Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, am I
Speaker 1: right or am I wrong? I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be continuing our
Speaker 1: conversation on moral bio enhancements. This is going to be
Speaker 1: part two of a two part series. So if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard the first episode, you should go back listen
Speaker 1: to that one first, so you know what we're talking
Speaker 1: about in this one. And without further ado, here begins
Speaker 1: episode the second. So the whole concept of moral bio
Speaker 1: enhancement has lots and lots and lots of problems, some
Speaker 1: of which we kind of touched on either through our
Speaker 1: tone or content so far. Yeah, and well, and I
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out real quick to a
Speaker 1: really great review of the literature on moral bio enhancements
Speaker 1: that I was reading by Jonas Specker and colleagues called
Speaker 1: The Ethical Desirability of Moral bio Enhancement a review of
Speaker 1: reason and and a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm saying are are things that that that
Speaker 1: that Specker in our colleagues, um pulled, pulled together from
Speaker 1: just tons and tons and tons of of amazing thinkers
Speaker 1: on the subject. So just wanted to put that out there.
Speaker 1: Go read that paper if you'd like, a very very
Speaker 1: theramic breakdown, but big problems. Yeah, who who decides what's moral?
Speaker 1: That's a big one. Yeah, who who's the moral authority?
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm qualified. Well, I mean, I'll
Speaker 1: stop up. So I understand that as a concern, But
Speaker 1: I also think that this is the same problem we
Speaker 1: already face in our moral decision today. So you've got
Speaker 1: to make moral decisions in your life, and you're either
Speaker 1: trying to think through ethical reasoning yourself and consider consequences
Speaker 1: and trying to make moral decisions on your own, or
Speaker 1: maybe in a lot of cases, you're sort of offloading
Speaker 1: some of that thinking. Two people you would consider a
Speaker 1: moral authority share like like a like a religion that
Speaker 1: you abscribe to, a subscribe a word, let's say it
Speaker 1: is um or or or or or like like like
Speaker 1: the theory of objectivism, like like some kind of theory
Speaker 1: like that sure, or even just to a person. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are people who live among us that we often
Speaker 1: think of as kind of moral genius. Mr Rogers would
Speaker 1: have been a moral authority. Yeah. You look at somebody
Speaker 1: and say, I think that person knows what's up when
Speaker 1: when it comes to how we should act, and I'll
Speaker 1: follow their lead because it sounds like they know they
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about. So we already do this.
Speaker 1: We either make moral decisions on our own or we
Speaker 1: defer to a moral authority. So so we're already faced
Speaker 1: with the problem of who decides what is and isn't moral.
Speaker 1: This would just be adding on another step to that.
Speaker 1: Do you also have a device or therapy further guiding
Speaker 1: you toward that conclusion? Yeah? And and right now, even
Speaker 1: if you have an authority who is proclaiming what is
Speaker 1: and isn't moral, every individual has the freedom to agree
Speaker 1: or disagree with that and to act upon that in
Speaker 1: whatever way he or she sees fit. So in some
Speaker 1: cases there might be like consequences. Absolutely, there could be.
Speaker 1: There could be very severe consequences, and that would probably
Speaker 1: prevent the vast majority of people from acting out on
Speaker 1: those thoughts, even if they held them right. Uh, some
Speaker 1: people might still act out on them and then suffer
Speaker 1: those consequences. That history is filled with those stories. Every
Speaker 1: story that involves the word martyr probably has some element
Speaker 1: of that in it, right. Uh. In some cases you
Speaker 1: might agree with the person who is labeled as martyr.
Speaker 1: In some cases you might not. But in either case
Speaker 1: it's someone who's who whose stance is very different from
Speaker 1: that of the authority figure. The case with moral bio
Speaker 1: enhancements is you would have no choice but to agree
Speaker 1: with whatever the authority figure had determined as moral, because
Speaker 1: the bio enhancement is mandating, is making that decision for you? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: so that's a different question entirely than I would say,
Speaker 1: because there we're talking about whether we could or should
Speaker 1: force other people to undergo moral enhancement. Is that not
Speaker 1: inherently immoral? I don't know that's a good question. I mean,
Speaker 1: so I was considering people who would willingly choose to
Speaker 1: undergo a moral enhancement. So imagine you could you could
Speaker 1: elect for a free surgery that would make you a
Speaker 1: better person. Would you do it? I think the problem
Speaker 1: is that the people who would elect for that are
Speaker 1: the ones that we least need to undergo the procedure. Well,
Speaker 1: we could all be better. I mean, I I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us, we're familiar with this, we wish
Speaker 1: we were better people in a way. I know I
Speaker 1: wish I was a person. There are times when I
Speaker 1: think about how I could be a better guy than
Speaker 1: I am, and I'm like, oh, man, like I let
Speaker 1: my friends down, and I wish that I hadn't done that.
Speaker 1: And I agree with that. And I think the people
Speaker 1: that when when you start talking about moral bio enhancements
Speaker 1: and you start envisioning the sort of problems that it's
Speaker 1: meant to correct, the people who are perhaps the most
Speaker 1: accountable foresaid problems seem to be the least likely to
Speaker 1: elect to undergo a procedure. They might say, I don't
Speaker 1: have a problem. I'm find how I am exactly you're
Speaker 1: everyone else has the problem. I'm sitting pretty, and like, well,
Speaker 1: the reason you're sitting pretty is because of the oppression
Speaker 1: you're you're dealing out to everyone else. Well, I mean, see,
Speaker 1: that's the I would argue. I don't think, first of all,
Speaker 1: I don't think moral bio enhancements being mandated being a
Speaker 1: a compelled thing everyone has to have it. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a great idea. However, I think that's the
Speaker 1: only way it would work. Like I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think moral bio enhancements are a good idea generally speaking,
Speaker 1: in that I think there are too many problems that
Speaker 1: over out that out way the benefits, uh And the
Speaker 1: benefits only exist if it works the way we want
Speaker 1: it to work, as opposed to some perversion of that vision. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we're getting there a little ahead of
Speaker 1: ourselves here then, because we we should talk more about
Speaker 1: what these problems are sure. Uh well, I mean, one,
Speaker 1: we've kind of identified the idea that you have to
Speaker 1: have to follow a moral authorities vision of what is
Speaker 1: no isn'm moral And it may be that your own
Speaker 1: view of morality doesn't match up to that person's morality.
