to be ‘true’ to it? When you consider what the “self” really is, a sequence of experiences strung together across time with a certain degree of continuity, it’s hard to place authenticity anywhere meaningful. If what we are is a set of experiences defined by certain parameters, so what if the parameters — and therefore the experiences — change? Surely our physical form is not absolutely essential. Presumably, we would still be authentically human if we had twelve limbs, even two heads.
The next issue with authenticity, as a basis for arguing against enhancement, is the assumption that What We Are is Good. While I’m perhaps uniquely sympathetic to the idea, you could certainly forgive one for thinking otherwise. Simply looking at our past, it’s clear there’s at least considerable room for improvement. And, if it so happened that such improvement came at the cost of some amount of authenticity, that might be a fair price to pay — one could certainly, and quite convincingly, argue.
Another problem with claims re the sanctity of authenticity is that they tend to rest on a very particular conception of what we are, one that takes our psycho-physical organism as primary, at almost the complete exclusion of the world around us. What does that mean? It means that proponents of authenticity tend to be biased against things that impact directly our physiology, our inner world, yet curiously impartial to things that change the world we live in, our environment. Of course, we are psycho-physical organisms. Whatever we do to our physiology is changing us, whether trivially or fundamentally. But we are also psycho-physical organisms embedded in the context of an external world. We are the world as much as our hands and feet, in other words. As such, we cannot be studied in isolation from the very context of our existence. Or we could, but it wouldn’t tell us much. For to understand someone, anyone, you must first take into account the world in which they live.
If we take our physical environments seriously, consider them as literal extensions of who and what we are, it stands to reason that we should be equally concerned about changes we make to the world as we are to changes we make to ourselves. What does it mean for authenticity, for instance, that we are have, through our relationship with technology, become ostensible cyborgs? Are we something fundamentally different than we once were by virtue of the fact that the majority of us spend the majority of our days hunched over a desk in front of a computer screen? What does it mean, for that matter, to be human in a world where half our lives are lived online? What about the fact that we can move through time and space like magic? Does that mean anything? Are all these changes to what we are merely changes in degree, or do they represent fundamental changes ‘in kind’? Whatever the case, it’s clear that the conversation around human enhancement, for it to make any sense at all, has to include modulations to the world outside of our skin and bones, for our humanity is inexorable from our world/s.
Critics of this kind of argument — we’ll call it the the ‘extended phenotype argument’ — might respond by asserting that the difference between changes in the world and changes to ourselves is that the former are less of a threat to our authenticity as they’re less connected to the ‘intrinsic qualities of our humanity’. Changes to our environment, though they might change us in superficial ways, they’re further removed from the core of our identity. Even though the world has changed almost beyond recognition, throughout history, it has not altered the essence of what we are. We are still, at root, the same kinds of things we always have been. Now this might be true. Perhaps, despite the transformation in the external world wrought by history, the essential character of our identity remains in tact. However, the idea that changes to our physical environment, such as those we have experienced, do not affect our humanness is patently absurd. The ways we communicate, the modes of work we engage in, the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the books we read (or don’t read) — the structure of our lives — absolutely impacts the essential features of our humanity; how much we care, how much we love, how much we know.
With respect to technological changes, specifically, a common intuition seems to be that they’re not as ethically significant as, say, germ-line changes to our genome, because we can always opt-out of the former. Technology we can always fix/get rid of, changes to our germ-line, however, are irrevocable. Understandable as this intuition is, it’s not entirely grounded in the reality of things. Although we are absolutely free, in principle, to opt out of the technology of our time, in practice, there is very little freedom to be found. The degree of cultural resistance that one would face in giving up certain kinds of technology, for instance social media, renders them — in effect — non-optional. Given the mechanics of culture, and our minds that constitute it, what appears as free choice is in fact nothing of the sort. At least with germ-line editing, we are aware of the permanency — or at least quasi-permanency — of the changes we are affecting. With changes to the external environment, however, we are ostensibly making germ-line edits to our cultural DNA, though the illusoriness of free will prevents us from taking such change quite as seriously as we should.
One of the most deeply felt aversions to the notion of human enhancement that hinges on the concept of authenticity, is the idea that, left to our own devices, we will eventually make of ourselves things that are, in some sense, utterly divorced from the ultimate/larger/underlying Reality of things. This intuition is captured perfectly in Brave New World with the use of the drug Soma, a kind of chemical ecstasy that everyone consumes ostensibly all the time, that colours their every experience. Everything, when on Soma, is gravy as. No matter how dark the person’s experience is, conceptually, experientially it’s bliss. The death of a loved one, for instance: so long as enough Soma’s in the person’s system, the emotional response to losing one’s closest relationship would be indistinguishable from the experience of the most mind-blowing sex. Everything is Bliss.
On the surface of things, this sounds great — utopian. And yet, something about it scares the shit out of us. This was of course part of Huxley’s genius, his ability to illuminate the blurriness between utopia and dystopia. When asked what the defining quality of a utopia would be, the most obvious response is, “Well, everyone should feel good all the time”. That is, a world free of suffering. If there was much suffering, by definition, such a world would be disqualified from the label of utopia. However, our response to Brave New World challenges this assumption. There’s more to a good life than ecstasy, we all seem to think.
There’s a couple of reasons why this might be the case. Firstly, there’s the fact that ecstasy — of the sort induced by Soma in BNW, and in our world, literal ecstasy — represents only one positive stand of mind, one flavour of well-being, among innumerable others. Part of why we take issue with the constant, indiscriminate and universal consumption of Soma is that it would mean we are opting for one positive state of being, to the exclusion of all the others. We want to feel good, sure. But we also want to feel good in all the ways. Though we might prefer one flavour of ice-cream, we want others from time-to-time, too. Irrespective of how much you like vanilla ice-cream, a world where vanilla ice-cream is the only source of food is a most terrifying kind of hell.
