The ethics of brain boosting
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Memory and math? What is this a competition? Why on earth would you not want to increase your capacity for memory and math?
The analogy is that steroids are to a mover as this thing is to an engineer. Do you really care how your mover found his strength?
On the intellectual side of things, you have students competing for scholarships, grants, and research placements. You have people competing for jobs in high-tech industries, and then competing with their colleagues for promotions, pay raises, and bonuses. I'm sure you can come up with more examples. The same problem then exists with devices or drugs which purport to improve learning ability. I could take dextroamphetamine every day. My productivity could go through the roof and I could soak up information like a sponge, easily putting within my grasp that which I strive to accomplish every day. Yet I do not want to do this, for many reasons.
Maybe the device in the article lacks the side effects of regular amphetamine use. It therefore would not be on the same level as nootropic drugs, but saying we should 'throw ethics out the door' is quite a leap.
At the same time athletes surve a different purpose. They entertain. The perception of a fair playing field is much more important to a bottom line than the actual performance of a person. No one wants to watch a machine pitch a perfect pitch every time. Likewise no one wants to watch a juiced up player hit a home run every time. Theres no spectacle in that.
As for entertainment, I'd probably not object to watching steroid-pumped athletes if I was confident they wouldn't end up with anger-management and biological gender disorders afterwards. Same applies to stimulating the brain with electrodes, except we don't know where/whether that might go wrong yet. Ben Johnson wasn't competing to run the world; but at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, the track record of those using stimulants to help them run the world isn't great.
Be careful with such sweeping statements. I think it'd be cool as hell to watch athletic competitions that were really just proxies for various performance-enhancing labs to show off their latest, greatest stuff. I don't watch the Tour de France now, for instance, but if all of those riders were openly doping and tweaking to expand their limits in new and interesting ways, I probably would.
Pro athletes already make sacrifices that the rest of us would consider horrific, wrecking their health and shortening their lifespans for the sake of a few years of glory and attention. What's suggested here is absolutely nothing new.
With a widening gap, would such a device further increase the gap between those who go on to be the "have's" vs. the "have nots"? Would this introduce a more substantial barrier to entry for the upper class? What if the device cost $1000? What if it cost $1000/month?
What would happen to society if 50% or more of society was structurally unable to move up in the class system? There is unrest today (occupy protests) and the common perception is that it isn't even a big problem in the US yet. How bad would it get if people actually thought it was as bad as it is? And then what if it got worse?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_...
People have built DIY models for under $50. With full scale production you could build a basic model for a few dollars.
Plus the cost of patent licenses, of course.
There may be patents covering some specific implementations, but I believe one could design a patent free device fairly easily.
What you are talking about could indeed be a problem if there are significant developments in nano human augmentation. I personally would love it if cognitive boosters were treated as a health issue and made widely available.
maybe not status, but it's a big factor in mobility. Not saying you can't do it without, but those at the top of the class definitely move up. Scholarships, Doctors, Lawyers, Scientists, Engineers -- all make it to the top 2/5ths.
>> Brain boosters have the greatest effect when used by scientists and engineers
Exactly -- pushes those already 'on top' even higher.
It's positive-sum. If researchers taking cognitive enhancements are able to accelerate the process of curing Alzheimer's or getting self-driving cars on the road, I'm not going to complain if they earn billions in the process.
These brain modifiers are not limited to such pedestrian things as increasing mere intelligence. Evidence would strongly suggest they are also capable of screwing with things like discipline, concentration, and ability to defer gratification, which definitely are connected to socioeconomic status. It's really quite difficult to predict what the effects could be.
When a society regularly creates incentives that lead to bubbles that eventually collapse and leaves wrecked lives in its wake, people are bound to get upset.
But in a society that does not punish savers and reward foolishness, prudent people with even modest means and a bit of luck can build a nice nest egg for retirement and a rainy day.
Our politicians believe consumption is the key to prosperity and the more you subsidize consumption, the more likely it is that you will be re-elected.
But it is actually production and productivity that lead to wealth and stability, not consumption. And certainly not bubbles where hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted building things for which there is ultimately no market.
A device that truly makes people more productive (without longterm side effects, of course) would actually benefit us, not hurt us. And banning such a device would simply give the advantage to other countries to exploit.
