91–100 of 123 posts
So the question is rather where you want the current to go exactly, but if "reversing" the polarity is bad, it's safe to say EVERYTHING is bad. (Unless you don't mind destroying a part of the brain to get to another part.)
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"Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade " Serious question. If the friction is removed (illegality is friction) and this process is legal and available what will prevent people from deteriorating into 24/7 pleasure seekers (much like some people get addicted and spend their life in crack houses?)
Where cocaine was legal, people used the cocoa leaf to make a tea they drank all the time, the way we drink coffee or caffeinated soda. When heroin was legal (from the Bayer company!), addicts took it in pill form and it caused no particular social or financial or health problems - the primary negative effect of long-term heroin use is constipation. The vast majority of the harm illegal drugs do to people is due to t…
It's really hard to quantify what effect has been of this. Bolivia by all metrics is an underdeveloped country. Has this contributed to it or not? No way to really know..
Also I'm not convinced about the social effects of heroin. I think it DID have effects on society and that's why it was eventually outlawed.
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> Is there literally no potential for artificial selection to outpace natural selection? Of course there's potential and loopholes but the basic observation (dubbed 'Algernon's law' by some; I've written an entire essay on the topic: http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics ) seems sound for tDCS: it's such a trivial intervention that it shouldn't work, which suggests there must be some catch. The catch may well be tri…
I don't completely follow this line of reasoning. Something like "a minor enhancement like this would have been selected for by now, so it not being selected means it has a drawback?" I'm no evolutionary biologist, but it seems like the increased intelligence (or more accurately, cognitive performance) may not have had all that practical a benefit until just recently in our history anyway. I accept that the verdict i…
This is a fairly cynical point of view. But safe. We are not talking about medicine, we are talking about messing with otherwise perfectly healthy people.
Off the top of my head, vitamins and vaccines are the only side-effect free wonder drugs for healthy people. Similarly, clothing is the only body augment to fit this category. (And even then we get it wrong sometimes. Lots of examples from women's fashion in the past and currently the debate about shoes's effects on the knees/back.)
I am convinced that at some point some smart sod will figure out how to create a 'high' by using something along the lines of this. Put on a headband, flick the switch, and blam! high as a kite. Turn the switch off, and back to being sober. When that happens, the world will change in a very unpredictable way. Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade will suddenly have no where to go. All…
I think what you've just described is Larry Niven's "wirehead." In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a "droud" in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brain. In the Known Space universe, wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually di…
I am convinced that at some point some smart sod will figure out how to create a 'high' by using something along the lines of this. Put on a headband, flick the switch, and blam! high as a kite. Turn the switch off, and back to being sober. When that happens, the world will change in a very unpredictable way. Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade will suddenly have no where to go. All…
I'm long on tie-dye. People will still enjoy advertising what sort of highs they enjoy.
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"Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade " Serious question. If the friction is removed (illegality is friction) and this process is legal and available what will prevent people from deteriorating into 24/7 pleasure seekers (much like some people get addicted and spend their life in crack houses?)
Where cocaine was legal, people used the cocoa leaf to make a tea they drank all the time, the way we drink coffee or caffeinated soda. When heroin was legal (from the Bayer company!), addicts took it in pill form and it caused no particular social or financial or health problems - the primary negative effect of long-term heroin use is constipation. The vast majority of the harm illegal drugs do to people is due to t…
I haven't yet gone through the book you linked, but it appears from a quick glance at wikipedia that chronic cocaine usage does bring with it some fairly bad physical side-effects. Are you saying that chronic usage will be rare if cocaine were legal?
You seem right however about heroin: "Like most opioids, unadulterated heroin does not cause many long-term complications other than dependence and constipation." I had no idea!
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Seems pretty easy to test, though hard to test ethically perhaps. Wire someone up, flip the switch, tell them that they can turn it off if they don't like it. If they like it, then is it not by definition pleasure? Perhaps they find "wanting" to be pleasurable, but I know that I for one do not.
it has been tried on humans only twice AFAIK
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"Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that are part of the drug trade " Serious question. If the friction is removed (illegality is friction) and this process is legal and available what will prevent people from deteriorating into 24/7 pleasure seekers (much like some people get addicted and spend their life in crack houses?)
But without the illegality and high cost, it's not so bad. You get a bunch of people hanging out high without all the robbery, extortion, prostitution, and organized crime. A bunch of harmless pleasure seekers doesn't seem like a major issue without all that other stuff.
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I think what you've just described is Larry Niven's "wirehead." In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a "droud" in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brain. In the Known Space universe, wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually di…
Also explored at length in God Is An Iron, a short story by Spider Robinson, extended into the novel Mindkiller. Unlike in Ringworld, where wireheading/tasps are a MacGuffin, they're the central plot point in GIAI/Mindkiller.
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Haha, yes it would. But likely my ability would at least enable me to convince others of this discovery!
This is speculative, but it has been suggested that some people's thinking is so advanced that we can't understand what they are trying to do. [1] So it could be the case that what you try to convey once you reach that advanced state isn't comprehensible by normal people. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Genius_Theory