But there’s another reason. That is, that it’s Good, in the moral sense, to be connected to the actual state of things, for our thoughts and emotions to track the solid ground of Reality. Even if it means occasional suffering, we should nevertheless prefer a world wherein our experience is honest to and accords with the Truth of things. To experience emotions and thoughts that are less-than-faithul to said Truth is to live a life that is fundamentally false, dishonest, inauthentic. Such a life, it goes, would be Bad.
Such a life would indeed be Bad. And not only because of its lack of authenticity, although that provides some grounds for wanting to avoid such an existence. More importantly, we want our experience to be faithful to Reality because without such an alignment, it’s ostensibly impossible to flourish in the broadest sense possible. When our experience is commensurate with the Truth, we are best able to successfully navigate our circumstances, to make decisions and take actions that maximise our future well-being. When we suffer, not always but very often, we are gaining valuable information about our relationship to the world. Information that then informs our behaviour. Thoughts and emotions are valuable sense data when they are grounded in the underlying facts of the matter, misleading and destructive when they’re not. Our cognition is like a GPS system of sorts, and like our GPS, we want our cognition to map/reflect the actual, objective state of things.
Take the trivial example of physical pain. Say we suddenly begin to experience some form of pain around our chest and shoulder area. If our response to that situation is, “Fuck, that doesn’t feel so good” we are rather likely to do something about it. Depending on our age and knowledge, we might draw the connection between our pain and a heart-attack. That thought might in turn lead to our calling an ambulance. If the pain was in fact the result of a heart-attack, then our experience being faithful to the actual goings-on of things could likely save our lives and thus preserve whatever future well-being we might experience. If, however, we are artificially in a constant state of pleasure, we would perhaps never know that we were having a heart-attack and therefore never make the call. In such a case, we are far more likely to keel over. Given all the well-being we would lose out on, that would indeed be Bad.
One could, of course, look to make the opposite argument. Barring perhaps the example of physical pain, being disconnected from Reality might, at least in some instances, result in far greater well-being than a truly faithful relationship with ground truth. In support of this claim, one might point to the worldly successes of certain dreamers, do-ers, change-makers, “visionaries”. Among others, Kanye comes to mind. Visionaries, they could argue, are successful precisely because they neglect Reality and instead make their own, that their prosperity is the result of their dogged unwillingness to accept the notion of Truth, their capacity to bend the “facts of the matter” into “facts of their own”.
Such an argument would nevertheless be mistaken. Firstly, we must distinguish between worldly success and well-being. Though visionaries of the sort our current culture tends to admire/worship/celebrate may achieve much of the former, acquisition of the latter doesn’t appear to be directly linked. Indeed, the two are very much separate things. People who achieve great deals of worldly success, as a product of their seemingly flexible relationship with the Truth, do not by necessity also achieve high levels of well-being. Thus even if we concede that a distorted or unfaithful perception of Reality may, in some cases, be conducive to the conventional notion of success, there is very little to suggest that such a perception leads to heightened levels of well-being. Quite the opposite, the evidence strongly suggests that maladjustment to Reality and well-being very much work against each other. Purely from an everyday experience standpoint, it’s more often than not the case that when we are experiencing some form of psychological suffering, even just reframing that suffering in a more expansive/enlightened/honest light tends to resolve the suffering. The same goes for physical pain. Consider exercise. If our understanding/framing of the experience of exercise wasn’t faithful to the actual facts of the matter — that exercise is good for us, that the pain is a sign of perfectly natural and indeed positive physiological processes etc. — we would find it insufferable. Because our perception is generally in accordance with the underlying Reality, however, we can tolerate it. Some even find it immensely pleasurable. Taking this line of argument even further, there’s even a strong — and indeed empirically verifiable — case to be made that a truly veridical perception of things is itself the most compelling flavour of well-being. If we regard Enlightenment as the state of mind most commensurate with the reality of the human condition, the most “true” state of awareness, then given the inherent pleasure of said state of mind, accurate perception and well-being would thus not only be consonant but actually synonymous. The difference between pleasure of the variety induced by Soma and the pleasure of Enlightenment, however, is that the pleasure of Soma excludes other varieties of experience, whereas Enlightenment is consistent with almost every conscious experience, as it’s not so much an experience as a quality of experience that can be discovered within — or on the very surface of — all experiences. We’ll return to this claim later.
Though it’s tempting to ascribe the worldly success of certain individuals to the fictionality of their Reality, often, what might seem to be the product of magical thinking — a shaky relationship with the Truth — is little more than an unconventional interpretation of it. In other words, it’s not the quality of their sense data that leads such individuals to take action we might view as crazy, arrogant or egomaniacal, but rather a different take on what the implications of those sense data are. Just because something is extraordinarily unlikely or difficult, for instance, it does not follow that we shouldn’t at least go for it. It would be magical thinking to believe that the statistical probability of making the NBA if you’re 5’6” is high, but it’s by no means magical thinking to dedicate your life to defying the odds. Indeed, if it’s a burning desire you have, it might be perfectly rational behaviour. More often than not, we are best served by the Truth. Knowledge is power, after all. It assists us in our efforts in the world. Knowing all the ways we might fail helps us hedge against them, it helps make the “impossible” possible.
To be sure, some people really are just crazy.
Unintended consequences
Philosophical quibbling aside, there is a genuine concern that underlies the authenticity thing. That is, that in attempting to enhance ourselves, according to some conception of what’s good, we could really fuck things up. For instance, in engineering for heightened intelligence, we may well lose other, and perhaps more important qualities — such as empathy, compassion, love. Whatever this has or hasn’t to do with authenticity, it’s a valid concern nonetheless. We want to enhance ourselves, after all, not mess our shit up. This is among the most significant concerns with human enhancement — and engineering more broadly. It’s the problem of unintended consequences. We want one thing, and unwittingly get another. Unintended consequences are a fundamental problem inherent to intervening in the human experiment. It’s also a fundamental problem, however, with not intervening in the human experiment. There are consequences to both our actions and non-actions, and given the stupid complexity of things, some of those consequences are inevitably unanticipated. Moreover, some unanticipated consequences are also undesirable. Not everything is roses. At least not all the time.
