Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, a
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says right and wrong.
Speaker 1: Do you know the difference. I'm Jonathan Strick and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. Quick warning to the listeners that this is
Speaker 1: one of those conversations we had that went way longer
Speaker 1: than intended. So we decided to split this up for you,
Speaker 1: divide right down the middle where we're gonna have half
Speaker 1: of our conversation in this episode and then continue with
Speaker 1: the second half in the next episode. Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: something excited to talk about, guys, something I'm so excited about.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk all about trans humanism and and
Speaker 1: bio enhancements. We've talked about it so many times in
Speaker 1: this episode. Are not on this episode on the series,
Speaker 1: like the idea of of taking humans and making them better.
Speaker 1: You know you're staring at me blankly, Jim, I'm listening. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So we want to make them better by giving them claws,
Speaker 1: by giving them sharp clamps, well, clamps with claws on them, Okay, clamps, yes,
Speaker 1: of course, of course. Wings, I mean humans need wings.
Speaker 1: Generally I can eat like thirty or forty wings all
Speaker 1: by myself. Yeah. So we've done an episode called one
Speaker 1: to Our Our two cents on More Senses, which was
Speaker 1: all about how we might be able to use technology
Speaker 1: to expand our our ability to sense stuff around us. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've talked about how to enhance ourselves that way.
Speaker 1: We've explored how bio enhancements presents some pretty difficult ethical questions.
Speaker 1: I remember we used to talk about is it ethical,
Speaker 1: say an athlete wants to just cut their healthy legs
Speaker 1: off to get fake legs, And that's not the right word,
Speaker 1: not fake legs, prosthetic legs that might be better than
Speaker 1: the legs he or she was born with. Right, And
Speaker 1: then also just on the on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: is it ethical for a doctor to perform such a procedure?
Speaker 1: Like Like, these are tricky questions that we don't have
Speaker 1: the answers to. But instead of looking at those, I
Speaker 1: thought we could actually look at a related but slightly
Speaker 1: more focused topic, the concept of moral bio enhancements. Yes,
Speaker 1: instead of making humans better, we make them better. Yes,
Speaker 1: Instead of better at clamping and better at clawing and
Speaker 1: running and flying, make make them better at not stealing
Speaker 1: out of the donation box, right right, all the all
Speaker 1: the little petty things that you know, add up at
Speaker 1: the day like you you're you're from the moment you
Speaker 1: wake up to the moment you go to bed, all
Speaker 1: those little things that irritate you. Because if people were
Speaker 1: just decent like you were decent, everyone would get along
Speaker 1: much better, share making people less aggressive and more altruistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like you know if they would, If people would
Speaker 1: just let you into that lane of traffic, then everything
Speaker 1: would move much more smoothly, works like a zipper. People
Speaker 1: first one car from one lane and then one from
Speaker 1: the next. But of course that's not how it works
Speaker 1: because jerk faces are out there. But what if we
Speaker 1: could have a little switch that said jerk face off
Speaker 1: and everyone was a non jerk face. Well, that's thank
Speaker 1: YouTube a lot more enjoyable. Yes, the comments sections would
Speaker 1: be so much different. Although our our our commenters are
Speaker 1: really very lovely. Yes, we're not talking about you guys. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's you guys are beautiful. It's not you, it's those
Speaker 1: other jerk faces. Uh. We So we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this concept of moral bio enhancements. Now to talk
Speaker 1: about that, we first have to just discuss what is
Speaker 1: morality in the first place. Uh, And it's a tricky thing, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's basically knowing the difference between right and wrong,
Speaker 1: if you want to be super super general about Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that that in itself is is Uh, it's deceptive
Speaker 1: in its simplicity, right. Well, Yeah, we generally think it
Speaker 1: describes a certain type of cognition and behavior, right, that
Speaker 1: there is a decision making process and that happens in