Speaker 1: It maybe the morality our sense of morality changes over time.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Well, the theories like like relativism say that
Speaker 1: that morality is is an inherently personal thing, that that
Speaker 1: that that you know, my morality cannot be your morality Joe,
Speaker 1: and that that neither of our morality is going to
Speaker 1: be nulls or Jonathan's um, I mean, and on on
Speaker 1: a society wide thing. That's that's definitely a question you've
Speaker 1: also got um, you've all so got uh moral pluralism,
Speaker 1: which which says that that some aspects of morality are
Speaker 1: are going to counter themselves. That if you're acting completely
Speaker 1: morally in one way, it's a trolley problem essentially, Um
Speaker 1: that that you're you're never because of the way that
Speaker 1: the world works, You're you're never going to make a
Speaker 1: perfect decision. Right. There's not there's not a black and
Speaker 1: white binary world out there where everything is either moral
Speaker 1: or not moral. There are issues where you are you
Speaker 1: might be faced with a complicated problem that has no
Speaker 1: good solution, but you still have to make a decision.
Speaker 1: And and that becomes problematic in a world where you say, well,
Speaker 1: we've got a procedure that's going to force people to
Speaker 1: act in a quote unquote moral way, because that means
Speaker 1: someone has to make that either someone has to make
Speaker 1: that uh decision ahead of time about what is the
Speaker 1: moral outcome of those decisions or whatever guiding factors push
Speaker 1: you to one choice over another. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: you've you've got the problem of of what if our
Speaker 1: ideas about morality change over time, because they do continually. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's I'm sure, I'm positive that what was considered
Speaker 1: good and moral six years ago is not the exact
Speaker 1: same thing that we consider today, and that's that's that's
Speaker 1: a long term kind of concept of like if these
Speaker 1: if these changes, if if these treatments are irreversible, then
Speaker 1: who makes who makes the decision to start changing them
Speaker 1: down the line as as needed? Well, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting thing to consider, But I
Speaker 1: also think that sort of falls into the same thing
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier, where this is already a
Speaker 1: problem we're faced with just having moral brains. So we
Speaker 1: have moral faculties that are informed by our sort of
Speaker 1: natural predispositions with whatever genetic element there is, and then
Speaker 1: also by our education and socialization which happened at certain
Speaker 1: periods in time, and we get sort of moral rules
Speaker 1: implanted in us. You can see this in changes between
Speaker 1: generations where the older generation has been taught a certain
Speaker 1: thing about what's moral, and then you know their kids
Speaker 1: might not agree with them about that. Uh So, in
Speaker 1: a way, I'd say this is also already a thing
Speaker 1: that we face. We're talking again just about adding coercion. Well,
Speaker 1: except that I would argue a person can also come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion like they can change their right, they
Speaker 1: can change their view, and so could a bio enhancement.
Speaker 1: I mean it depending upon the implementation. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: depending upon the the desires of whomever whatever entity is
Speaker 1: actually administering them. Right, So it gets more complicated. It's
Speaker 1: not like it's something that would be decided on an
Speaker 1: individual basis, or at least not the individual who's actually
Speaker 1: having the experience. It would be decided upon from an
Speaker 1: authoritative perspective. Right, So could you have the country of
Speaker 1: vote on everybody's brain should be forced to think for
Speaker 1: the bio enhancements are. Because once the bio enhancements are
Speaker 1: and then you have the question. It's almost like our
Speaker 1: our discussion on e voting. How do you know that
Speaker 1: the the true desires of the person are being reflected
Speaker 1: in the outcome? Yeah? Well, well here's another problem. This
Speaker 1: is hypothetical. What would it actually be possible? We sort
Speaker 1: of talked about this earlier, But I think is it
Speaker 1: possible from a technological point of view to have something
Speaker 1: like this? And I think the answer could be both
Speaker 1: yes and no, as in, we know there's a brain
Speaker 1: basis for morality that you can tamper with it with
Speaker 1: electrodes or drugs, things like that. But morality also appears
Speaker 1: to be this complex cross brain region phenomenon, meaning we
Speaker 1: can't yet foresee a way to control outcomes with precision,
Speaker 1: and the question is could we ever do that? Uh?
Speaker 1: For for example, with with saratonin, seratonin is just let's
Speaker 1: all chill out brain chemical. It also has a hand
Speaker 1: in how we sleep, our memory and coding and recall,
Speaker 1: our sexual behavior and performance, how we process pain, our appetite,
Speaker 1: how we process visual information. It has a hand in
Speaker 1: all of these. And so, uh, just like tossing SSR
Speaker 1: eyes at the entire population wouldn't really be moral. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a new kid for more of it kind
Speaker 1: of option, right, Yeah, and it's really too bad that
Speaker 1: we aren't like the crusty doll in that Treehouse of Horrors.
Speaker 1: Oh here's the problem. Yeah. Um, but see that that
Speaker 1: brings up another thing that we'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: What is the crusty dolls life like after he gets
Speaker 1: switched to nice? It's not good, isn't. No. He lives
Speaker 1: a life of humble subservience. But anyway, so we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute. But another practical problem I
Speaker 1: want to point out is Okay, so we've got this
Speaker 1: problem with precision in the brain. We don't know exactly
Speaker 1: where to put the micro electrodes to make you stop
Speaker 1: kicking small children. Um Man, I don't hope they never do.