There are innumerable examples of unintended consequences of human engineering. That millions of people would some day die as a result of the invention of cars was unlikely anticipated by Henry Ford when he was tinkering on his first model automobile. That social media would be weaponised, lead to an information apocalypse — the “infocalypse” — dividing society and undermining the concept of truth was probably not top of Zuckerberg’s mind as he was hacking away at “The Facebook” in his Harvard dorm. Similarly, that the efficient combustion of fossil fuels would eventually lead to runaway climate change was, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, probably unthinkable. And yet…
While it’s easy to cast judgment on such characters of history, label them ignorant, or worse, malevolent, the reality is that the future is tricky. Shit happens, and our powers of foresight are all too limited. That’s the issue here, not “authenticity”. We are stupid apes with the god-like powers. What could possibly go wrong? We’ll just make a harmless edit to the germ-line here, tweak our immune system just a touch. It’ll be sweet, promise. Next minute we’re all zombies. So no wonder we’re nervous. The unsettling truth is that this is the game we’re playing. And it’s the game we’ve been playing for a good while. The even more unsettling truth, however, is it’s not all that clear what — if anything — we can do about it. We can encourage caution, “play it safe”, but just what effect — if at all — that has on things is far from obvious.
Before we get to that point, though, there’s still much to cover. For instance, what if we get it right? What if it all works out according to plan? Who’s plan?
What’s Good?
One of the first issues people have with enhancement is the concept itself. Sure, enhancement implies an improvement in what we are, but what exactly constitutes an improvement? Presumably, what one person might consider an enhancement, another might consider a downgrade. This has less to do with the fact that some humans are better philosophers than others, and more to do with the fact that we are all constituted slightly differently; we all have unique preferences, things we like or value more than others. While super-intelligence sounds like a dream to some, it could conceivably sound like a curse to others. So how are we to reconcile this variance, in terms of taste, that defines our species? If we can’t converge on what changes to make to ourselves, is society not destined to fracture at the seams?
In some sense, this is the flip side of the unintended consequences concern. Rather than ‘what if we fuck it up?’, this class of concern has to do with ‘what if we get it right?’ One of the major concerns is that, given the hyper-competitive nature of our present culture, the kinds of enhancements we’re likely to make are bound to be skewed towards traits or attributes that simply make us more competitive, as opposed to genuinely ‘better’ human beings. Within the context of our current cultural paradigm, intelligence, discipline, obedience, model good looks, are the kinds of features we’re likely to optimise for, provided the chance. However, whether this is the kind of society we should strive for is questionable. While the concern that economic factors (and thus values) will determine the kinds of enhancements we’re likely to make — rather than more ‘enlightened’ values — is well-founded, the real issue is in fact far deeper. The concern, construed more broadly, is that we are not in a place — culturally/intellectually — to make decisions that could so materially affect the trajectory of our species. Since the enhancements we’re likely to make will invariably reflect the values of our present culture, if our values are perverted in fundamental ways, then such enhancements will only further pervert our being.
This problem has also been framed, rather less cynically, as a lack of imagination issue. As in, the kinds of enhancements are likely to be narrowly focused by virtue of the fact that we lack the capacity to imagine things that might be desirable, either now or in the future. An example that’s provided is that of creative genius. Imagine we were we granted, in the 19th century, the ability to enhance our musical abilities. Provided the chance, we would have enhanced our music-making abilities according to our then-existent criteria as to what constitutes good music. Alas, we would have engineered generations of better classical musicians, new-and-improved Bach’s and Beethoven’s. Consequently, we wouldn’t have gotten the Beatles, nor Biggie. For in order to get the Beatles or Biggie it would’ve require our having conceived of their work, and its desirability, before their existence.
Although these concerns are generally presented as arguments against enhancement, it’s worth appreciating that they could just as readily be framed as arguments for enhancement. In the first case, the problem of the relationship between values and enhancement, we might use this line of reasoning to advocate for enhancing our value systems before anything else. In the case of imagination, this suggests that enhancing our imaginations might also be a good thing.
In any case, both arguments represent valid concerns. However, they’re also simply immutable realities of the human condition. Our value systems are as a matter of fact imperfect, and our imaginations all too constrained by circumstance. To say that we should rally against enhancement, on either basis, would be a mistake. We’ve been enhancing — or at least editing — culture with imperfect — that is, human — value systems and limited imaginations since day one. It therefore seems unreasonable that we should all of a sudden demand higher standards of ourselves before we go on doing the same. Whether or not perfect values and unbounded imaginations would be ideal, the fact is we don’t have them — and likely never will. We are human beings, with all that entails. We make decisions, everyday, based on incomplete information, with limited intelligence, and value systems shaped by our own set of arbitrary experiences. It’s therefore unreasonable to hold society to standards that we don’t even hold ourselves to, and couldn’t even if we wanted to.
Theoretical arguments aside, it’s inevitable that we will continue to enhance — or attempt to enhance — ourselves before we reach anything close to perfection. On purely pragmatic grounds, our focus should thus not be on whether or not we should do so, in light of our imperfection, but rather how/if we can prevent our imperfection from getting the best of us, whether there are systematic ways we can ensure the better angels of our nature are expressed, and not our worse demons.
Although it’s alarming to consider the worst elements of our present culture being amplified in the name of ‘enhancement’, perhaps the most important aspect — and indeed controllable — of all of this, is that we retain the freedom to decide our individual futures. See, part of what makes us so anxious about the future of enhancement is the thought of someone else deciding, on our behalf, what’s good. This notion conflicts with one of our most deeply held intuitions. That is, that our lives are for us — as individuals — to decide, the freedom to fuck up our own future our most cherished, fundamental right. If we are going to fuck our future’s up, we’ll do it on our own, thank you very much.
