Can we have nice things? A technology to alter brain function to actually make peoples lives better and not be abused to make them also complacent, obedient, work twice with half the pay without complaining and buy the highest bidding brand.
Not to worry, the new brain implant provides immediate relief from negative feelings about the brain implant! You'll be hysterically cackling in no time on your way to work at your third minimum wage job in the mines, with a protein snack made of an assortment of bugs.
In all seriousness, this is highly concerning, especially in conjunction with the powers that have been given so easily during the COVID pandemic.
Imagine in 10 years time it is declared that there is a 'depression pandemic', and for the better health of yourself and those around you, you must get your anti-depression implant in order to return back to work, and without your implant passport you will not be allowed into bars, restaurants, etc. Those that have already had the implant call you 'anti-Science' and publicly ridicule you as a second-class citizen. The President at the time publicly declares "our patience is running thin", as pressure ramps up to combat yet another infectious wave of depression.
The government promises "the implant will only be used to track and trace contact with those suspected of having depression", but soon the police realise that such technology could also be used in "exceptional" criminal cases, where your state of mind around the place of the crime can be submitted as evidence to your involvement. Once there is some acceptance and legal standing, the use becomes more and more common place. Eventually some smart people realize that there is some pattern of behaviour for people who are about to commit a crime, and so pre-crime arrests and thought-crimes arise.
The future has never looked so safe!
I can imagine your scenario, it's an interesting enough thought for some dystopian fiction, but I don't think the clear one-to-one analogy between an infectious disease and crippling depression work in any way at all. In the COVID case, it's an infectious disease with some possible long-term damage, high rate of infection, relatively moderate risk of death, and a scramble to try to contain or slow the spread. I don't see how any of that can be compared to depression, a non-contagious disorder that very often destroys all quality of life in the sufferers.
Honestly, I don't see any gain in this incredible pessimism. A brain implant seems to have some potential to allow some people to have hope in successfully living a life that isn't controlled by a cloud of grey, and the first worry is in a dystopian government using it to brain control the public, because there is a pattern of behavior in how governments desperately tried to control a pandemic in the past?
>> Depression isn’t contagious in the same way the flu is, but moods and emotions can spread. Have you ever watched a friend laugh so hard that you started laughing? Or listened to a co-worker complain for so long that you started feeling negative, too? In this way, moods — and even depressive symptoms — can be contagious.
>> We’ll explain how it works, what the science says, and what to do if you feel like you’ve “caught” depression from a loved one.
>> Researchers call it a variety of things, including network phenomenon, social contagion theory, and group emotional contagion theory.
https://www.healthline.com/health/is-depression-contagious
You're killing grandma by being unhappy.
Also, pretending this whole argument isn't a pathos charged slippery slope analogy. Why would I go bars, restaurants, etc if there was a risk I could expose others to depression. Which I must assume is somehow contagious now, and somewhat fatal? Seems awfully inhumane and immoral to subject people to this new somewhat lethal contagious depression.
More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response?
I'd shoot the nearest billionaire to encourage the others.
If enough of those people are killed the rest of them will get the memo that they'll live longer if they hoarded less wealth.
That's just the long winded way of saying yes, I think depression as a concept should be considered contagious, but only philosophically. It's wrong to say depression is contagious if the discussion is remotely medical.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a setting based on a very similar concept, it'll probably be an old hat to most here on HN but I strongly encourage everyone to read it if they haven't already (along with The Doors of Perception). Huxley makes a lot of very good objections to why this "technology to make people happy with their social status" is actually a deeply dystopian notion.
Like the Savage, I don't want to live in perfectly happy world where government writ forces me to live my life on rails set for me before my birth, a world where people can only colour within the lines drawn out by the elite and are completely incapable of even conceiving a world outside the one they're born into because they're medically engineered to love their social station and be perfectly happy in the caste they were born into. In the Savage's words: "I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin". I'd rather be authentically unhappy than artificially happy because someone else told me I have to be or I'm defective.