I think most of the resistance to intelligence boosting based on fairness are just appeals to status quo. It's occurrence is inevitable and the benefits of a more educated and intelligent populace working to improve their lot via technology is worth the cost if they can bootstrap themselves into something better.
And I very much doubt that such a device will cause as much of a socioeconomic divide as access to literacy, computers, electricity, internet, clean water and iodine has on the world. Iodine deficiency can cause a loss of as much as 15 points of IQ [2]. Really though, the main issue will be when gene, protein therapies and genetic engineering become safe and better understood.
But consider that as research continues, they will probably find that other effects can be achieved by stimulating other brain areas in other ways. Perhaps they will find an area that enhances reading comprehension, or musical ability, or objectivity.
So imagine we reach a state where we have general purpose brain stimulators in most schools, that can be programmed to stimulate the appropriate part of the brain in the appropriate way for a given lesson.
Great, right?
Now consider this. One researcher has already reported that he can induce by brain stimulation a mystical or religious state, where subjects often report feeling they are in the presence of God. If the school stimulators could be programmed for this kind of stimulation, they could turn into a powerful tool for religious indoctrination.
I would not at all be surprised, if the religious inducement turns out to be true (I believe it has not been replicated yet) that they will find other deep emotional things can be induced, such as feeling of national pride and patriotism. I'm sure I don't need to say anything about the potential abuse of that if every public school has a programmable brain stimulator.
This is why we don't throw ethics out the door--we need a way to make the good aspects of this available (boosting memory and math) WITHOUT just blindly getting the bad parts.
When I say throw ethics out the door I specifically mean ethical questions that would pose a problem for institutions such as universities. I feel like what you are talking about falls more under the category of health rather than ethics but the line between them here is very very thin.
So for instance, say the people that take these meds end up living 5 years less on average due to side effects of the drugs but are for instance able to read 2 times fast, remember thing better and only need 5 hours of sleep a day. Naturally because they're on average better they will get better jobs, more promotions and so on. So the people that choose not to trade in years of their life end up getting screwed (in relative terms) and (taken to the extreme - say 50 years down the road) will be second class citizens.
To a very minor degree this happens with caffeen, but when you put things in the equation like amphetamines and provigil it gets a lot scarier.
If I was taking amphetamines and provigil in college I know for certain I would have graduated with a lot higher GPA and I probably would have done a lot more in college. But what would have been the cost? I don't know.. and know one really can say; I wasn't willing to take that gamble. Why should the person that was willing to gamble his health get rewarded for it?
in some NASA research use 5mA
So for instance, say the people who work long hours end up more stressed and less healthy, but produce for instance 50% more value. Naturally because they're on average better they will get better jobs, mor epromotions and so on. So the people that choose not to trade in quality of life end up getting screwed (in relative terms) and will be second class citizens.
By working hard and taking risks you might outcompete some people. I don't see why this is an ethical problem.
First of all, I don't think quality of life necessarily translates to years spent living, or at least that's very hard to quantify.
For the Quality of Life vs. Long Hours:
Firs of all, it's also a weak comparison. You can work at a job 8 hours a day and hate it while the guy next to you does it for 12 hours a day and loves it. You might end up ruining your quality of life and he won't be. So you can't quantify your quality of life with time spent at work.
But even considering that there is probably a strong correlation; fortunately there is also a very natural balancing mechanism. If work long hours is really ruining your life then that's a direct incentive for you to not do it. You have a constant pressure to not overwork yourself because you it psychologically make you feel horrible and no one wants to feel horrible. So things sorta tend to balance themselves out. Even if you look at environments/careers were people really push themselves due to competitiveness in the long term I don't think they end up having shorter or worse lives.
Sure there are masochists that work 12 hours a day, hate it, but do it for the promotion; but even for them I think in their minds they don't have a horrible life. The prospect of the promotion prolly keeps them happy and keeps them going.
Now compare that with taking a pill or zapping your brain: If you take a pill and you get dementia 40 years later then you're trading in current gains for future pains. You're not getting constant negative feedback to hold you back. So to keep up with your peers you and all the people around you will be popping every pill possible because otherwise you drop out of the race.