It’s thus the lack of freedom, not the enhancements per se, that make dystopian futures — such as Brave New World — so, well, dystopian. We want the right to shape our own destiny, to decide for ourselves what’s good, what’s worth enhancing and what’s not. Given the state-space of possible and desirable futures, there are many enhancements one might choose. What we must work towards, therefore, is ensuring this state-space remains vast, that we respect the right to choose, for ourselves, the sorts of enhancements we consider worth embodying. What we must prevent is the collapse of possible futures into a singular and homogenous world, devoid of physiological/psychological diversity. So long as an enhancement is compatible with the well-being of others, in the broadest sense, we should welcome it. It’s not for us to impose our own cup of tea on others. If someone wants giant biceps or 6 hands, power to them. Morphological freedom, my friends.
No pain, no Good?
One of the more interesting, and certainly less considered, aspects of the enhancement debate is the significance of traditional human values, such as discipline, motivation, ambition, work ethic, in a world wherein we have something approaching near-complete mastery over our condition. In other words, is a world wherein we don’t have to endure struggle, suffering, hardship in order to accomplish, a world we should care to inhabit?
Life is Dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness), the Buddha once said. It is, he believed, our default condition. Anyone who has lived long enough should be capable of attesting to the Buddha’s insight. Our lives, it’s true, tend to be characterised by a gnawing sense of discontent, dissatisfaction, disappointment. Fortunately, this condition is occasionally punctuated by moments of complete contentment, bliss, euphoria, wholeness. But for the most part, we tend to lean into the next moment, craving something other than whatever it is we’re experiencing in the present. Interestingly, however, in the grand scheme of our lives — at least when they’re considered retrospectively — we tend to view our suffering/Dukkha, not in morbid or negative terms, but as the source of immense meaning in our lives. Our struggle, it seems, is utterly inseparable from our success; our pain intimately connected to our pleasure.
Even if you’re not inclined towards a yin-yang metaphysic (good is bad and bad is good etc.), it’s clear that whatever suffering is, it’s not wholly bad. Just think, what satisfaction would there be in succeeding without some amount of suffering. What’s the point of striving, in other words, if there isn’t great odds to be overcome. Indeed, without great odds to be overcome, there can be no striving. For without striving, there is only success (or failure). And where’s the fun, not to mention meaning, in that?
In fact, it’s this existential condition of Dukkha that, perhaps above everything, binds us as human beings. It’s our shared trauma, the battle scars of our humanity, that’s the ultimate source of our solidarity. Well, trauma and love — but mostly trauma. On this view, suffering is an inexorable part of our human identity, the pain and torment we experience an integral component of the human struggle. More than that, though, not only is suffering inexorable from our identity, it’s of fundamental moral significance. For perhaps it’s in our grappling with suffering that we ultimately discover who we are, in our vulnerability that we learn character, in our contending with the shadow-world that we find meaning, strength, and value. Without suffering there would be no hero’s journey to embark on, for there would be no adversity to overcome, no great battle that infuses our lives with purpose. A hero needs an adversary, after all. Without an adversary, he/she/they/it is just plain regular. So although a life would be less painful without suffering, perhaps it would also be meaningless.
This raises the concern that, were we to engineer suffering out of the human system, would we not have lost one of our most valuable features? Of course, this concern is closely related to authenticity. However, as it has more to do with the metaphysics of suffering, specifically, it deserves its own treatment.
It was the Buddha who said life is Dukkha, so it only makes sense to examine what he thought we should do about it. Although he recognised that Dukkha was a characteristic feature of human life, the Buddha really wasn’t about that Dukkha life. In fact, the whole Enlightenment program he championed was designed specifically to help us transcend this supposedly sad state of affairs. Life is Dukkha, he reckoned, only when we are ignorant, when we fail to see things clearly for what they are. Through practice, namely meditation, we could learn to clarify our perception of things and therefore learn to live above Dukkha, in the peace/tranquility/freedom of true awareness — Nirvana.
While it’s easy to wax romantic about the existential value of suffering, it’s important not to take it too far. Without doubt, suffering often is a source of immense value in our lives. It’s through the window of Dukkha that so many discover the Dharma, after all. That said, it seems clear that the vast majority of our suffering — the more mundane, moment-to-moment variety defined by unsatisfactoriness, anxiety, displeasure etc. — is absolutely meaningless, serving no ultimate or larger purpose. On our deathbeds, it’s hard to imagine ourselves reflecting on how meaningful our incessant, gnawing social anxiety was, or the cosmic significance of our never truly liking ourselves, of the self-loathing that plagues so much of our experience.
Clearly, there’s good and bad suffering. Suffering that’s ultimately valuable, that leads to our betterment, and suffering that’s just plain ol’ suffering and nothing more. Suffering is not a Good in itself, in other words. It’s only good when it affects a certain kind of response. And so it is that we should embrace the good kind, and do all we can do avoid the bad kind, to expunge as much pointless suffering from our lives as possible.
Now what about difficulty? Although closely related, difficulty and suffering are not the same thing. Difficulty can of course be a form of suffering. Take the difficulty often inherent in juggling the affairs of life. Kids, work, attempting to maintain some semblance of a social life etc. Difficulty can also be the source of great satisfaction, not only retrospectively but in the moment, too. Solving a tricky puzzle or attempting a particular gymnastic feat, whatever. There can be both pleasure and pain in difficulty, depending on the framing. Both can be valuable, of course. Difficulty that bears suffering can be good, if it breeds resiliency/grit/discipline or other traits that come in handy down the line. It can also provide satisfaction retrospectively, when we reflect on the challenges of our lives and they provide us with some sense of accomplishment and meaning. Like certain kinds of suffering, though, certain kinds of difficulty contain no value whatsoever. As with certain kinds of difficulty as with bad sex, it’s hard to find any consolation for it. Conversely, difficulty that confers in-the-moment pleasure is of course free from suffering entirely. Though the task at hand might be inherently difficult, the phenomenology of the task is one of satisfaction, pleasure, happiness etc. Obviously, we should keep this kind of difficulty in our lives.