Obviously in the case of depression and other mental illnesses it's different, you're aiming to treat a disease rather than make people slavishly compliant with a socio-political establishment. I don't object at all to the former, but I very much object to the latter if there's no way out for people who'd rather not be manipulated into social submission.
The dumb worker peons always seemed silly because any sufficiently advanced control society would at the very least lift people up to be more useful, his characters are comical references to socialists (Lenina etc), it's so trite.
It's also full of conservative moral panic, for example the sexual freedom and alternative experiences through synthetic drugs never get a serious treatment as potentially positive. Why not celebrate the fact that you can create children synthetically and women are freed from reproductive obligations? The book never goes beyond "oh no the family is dead, orgy porgy!"
The book's plagued by the same provincial pastoralism you find in almost any British upper-class writer, be it Orwell, Tolkien, Huxley or C.S. Lewis.
We're supposed to buy that he's more free because he's not been hypnotically conditioned from birth (ie without his consent) to love his role in society and his place in its rigid caste hierarchy. The "civilised" people in Brave New World aren't less free because simply because they're civilised as the trope usually goes, they're less free because their social superiors have deliberately prevented them from ever learning notions of freedom to begin with - to them consumption is the highest form of existence because it's all they've ever known. Yes it leans fairly heavily on the "noble savage" trope but I don't think he's as one-dimensional as you make him out to be.
>The dumb worker peons always seemed silly because any sufficiently advanced control society would at the very least lift people up to be more useful
Why would they bother lifting people up in the context of Brave New World? The leadership's whole thing is that the ratios of the various castes are strictly controlled and most of humanity are intentionally engineered to be simpletons who love their roles and little else. The book even addresses this idea of lifting everyone up to be more useful directly, it mentions an island where everyone was in the "alpha" caste and says it was a disaster as far as Brave New World's leadership was concerned. Their argument was pretty much "why make everyone intelligent ubermensch even though we can when we still need people to empty the bins and sweep the streets - jobs these people would be profoundly unhappy doing?".
>It's also full of conservative moral panic, for example the sexual freedom and alternative experiences through synthetic drugs never get a serious treatment as potentially positive.
Huxley wasn't a prohibitionist, in fact he wrote about his experiences taking mescaline at length and was seen as an important author by the psychedelic counterculture of the '1960s. He did think that psychedelic use ought to be limited in contrast to the likes of say Timothy Leary who wanted to see them used in a more widespread fashion but I don't think Brave New World is particularly based on a moral panic. You can criticise hedonism and what Huxley would have considered cheap and ultimately hollow attempts at happiness without necessarily being a moraliser in my opinion.
I'll give you the "Lenina" thing though, I always thought that was a bit cheap.
>Why not celebrate the fact that you can create children synthetically and women are freed from reproductive obligations? The book never goes beyond "oh no the family is dead, orgy porgy!"
I have to disagree here, the point of the book isn't that these technologies are bad per se. The argument is that these technologies could potentially be used to create a dystopia that's very touchy-feely on the surface and supposedly concerned with making everyone happy but in reality creates an inauthentic happiness, a happiness where humanity is stripped of its very essence and turned into little more than livestock for the consumerist meat grinder.
In Brave New World the leadership take the view that it's fine for authorities to manipulate and coerce people as long as they're subjectively happy about it, criticising this isn't particularly moralistic in my opinion. Brave New World isn't some sexual hangup-free utopia either - its leaders actively discourage people forming exclusive relationships because they see it as a threat to their highly controlled social order. It's the logical conclusion of what countries like the USSR were doing in the '30s, weakening family ties so that children would inform on their parents and so on. Huxley is presenting the destruction of the family as a tool of political control, not lecturing us on Christian virtues.
>The book's plagued by the same provincial pastoralism you find in almost any British upper-class writer, be it Orwell, Tolkien, Huxley or C.S. Lewis.
In my opinion Brave New World is critiquing the idea people should have the decision to be unhappy taken away from them, which is quite a paternalistic idea. At any rate I think you're making a bit of a sweeping statement there, dismissing literature because you don't like the culture it came from isn't a very strong argument in my opinion. It's a bit like someone dismissing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner simply because they happen to be an atheist and the Christian allusions aren't to their taste.