Now since there are no brakes to the process and everyone is trashing their bodies to make it to the top your society eventually ends up with a group of super smart pill-poppers and brain zappers and they become all the CEO and PhDs but live to only 40 before their brains are fried and then you've got the rest that live to 90 and clean toilets.
I'm not quantifying it, I'm merely pointing out that being a workaholic harms many people. Personally, I work hard doing stuff I love. But I do raise the bar for people who don't enjoy it, and who are forced to do so in order to compete.
If you take a pill and you get dementia 40 years later then you're trading in current gains for future pains.
And if you work your ass off and get high blood pressure/etc 40 years later, you are doing the same thing.
At most, it seems like a matter of degree and uncertainty. The costs/benefits of hard work are reasonably well known, whereas brain pills are not (yet).
But, well, when i read this, I must say, i have people close to me who would have access to this technology and understand the risks, and I thought, hmm.
If you are actually learning, and the effect is not temporary, then it's obviously not cheating, no matter how easy it is.
Exams are an attempt to measure something about you. Cheating is an attempt to make the result of the exam better than the reality of the thing the exam is trying to measure. Morally this puts it in the same class as lying and other deception.
So whether carrying information into the exam is cheating or not, depends on the exam. If it's trying to measure what you can remember, it's cheating. Otherwise, it may not be.
If this technology helps you to actually learn, then you aren't just increasing the result of the exam, you're actually increasing the thing the exam is trying to measure.
Only now, they're questioning the ethics of letting people know about it, and they do that... by talking about it?
I believe it would now be more dangerous and irresponsible to keep things secret, the cat's out of the bag. People who read such an article with the details provided, only have enough information to have an approximate understanding of how this thing works, but it won't stop them from experimenting. Already, I see instructions being posted on this very thread.
Yeah, I'd be shocked if half the population of HN don't have one of these things inside a week. Somebody should call Jameco and Mouser, etc., and ask if they see a spike in sales of certain electronic components in the next few days!
I probably have most of the parts needed in my parts-box already, so I might just give it a try myself. Nothing like a little reckless self-experimentation...
As you can see, there is an inviolable convention among researchers not to unambiguously mark the anode + contact on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode - contact over the subject's right eyebrow. Instead, what we see on the third slide is a cartoon drawing of a subject in which two contacts are labeled "active" and "reference". There is an arrow leading from the active contact to the reference contact labeled "anodal" and another arrow from the reference contact labeled "cathodal". This refers to an ancient convention in electronics, in which current was assumed to flow from the anode to the cathode, even though electrons flow from the cathode to the anode. The literature is replete with such helpful diagrams. One would like a completely unambiguous statement: the anode is the positive connection, and it is secured to the left side of the subject's scalp; the cathode is the negative connection, and it secured over the subject's right eyebrow. Or one of the eight combinations possible by arbitrarily switching anode with cathode, positive with negative, and left with right. But I have been unable to locate a statement in the literature that would condescend to so direct and simple a description.
Here is another article with a diagram showing node placement for tDCS. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165017306.... Note that the anode is placed over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the cathode is placed on the forehead. That beats the anodal and cathodal arrows of the previous diagram. What we still don't have is the identification of + with anodal and - with cathodal. And so one must continue searching through the literature--which should be done in any case--until one comes to something approximating a consensus on node placement and the meaning of anodal and cathodal versus positive and negative.
Finally, here's a compilation from a less than unimpeachable source: http://www.drmueller-healthpsychology.com/tDCS.html. The author misreads 1mA as one microamp. That's one milliamp. But we do get a straightforward statement about node placement from Fregni, F., Boggio, P., Nitsche, M., et al. (2006). Letters to the Editor: Treatment of major depression with transcranial direct current stimulation. Bipolar Disorders, 8:203-205. This is confirmed in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22031874, though you have to know that anode means positive and cathode means negative.
I should say that in my initial reckless period of self-experimentation, I managed to induce phosphenes by accident -- blue white flashes in the entire visual field, blanking out everything else. Both contacts were in the supraorbital region. I ceased my experiments for a while and returned to the literature.
But really, if you are capable of building such a device, wouldn't that make you very employable to begin with?
1 stuty found residual effect after month
At first I wasn't going to mention this (lest it become the reason he doesn't share the details), but then I realized, here's a smart guy who has a device that makes him even smarter, so I figure he probably already knows. :)
Really, really curious.
