Ed Boyden's Blog in Technology Review discusses abandoning the medical precept of "primum non nocere" (first, do no harm) in favor of "do good". Why stop, he argues, at returning patients to normal? It's hard to know what is "normal" anyway, so why not optimize them? He advocates using neurotechnologies to make people as happy and intelligent as possible - even to provide a sense of meaning to their lives.
This is incredibly dangerous thinking.
Boyden himself points out "...whereas many measures of depression and sadness have been defined, a coherent description of happiness remains elusive. How can you augment something if you can't define it?" Exactly. And though Boyden calls for more research, the important question is just who's definition of happiness will be used? A government might define a happy population as one completely satisfied with the status quo. The powers-that-be may wish for a world of contented sheep, but progress has always come from the disaffected.
Boyden may call this "optimizing", but is it moral to change someone's brain chemistry so they feel happiness and a sense of worth regardless of their actual situation? I think most people would say no, but let's look at another case. If we had the ability to transform violent criminals into meek, authority-respecting, happy citizens, should we do it? We're getting into a little "Clockwork Orange" territory now. I believe the majority would approve of this type of optimizing. But it is a very slippery slope, and in the end we'd arrive at a time when any resistance to authority is treated as a disease.
It's frightening that in the name of enhancing humanity, intelligent people are working even now on the tools that may one day enslave us.
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