Dystopian fiction is a intended as a warning sign of a particular dangerous potebtiay failure mode of existing/developing societal elements, not an analytical critique weighing alternate potential outcomes of the same elements.
So, yeah, it fails at being what it very much is not intended as; no surprise there.
> It's also full of conservative moral panic, for example the sexual freedom and alternative experiences through synthetic drugs never get a serious treatment as potentially positive.
Its illustrating a failure mode, noy trying to map the entire potential result space. Exploring how the same components could succeed is...very much not the point.
> Why not celebrate the fact that you can create children synthetically and women are freed from reproductive obligations?
Because the point isn't “How this could work out well”. That's not the goal.
You would really give over so much control over your person?
> More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response?
Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt?
The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments.
You'll not that I never said I'd give up my anatomy, just that I'd be happy regardless of whatever tasks or life I'm living. And yes, absolutely. If I was freed from negative emotions and experience. I could instead spend my time on what I want to, or need to. You didn't state what I think you meant to wrongly imply that it was a mind control device.
> Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive?
I don't know, my current understanding of torture is you can break a person, meaning get them to give up on life. But can't actually ever control how they behave. I have no reason to believe that would change with better technology. Say you do break me, destroy my ability to do anything. I'd have no motivation to do anything at all ever. People suffering from such a severe breakdown or depression lose the ability to function. You can do that with torture now, "new technology allows us do to something faster" isn't impressive, nor revolutionary.
> How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt?
Never... humans have tried to create manchurian candidates already. It has always failed. Failed so drastically that we've never even come close to getting any human to willingly do something outside what they'd do through positive motivation. So you haven't given me a reason to suspect otherwise.
> The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments.
Let's pretend for the sake of this argument, that I do agree with you that we're losing additional freedoms that we have. And setting aside the reasons. (For the record, I don't. Arguments that this is a new scary thing we all should be afraid of are made without merit, with a single exception.) I'm assuming you're familiar with one, but not both versions of the slippery slope fallacy. I'll try to refute both.
The first being `A will lead to B; B is bad; therefor A is bad`. That's a fallacy, it's not true. A could be good or bad, and B could be good or bad. But that doesn't mean A and B is bad. Billy is a mass murder, he's caught and sent to jail. Him being sent to jail means he's not allowed to do what he really wants, that's bad. A leads to B, B is bad. A and B happening together are still better than not happening.
The other; `A might lead to B; B might lead to C, C is SO SO much worse than A and B could possibly be; thus A is bad and should be avoided`. This is the more common one, but it's logically flawed because you both have to prove that C is worse than A (which you haven't in this case), *AND* prove that A MUST lead to C. Which you also haven't done. Requiring people to prove that they have made an attempt to ensure they're not infectious/dangerous before being allowed to interact with a community, is not the same as requiring invasive treatment for a non-contagious disease. And you haven't given me a reason to think anyone's trying to apply that logic to it. One's infectious, the other isn't. You've said nothing to change my mind on this. Just because someone might say or do something stupid, isn't a reason to believe it will happen.
There's a reason these fallacies are common, they seem like they could be true, and they're scary. The probability of it happening * how bad it could be = how scary it feels. The problem is, just because they're something that could happen, doesn't mean it's logical or reasonable to think it will happen. Thus it's just an argument people use to make others feel scared. Because they pretty much are pulled from thin air. There's no logical reason to say because all of these things exist, they will all be used together. Microwaves exist, and are good at heating water, humans are mostly water, why don't we heat our homes or ourselves with microwaves? Wireless power transmission exists, the hardware is cheaper than cables, why do we still use cables instead of wireless power? Because it exists, doesn't mean it will be used wrongly or maliciously. Stop being afraid that bad things might happen, instead focus on the bad things that ARE happening. If you don't want vaccines because they're dangerous, prove they're dangerous. Don't be opposed just because it might lead to something that you're afraid of.