Speaker 1: the brain, or certain types of reactions to stimuli that
Speaker 1: we class under morality. And there there are a lot
Speaker 1: of different types of morality, right, Like, there are things
Speaker 1: that some people consider moral dilemmas that other people would
Speaker 1: not even categorize as moral questions. For example, Uh, generally
Speaker 1: people almost universally think of things like not causing harm
Speaker 1: to others and making things fair. Those are pretty universal
Speaker 1: moral principles. But there are also things like, uh, certain
Speaker 1: types of ideas about purity, ideas about loyalty and obeying authority,
Speaker 1: and things that people in some places and and some
Speaker 1: individuals think of as very important moral issues and other
Speaker 1: people don't even categorize as moral. Right, So one might
Speaker 1: ask where did this whole concept of morality come from? Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of law suffers that I was
Speaker 1: reading about and their views on the subject, specifically because
Speaker 1: they are advocates for moral bio enhancements. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a second. Those philosophers are Julian Savolescu and
Speaker 1: ingmar Person. They argue that morality arose out of the
Speaker 1: way that we humans would group together, way way way back, right,
Speaker 1: you know, although to the point where we were just
Speaker 1: tiny social groups of humans originally traveling together and then
Speaker 1: eventually settling down and trying to create like an actual
Speaker 1: uh settlement. I guess. So the theory there is that
Speaker 1: evolutionarily there's a survival advantage to group behavior, that you
Speaker 1: you have a better chance of passing on your genes
Speaker 1: if you work together with others, and you work together
Speaker 1: with others better if you behave well. Yes, that's essentially
Speaker 1: the perspective saying that morality is that sense that makes
Speaker 1: us feel badly when we cause harm to other people,
Speaker 1: and to a lesser extent, when we allow someone to
Speaker 1: come to harm not through our direct action but through
Speaker 1: our inaction and specifically within our social group. So we
Speaker 1: feel worse if we're directly responsible for that harm. Morality
Speaker 1: and causation are linked, according to their argument, and they
Speaker 1: also say that the further out you get from a
Speaker 1: social group, the less badly you would feel about harming
Speaker 1: someone so so so. Yeah, So if I, if I
Speaker 1: had the chance to to to through an action, do
Speaker 1: something mean to to you guys, yeah I might. I
Speaker 1: might feel pretty bad about it if it was to
Speaker 1: someone in the next office over right, because you don't
Speaker 1: know that person. Yeah. Yeah. This is also kind of
Speaker 1: coming into something that I used to read about, I
Speaker 1: think in The Straight Dope, where Cecil Adams argued that
Speaker 1: essentially every group's name for themselves tends to mean the people,
Speaker 1: and then then everyone's name for everyone else's those godless
Speaker 1: heathens over there, right, So, so that that's an illustration
Speaker 1: of this idea right there, that other group of people
Speaker 1: are not within the social group, and so therefore you
Speaker 1: don't feel that sense of of responsibility and accountability, or
Speaker 1: or even if you feel responsible, you don't feel badly
Speaker 1: about being responsible for their for anything negative happening to them. Well,
Speaker 1: a much simpler way to think about this, even is
Speaker 1: in your day to day life, you don't you treat
Speaker 1: other people in traffic a way that you would not
Speaker 1: treat your close friends and family members? What depends on
Speaker 1: what they're doing in traffic. According to everyone I know,
Speaker 1: I cut off everybody in conversation, So apparently I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a morally normal person. That's fair, that's fair, lawful,
Speaker 1: evil schemer, it's more neutral evil, but thank you. So,
Speaker 1: as our world has grown, according to these philosophers, we've
Speaker 1: become members of a global community, and those natural inclinations
Speaker 1: aren't sufficient to keep things civil because the world is
Speaker 1: just too big. There are too many people, and social
Speaker 1: groups are too fragmented for us sen some morality to compensate.
Speaker 1: So they point out three things that have come as
Speaker 1: a result of this. They say that, as as a group,
Speaker 1: human beings have become more loss of verse, meaning that
Speaker 1: we try to protect ourselves against loss rather than pursue improvement.