Speaker 1: So we could study this to try to figure it out.
Speaker 1: But scientific ethics make it difficult to conduct experiments like
Speaker 1: this because, okay, so imagine you're trying to get institutional
Speaker 1: approval to perform brain surgery or introduce psychoactive drug regimens
Speaker 1: on people in order to see what makes them spend
Speaker 1: less time leaving jerky YouTube comments. That just seems like
Speaker 1: you're going to run into experimental ethics problems. That's what
Speaker 1: college students are for. Just elect to go and be
Speaker 1: a subject in one of those testing procedures and they
Speaker 1: get like twenty bucks at the end of it and
Speaker 1: everything's fine. Or even even if you took a population
Speaker 1: of of of criminals, of people who had murdered people,
Speaker 1: you would still have really have a really hard time,
Speaker 1: rightfully so getting getting permission from from any kind of
Speaker 1: uh good board of humans too to carry out these
Speaker 1: kinds of experiments, because any time that you that you
Speaker 1: do something to someone against their will when they are
Speaker 1: when they technically do not have a disease like a
Speaker 1: like a lack of moral virtue is not a disease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is another problem because then you're going to have
Speaker 1: a conflict between the ethics of the experiment and scientific rigor.
Speaker 1: Because ideally what you'd want is a randomized sample to
Speaker 1: do your experiments on. You'd have a big problem if okay,
Speaker 1: you say so too. In order to do this most ethically,
Speaker 1: we'd have to have people who volunteered to want to
Speaker 1: be a part of this experiment. But that would introduce
Speaker 1: a self selection bias into the sample of people you're
Speaker 1: performing it on, which is going to change the outcome.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Yeah, there's all kinds of trouble in trying
Speaker 1: to do experiments on this and and bringing up the
Speaker 1: issue of you know, who do you who do you
Speaker 1: perform these experiments on? Uh, it's not just an academic question.
Speaker 1: I mean history is filled with examples of some very
Speaker 1: ethically questionable, if not downright unethical, experimental projects that subjected
Speaker 1: people without their knowledge. Two pretty intense and extreme experiments
Speaker 1: you know, in the name of science, and justified in
Speaker 1: some way or another at the time. But from today's perspective,
Speaker 1: from our moral perspective today, we would say, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is all kinds of wrong. So it is a very
Speaker 1: tricky subject. Another complication I went to want to introduce,
Speaker 1: what if moral cognition isn't as local as it once looked,
Speaker 1: or what if there is no such thing as moral cognition.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into the whole argument, but there.
Speaker 1: There's another paper in social neuroscience from called where in
Speaker 1: the Brain is Morality Everywhere and Maybe Nowhere? By Leanne
Speaker 1: Young and James Dungan. They answer the question in the title.
Speaker 1: You don't even have to read the rest of the paper.
Speaker 1: Uh No, it's so uh. Essentially, they asked the questions
Speaker 1: of is there really a uniquely moral part of the
Speaker 1: brain or is this just a label we're applying to
Speaker 1: aspects of the emotional brain and the social brain and uh,
Speaker 1: And so they look for it and they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some regions that have been implicated, like some
Speaker 1: of the stuff we talked about earlier, think of intermedial
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortex and stuff like that. But it's also just
Speaker 1: a very complicated picture, and nobody's identified this moral brain
Speaker 1: substrate there's nothing there. Um, so we may be there
Speaker 1: may be some folly in our approach here. If we're
Speaker 1: looking for where is the moral brain? There might not
Speaker 1: be a moral brain. Morality might be more like an
Speaker 1: emergent behavioral phenomenon that we're describing that comes from some
Speaker 1: emotions and some social tendencies. And we don't know if
Speaker 1: in fact that turns out to be the case. That
Speaker 1: makes it even more complicated to come up with a
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancement that would actually be effective, right, because
Speaker 1: then what you'd actually have to be modifying is you
Speaker 1: can't pinpoint morality in the brain. You'd have to be
Speaker 1: modifying emotions brain. And now you're really like, if you
Speaker 1: weren't already getting people a little squeaky about the idea
Speaker 1: of of tweaking morality tweaking emotions, then you're thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: it sounds like, uh, you know, you're you're creating just
Speaker 1: a little dial on me that has a very narrow
Speaker 1: spectrum of the human experience experience and everything else is
Speaker 1: off limits. Yeah, And this this actually I would say
Speaker 1: that this conundrum is something we might expect from what
Speaker 1: we've already seen with the overlap between moral behavior and
Speaker 1: like SSR eyes which do mess with emotions. Uh. So
Speaker 1: here's one more complication. I want to introduce technologically, the
Speaker 1: plastic and adaptive adult brain. This is the thing we've
Speaker 1: discovered is that the adult brain is more were adaptable
Speaker 1: than we thought, and which is wonderful. Yeah. So there
Speaker 1: are examples of the adult brain adapting to problems. Forms
Speaker 1: of neural injury can, for example, be offset by ad
Speaker 1: hoc adaptations using the rest of the brain. One example
Speaker 1: is people with memory loss coming up with cognitive strategies
Speaker 1: to offset memory deficit. Yeah. It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you work in a really small office and everyone has
Speaker 1: a very specific job, and someone has to call out
Speaker 1: sick at the last minute, and then everyone else has
Speaker 1: to figure out, how can we continue to do our
Speaker 1: work plus carry the load of this person who is
Speaker 1: not there, even though they specialize in something that we
Speaker 1: do not ourselves typically handle. Right, And you might not
Speaker 1: be able to exactly cover that person's duties, but you
Speaker 1: can sort of do it. Uh. And another one would
Speaker 1: be since lost, people who have lost one sense like
Speaker 1: site can sometimes compensate with adapted cognition based on different senses. Uh. Daredevil, Right,
Speaker 1: I was just going to say the same thing that
Speaker 1: I decided I've been too geeky for this episode soiled back.