In a perfect world, we would develop the capacity to eliminate all unnecessary/meaningless suffering and difficulty from our lives. To do so would be an enhancement. This is an easy enough call to make. All suffering/difficulty that is unequivocally Bad we should remove from the human equation. All that is Good we should keep. Where it gets trickier, however, is in evaluating whether or not we should eliminate suffering/difficulty even if we could not do so discriminately. Provided the chance, should we eliminate all suffering and difficulty so as to secure all the well-being that would fill its place? Or, should we prefer our lives as they currently are, that is, a sloppy mix of the two?
There are two thought experiments that help illuminate the dilemma here. The first is a device that confers total Enlightenment upon whoever uses it. The second, a neural implant that enables us to download knowledge/skills instantaneously, without effort.
Thought experiment #1: $99 Enlightenment
Imagine that, for the modest sum of $99, you could purchase a wearable device (a special sort of hat) that configured your brain in such a way that you were “fully Enlightened” so long as you were wearing it. No longer would you have to muster the motivation for meditation, struggle away on the cushion for hours, pour over the pages of dharma books or abstain from sense pleasures. For $99, you could transcend the psychosis of ordinary awareness, along with all its attendant suffering. Sounds like a good deal, no? But would you take it? Should you take it? Even though Enlightenment for double digit dollars is, on the surface, a ripper deal — it’s not clear that we ought to go for it. At least intuitively, Enlightenment seems all of a sudden far less valuable if you can buy it. For is it not the sacrifice inherent in the path, the immense discipline one must cultivate in order to walk it, that makes the goal — should we happen to attain it — so tasty? The same goes for every other element of health. Is it as meaningful if it comes for free (or close to)? Or must it be hard fought? Is it the struggle that makes the success, in other words?
No. The struggle is not what makes the success, though it might sometimes be a bonus. To the degree to that struggle contributes to the well-being that results from “success”, whether that be in terms Enlightenment or any other pursuit, it’s a good thing. However, though the struggle may colour the well-being, or contribute to it, it’s not the primary source of well-being — it’s not what makes the well-being valuable/meaningful. Well-being is what we ultimately care about, not what surrounds it, not the means by which we get there — or what we must sacrifice for it. To illustrate this point, imagine two writers whose strongest yearning in life is to become a successful, widely read author. Further, imagine that their circumstances are precisely the same. For all intents and purposes, their journeys are the same, paved with the same set of challenges etc. In the end, they both achieve their aim, whereafter they both realise immense well-being as a result. However, where one of them suffered throughout the process — found the writing a great hardship, the promotion insufferable etc. — where the other found the whole deal a great delight. Would we opt for the former purely because of the juxtaposition between the experience of the struggle and that of the success? No. We would be crazy to. For on net, if we assume their well-being was the same following their success, the one who “enjoyed the journey” would have led a more “valuable” life.
As for the Enlightenment deal, specifically, it’s much the same. What makes Enlightenment valuable is the well-being that’s inherent in it, the states of mind that it confers upon the “Enlightened”, as well as the ripple-effect that Enlightened individuals tend to have on the world. That the attainment of Enlightenment — to the degree that such a state of finality exists -tends to involve countless hours of practice and immense sacrifice is, for the most part, entirely arbitrary, a product of the vagaries of history. The time, effort, struggle, and discipline that are ordinarily required to produce Enlightenment are not essential qualities of Enlightenment, necessary pre-conditions. In fact, they (their absence) are generally the greatest impediments to Enlightenment. That Enlightenment should require so much of us precludes so many from ever tasting the rainbow. And that’s a great shame. If we could do something about that, we should.
One needs not posit the existence of magical technologies, such as the Enlightenment device, in order to challenge our assumptions about the role of effort/discipline along the Path. Indeed, real/non-hypothetical technologies will also do the trick. Think about meditation apps. Their explicit aim is to make meditation “easier”. By serving as a mindfulness alarm, meditation apps can help maximise the time we are spending “actually meditating” and less time simply lost in thought. In some sense, this makes one’s meditation more efficient, and in a sense, easier. Where meditation apps can have a more leveraged impact, however, is in pointing out certain instructions or insights that could have profound and disproportionate effects on the meditator. It’s therefore entirely possible that a quality meditation app could greatly reduce the time it takes one to reach Enlightenment. Does this make it Bad? Should we prefer the path where we struggle blindly on our own? Of course not. All of these technologies that serve our practice exist on a continuum, with the original Enlightenment technology (the Guru) on one end, and the $99 Enlightenment on the other. There is no point along the continuum at which helpful becomes a hinderance, Good becomes Bad. We want Enlightenment as efficiently and painlessly as we can get it.
It’s also worth noting that — apparently — some of the greatest sages/gurus throughout history did not endure any suffering whatsoever in order to realise Enlightenment. Instead, they sorta just woke up like that. It’s as if, entirely out of the blue, they were struck with the bolt of Enlightenment. Such individuals have inspired enormous followings and — apparently — affected great change in the lives of others. Interestingly, we don’t devalue such people’s experience or suggest it’s meaningless because they didn’t work for their fruits. On the contrary, we praise them as supranormal beings — special — and flock to them.
Thought experiment #2: Learnomade
Imagine a neural implant (a chip inside your brain) that allowed you to download any knowledge/skill for the price of an iPhone app. We’ll call it the “Learnomade” (like lemonade but with learn LOL). Want to speak fluent French? A couple of clicks and you’re good to go. Keen to master the karma sutra? Not a problem — 99 cents and you’ll be pretzeling like a pro in no time. Surf like Kelly Slater? Easy. With the Learnomade at your aid, no longer would you have to slave away for years in order to acquire knowledge or master a skill. At last, the world would be your oyster, your wildest dreams realised — and all in an instant.