Speaker 1: So rather than say, hey, we can work to make
Speaker 1: things better, we say, hey, let's make sure things don't
Speaker 1: get worse. This would manifest as a status quo bias. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just don't want things to change, right, or at
Speaker 1: least we don't. Things are pretty lousy I don't want
Speaker 1: them to get worse than they are now, like that
Speaker 1: kind of idea. Also that we focus mostly on our
Speaker 1: immediate social group and the immediate future. So if someone
Speaker 1: is outside your social group, you're less likely to be
Speaker 1: concerned for their well being, and you may also view
Speaker 1: any offense they commit as being greater than you would
Speaker 1: feel if someone within your social group had done the
Speaker 1: same thing. So you you judge people by their actions,
Speaker 1: not just on the actions alone, but whether or not
Speaker 1: there within our particular social group. E judge outsiders more harshly, exactly.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I think it's also interesting that
Speaker 1: they point out the immediate future problem, because that's something
Speaker 1: else that as just sort of an armchair observer, you
Speaker 1: could argue. You see throughout lots of different aspects of
Speaker 1: life where organizations you may feel like an organization is
Speaker 1: making decisions that are for short term benefit but will
Speaker 1: be a detriment in the long term. Well, according to
Speaker 1: these philosophers, that's an issue that's just it goes all
Speaker 1: the way down to the way you treat your your
Speaker 1: immediate friends and family. Uh that it's just innate and
Speaker 1: it's something that we have to work to get past,
Speaker 1: And they also say that we feel less responsible if
Speaker 1: we're part of a large group of people causing a
Speaker 1: negative outcome for someone else, then we would if it
Speaker 1: were on an individual basis. So, in other words, if
Speaker 1: I were to act personally in a way that caused
Speaker 1: Lauren harm, I would feel very badly about it, if
Speaker 1: I Yes, yes, I'm offended that you think otherwise if
Speaker 1: I were if I were part of a large group
Speaker 1: of people who caused harm to Laura, and I'd probably
Speaker 1: feel badly about it. But maybe not I I because well,
Speaker 1: it was the group diffusion of the responsibility. Yes, I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean it was really Josh Clark study in the
Speaker 1: first place. And that guy man that Josh, what a
Speaker 1: jerk face he is. There's a similar phenomenon with reluctance
Speaker 1: to help by people in large groups. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're the only person around to help somebody who's having
Speaker 1: some kind of who needs help, you're probably more likely
Speaker 1: to do it than if there are a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people standing around and you're just waiting for somebody
Speaker 1: else to do something. Yeah, that that I like. There's
Speaker 1: some folks I've listened to on another podcast who kind
Speaker 1: of casually referred to that as someone else is smarter
Speaker 1: than I am. Right, the idea that there's someone else
Speaker 1: who is more capable of handling that situation than you are.
Speaker 1: Therefore you should hold back because you're afraid of making
Speaker 1: the situation even worse, when the reality often is someone
Speaker 1: needs to start to act as soon as possible, and
Speaker 1: you're not likely to make it worse, but through an action,
Speaker 1: you're making it worse. Actually sounds kind of similar to
Speaker 1: the status quo bias, very afraid to change things. So
Speaker 1: because of these uh issues, the two philosophers are in
Speaker 1: favor of the idea of moral bio enhancements. And we've
Speaker 1: mentioned that term several times. I guess it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about what the heck they are. Okay, So, the
Speaker 1: basic picture of a moral bio enhancement is number one
Speaker 1: doesn't exist yet, right, or well, you might say that
Speaker 1: in some very primitive ways, something kind of like a
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancement could exist, maybe in some sort of
Speaker 1: drug form, not in a very precise or advanced way, right,
Speaker 1: Not in a way where it would be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: applicable to large populations. Certainly not And we're not really
Speaker 1: using those as therapies right now, right, Yeah, But of
Speaker 1: course the second thing is is it well, it would
Speaker 1: be some kind of alteration or modification, So maybe a
Speaker 1: drug therapy, of physical therapy, of some kind of surgery
Speaker 1: and implant would be something you can do to your body,
Speaker 1: to your brain specifically that either guides you or forces
Speaker 1: you to make moral decisions and exhibit moral behavior. You
Speaker 1: could imagine this as anything from sort of a positive
Speaker 1: reinforcement where you your body has a reward system for
Speaker 1: every time you make a decision that is quote unquote moral,
Speaker 1: as is as has been determined by whomever has designed
Speaker 1: this bio enhancement, like like a like a little like oh,
Speaker 1: like like that that good decision just tasted like chocolate
Speaker 1: a little bit, yeah, sort of sort of thing. Or
Speaker 1: it could be imagine if morality felt as good as
Speaker 1: eating food or having sex or other things that that
Speaker 1: give you rewards in the brain, right. Or it could
Speaker 1: be an aversion approach where choosing the bad thing, the
Speaker 1: immoral choice, would make you feel much worse than you
Speaker 1: would otherwise, like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the
Speaker 1: initiative puts that chip in Spike's head and every time
Speaker 1: he tries to attack somebody, he he gets a little
Speaker 1: like like instant migraine. Yeah, I've never heard about that.
Speaker 1: It's where we learn in the Buffy verse that a
Speaker 1: computer chip is equivalent equivalent to a human soul. I
Speaker 1: have no problem with that particular part of their mythology.
Speaker 1: So that's a good one. Another one would be a
Speaker 1: work being problematic. Yes. Another one would be a clockwork
Speaker 1: orange yes, yes, clock regards the Ludovico treatment. Yes. So
Speaker 1: the very simple explanation is the main character is a
Speaker 1: sociopathic criminal teenager who loves to commit ultra violence against
Speaker 1: random people, and he gets sent to prison and subjected
Speaker 1: to this therapy where he's made to watch films of
Speaker 1: violent and lawless behavior and meanwhile is given some kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know, some kind of drug that makes
Speaker 1: him feel horrible and establishes this association in his brain,
Speaker 1: right right. And we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: that towards the end of this episode, because it does
Speaker 1: come into play again. But I do bet some of
Speaker 1: you out there thinking, wait a minute, moral bio enhancement.