Speaker 1: But here's the question I thought about. What if we
Speaker 1: apply this to moral bio enhancement. So you go in
Speaker 1: and you do the equivalent, the positive equivalent of applying
Speaker 1: a brain lesion that introduces modified sociopathy. You put in
Speaker 1: some kind of modification that makes people very nice to
Speaker 1: each other. Other parts of your brain are still going
Speaker 1: to want to be selfish. So what if your brain
Speaker 1: adapts to the change and finds a way to circumvent
Speaker 1: it and revert to baseline jerky nous. Yeah, life finds
Speaker 1: a way and this yeah, jerk faces find a way. Yes,
Speaker 1: in this case were it's not that even the person
Speaker 1: in question is making a conscious effort to be selfish.
Speaker 1: It's the brain itself is adapting to these changes and
Speaker 1: saying this is not the way things are supposed to work.
Speaker 1: So other parts of the brains start behaving in a
Speaker 1: slightly different way in order to kind of get us
Speaker 1: close to that previous condition before moral bio enhancement as
Speaker 1: you possibly can get. One of the other arguments that
Speaker 1: I saw was, um, should we should we really be
Speaker 1: just concentrating on treating actual mental disorders before we go
Speaker 1: like whole hog on something that isn't a disorder, like
Speaker 1: like moral disorders. Right. And then my response to this
Speaker 1: is that the problem with that line of questioning is
Speaker 1: it starts to argue for a zero some kind of
Speaker 1: perspective on the subject, saying that if you focus on one,
Speaker 1: you cannot by necessity focus on another. And my argument
Speaker 1: would be that you could certainly have these areas of
Speaker 1: research all working, perhaps even in parallel, cooperatively with one another. Uh.
Speaker 1: And but it is it is a good question if
Speaker 1: you could say, like, well, we have some very real
Speaker 1: problems that we do not understand how to tackle in
Speaker 1: a way that is beyond just treating some symptoms. Why
Speaker 1: are we worried about something for people who have quote
Speaker 1: unquote healthy brains. Uh? Shouldn't we focus on the people
Speaker 1: who are really struggling with these diseases injuries, disorders and
Speaker 1: worry about that. First, Jonathan, I think I agree with
Speaker 1: your first criticism. I mean, I am wary of this
Speaker 1: type of question in general. That's just like, well what
Speaker 1: about uh, you know, what about is m of like
Speaker 1: there's another problem though, Uh so to remove the first problem,
Speaker 1: problems can exist at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that this is a good question if
Speaker 1: you can point to factors that make it clear that
Speaker 1: we really are going to need to choose between one
Speaker 1: or the other. But if you can't point to factors
Speaker 1: that make it clear that it's one or the other,
Speaker 1: then I don't think this question, uh necessarily matters. Well,
Speaker 1: how on another one then sure? Okay, in a world
Speaker 1: where some people are artificially moral, would would the regular
Speaker 1: people take advantage of them? Yes? I think so absolutely.
Speaker 1: If you know that every time you come by your
Speaker 1: neighbor's house and say, hey, can I borrow twenty bucks,
Speaker 1: they're going to say yes. There are gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of people banging on that neighbor's door until that
Speaker 1: neighbor doesn't have any twenty dollar bills left, which which
Speaker 1: brings us back to uh, something that we that we
Speaker 1: covered earlier in the show. Where where could regular people
Speaker 1: be allowed to exist in a world where anyone has
Speaker 1: this this altruistic treatment. So we wouldn't just be getting
Speaker 1: rid of murderers, we'd be getting rid of people who
Speaker 1: just you know, want to have basic uh, non harmful,
Speaker 1: pleasure driven lives. Right. Yeah, let's let's say we've got
Speaker 1: let's say we've got someone middle class hedonism. Yeah, hedonism.
Speaker 1: We don't even need the hedonism part. But sure, let's
Speaker 1: say let's just say, let's take it. Uh, let's make
Speaker 1: a hypothetical person. And this person leads uh, you know,
Speaker 1: typical life. They've got work, they've got some outside interests.
Speaker 1: More or less, they keep to themselves. They don't really
Speaker 1: socialize with their neighbors. They don't know their neighbors names
Speaker 1: or anything. They're not mean to their neighbors, they aren't
Speaker 1: thoughtless towards them, but they don't go out their way
Speaker 1: to know them either. Sure, but they really love uh
Speaker 1: spawn camping in in an online shooter game. Sure, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just how it's how they release their tension. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a legitimate strategy, I'll remind you. But it's yes,
Speaker 1: so they will take advantage of something that is not
Speaker 1: explicitly against the rules. So therefore they're not really doing
Speaker 1: anything wrong, although their pleasure is coming at the expense
Speaker 1: of other people's enjoyment. Or even even if you want
Speaker 1: to take that away, let's just say that they happen
Speaker 1: to notice that a name or is having a hard
Speaker 1: time for whatever reason, but they don't feel any need
Speaker 1: to help. They're not making it worse, they're not judging
Speaker 1: the neighbor. They're just not helping. You could argue, well,
Speaker 1: this approach would mean that people would feel better about
Speaker 1: going out and helping others. It's not even that they
Speaker 1: are taking advantage of other people. It's that they are
Speaker 1: not ignoring them. They're not They're not discounting someone else's
Speaker 1: misfortune or doing something like in like in this spawn
Speaker 1: camping example, that that's that's earnestly harmless, like the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of the right. It is irritating as all get out.
Speaker 1: I say it's a legitimate strategy, that's merely a quote
Speaker 1: from a from a video series. I don't actually spawn
Speaker 1: camp well, so I want to introduce a modification on this.