Yay or nay? Would such a technology be a) the very best thing to happen to the world, or b) the worst thing since COVID-19?
On one hand, what a gift it would be. Not only would the horizon of our possible experiences expand almost infinitely, civilisation in the large would be utterly transformed. The intellectual/temporal band-width constraints that have so long capped our potential would be no more. Technologies hitherto unimaginable would be discovered, enabling us to solve the technical challenges of our time. Presumably, our lives would be made all the richer by our newfound capabilities and the vast reams of knowledge we would have, not only at our fingertips, but literally inside our skulls. Moreover, it stands to reason that such a technology could — and more than likely would — improve our humanity, at least in certain ways. After all, wisdom — that most elusive human thing — is a certain kind of knowledge, one that — with the Learnomade — we could readily download like any other. To the degree that wisdom improves lives, this would be of immense benefit. And talk about equal opportunity! Such a technology would, at least in principle, be the ultimate equaliser. At last, the meritocratic ideal would be realised.
On the flip-side, what’s the point of things in a world any-one can do any-thing? All of the fear, excitement, anticipation, struggle, satisfaction — in a word, humanity — that surrounds the learning process would be extinguished. In its place would be left only the intrinsic qualities of any given activity. Speaking French would feel like speaking French, at least on some level, but it would not contain the additional richness of humanity that is imbued in the act by learning it by ordinary — non-magical — means.
As awesome as such a superpower would be, the concern — in a nutshell — is that we would in exchange be trading something far more valuable — our humanity. This intuition/argument represents a large class of concern re the ethics of human enhancement. That is, that certain kinds of enhancement would be “de-humanizing” and therefore Bad. De-humanizing arguments are interesting, for they rest on a particular conception of human nature along with the view that What We Are is What We Ought to Be/remain. Broadly speaking, the idea is that we are creatures that love, hate, struggle, suffer, laugh, fight, forgive — i.e. do all the human things — and we should keep things that way. To intervene on ourselves to the point that we fundamentally alter our nature would, it goes, be highly unethical — on the basis of our “human nature” being something that’s a Good in and of itself.
Such arguments are not new. Something of the sort apparently drove the Celtic warriors to eschew body amor (and even clothing) in battle because they believed that it diminished the glory of a true victory. Armor, it was believed, somehow stifled the humanity of the experience of war. More modern examples also abound. For instance, some authors have argued that computer keyboards corrupt the humanity writing process, driving a wedge between our humanness and the page. Such examples are generally provided in order to demonstrate how ridiculous de-humanizing concerns are in practice. “See, all the fears of how technology would violate our essential humanness, throughout history, have been mostly unfounded”. The kind of character traits we cherish and admire in ourselves are very rarely smothered by new — and at first, seemingly magical — technologies, they simply reveal themselves in new ways, in new struggles.
Perhaps the same would go for the Learnomade. While the struggle and satisfaction involved in the learning process will have been done with, maybe there would be a whole new frontier of struggle and satisfaction — suffering and well-being — that the Learnomade opens up. Perhaps, in a post-learning world, the primary human endeavour would no longer be the acquisition of skills/traits/knowledge, but instead the creation of entirely new kinds. Having mastered the known, perhaps we would set our sights solely on the unknown. The struggle and satisfaction that was once part-and-parcel of the learning process would, perhaps, find itself replaced by the struggle and satisfaction inherent in the process of creation.
So maybe the Learnomade would be continuous with the history of technological things that change the way we do things. Like the rest of things, the Learnomade would change things, but not our nature. It would not de-humanize us, so much as re-humanize us; that is, redefine what it is to do and be and suffer and prosper as a human being. We would still suffer, don’t worry, just differently. #sufferdifferent.
But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the advent of the Learnomade would represent a fundamental departure from the history of technological progress, an invention so radically powerful that it doesn’t compare to anything that preceded it. Maybe the computer keyboard isn’t a fair analogy for the Learnomade, then, for where the former merely amplifies or augments our nature, the latter makes of it something completely Other. Perhaps. If history tells us anything, however, it’s that our technological fears are very rarely justified. What we identify as cause for concern hardly ever proves to be genuinely problematic. Rather it’s what we don’t identify that bites us in the ass. That’s not to say that technology is never a threat to the quality of our humanity, and thus never worth worrying about. It’s rather to point out that we can only so scarcely grasp, in advance, the ways in which technologies will affect us. We can speculate, but the future is unknown, the world weird, God too funny — and so she laughs at our prophesies.
Maybe… who knows.
Moral enhancement
Thinking about enhancement, it should be clear by now, can be dizzying. With so much to consider, so many nuances, so many arguments, so many ways of framing things, it’s near impossible to find a position, amongst any of this, that one can adopt with any real conviction. To enhance, or not to enhance? ’Tis the question, but it’s the answer that’s the trouble. Even if we could decide on one, though, it’s far from assured that it would be the right one — morally speaking. As human beings, we are many things. Perfect moral agents, however, is not one of them. What a sober assessment of history — as well as the present moment — reveals, is that our moral intuitions very rarely cause us to converge on anything near optimal moral outcomes. Whether we choose to evaluate the performance of our implicit moral judgments at the level of society or in terms of our individual lives, the results are rather less than impressive. Part of the issue is that, instead of hard evidence, reason, or logical argument, we tend to make our moral judgments based primarily on the emotional saliency of the various alternatives. While we would never refuse to help a nearby child drowning in a shallow pond, the vast majority of us are complicit in the equivalent moral crime each and every day — by virtue of our not putting our money to the rescue of the most underprivileged lives. Of course, that’s not to say we wouldn’t like to help. For the most part, we all yearn to make a difference, to better the lives of the less fortunate — but only after we get that new car, watch or place on the beach. We want to save lives, that is, but not at the expense of our enjoyment of material comforts.