Speaker 1: But that couldn't happen. We couldn't do that with technology
Speaker 1: and I want to say, let's consider Okay, so first
Speaker 1: of all, I think we should all agree morality is
Speaker 1: located in the brain. Whatever morality is, it's something that's
Speaker 1: going on in the nervous system, definitely, pretty much entirely
Speaker 1: in the brain, a chemical and physical process probably, yes,
Speaker 1: and for this reason can be altered by changes to
Speaker 1: the brain. So there's just overwhelming evidence that moral behavior
Speaker 1: is controlled by this complex set of factors in the brain,
Speaker 1: something that was referred to in one scientific review that
Speaker 1: I read as a neuro moral network. And that review
Speaker 1: was by Mario F. Mendez and it's called the Neurobiology
Speaker 1: of Moral Behavior Review and Neuropsychiatric Implications in CNS Spectrums
Speaker 1: two thousand line. And so this neuro moral network, assuming
Speaker 1: it exists, there is some kind of network of processes
Speaker 1: in the brain controlling morality. Whatever that is. We can
Speaker 1: call it in euro moral network. You know, if it's
Speaker 1: not exactly the brain locations that are implicated so far
Speaker 1: in euroscience, sure, sure, it's a it's a variable term.
Speaker 1: At this point, we're saying like we're using this term
Speaker 1: to describe something we do not fully understand or can
Speaker 1: fully identify, or even really vaguely understand. Honestly, well, we
Speaker 1: do know some things about it, and I want to
Speaker 1: I want to say what those are. So we do
Speaker 1: think that's responsible for a system of emotions and drives
Speaker 1: that guide and motivate our moral decisions. And in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, if you look at what's going on
Speaker 1: in the brain when people are making moral decisions, there
Speaker 1: seem to be social drives at work. So we have
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that respond to social situations and
Speaker 1: give us cues about how to, you know, act in
Speaker 1: a group or act in relationship to other people. And
Speaker 1: there are emotional feelings that are generated that act as
Speaker 1: sort of like a sort of like cattle prod to
Speaker 1: make us do something. So some areas of the brain
Speaker 1: that are involved in morality are already known. For example,
Speaker 1: Mendez gives the gives the example that a major area
Speaker 1: implicated in response to moral dilemmas is the ventromedial prefrontal
Speaker 1: cortex and it's connected regions, especially on the right side
Speaker 1: of the brain, one of my favorite regions of the brain. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are that this would also implicate the adjacent orbitofrontal
Speaker 1: plus of ventrolateral cortex. I'm sorry to just be saying
Speaker 1: these names, but we should list what they are. The
Speaker 1: AMYG delay and the Dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, also known
Speaker 1: as the bad neighborhood of the brain. Now, these are
Speaker 1: not the only areas of the brain that would be
Speaker 1: involved in moral moral dilemmas, moral reasoning, and moral behavior,
Speaker 1: but these are some of the main ones that have
Speaker 1: been identified. And most of this has been learned through
Speaker 1: f m r I research, which usually looks something like
Speaker 1: this US You put a person in an fMRI machine
Speaker 1: and this tracks activity in different parts of the brain
Speaker 1: in real time based on blood flow. This is often
Speaker 1: used to try to figure out what part of the
Speaker 1: brain is somebody using when given a certain type of stimulus,
Speaker 1: and the stimulus in this case would be For example,
Speaker 1: you present people with moral dilemmas, you say, would it
Speaker 1: be wrong to play soccer with a human head as
Speaker 1: the ball? Would it be moral to kill a healthy
Speaker 1: man so his organs could be donated to hospital patients
Speaker 1: who need them. Or you show people quote morally salient photos.
Speaker 1: So you might show people photographs of very bad things
Speaker 1: happening to people and say like this good or bad?
Speaker 1: Getting close to that clock wreck, orange treatment, except, of course,
Speaker 1: not trying to create an aversion therapy in the process. Right,
Speaker 1: They're just trying to understand what parts of the brain
Speaker 1: are you using when we make you think about stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's see what happens when we take the puppy a
Speaker 1: exactly So. So, these neural factors that are controlling moral
Speaker 1: be behavior are physical, and they can be modified chemically
Speaker 1: or mechanically. One example is acquired sociopathy from brain lesions
Speaker 1: or changes in moral behavior linked to fronto temporal dementia
Speaker 1: or f t D. These are examples we know of
Speaker 1: where you make a change to somebody's brain and their
Speaker 1: moral behavior changes. So if you suffer a certain type
Speaker 1: of head injury seemingly out of nowhere, you might become
Speaker 1: a pathological liar who can't stop shoplifting. Right, And it's
Speaker 1: not that you know that, Uh, you have just decided, well,
Speaker 1: after I had a near miss with death, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna start taking stuff because the world owes me no.