Speaker 1: A lot of I think a lot of actually very
Speaker 1: destructive behavior in the world, and I'm sure y'all would
Speaker 1: probably agree, is not even explicitly emminal behavior, not like
Speaker 1: violent behavior. For example, there are systemically destructive phenomena in
Speaker 1: the world in which many people participate, but nobody personally
Speaker 1: breaks a law, or does anything violent to anybody else.
Speaker 1: One example I think might be some practices on Wall
Speaker 1: Street that you could point to. That's okay. So you
Speaker 1: have thousands of people who collectively participate in a system
Speaker 1: that you could probably predict is going to lead to
Speaker 1: a bubble that's gonna burst, that's going to massively devalue national,
Speaker 1: probably global economy, lead to millions of people being out
Speaker 1: of work. You know, So there's a system that is
Speaker 1: pretty much guaranteed to cause misery. People are participating in
Speaker 1: the system without breaking any laws, and uh and so
Speaker 1: and and so what do you do about this? I mean, this,
Speaker 1: in one way is regular behavior. It's not necessary deviant.
Speaker 1: They're not you know, beating people up in the street,
Speaker 1: not breaking any laws. What would you think about this
Speaker 1: kind of thing if you've just you're just part of
Speaker 1: a system that has perverse outcomes. Well, and this goes
Speaker 1: back to those arguments the philosophers were making at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, right, the idea that we focus
Speaker 1: so much on short term as opposed to long term,
Speaker 1: that they would argue, using moral bio enhancements, you would
Speaker 1: start to think more in long term, and that you
Speaker 1: could still have that system in place. You could completely
Speaker 1: have an investment system in place, but that the behaviors
Speaker 1: of everyone involved would be more about trying to invest
Speaker 1: and go for a long term return on that investment. Sure.
Speaker 1: Sure to take it back to the to the online
Speaker 1: shooter example. Uh, if you know, you could, you could
Speaker 1: potentially argue that that someone who has been spawn camped
Speaker 1: just one too many times develop some kind of some
Speaker 1: kind of heart problem and eventually that that type of
Speaker 1: repetitive emotional stress leads to a heart tech. H that's
Speaker 1: a fair I'm not sure if fair is the right
Speaker 1: word for it. But thank you, but so many bullets
Speaker 1: and overwatch, I'm just ready for someone to someone to
Speaker 1: to feel my pain. No, but but but that but
Speaker 1: that that that same kind of drop in the ocean
Speaker 1: sort of sort of behavior that you that you can
Speaker 1: make an argue argument for in many different types of situations.
Speaker 1: I think could could certainly be applied. That that, yes,
Speaker 1: that that it is that we need a mandatory universal
Speaker 1: moral upgrade. On the flip side of that, though, is
Speaker 1: there any evidence to suggest that selfish behavior can sometimes
Speaker 1: be of benefit to a species? Hey, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: let's go back to the let's go back to the
Speaker 1: Wall Street analogy. Now, I think it's quite easy to
Speaker 1: see how, if you know, you look at like what
Speaker 1: has happened in various depressions and in financial markets throughout history,
Speaker 1: it's obvious how certain behaviors in in financial markets and
Speaker 1: in on Wall Street can lead to pain and suffering
Speaker 1: around the world. Sure, every single every single major bubble burst,
Speaker 1: you would argue, like you just look at the the
Speaker 1: outcome of that, right, the bubble burst, and you and
Speaker 1: you think, wow, how could we have let this happen?
Speaker 1: But then again you'll also get plenty of defenders who say, look, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes things go wrong, but this is what
Speaker 1: drives our economy. We've got investment and even maybe sort
Speaker 1: of like risky investment, it generates tons of wealth, it
Speaker 1: creates jobs. Uh. And if there is something to what
Speaker 1: people like that are saying, and this isn't the only
Speaker 1: case where it would apply, you could say that, Okay,
Speaker 1: sometimes people might engage in risky, selfish behavior that could
Speaker 1: cause harm to others, and you might look at it
Speaker 1: as morally dubious, but it also has lots of positive
Speaker 1: out comes that we depend on, uh, Yeah, which which
Speaker 1: brings me to, uh to another question. Could could we
Speaker 1: nice our society to death? Um and and allow me
Speaker 1: to to bring in a an animal, an animal tail
Speaker 1: about this one? Okay, not a fable, no, because this
Speaker 1: is literal, actual biology that's going on out there in
Speaker 1: the world. Um. Okay, So some spiders actually live in colonies.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to break it to you, um, but most
Speaker 1: spiders don't because they're cannibals. Um. But you know. But
Speaker 1: but spider cities of up to like ten thousand spiders
Speaker 1: lived together in some parts of the world, hanging out,
Speaker 1: not eating each other, taking care of each other's eggs,
Speaker 1: making repairs to the to the entire web, and sharing
Speaker 1: their food. But um, but but in this specific but
Speaker 1: in the specific type of spider um every generation that
Speaker 1: they go through, about one of the colonies just die out,
Speaker 1: just go completely extinct. Um and And so these these
Speaker 1: researchers from the University of British Columbia looked into it recently,
Speaker 1: and they discovered that once the colonies reach a certain size,
Speaker 1: they essentially share themselves to starvation because the overall web
Speaker 1: isn't catching enough food to support the entire colony. And
Speaker 1: they overshare and they all die. Huh yeah, yeah. So
Speaker 1: so there we have an argument saying if we get all,
Speaker 1: if everyone's on the same page, we eventually just enthusiast collapse.
Speaker 1: Yeah we we everyone ultimately goes extinct because we weren't
Speaker 1: cold and callous enough to let parts of us go extinct.