Dealing with it without resolving the underlying cause is effectively turning people into obedient work force that has accepted its fate.
Except we destroyed that with low interest rates and turning a blind eye for anticompetitive behavior. Now most people are replaceable cogs that ran out of goals that would motivate them. That's the real, and very big problem.
I hope the degree was worth it, because otherwise you have wasted 6 years of your life. Paying for some administrators' trips to Hawaii with your student debt. And that depression feeling was a very clear early warning that could have helped you prevent that.
Think of all of the people who were born like that. Think of the people who had intensely traumatic experiences at a young age such that their systems grew abnormally. Ascribing a lack of self-discipline to those and many others who face that awful affliction is both arrogant and ignorant.
but the implication that attempting to treat depression without solving the external underlying cause perpetuates the negative stigma around depression treatment and makes it harder for people to consider and accept treatment. Which has been shown over and over and over and over and over again to be required for people with severe depression to be able to take any action to improve their life.
Even that's only including the people who are depressed from some external cause that they can take action on. loss of a loved one is something that causes depression and if left untreated can spiral down into a state of despair that people are unable to dig themselves back out of alone.
I guess those people should just be happy right?
I think it's a problem of terminology really. Grief and depression look very similar to an outside observer and are often conflated, but there are several other mental states that all look pretty similar and are labeled under the umbrella of 'depression' too. Many of them are relatively temporary.
I think the kind of depression parent is talking about is the one that's behind the significant and rising percentage of people being diagnosed with, and treated for, depression. Over 10% of the population in the US is on an SSRI, and that cannot be a good sign for society.
In order to treat causes of depression successfully in the long term, it can be incredibly helpful to dampen the symptoms short term.
I've had a tough time lately, mentally, and went on a bike tour with my dog to a state park 40 miles away for 2 days. Over 100lbs of load. Hiked a good 10 miles while there. Rode back. It felt great and life had clarity for all of 24 hours after.
There's a lot of good reasons to exercise, but alleviating depression isn't one of them in my experience.
No. This is not reasonable to say, because exercise does not "work wonders". It works a little and it makes you feel a little better, that is it.
There's a theory of a strong association between clinical depression and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness and hopefully society will move forward to enable people to live better lives.
But there are other causes for depression. It can simply be a brain with too little of a neurotransmitter or other. SSRIs actually work great for many people, Gabapentin for others.
Even in the above example, "ADD" can easily be replaced with "poverty" and you can add some drug addiction in the mix.
After years, it just becomes chronic, your new normal and it's very doubtful that you can be normal without serious external help.
Then again, if I’ve learned anything from the past decade, forget all that working harder stuff, I’ll just figure put how to sell advertising straight into your brain implant, don’t mind me while I take some of the most talented programmers in the world to do this.
https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wireheading_done_righ...
The likelihood of DBS being able to turn someone into an ideal worker/consumer is about the same as it being able to turn a Parkinson's patient into an Olympic athlete.
BUT...I would say apathy as a broad symptom/syndrome is known to be associated w/ an untreated Parkinsonian state...so if some enterprising postdoc somehow finds a target nucleus that improves apathy w/ macro stimulating electrodes in the near future...we could all be wrong..
Even with people with PD, whether and how well DBS will work is variable, and even after it's put in, assuming it works for someone, programing is about finding a good balance between beneficial effects and unwanted side effects.
Even if there is a target to improve apathy, it'll likely come at the expense of some other unwanted side effects.
That being said, I have heard for less measurable symptoms, i.e. OCD or depression...DBS implantation and programming is much more inexact, as you describe.
It is night and day for tremor, but it also has significant trade-offs. Granted, it could be that the targeting wasn't ideal to begin, after 15+ years she needs her leads redone, or something else, but from what I've seen it really is a set of trade-offs.
I remember watching a video by a guy who just got DBS talking about something similar with a researcher and I'll edit this post if I can find it.
Targeting has probably come a long way too. I remember pulling old MRI's from cases done in 2003 or so, and they just look so fuzzy and crude compared with modern machines...