Speaker 1: In other words, that would explain YouTube comments go ahead, No, Well,
Speaker 1: there there are faculties in the brain that are involved
Speaker 1: in moral reasoning and moral responses, and injury or damage
Speaker 1: to the brain can cause major changes in how this
Speaker 1: decision making happens, right, right, And and I mean again,
Speaker 1: this is where we we look at this as evidence
Speaker 1: that morality has ultimately, uh its source within the gray
Speaker 1: matter that's in our skulls. I've seen some people argue otherwise,
Speaker 1: saying that they thought that that was too simplistic. But
Speaker 1: when you look at the evidence of people who have
Speaker 1: suffered some form of condition or injury and there thereafter
Speaker 1: their morality has changed significantly, it becomes pretty compelling evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that morality does have its seat in the brain. Well,
Speaker 1: now I do want to back up and and give
Speaker 1: a shout out to those critics you just mentioned, because
Speaker 1: they might have a point, not that it's not based
Speaker 1: in the brain, but that morality maybe based in in
Speaker 1: the brain in a way that is so generalized and
Speaker 1: complex that it would be difficult to modify it with
Speaker 1: precision changes to certain parts of the brain. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so that is another thing though, But the general principle
Speaker 1: I think is very true. If you can change people's
Speaker 1: moral behavior and change the moral salience of events to
Speaker 1: people's brains through accidental changes like injuries and illness, you can,
Speaker 1: in principle also change it with intentional modifications. It's just
Speaker 1: a question of could we actually figure out what those
Speaker 1: modifications should be, And the answer might be no, right right,
Speaker 1: could we figure out those modifications to an extent where
Speaker 1: we actually get the outcome we desire? Right? Well, anything
Speaker 1: having to do with the brain is is like this.
Speaker 1: We've probably said twenty eight million times on this show
Speaker 1: that the brain is it's really quite a complicated thing,
Speaker 1: and we still know so little about exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on in there despite our best intentions over the past
Speaker 1: sixty or seventy years. UM. Some of the areas that
Speaker 1: are currently being investigated into how we might go about
Speaker 1: doing this, or areas that show promise, I should say,
Speaker 1: rather are stuff like like psychopharmaceuticals UM, you know, using
Speaker 1: drugs to to do stuff to the brain like UM,
Speaker 1: like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors s s R E
Speaker 1: s UM. There's research that indicates that serotonin may play
Speaker 1: a role in reducing reactive or or impulsive aggression. UM.
Speaker 1: So therefore treatment with s SR eyes might induce an
Speaker 1: aversion to harming others. You know that Just as a
Speaker 1: side note that brings up another thing we should note
Speaker 1: is that there are also different processes that produce moral
Speaker 1: behavior you mentioned, yeah, yeah, and impulsive aggression deliberate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you could have somebody who thinks about murdering somebody
Speaker 1: and they come up with a plan and they go
Speaker 1: and do it. Does a minority report territory here, right,
Speaker 1: Versus somebody who just gets into an argument with somebody
Speaker 1: and they can't control their flare up of emotions they
Speaker 1: get angry, yeah, and they kill somebody. Both result in homicide.