Speaker 1: Well here's another thing, Uh, think about who are some
Speaker 1: of the greatest political leaders in history? Just think of
Speaker 1: some in your head here. You don't have to say
Speaker 1: who they are. I bet whoever you've got in mind
Speaker 1: had to do some really immoral stuff in order to
Speaker 1: achieve goals that ultimately they we now look back on
Speaker 1: and say, I'm glad that happened. I mean, whoever it is,
Speaker 1: a lot of people might might pick Abraham Lincoln, but
Speaker 1: it's not like Abraham Lincoln just governed with like a
Speaker 1: squeaky clean you know what I mean? Or whoever you
Speaker 1: want to pick, leaders tend to have to do some
Speaker 1: crappy stuff. So even the really good ones, and mostly
Speaker 1: I mean even if it's yeah, even if it's not
Speaker 1: a conscious effort to do something crappy, maybe that they
Speaker 1: have to do something crappy in order to avoid an
Speaker 1: even more crappy consequence exactly. So would we be hamstringing
Speaker 1: ourselves and sort of preventing greatness and preventing change if
Speaker 1: we say, well, everybody's always got to be a super
Speaker 1: goody two shoes all the time. What if sometimes we
Speaker 1: need people who tread into immoral waters in order to
Speaker 1: ultimately take us to a better place. And then there's
Speaker 1: the the question that's asked in a clockwork are in,
Speaker 1: which is, if you remove a person's ability to make
Speaker 1: an immoral choice, are they no longer a person? If?
Speaker 1: If matter? Yeah, I mean Clark Karns just kind of
Speaker 1: tricky to write. Like the American version that was published
Speaker 1: was published without the twenty first chapter, So chapters one
Speaker 1: through twenty you have Alex's sociopathic character who does unspeakably
Speaker 1: awful things. He is not a redeemable character at all
Speaker 1: through the vast majority of the novel, which is why
Speaker 1: I think American editors demanded the twenty first chapter be
Speaker 1: left off. Spoiler alert, he gets redeemed in the twenty
Speaker 1: first chapter, So for twenty chapters he's a terrible person,
Speaker 1: even after he's undergone the Little Eco treatment which gives
Speaker 1: him this aversion therapy. Where he feels physically ill every
Speaker 1: time he wants to uh perform an act of violence.
Speaker 1: He still wants to do the ultra violence. He just
Speaker 1: can't enjoy it. Yeah, he can't. He can't think about
Speaker 1: it because it makes him sick. But he still has
Speaker 1: the desire to do it. He has not changed as
Speaker 1: a person. He only changes in that twenty first chapter
Speaker 1: as a result of maturing of growing up. So some
Speaker 1: people have argued that Burgess's approach to that form morality
Speaker 1: was a little shortsighted, like two little naive and optimistic
Speaker 1: saying that you'll just grow out of being a sociobath
Speaker 1: and then you'll be fine. Um and uh. And people
Speaker 1: say that the way that the book ends on chapter twenty,
Speaker 1: where he is quote unquote cured of the Lotto Eco treatment,
Speaker 1: it no longer affects him, so he can go back
Speaker 1: to the person he was at the beginning of the novel. Uh.
Speaker 1: That that raises a very tough question for the audience.
Speaker 1: Is it better to remove the ability to make these
Speaker 1: terrible decisions and have a quote unquote peaceful society or
Speaker 1: is it better to allow people to retain their humanity?
Speaker 1: But the consequence is you've got this unease and unrest
Speaker 1: and chaos us in society and burgesses. An answer eventually was,
Speaker 1: if you wait around long enough, people grow up and
Speaker 1: then they stop being total jerk faces. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: some people do grow up. Some people grow out of
Speaker 1: certain types of behaviors. I think. I think just rampaging
Speaker 1: around murdering people all the time doesn't sound like something
Speaker 1: people usually grow out of. I'm not sure, to be fair,
Speaker 1: most people who do that behavior don't necessarily get start
Speaker 1: a chance to continue all that long. Well, they also
Speaker 1: don't necessarily get started at age thirteen, and most of
Speaker 1: them tend to be if you look at the grand
Speaker 1: scheme of criminal psychology, it tends to be later in life.
Speaker 1: But at any the point in fiction versus reality. But
Speaker 1: but no, but but but but it is. It is
Speaker 1: a really interesting moral question of whether or not our
Speaker 1: personal choices and morality are a part of what makes
Speaker 1: us human, and whether we would be removing and an
Speaker 1: integral part of the human experience by by implementing some
Speaker 1: kind of treatment like this, will we just has becomes
Speaker 1: some kind of fleshy robot If we were unable a
Speaker 1: robots at least in theory only able to act within
Speaker 1: the parameters of its programming. Yeah, so would we just
Speaker 1: become robots because we would have the equivalent of programming.
Speaker 1: It would just be here's a list of things you
Speaker 1: are not allowed to do, and not not just from laws,
Speaker 1: you physically cannot do them because of these enhancements. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I don't know if we maybe we have,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if we've talked yet in this
Speaker 1: episode about what is the internal experience of this life.
Speaker 1: We've talked about sort of the external behavioral outcomes, but
Speaker 1: what does it feel like to have one of these
Speaker 1: modifications performed to your brain? And since it's hypothetical, it's
Speaker 1: really exactly I'm just saying, trying to imagine it. Would
Speaker 1: it be a case where you really want to do
Speaker 1: something immoral and you feel the urge to do it,
Speaker 1: but something prevents you, right like you're you're cybernetic and
Speaker 1: plan't get it out your cybernetic implant. Make sure that
Speaker 1: you can't, you know, go out, go outside and kick
Speaker 1: that kid that's been irritating you all day. It's not
Speaker 1: that you don't want to do it is that you
Speaker 1: physically are unable to do it or does it change
Speaker 1: your fundamental desire? Right? And that seems harder to imagine.