This page has some schematics and the results of his own experimentation: http://brmlab.cz/project/brain_hacking/tdcs (not sure how legit it is).
Can you post your schematics and instructions?
Effect very depends on start state mostly on levels of stress hormons in the body.Here some early tests http://brmlab.cz/project/brain_hacking/tdcs (part tests) I planed to do more test (i made aroud 50 , but the dont documted),currently working on other projects but plans to come back and improve it (mostly the electrode position and current density).
-------- If you want to use higher current use 2x9V baterry ,there must be enough volts to equalize the resistance changes. ( resitence electodes+head is about 2-5kOhm)
This was the source of much confusion in biochem (electrophoresis) for many students because negative charges migrate to the anode.
but... "CAUTION: Investigational Device. Federal (or United States) law limits device to investigational use."
edit: also check out this video for how to do it: http://www.jove.com/video/2744/electrode-positioning-and-mon...
But the data sheet for the LM317 says the minimum operating current is 2.0 mA, yet the amount delivered to the brain should be 1 mA. How did it work?
From the datasheet
>all quiescent operating current is returned to the output terminal. This imposes the requirement for a minimum load current. If the load current is less than this minimum, the output voltage will rise.
I've used an LM317 drawing less than 2mA, so I assumed it was possible (in hindsight I must have used the solution, below).
The solution is very simple however, make a separate parallel circuit that will draw at least 2mA. This can be accomplished just by placing a resistor of appropriate value between the Vout and ground.
different types (small,large case) of LM317 havemaybe different parametrs
And phosphenes.. oh my.
But I would contend that before you try something like tDCS, you probably should try to optimize other easier and much more beneficial parameters such as sleep,diet,immunity,vitamin dosage,supplemental dosage etc.
In the end a pocket tDCS device can really come in handy when something (GEB for example :)) gets really hard to understand.Its all about using it in moderation.
Got some mild phosphenes during the first try by putting the anode too far forward -- although not in my entire visual field like the author, instead just at the top, and the phosphenes stopped once the electrode was securely connected.
OP, what duration do you use? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17940759 indicates that "short-term" is <1s and "long-term" is 10m. It's hard to say objectively, but I think after about 1m I can feel increased concentration and wakefulness.
Thanks for posting, this has been an interesting experience.
for 2mA 9cm2 in higher current density work much faster efect is precivable after few second (aplication 3min) bud ther is a problem - skin iritation and is little itchi (early expediments) in publication is recomandet current density under 60uA/cm there was much more but still under tishue damge limit
ATA from BRMLAB
Thus extrapolating, I wonder if tDCS use might also induce psychosis.
Going off methylphenidate on the weekends ameliorated the psychotic effects, but some of the psychosis-induced beliefs persisted for quite a while.
I was 9.
there is only small border between geniality(new ideas) and madnes
Presumably there is the notion of "only ability counts", but what happens once genetic engineering levels everybody's abilities? It seems to me from then on the logical conclusion is that in a Star Trek universe mankind would become a super organism spawning individuals according to need. The individual would necessarily be transcended.
This would lead to the banning of genetic engineering on Earth by the mid-22nd century, even research which could be used to cure critical illnesses. This ban was implemented because of the general fear of creating more tyrants such as Khan. It was also felt that parents would feel compelled to have their children genetically engineered, especially if "enhanced" individuals are allowed to compete in normal society.
...
By the 24th century, the United Federation of Planets allowed limited use of genetic engineering to correct existing genetically-related medical conditions. Persons known to be genetically enhanced, however, were not allowed to serve in Starfleet, and were especially banned from practicing medicine.
I wonder how this compares over the long term to just working an extra 20 minutes per day, or even just drinking a cup of coffee.
wouldn't this just make you do connections in your reasoning that you usually wouldn't do (maybe for a good reason) (is this why this method is ethically questionable?)
Our brains evolved in a way which maximized reproductive potential, and while having strong cognitive abilities was clearly favored to an extent, there was a constant tradeoff between larger brains and food/energy input. Now that we don't have the same critical food shortages, we can set our own objective functions. Ex, now most people would probably choose a brain with +50 iq points which required an extra 1000 kcals a day, but a few tens of thousands of years ago, those requirements would probably have been fatal...
Like books, for example? Or computers (not that cheap, but widely available).