Speaker 1: But these are very they apparently at least are very
Speaker 1: different things happening in the brain. So that's something that
Speaker 1: we should also be cognizant of absolutely. And uh. And
Speaker 1: along along that that deliberate aggression kind of line, there's
Speaker 1: there's another class of drugs, neoprin reuptake inhibitors that have
Speaker 1: been studied in relation to moral behavior and and in
Speaker 1: relation to uh, controlling one's own actions, um to not
Speaker 1: going out and doing that thing that you thought to
Speaker 1: do that is actually kind of crappy, deliberate decision, deliberate
Speaker 1: decision making, yeah, um uh. And and there's uh back
Speaker 1: back to serotonin though that there are a couple studies
Speaker 1: in which, um, some subjects were given citalopram and then
Speaker 1: asked to to to think through hypothetical scenarios or to
Speaker 1: play an economic game. UM. A couple different studies here,
Speaker 1: and the subjects who were on the S s R
Speaker 1: I were less likely in the hypothetical scenarios to say
Speaker 1: that it's okay to harm one person for the good
Speaker 1: of a group. That was weird weird outcome, um and
Speaker 1: and uh. In terms of the economic game, the people
Speaker 1: on S s R S were less likely to UM
Speaker 1: to penalize people who were behaving unfairly towards them in
Speaker 1: the game. So, I mean these present interesting moral dilemmas
Speaker 1: that we could all think about, right, Like, It's not
Speaker 1: just like they make you more likely to kill somebody,
Speaker 1: but they might modify your your opinion on a question
Speaker 1: that is morally debatable. Yeah, yeah, because I think that
Speaker 1: that's one of the classic moral debates of whether, um,
Speaker 1: whether it's okay to sacrifice one person for the good
Speaker 1: of a group. In fact, that it was what I
Speaker 1: brought up, can you kill a healthy guy to take
Speaker 1: all his organs to give to ten different people who
Speaker 1: need them? Right? And of course it's it's connected to
Speaker 1: the trolley problem. Which we've talked about previously, especially in
Speaker 1: regards to self driving cars, like these are shoes that
Speaker 1: have been talked about in various incarnations for about as
Speaker 1: long as we've had philosophy, and the fact that we
Speaker 1: don't have a definitive answer tells us that these are
Speaker 1: complicated issues. And maybe one of the reasons why some
Speaker 1: people say moral bio enhancements are tricky thing to look
Speaker 1: into because if they seem to simplify something that humans
Speaker 1: over the course of more than a thousand years haven't
Speaker 1: been able to come to a conclusion too, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a little too simplistic. Yeah, Yeah, other other areas that
Speaker 1: that could be potentially looked at in terms of therapies
Speaker 1: and treatments that were currently capable of brain stimulation, because
Speaker 1: we we've talked on the show before about how electrical
Speaker 1: stimulation and and or electromagnetic stimulation are our treatments for
Speaker 1: for very severe cases of depression basically because they change
Speaker 1: the levels of some of your brain chemicals like serotonin
Speaker 1: or nor epinephrin um for for reasons that science isn't
Speaker 1: really sure about. Yeah, sometimes we do we do therapies
Speaker 1: without really in seeing that they have an effect without
Speaker 1: really understanding what the mechanism is of that, and it, uh,
Speaker 1: it concerns us a little bit, but worked, let's keep going.
Speaker 1: Usually usually it means we're going to keep looking into
Speaker 1: this to figure out why it worked. But in the
Speaker 1: meantime it's working, so and and and in those cases
Speaker 1: for for people for whom drugs don't work, it's it's
Speaker 1: a lifesaver and it's a it's an incredibly relieving therapy
Speaker 1: to have available. Um Oh. A third, a third area
Speaker 1: that that people have hypothesized about is a genetic selection
Speaker 1: or or genetic engineering, which is so definitely far beyond
Speaker 1: us right now, because Okay, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: genes that have been implicated in altruistic behavior, but studies
Speaker 1: into the whole genome of human people definitely indicate that
Speaker 1: that it's probably like a lot of genes working together
Speaker 1: along with a lot of environmental factors that make people
Speaker 1: altruistic or jerks. Yeah, I mean, that's taking a step
Speaker 1: even farther back from us understanding what's going on in
Speaker 1: the brain. So in the brain, you know, we've implicated
Speaker 1: a few major regions, but it's still there's a lot
Speaker 1: of mystery. Sure, what exactly is the neural substrate for morality?
