Brain Programming for Peace

[gumOnShoe]

The only absolute system that can be followed is the system that governs the known universe. You may call that physics whatever suits your fancy, but what I'm getting at is that the only system you can't violate is the one that says when a fist hits you at 25 mph in the face, it is going to hurt and your cells are going to real as several of them explode in reaction to the force.

Hence, so long as humans have the ability to violate the self imposed constraints of government and one of them is willing to do it, we will never have peace and our problems will never be fixed. One person willing to take advantage of the system at any level will ruin it for everyone.

So, far, in order to compensate for this, we have created greater and more complex forms of government that take a longer time to corrupt because of their vast complexity and system of checks and balances. However, eventually, due to the laws of probability, all systems will likely be corrupted and abused. We may be on the verge of that point already with the united states government.

As a solution, we revolt and start over, building a fresh system, that may not be free of corruption, but which strife of the reality of not having a system forces us back into so that we are willing to accept it. And if we are lucky, eventually a revolt will lead us to a stable government that will last for some greater portion of someone's life.

This is a cycle which I cannot prove happens, but which through observation I believe happens. I recognize the actual problems are much more complex, but the solution is simpler than we have been lead to believe.

We are a parallel civilization. Each of us has an independent mind to do with as we please which is not held in check by anything. When we are given the option as a people to literally bind flesh and machine together and alter our DNA we will be given a new opportunity. We will be allowed for the first time, in the history of humanity, to alter the actual rules by which we live by. We can make crimes instantaneously punishable by death. We can introduce algorithms to remove depression, to self regulate thought, and to steer us away from doing harm to each other. We can regulate our thoughts to be progressive, to attempt experimentation.

In short, we can apply the very laws suggested by Asimov for robots to humans.

Nothing short of this can ever bring peace to humanity. The question is, would this peace be the equivalent of a death sentence for humanity as well?

[HorseloverFrost]

Ignoring for the moment the question as to whether peace is good, there's the issue of complacency. I would posit that society such as you suggest would be incapable of adapting to rapidly changing external situations. All it would take would be one climactic upheaval, or one encounter with another society to cause the extinction of said thought-regulated culture.

[gumOnShoe]

At 10/25/09 08:55 PM, HorseloverFrost wrote: Ignoring for the moment the question as to whether peace is good, there's the issue of complacency. I would posit that society such as you suggest would be incapable of adapting to rapidly changing external situations. All it would take would be one climactic upheaval, or one encounter with another society to cause the extinction of said thought-regulated culture.

Are you suggesting that people who choose not to rape and murder each other will grow complacent and do nothing? I never said all the pressure caps would be removed. We'd still have several problems to fix and be wary of: disease, famine, space to live, transportation, fuel, expansion, population control.

There are still plenty of motivators for a species which has relinquished violence to do stuff. The very final of which is death, of both man, the solar system, the planet, or the universe.

[HorseloverFrost]

At 10/25/09 09:08 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Are you suggesting that people who choose not to rape and murder each other will grow complacent and do nothing? I never said all the pressure caps would be removed. We'd still have several problems to fix and be wary of: disease, famine, space to live, transportation, fuel, expansion, population control.

There are still plenty of motivators for a species which has relinquished violence to do stuff. The very final of which is death, of both man, the solar system, the planet, or the universe.

Without violence, the remaining problems will be ones of a much longer scale. I'm not claiming that this society would lose motivation, but rather the ability to react to sudden problems. A people used to solving problems that take generations to manifest won't react in time to a problem that will kill them all in a few months, or even maybe days. That sort of reaction can only be found in a species that lives in the ever present risk of being killed at any moment.

[Sheizenhammer]

I have every confidence that someone will try this as soon as it becomes possible. However, there are two things stopping it from ever happening currently:

1. The global moratorium on human genetic modification experiments.
2. The innate hesitation of most governments to fund the research that would make true cyborgs (in which living tissue is directly controlling mechanical, non-living parts, through neural impulses) possible.

The latter has only just started to happen, and the former... well, that's highly unlikely to change anytime soon.

I don't think the tweaking of human nature to completely eradicate certain choices (rape, murder etc.) would open up gaping flaws in humanity's ability to circumvent problems; that would only be likely if the entire thought processes were standardised somehow. It might cause a few problems with legal systems that employ the death sentence or other areas where exceptions to the rules are inevitable (as happens with every rule supposedly governing behaviour, there's always the few times when a learned / programmed behaviour is counter-productive or ineffective given the circumstances), but overall, as long as it's kept to a minimum, the universal altering of human behaviour should not cause any major problems.

Provided it's done right. Which most pioneering efforts like this aren't.

[hansari]

At 10/25/09 08:48 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Nothing short of this can ever bring peace to humanity. The question is, would this peace be the equivalent of a death sentence for humanity as well?

Didn't we see a complacency of this sort in George Orwells 1984?

[Elfer]

Asimov's Laws? Really? Do you really want to live a life filled with thinly veiled logic puzzles?

[Markface]

At 10/25/09 08:48 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Nothing short of this can ever bring peace to humanity. The question is, would this peace be the equivalent of a death sentence for humanity as well?

You know, this reminds me strongly of a series called 'Uglies' by Scott Westerfeld. People are implanted with legions to block out violence and rage, causing everyone to live happily. No need for weapons, bombs. No wars in hundreds of years.

But yes. That would obviously change the nature of human beings. But the thing we need to realise that not all change is bad. People would complain and bitch about humanity not being the same... and maybe it shouldn't be. We can be an ugly race.

I'm really picky on chosing a side, it's a good question... but it depends. I wouldn't rule out doing it.

[Markface]

At 10/25/09 08:48 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Nothing short of this can ever bring peace to humanity. The question is, would this peace be the equivalent of a death sentence for humanity as well?

You know, this reminds me strongly of a series called 'Uglies' by Scott Westerfeld. People are implanted with legions to block out violence and rage, causing everyone to live happily. No need for weapons, bombs. No wars in hundreds of years.

But yes. That would obviously change the nature of human beings. But the thing we need to realise that not all change is bad. People would complain and bitch about humanity not being the same... and maybe it shouldn't be. We can be an ugly race.

I'm really picky on chosing a side, it's a good question... but it depends. I wouldn't rule out doing it.