Rather than pointing this reality out for the mere sake of chastising the entire Western world, it’s simply to show that our value systems and moral intuitions — as they are — are a long way from optimised for producing ‘maximally moral’ outcomes. Having evolved, as they did, by the same bootstrapped process as everything else, our moral faculties are half-baked, dodgy, fallible. That is, just like the rest of us.
Knowing this, that our moral faculties are less-than-perfect, should give us cause for concern. For placed in the position, as we are, to affect immense change in our condition and therefore radically alter the human trajectory, we find ourselves with limited and highly flawed moral powers. Again, we are apes with God-like powers. On its face, this would sound like an argument against moral enhancement. Since we are highly imperfect moral agents, with highly powerful technology, it would seem to follow that we should play it safe — err on the side of caution — and intervene as little as practically possible. We don’t know what we don’t know, after all. So let’s just chill, be cool. However, this doesn’t resolve the dilemma either. For the paradox here is that, while enhancement might be a horrible idea by virtue of our janky moral compasses, by dint of the very same fact, not enhancing might be similarly disastrous. In the same way that decisions to intervene could result in immoral outcomes, so too could decisions not to enhance negatively affect our position along the moral landscape, whether that be in the short-run or deep intro the future. In other words, both acts of commission and acts of omission have the potential to harm our moral future.
In fact, what at first appears to be a particularly strong argument against enhancement, when rotated just a few degrees towards the sun, becomes a highly compelling rationale for enhancing. With respect to enhancement, the fact of the matter is we are going to make decisions that have moral consequences. Even no decision is a decision. That’s just the nature of the beast. Thus given this predicament, as well as our past and present moral performance, perhaps we should go straight for the jugular and enhance our moral faculties, our powers of wise/ethical judgment! If we are so concerned that we are ill-equipped to make the kinds of decisions that will positively affect our future, maybe we should do something about it. Rather than going after the more superficial enhancements, like better short-term memories, it seems sensible that we first ought to improve the source of our decision-making, enhance our moral arithmetic, so that all subsequent enhancements are oriented towards producing the most fair and just world imaginable. No longer would we spend so frivolously. Every surplus dollar we earn would be spent towards rescuing the world’s poorest from their proverbial shallow ponds.
Putting aside for the moment the circularity of the argument (that is, either way we must first make a decision with fallible moral powers), there is something viscerally repulsive about the notion of engineering ourselves so that we become perfect moral creatures. Intuitively, it feels as though such an “enhancement” would be a major violation of our humanity; more precisely, of the fallibility that is the very mark of our humanity. In the same way that it is our suffering and struggle that defines our character, that gives our lives its texture, it’s our wrestling with the great big juicy moral questions of our lives that infuse them with so much drama, meaning, significance. If we were to lose our fallibility, we would therefore be losing something vitally precious. Of course, it’s very likely that this kind of response is just our fallibility — our imperfection — speaking. No shit we shudder at the thought of making of us angels, for that would mean no more of the debauchery and decadence that fills our lives with so much excitement and, well yes, discontent. What’s more, if we were all perfect moral agents, being moral in such a world would provide none of the satisfaction that it does at present. To act with anything resembling moral rectitude in today’s world is to be donned a saint. In a world where we’re all bona fide saints, what’s the point of acting saintly?
While most of us have a wholly negative reaction to the idea of moral enhancement, those in shallow ponds presumably have a very different take. It seems reasonable — if not reasonable, unsurprising — that those of us in a position of fortune and privilege would be biased against moral enhancement. On some level, perhaps we know we are living lives that are reprehensibly unfair, that we didn’t do anything to deserve them — unless of course Karma holds true — but yet we cannot bring ourselves to concede this fact. For to concede this fact would be to let go of the meritocratic illusion that we have structured society around and which fills so many of us with guiltless pride.
Enhancement and ex-risk
Given the vanity of the most popularly imagined enhancements — chiseled features, x-ray vision, super speed etc. — it’s not unsurprising that many find the notion utterly stupid, a symptom of the deep-ceded inferiority complex that seems to have indelibly marked the human mind. Although a more charitable interpretation of things would attribute this yearning for improvement to the loftiness of the human spirit, Schopenhauer’s “will-to-life”, or, if one is so inclined, perhaps the great creative/evolutionary impulse of the cosmos, it’s clear that a non-insignificant source of our desire for enhancement is indeed our own psychopathology. Sure, we want to be “better”, in part, because our powers of reason suggest it would be a good idea. However, we are at least equally motivated — and arguably far more so — by our own dissatisfaction with ourselves, by the sometimes all-too-painful fact of our inadequacy. Many opponents of enhancement, I believe, are acting — whether knowingly or not — in response to this most human issue. This is no way to Be, they warn us. Making ourselves better is not the answer. Neither bigger biceps nor brains will fill the hole in our hearts. Instead, we must learn to love ourselves — for who and what we are. Thus, on some level, arguments against enhancement can be seen as fundamentally psychological in nature, based on an awareness of the reality of human self-loathing and grounded in an understanding that true well-being comes from within, not without.
While this concern is attached to what we may refer to as “superficial” enhancements, it doesn’t seem nearly as relevant to enhancements aimed at preventing the collapse of the human species. Psychologically, there seems to be an entirely different complex behind the desire for positive enhancement — the desire to be “better” — and negative enhancement — the desire to prevent our collective extinction. Where the former is driven by self-loathing, perhaps the latter is driven by the primal fear of death — an individual fear we all hold and then rationalise/project onto the population writ large. While the psycho-physics behind both of these desires are unhealthy — though perfectly natural — they elicit different kinds of intellectual response. Though it’s relatively easy to level an argument against positive enhancement, it’s far harder — even just intuitively — to develop strong arguments against ensuring our continued existence long into the future. Enhancing ourselves so that we can run a little faster or think a little quicker is one thing — superficial child’s play — enhancing ourselves so that we save the future strikes one as something very different — among the most noble and legitimate concerns one could possibly have.