Speaker 1: Is it a whole brain kind of thing that's just
Speaker 1: gonna be too hard to understand? And now you've got
Speaker 1: to step back and say, now, what are all the
Speaker 1: things that make the parts of the brain behave the
Speaker 1: way they do? Right? Right? And And obviously if you're
Speaker 1: talking about a moral bio enhancement that has the the
Speaker 1: largest blanket of of effect, then you would want to
Speaker 1: go all the way back to the most basic unit
Speaker 1: that you could, But it becomes progressively more difficult to
Speaker 1: identify all of the variables you need to understand in
Speaker 1: order to actually make it work. That also, though, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're going to back up all the way
Speaker 1: to say, now we're not modifying an adult, but we
Speaker 1: are trying to create human from the start, an embryo
Speaker 1: will be the most moral. Yeah, exactly, altering germ cells
Speaker 1: to produce moral babies that grow up to be moral adults.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're starting at the beginning, it just
Speaker 1: seems like you could work harder to educate kids to
Speaker 1: be moral, but that that's not gonna work every time, right,
Speaker 1: because we do think that there there's pretty good evidence
Speaker 1: that there are genetic conditions that you can be born
Speaker 1: with that affect your moral behavior. Sure. Also on a
Speaker 1: related note, Moral Babies was one of my favorite Saturday
Speaker 1: Morning cartoons, Jim Henson's Moral Babies. Yeah, that's great. So
Speaker 1: we've kind of touched on this a little bit. But
Speaker 1: why would anyone advocate for moral bio enhancements in the
Speaker 1: first place. We have the we have the bit at
Speaker 1: the top of the show where we have the philosophers
Speaker 1: who said, you know, since the dawn of humanity, we
Speaker 1: have had morality. Uh. And it was and it worked
Speaker 1: pretty well for us when we were all in our
Speaker 1: own little small groups that were more or less, you know,
Speaker 1: self sustaining and maybe only occasionally had contact with other
Speaker 1: small groups. But this is that that level of morality
Speaker 1: is no longer sufficient to uh, to account or to
Speaker 1: make us make moral quote unquote decisions in a larger context,
Speaker 1: in a global context. Yeah, I mean, i'd say that
Speaker 1: if you if you just assume that it works as
Speaker 1: we would want it to, and you take away all
Speaker 1: of the potential caveats, it's obvious why we wanted you
Speaker 1: just you would rather be around people who treat other people, right,
Speaker 1: and don't do selfish dangerous things. Yeah, I mean imagine
Speaker 1: a world in where in which everyone had these bio enhancements, right,
Speaker 1: Nor we're not talking about you have identified one subpopulation
Speaker 1: and they're going to be subjected to this because I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: and I'm using loaded words here on purpose, but rather
Speaker 1: this is something that affects all humans. It becomes something
Speaker 1: that is, uh, whether it's mandate did or everyone somehow
Speaker 1: magically global and we've all agreed to do it. Then
Speaker 1: then suddenly it sounds like that things would be kind
Speaker 1: of awesome. That people would all be making choices that
Speaker 1: didn't benefit themselves at the expense of someone else. They
Speaker 1: would try to make choices that would benefit multiple people
Speaker 1: or at least not cause hardship to other people while
Speaker 1: it's benefiting yourself. Dogs and cats living together, mass utopia, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's that's the that is like the the idealistic vision
Speaker 1: of what this would be like. Of course, no crime,
Speaker 1: no wars, no no poverty, yeah, all all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, yeah, so so so cool. So that that's all,
Speaker 1: at face value obviously quite good. And you might ask
Speaker 1: on top of that, then if we think it's possible
Speaker 1: to make things like this, then do we have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to create bio enhancements? Is it our do if
Speaker 1: we know that we can do this? Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: were to measure up all the people who would be
Speaker 1: who would benefit from this, right, who whose condition is
Speaker 1: such that if this change were made, they would have
Speaker 1: uh more positive influences on their existence. And then you
Speaker 1: were to measure all the people who you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not a negative impact, but it uh it
Speaker 1: impedes their ability to succeed at the rate they've been
Speaker 1: going at. If you look at it from that perspective,
Speaker 1: chances are you gonna say, well, from the numbers, like
Speaker 1: on paper, it makes total sense to do this because
Speaker 1: a relatively few number of people, when you're talking about billions,
Speaker 1: are going to have a slight a slight to maybe
Speaker 1: well even let's say a um extreme impact on their
Speaker 1: ability to improve their position in life has been You
Speaker 1: know that that's been put in place. You know they're
Speaker 1: not badly off, they just it be better off than
Speaker 1: they are now easily. But then you have billions of
Speaker 1: people who can come from a place of poverty, of conflict,
Speaker 1: of real struggle and be removed from that. On paper,
Speaker 1: that's an easy thing to to see and say, well,
Speaker 1: it makes sense, we need to flip that switch. Sure.
Speaker 1: The also, the philosophical argument could be made um that
Speaker 1: that traditional methods of betterment, education and socialization and stuff
Speaker 1: like that are only going to take us so far,
Speaker 1: uh in in in this incredible future that we're trying
Speaker 1: to build, and so like, eventually, is this the best
Speaker 1: way in fact to go about it? Well? And and
Speaker 1: I think in particular not to get political, but in
Speaker 1: particular in sixteen, we've seen some evidence of things that
Speaker 1: have shocked some people where uh where we see that
Speaker 1: some beliefs like let's let's go with zeno of phobia
Speaker 1: being one, are much more ingrained and widespread in different
Speaker 1: parts of the world than maybe you had been aware
Speaker 1: of before. And it raises some real hard questions. And
Speaker 1: and and by xenophobia, I mean xenophobia by itself that
Speaker 1: word using the word phobia, you're talking about irrational fear.