Speaker 1: In that case, would you still be you? And you
Speaker 1: could argue that if it was something that was done
Speaker 1: from birth, then it is you. It's the but it's
Speaker 1: the only it's not that you you could have been right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you as mandated. Well, and I and I think
Speaker 1: that that based on the neurobiological view of of of
Speaker 1: what we currently know about how we could implement this
Speaker 1: kind of treatment. Um, I think I think that's more
Speaker 1: likely actually that that latter thing, where where just are
Speaker 1: our very personalities would be different, um, more than having
Speaker 1: like a button in your brain that like prevents the
Speaker 1: kicking mechanism from traveling through your nervous system. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess here's one thing we could compare it to.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're somebody who takes an s s R I
Speaker 1: for depression or something like that. How does that change
Speaker 1: you do? Do you like feel depression coming on but
Speaker 1: then something stops it? Or do you just is it
Speaker 1: just something that's no longer a feature of your brain
Speaker 1: in the same way, So so sort of like have
Speaker 1: you guys ever had like a really bad headache and
Speaker 1: then taken some headache medication and you can tell there's
Speaker 1: still a headache, but you're not feeling the pain anymore.
Speaker 1: Because that happens with me and migrains where I'm aware
Speaker 1: that there is something in my brain that is not right,
Speaker 1: that it is it would be causing me agony. But
Speaker 1: the medication I am on prevents that pain sensation. But
Speaker 1: there's still like it almost feels like a presence, like
Speaker 1: almost like it's a physical thing in my head. Um.
Speaker 1: I I have, if I may share this experience with y'all,
Speaker 1: taken ss R S for anxiety and depression and and
Speaker 1: for me, the way that it's worked is, um it's
Speaker 1: it's more like it's sort of like all get an idea,
Speaker 1: um and and an anxious or a depressive idea and
Speaker 1: uh and and without the medication, I I have sometimes
Speaker 1: had the experience of not being able to escape from
Speaker 1: the idea, kind of have that idea repeat and and
Speaker 1: get worse and kind of spiral in my head um fixating.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, um And But but with that kind of medication,
Speaker 1: I've had the experience of of just being able to
Speaker 1: shut it off, just going like this is ridiculous, dude,
Speaker 1: stop it and and having and having that work, as
Speaker 1: opposed to other times when when I have that thought
Speaker 1: and in my brain is just like nope, blur, forget
Speaker 1: about being any sort of productive member of society. You
Speaker 1: are going to be paralyzed with self doubt and fear.
Speaker 1: This is just what you're doing for the rest of
Speaker 1: your day. I'm familiar with it, and so yeah, so
Speaker 1: so I mean, I don't know, like I it's it's
Speaker 1: a very strange thought to to try to imagine that
Speaker 1: that kind of thing going over into into moral territory
Speaker 1: of like of like may in like I really want
Speaker 1: to cut that dude off in traffic. But I guess
Speaker 1: I can just calm down. I guess, I guess just
Speaker 1: everything that's going to be fine. It would be interesting
Speaker 1: to live in a world where road rage is just
Speaker 1: a term of something that used to happen, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's a weird thought, especially here in Atlanta. So so
Speaker 1: let me ask you guys a question. I think we
Speaker 1: can wrap up this discussion. It's gone on pretty long,
Speaker 1: and uh, we have another section that I think is
Speaker 1: completely superfluous, So I cut it. But I do have
Speaker 1: a question for both of you, so, and I'll be
Speaker 1: happy to answer it to your own personal response to
Speaker 1: the idea of moral bio enhancement, do you think, ultimately
Speaker 1: it sounds like something that we should absolutely pursue or
Speaker 1: do you think the negatives outweigh any positives. What was
Speaker 1: your personal feeling, Joe, Well, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: very complicated for all the reasons we've talked about here
Speaker 1: and probably some other ones we haven't even thought of.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that. Um. I think there's a
Speaker 1: tendency that a lot of us who have experienced dystopian
Speaker 1: science fiction have to want to say anything that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of creepy is something that is ultimately like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that you know, we we shouldn't even look there. And
Speaker 1: I don't feel like that. I don't feel like this
Speaker 1: is something we shouldn't even look into. But I'm I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not ready to commit to bio moral bio enhancement,
Speaker 1: especially not compulsory moral bio enhancement. UM. I don't know
Speaker 1: voluntary moral bio enhancement that I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: what exactly would be the problem with that, and nothing's
Speaker 1: coming to mind it's hard to say without the actual
Speaker 1: ability to do it, right, because we can't we can't
Speaker 1: observe the results. Yeah, I think I think that the
Speaker 1: only real risk is having those people being taken advantage of. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that the compulsory is what would
Speaker 1: be flat flat out evil, just that that would be
Speaker 1: completely so copletely immoral. Um, I'm taking a stance right there.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I don't know, like I think actually, uh,
Speaker 1: allowing the possibility of voluntary moral bio enhancement might range
Speaker 1: towards evil a little bit too. I feel pretty strongly,
Speaker 1: um it kind of surprisingly like like I'm kind of
Speaker 1: pro a lot of of other voluntary brain enhancements, Um,
Speaker 1: but but this one, I don't know. I just I
Speaker 1: have real squeaky feelings about. Okay, well, let me let
Speaker 1: me test you on that little if that's all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally alright. So we we we have a serial killer
Speaker 1: who has been caught by police. And this is a
Speaker 1: guy who's murdered twenty seven people. Uh. He tells the
Speaker 1: police that he will not stop. If he is set free,
Speaker 1: he will do it again. Now, this guy has the
Speaker 1: several options he can go to prison for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life, or he can elect to take some
Speaker 1: proven bio enhancement therapy and we'll just assuem optimal conditions.
Speaker 1: Here we've actually shown that it works in some way.