For those who haven’t thought much about existential risk and the moral imperative to do everything we can to safeguard against it, just consider this: if we play our cards right, the overwhelming majority of human lives are yet to exist. Should we keep this thing going for a good while, it’s entirely possible that hundreds of billions — maybe even trillions! — of humans will eventually come to have the gift of life. So long as they are lives worth living, that would be hugely Good — morally. If, however, something was to wipe us out, that would mean all those lives would never come to pass; that is, never experience the thrill of a first kiss, the bliss of a scorching sunset, the pure joy of surfing, or the base pleasure of good sex. And so it is that the most important thing we can do, in the present, is to ensure our presence in the future. The greatest Good we can do is to extend the horizon of human existence.
Almost every human enhancement can be framed in terms of managing ex-risk. One of the greatest threats to our existence is, among other things, our stupidity. Not only would human superintelligence be a major vibe (at least one presumes), it could also help us solve the problems that could likely wipe us out, whether that be runaway climate change or an earth-ending asteroid impact. Similarly, just as an enhanced immune system might be the key to infinite longevity, it may also be the key to safeguarding against the threat of a genuinely catastrophic pandemic in the future.
Ironically, as is a recurring theme in the enhancement debate, the strongest argument against enhancement — avoiding the extinction of our species — becomes the strongest argument for enhancement. But again, as with the rest of this whole thing, the difficulty is in not knowing how things will actually play out, in our not having a crystal ball that affords perfect omniscience. In principle, enhancement is an extraordinary moral imperative. But in practice? Who knows. It’s all a roll of the dice.
What to do?
As much as the implications of the enhancement conversation extend well beyond the ivory tower of academia, much of the conversation is indeed purely academic (or at least close to). Whether you think enhancement is a good idea or the worst, as a matter of principle, is one thing. It’s entirely another translating these positions into real-world actions or governmental policy. How, for instance, should the belief in the moral value of human enhancement impact our approach to the job? Dial down regulations, perhaps? Let the scientists go hell for leather? Put more money towards basic research? Conversely, what would it mean, in terms of the regulations we might seek to implement, if we decide enhancement is a fundamentally bad idea? Shut down biology? Prevent the sale of anything that intends or purports to makes us better? Or what?
This part of the conversation opens up a can of worms, philosophically speaking. A can of worms that, to be honest, I have very little interest in opening. That can of worms — as you might have guessed — is the role of government regulation. For what its worth, my personal bias is against regulation almost across the board (full disclaimer). That said, I’m perfectly open to the idea that regulation may in some instances be of value, though it’s hard to say where (or when). Aside from the odd libertarian, God bless their souls, very few people challenge the supposed utility of regulation. Indeed, it’s simply assumed that regulation is synonymous with good sense. Regulation is good, regulation makes us safe, regulation is an insurance policy. Regulation appeals to our desire for order, security, safety. There is obvious psychological appeal to the notion that, through legislation, we can control the future. Whether or not government regulation is ever called for, or of genuine value on net, the challenge associated with regulation is in regulating, so as to achieve the desired outcome — be it safety, justice etc. — without fucking other shit up, whether basic rights or scientific progress or technological innovation. The problem with regulation, as with enhancement, is the problem of unintended consequences.
Most regulation, perhaps the overwhelming majority, is merely the pretence of control. That is, it doesn’t materially change behaviour in the desired direction but simply gives us something to point to when asked what we’re doing to prevent x from happening. This sounds harmless, although it often comes at great expense, whether in terms of what it costs governments (and thus the populations which support them) or stifled innovation. Given the stupendous complexity of things, it’s impossibly difficult to know, with any real certainty, the consequences of any given regulation. As with biological interventions, regulatory interventions are dealing with highly complex, non-linear open systems that are by their nature highly unpredictable. What seems like a perfectly sound, intuitive idea — such as placing controls on certain kinds of behaviour — often manifests in the form of highly adverse and yet absolutely unforeseen consequences. It’s revealing that the most regulated industries in the US, education and health care, are also the most dysfunctional, sclerotic. Just as we ought to be worried about our ability to make enhancements to ourselves, without disastrous unintended consequences, we ought to be worried about our ability to successfully regulate the systems that will mediate future enhancements. We can be sure we will try, but we can be far from sure we’ll succeed.
With respect to enhancement technology, specifically, it’s terribly difficult to imagine how we might go about regulation. Short of pulling funding for all relevant scientific research, which would be both unprecedented and unmanageable (from an administrative standpoint), it’s not clear what could be done to prevent the inevitability that is human enhancement. Though we might keep in place our moratorium on germ-line interventions, such a policy is in reality arbitrary. Whether to make germ-line vs somatic interventions is, for the most part, a matter of convenience. If it makes sense to intervene at the level of the germ-line, provided the legal permission, we will. Otherwise, we’ll do the thing somatically.
Part of the issue with regulating enhancement is the competitive dynamics that come into play. What one country allows, another won’t. For those that are more liberal in terms of regulation, it’s easy to imagine there being a certain competitive advantage that such nations will gain. Remember, an enhancement is something that, by definition, makes us better. So long as what we define as constituting “better” continues to accord with our economic aims, nations that take a more lenient stance towards enhancements will be benefited. So even though the US, for instance, might draw a line in the sand against a particular enhancement, if their Chinese friends are going hard on that enhancement and that enhancement seems to be working, it’s hard to see the US remaining firm in their position, on “moral grounds”. When it’s all said and done, nations will do whatever they deem to be in their best interest. Abstract moral concerns will quickly seem quaint/irrelevant in the face of a compelling economic incentive. Should that give us pause? Of course. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not. The future is coming, whether one likes it or not.
