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Comment by tekromancr | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a fine time to discuss the ethics of augmenting healthy brain function

I'm most concerned with the ethics of testing the device, which I suppose leads us to the ethics of augmenting healthy brain function. The best candidates for testing this device might not be in the best position to give informed consent. Even if they signed forms when of sound mind, there's simply no way of knowing if they would change their mind later. This means we might need to test on healthy individuals, at least until we know the risks of the device that do not relate to the disorder.

We should be thinking about ethics in our new, exciting world, but for the most part, we tend to make decisions about ethics via popular consensus. Even if some of us might be vocal about this being a bad idea (ethically, or otherwise), if the majority are seeking it out, it's still likely to happen.

Like millions of students do with amphetamines?

We should've started this discussion a good long while ago. But yes, we had better get on it. The gap between the haves and have-nots will widen exponentially with technology like this.

Make 'em legal, make 'em cheap, make 'em as mild-mannered as one unit of coffee (i.e. probably much less than even the lowest instant release formulation). Flaws?

I disagree. It's rather a fine time to discuss the ethics of selling (currently) impossible technology to investors.

If those who augment their brains outcompete those who don't by an ever-widening margin (seems more likely than not), this discussion topic is preemptively obsolete. Their ethics will be dominant sooner or later.

I've been eagerly awaiting the conversion, but I was expecting it to be around the issue of biological immortality. This will be more entertaining though, because it is open to more than the religious types - anybody can try to guide the state's tools of coercion! So what justification for literally controlling what other people do with their brains will ban advocates go with, will they use stem cell research logic or interstate commerce clause logic?

I think they are fine. We can do it right now using e.g. alcohol and drugs. Both can kill you when misused. And yet alcohol is legal, half of the drugs as well.

What’s more interesting to me is how to control/license the providers so their augmenting devices don’t include marketing BS, or don’t mess with user’s motivation to sue the provider.

I think we can wait until there is a working prototype.

Conclusions about the ethics of who should be able to buy and use these devices will inform the way the business of supplying them works - effectively we need to decide the size of the potential market. Would it be people with Alzheimers? People with memory disorders? Anyone who can afford it? Would these devices be the equivalent of a prescribed medical procedure or an elective, 'cosmetic' surgery? If society as a collective group decides that the devices should be illegal to anyone without a valid medical reason (let's say we don't want children using them to 'cheat' in exams) then developing, or investing in, businesses to innovate in the area would change dramatically.

In essence, you can't easily put the genie back in the bottle, so it's better to decide what you're going to do with the genie before it's out.

There's no real indication that this is bottle with a genie in it; I think it's just an old beer bottle.

you'll be waiting a very long time. The tech is decades if not centuries off

My point exactly.

Cynicism is not a replacement for skepticism.

What make you believe that the technology is centuries off?

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