Speaker 1: There's not a danger of this somehow going wrong right
Speaker 1: and has So we could put him in prison the
Speaker 1: rest of his life, or we could give him this
Speaker 1: thing and release him and he could live out his
Speaker 1: days and never harm anyone again. Do you still think that,
Speaker 1: like if in a in a in a perfect world
Speaker 1: where where the treatment was was not a lobotomy and
Speaker 1: uh not the kind of of aggressive drug therapy um
Speaker 1: that that has sometimes been practiced, then then yes, if
Speaker 1: if the treatment truly was changing just his desire to
Speaker 1: go kill a whole bunch of people, then then then
Speaker 1: of course that would be beautiful. But that's a big
Speaker 1: But that's a big if. That's such a hypothetical thing,
Speaker 1: and I and I don't personally envision us figuring out
Speaker 1: enough about the brain and enough about about ourselves to
Speaker 1: to do that certainly in our lifetimes. Maybe ever, is
Speaker 1: that too cynical? Well, the thing I like to think
Speaker 1: that we're capable of everything, except for the fact that
Speaker 1: human beings also change over time, so as we gain
Speaker 1: an understanding of how things are, we don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: an understanding of how things will be. So that's that's
Speaker 1: another I mean, you would think that our scientific understanding
Speaker 1: would start to outpace other factors, because it's not like
Speaker 1: evolution happens super fast. But that is still a factor, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I I side with you mainly on this. I I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm clockwork. Orange is one of my favorite novels of
Speaker 1: all time, and it's largely because I read the American
Speaker 1: addition that left off that twenty first chapter, which to
Speaker 1: me makes it the readers responsibility to answer the question,
Speaker 1: which is the greater evil? Right? Which are these these
Speaker 1: things that come out are the greater evil? The the
Speaker 1: allowing people who have immoral thoughts and who act upon
Speaker 1: them to exist, or removing the ability for a person
Speaker 1: to make any choice other than the ones that have
Speaker 1: been mandated by an authority figure, even if that's even
Speaker 1: if that's a range of behaviors, is that better? And
Speaker 1: more often than not, I I side with the that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't mess with that, at least not too much.
Speaker 1: I do think, to Joe your point, the idea of
Speaker 1: pursuing it in a way that is a treatment for
Speaker 1: pathological issues makes sense, and that it's treating a person
Speaker 1: who otherwise doesn't have that capability. It's it's literally a
Speaker 1: pathological issue, whether it's from an injury or an illness condition,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. And and and it's a danger
Speaker 1: to yourself or others kind of situation. Yes, that kind
Speaker 1: of situation, I would say that makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: anything beyond that is at best problematic. I've also seen
Speaker 1: some criticisms. I didn't go into it in the notes
Speaker 1: because it didn't have time to really read and digest
Speaker 1: all the information, but I've seen critics of the idea
Speaker 1: of moral bio enhancement say, just based upon the way
Speaker 1: we have scientific progress and technical progress alone would suggest
Speaker 1: that we would be able to address this in a
Speaker 1: very piecemeal kind of way, which could end up having
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences. Where it's like the idea of having that
Speaker 1: superhuman intelligent machine and you say, hey, I want you
Speaker 1: to find a solution for world peace, and its solution
Speaker 1: is to kill everybody, because now there's no way you
Speaker 1: could have conflict. Uh. That kind of idea that if
Speaker 1: you were to address one part of morality without being
Speaker 1: able to affect all of it, you could have some
Speaker 1: unintended catastrophic consequences. And I think the capacity for things
Speaker 1: to go wrong is so great that it outweighs the
Speaker 1: capacity for it to be a benefit to society. Um.
Speaker 1: That being said, I would love to see some really progressive,
Speaker 1: effective means of having people kind of come to uh
Speaker 1: uh a moral enhancement that doesn't involve bio enhancement, whether
Speaker 1: it's the education or uh some form of outreach things
Speaker 1: like that, so that people have that experience and are
Speaker 1: able to expand that that small social group to a
Speaker 1: larger group of people, and also expand that short term
Speaker 1: gain perspective for a long term one. Yeah. Another complication
Speaker 1: on top of all of this is that in the
Speaker 1: example we gave about, you know, somebody who's been already
Speaker 1: convicted of many violent crimes. Um, you'd also have the
Speaker 1: problem that people often don't just view prison as like preventatives.
Speaker 1: It's a punishment, right, and so that that would also
Speaker 1: be a complication. So imagine somebody has done a bunch
Speaker 1: of very harmful evil and now we're saying, well, what
Speaker 1: we could do with this person is give them a
Speaker 1: treatment that would mean they never do anything like that. Again,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would not be satisfied with that. Say, know,
Speaker 1: what needs to happen is this person must suffer in
Speaker 1: response to what they did. It's not Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: where you start to you know what, how do you
Speaker 1: view the purpose of prisons? Is it meant to be
Speaker 1: a punishment? Is it meant to be a center for rehabilitation?
Speaker 1: And the concept of the penitentiary being being making someone
Speaker 1: making someone become penitent, right, it's in the name exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: that was an amazing conversation about concepts that are pretty heavy.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you guys took the time to have
Speaker 1: that conversation with me, because again, like I love this
Speaker 1: whole arena of thought. It's fascinating to me. Uh and
Speaker 1: it's one that I think about a lot. And I
Speaker 1: would argue that in a lot of ways forward thinking
Speaker 1: being in kind of an optimistic view of what the
Speaker 1: future might be. A lot of that optimism depends upon
Speaker 1: the concept of compassion. And if you were to argue
Speaker 1: that compassion is having a less relevant place, maybe your
Speaker 1: solution to that issue would be Hey about moral bio
Speaker 1: enhancements but as we've discussed done here, we're not so
Speaker 1: convinced that would be the best approach, especially not compulsory
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancements. But I'm curious to hear what our
Speaker 1: listeners think. Yeah, you guys get in touch with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email our addresses f W
Speaker 1: Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter
Speaker 1: where FW thinking over. On Facebook, you can just search
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