Speaker 1: But there are certainly people who held very strong beliefs
Speaker 1: because of what they perceive as being hard truths. And
Speaker 1: you you might think, well, I I because sworn we
Speaker 1: made more progress on the education of people to understand
Speaker 1: what the root causes of problems are versus what the
Speaker 1: perceived problems are. But it's clear that that hasn't really happen,
Speaker 1: And that's what I think also fuels philosophers like the
Speaker 1: two I mentioned previously in saying like we've got to
Speaker 1: take a step further because the traditional approaches aren't working
Speaker 1: right right, and going further down that line, are are
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancements going to be the only way, in fact,
Speaker 1: to to save humanity from ourselves, to to to prevent
Speaker 1: some kind of global uh catastrophe. We we have the power.
Speaker 1: I mean we have the I don't mean the power
Speaker 1: to save ourselves. I mean we have the power to
Speaker 1: destroy ourselves. I think that's quite clear. We have nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: we have the power to change our climate and devastating ways.
Speaker 1: It is totally at our fingertips to destroy the earth. Moreover,
Speaker 1: we have the power to not at the very least, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have the power to not make choices that would
Speaker 1: prevent that from happening. Right, Like in the case of
Speaker 1: climate change. There have been stories numerous on numerous occasions
Speaker 1: about the things that we need to do in order
Speaker 1: to at least slow down climate change. At this point,
Speaker 1: stopping it is much further out than a few years. Right,
Speaker 1: Even if we were to stop all activity that contributes
Speaker 1: to climate change right now, that's something there's momentum there
Speaker 1: that would take years for it to finally get to
Speaker 1: a point where it stopped, like centuries, like hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of years. So you know there's that.
Speaker 1: But if with some people would argue that without this
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancement, the fact that we know we need
Speaker 1: to make those changes isn't enough, right, we have to
Speaker 1: have some other form of compulsion. Well, you mentioned long
Speaker 1: term thinking earlier. Yeah, I mean people they're just saying,
Speaker 1: what So you're saying, this isn't gonna affect me in
Speaker 1: the next few months. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna does this? Is this going to make my
Speaker 1: air conditioning bill lower next summer? No? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: might as well just crank everything up right now then.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people can't even properly factor
Speaker 1: the long term personal risks of something like smoking or something.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's only understandable that I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to make excuses for it, but people we just yeah,
Speaker 1: you're saying, okay, so it's gonna have this kind of vague,
Speaker 1: generalized effect that's hard to be specific about in like
Speaker 1: many years from now. Moreover, if it's an effect that's
Speaker 1: so large that you think, well, my personal behaviors are
Speaker 1: going to have so little impact on the overall problem
Speaker 1: that it doesn't even matter, because as an individual, when
Speaker 1: you look at your individual contribution to the problem, it
Speaker 1: seems miniscule. And then you feel like, well, even if
Speaker 1: no matter what I do, there's no impact on the
Speaker 1: end result. The only impact is if everyone does it right.
Speaker 1: So it gets back to this idea of of mandating
Speaker 1: this moral bio enhancement. Okay, and so we're gonna call
Speaker 1: it there for the first half of this conversation on
Speaker 1: moral bio enhancements. But if you want to hear the
Speaker 1: second half, join us again next time. And I feel
Speaker 1: morally obligated to mention that we recorded the whole thing
Speaker 1: and then made the determination that it was too long.
Speaker 1: I don't want to give people the sense that we
Speaker 1: just decided to stop here and then picked up again. See,
Speaker 1: this is a potential problem. Is this kind of sheepishness
Speaker 1: Jonathan is showing I think you should be more resolute,
Speaker 1: and you need a certain amount of immorality to do that.
Speaker 1: How can we fix that? I'm sorry that I'm a
Speaker 1: morally perfect being, Guys, I feel so badly about that.
Speaker 1: Now I'll go and mow your lawns as a way
Speaker 1: of saying I'm sorry. If you'd like to tell Jonathan
Speaker 1: where your house is so that you can mow your
Speaker 1: lawn as well, don't do that. Yeah, that's Jonathan does
Speaker 1: not need that power. But if you do want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, you can say an email
Speaker 1: the addresses FW thinking at how Stuffworks dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: Twitter we are FW thinking over on Facebook. Just search
Speaker 1: f w thinking. Our profile will pop up. You can
Speaker 1: send us a message let us know what you think
Speaker 1: about this episode, any thoughts you have about future episodes.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's some subject you really want us to dive into.
Speaker 1: Let us know, because we love doing this kind of stuff, guys,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again. Really so. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic and the future of technology, visit
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