I am not holding my breath on that device... My usual line of thinking: if it is so easy to enhance brain functions, why hasn't nature done so herself? (Another one where that applies is the super memory mice).
A good question to raise, but it has a lot of plausible answers. For example, maybe having better cognitive ability causes people to spend more time doing science and less time procreating/looking after their offspring.
But in normal healthy people we see enough variation in abstract reasoning to have a profound effect on their performance in our brand spanking new technological environment of the last couple of thousand years; less than an eyeblink in evolutionary terms. And not just in competitive terms, but in absolute ability. A lot of that advancement can be simply be attributed to better nutrition and better mental and language models. I have little trouble believing that fiddling and tuning up the brain's electrical environment might might have some comparatively striking effects. (I can also see it possible to do great damage as well)
There are a lot of low-hanging fruits nature has missed because nature only cares about how many copies of genes there are, it doesn't care about human goals. Evolution is a poor optimizer for what it does, it has no optimization for what we want done.
I have to verify your other numbers sometime, because I am pretty sure I have heard of cases where mutations took hold faster (lactose tolerance perhaps?)
If nature is a woman (rather than a collection of stochastic processes), then she is a strong argument against letting women into the same building as a computer.
Most biological organisms are designed incredibly badly. The body is full of spaghetti code, duplicate functionality, dead code that still causes bugs, and systems that evolved from a completely different purpose and didn't get the full rewrite they needed.
The nature methodology makes waterfall look like a perfect process:
1) Make a random change.
2) If conversions go up, commit. Otherwise revert.
This along with the following paragraph come across as somewhat misogynistic. I'm sure you didn't mean it to. Saying "person" instead of "women" would have avoided that.
I liked your description of nature's methodology as a development process.
So yes, I did mean to make it sound somewhat mysogynistic.
You know, I hear tech people saying stuff like this all the time but the question I would ask is: designed badly compared to what? I mean, if you're comparing to software code made by humans (is there any other kind?) then I think biological systems work pretty damn well. The type of systems that humans write code for are utterly trivial compared to what biology has to deal with -- and we STILL have all the anti-patterns and problems you mentioned with respect to biology. Until human beings can write code of comparable complexity to life that lasts millions of years (forget about billions) I think you should show the woman some respect. :-)
Compared to what it would look like if a human designed it. I took a course in math biology, and learned how a few of these subsystems work. A particular gene regulatory network I studied (can't recall the details, it was >5 years ago) looked like the following:
B, C = (False, False)
A = get_input()
if A:
B = True
if B:
C = True
if C:
do_something_interesting()
A = get_input()
if A:
do_something_interesting()
The debate over intelligent design is clearly over. If you want to argue for creationism, you need to argue that god is a drooling retard who starts a project, forgets what he is doing, and uses the pieces to finish a completely different task.
Just saying, that kind of redundancy might be an advantage for evolution, smoothing it's path.
That whole article doesn't really even explain how it works either, just some dabbling around "ethics" (really?). Just seems quite vague and unfocussed.
Really exciting prospect if it works though!
Has never, and will never be done.
Oh, and I will believe all the people who whine about the virtue of the natural, un-augmented human, and about how unfair augmentation is, when they start advocating that athletes compete naked.
I continue to scan research in this area because I know that at some point there will be a recreational drug equivalent that runs off batteries. That is going to destroy a lot of wealth in the underground drug business. That will cause some violent changes in society.
As for TDCS I expect it to move along to the point where this may be like a calculator, not "required" but an accelerator for people with ones.
That said, I'm interested in a maker kit.
http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/CurrentBiology/home...
which mentions "The long-lasting effects of TDCS, which can persist for up to 2 months" with a reference to this paper:
http://neuro.cjb.net/content/29/22/7271.full.pdf
This last paper is quite interesting, as arguments can (will...) be based off of it posing that tDCS does provide a long-term benefit. Unfortunately, the gain (in response time and accuracy) over a sham tDCS (e.g., placebo) is quite modest -- 15% with an error bar of 10% for response time, and 5% with an error bar of 5% for accuracy... Check the Figure 4 on page 5.
I'm curious on what the benefits of this is but also scared of the side effects if there are any.
Anyone else tried this?
* by soon i mean the next 5 years or so.