Happy people are quicker to make negative judgements of others.
Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly enough, happy people tend to be nasty, too.
Such (allowing for a little journalistic caricature) were the findings reported in last month's issue of Psychological Science. Researchers found that angry people are more likely to make negative evaluations when judging members of other social groups. That, perhaps, will not come as a great surprise. But the same seems to be true of happy people, the researchers noted. The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments -- like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he's a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody's sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ''everything is fine'' attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes -- including malicious ones.
My assumption is that people will genetically engineer themselves and their children to be happier. Genetic variations that create propensities toward sadness and depression will be excised. So then will people become nastier and more judgemental as a result?
Another way that people may change in the future is they may become less pain sensitive. When men choose to boost their testosterone levels they are probably lowering their pain sensitivity.
"If men are less sensitive to pain, there is more willingness to fight and participate in further fights," says Michaela Hau, an animal physiology and behaviour scientist at Princeton University, New Jersey, and lead author of the study.
The research team gave testosterone implants to male sparrows and measured their reaction times to pain. Testosterone allowed the birds to tolerate discomfort for longer periods, suggesting that the hormone somehow disguises pain.
It is likely that lowered pain sensitivity is not the only way that testosterone boosts will change the brain and hence change behavior. Look at 'roid rage reports of weightlifters who become extremely angry and aggressive as a consequence of taking steroids. Imagine a future of happy people, more prone to anger, and who feel less pain. They will be nasty, judge others more harshly, and be more aggressive. That doesn't sound like a recipe for either neighborhood peace or world peace, does it?
Another worry about how human brains may come to be different in the future is that people may genetically engineer their children to be less prone to engage in altruistic punishment. Think of the impulse that drives a person to report or testify about a crime that they see commtted against someone else. Imagine that impulse just wasn't there. A reduction in that impulse would reduce the motivation of police and prosecutors as well. A future full of happy nasty people with a lower propensity to dole out altruistic punishment brings to mind the Oingo Boingo song Nothing bad ever happens to me.
Richard Glen Boire of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics located in Davis, California is interviewed by New Scientist magazine on technological threats to cognitive liberty.
In the next five to ten years, we think drugs that enhance memory are going to raise important issues of freedom of thought. Will you have a right to say no to these drugs if you are the only eyewitness to a crime? Could a future government say: "It's very important that you remember what you saw. We want you to take this drug at least until after you have testified in court."
How would you like to be forced to maintain an accurate memory of, say, a murder you witnessed? That would be difficult but understandable. However, imagine you were forced to more accurately remember your own rape. At the very least use of a memory-boosting technology for that purpose would be an argument for speedier trials and should come with an optional ability to reduce the clarity of the memory once the trial was completed.
I have previously argued with Boire on the question of whether there is an unlimited right to erase one's memories. However, in a follow-up clarification post on his postion Boire acknowledged that the right to erase one's own memories should not be treated as unlimited regardless of circumstances.
Also, I should note that no right is "absolute." Not even something like freedom of speech or freedom of religion. I'm perfectly willing to accept reasonable "time, place, and manner" type restrictions on cognitive liberty.
As the mind becomes more malleable to both memory erasure and false memory implant technologies such technologies will pose a serious problem regardless of the positions governments take over cognitive rights. The advent of date rape drugs demonstrate that, once again, governments have no monopoly on the ability or willingness to violate the rights of individuals. My greater concern for the future in Western societies is that the drugs that will be developed that alter and erase memories and change personalities will be illegally used by individuals against others without their knowledge.
We need effective technological defenses usable by ourselves against drugs and other technologies that alter our minds. Imagine, for instance, implanted sensors that would be able to signal us when the sensors detect drugs or other agents in our bodies. The ability to detect that we are under some form of cognitive attack would, for instance, allow a woman who has just consumed a date rape drug to call for help before losing consciousness. A really advanced implant would even be able to release counter-agents to block some or all of the effects of the cognitive state altering agents.
Boire is also concerned about a technology called brain fingerprinting offered by a company called Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories. The inventor of brain fingerprinting claims brain fingerprinting can detect whether a person is lying with far greater accuracy than a polygraph test.
Brain Fingerprinting, developed by Dr Larry Farwell, chief scientist and founder of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, is a method of reading the brain's involuntary electrical activity in response to a subject being shown certain images relating to a crime. Unlike the polygraph or lie detector to which it is often compared, the accuracy of this technology lies in its ability to pick up the electrical signal, known as a p300 wave, before the suspect has time to affect the output.
Boire's concern is that people could be compelled to take a brain fingerprinting test and that this would remove a person's right to remain silent. Keep in mind that in much (most?) of the world suspects and defendants do not have such a right in the first place. A technology for detecting deception therefore may not so much cause a violation of an existing right as it would cause the coercion of testimony to produce a more accurate result. Though if interrogation becomes much easier to use to produce accurate confessions one can expect at least some governments to make greater use of it.
As least in the West I see greater threats to cognitive liberty coming from actions of non-state actors than from governments. William Gibson' narrator in Neuromancer said something along the lines of "The streets find uses for things". Reflecting my own view of reality my misremembrance of that quote which I will now claim as my own is "The streets find their own uses for technology". In free societies those street uses of cognitive state-altering technologies are what I think we have the most to worry about.
Over on the Brain Waves blog Richard Glen Boire is arguing for the unlimited right to erase one's memories.
The right to cognitive liberty posits that the power to enhance, erase, or otherwise modify one’s own memory ought to be an individual decision; something that is neither compelled nor prohibited by laws. While some people will undoubtedly make poor decisions with regard to modifying their own memories, it should not be a crime to modify your own thinking processes. Government may rightfully police our actions, but it does not, and should not, have the power to police our minds.
I would argue that in order for people to be granted full rights they must be held responsible to maintain cognitive competence and sufficient memory recall abilities to provide sufficient support to the proper functioning of the legal system and of society as a whole. For instance, suppose someone witnesses a brutal murder and can identify the person who commited a crime. Does that person have a right to go home afterward and erase that memory? Or suppose someone commits a crime. Does that person have a right to erase that memory? Imagine someone taking a lie detector test and being able to truthfully state that they have no memory of having raped someone because they conveniently had that memory erased.
Widespread memory erasure would allow a person to claim no memory of making a verbal contract. It would also make it difficult for, say, white collar crime prosecutors to trace a complex trail of fraud if perfectly innocent unknowing tools of the fraud had the memory of their last bank back office job erased because they didn't want to remember the drudgery that the job entailed.
There are aspects of how our minds work that are essential for the proper functioning of a rights-based society. The exercise of some kind of modification of the brain that undermines the ability to make a rights-based society work can not itself be an unlimited right. The biggest challenge facing us with mind engineering is that it will eventually become possible to modify minds in a number of ways to create sentient beings that are highly rational but which behave in ways that make the continued existence of a rights-based society highly problematic.
Over on the Gene Expression blog Razib has responded to my previous post On Religious Belief And Germ Line Engineering. I'd like to flesh out in more detail some of my ideas about genetic engineering and religious belief and experience.
First of all, when it comes to the God stuff there are beliefs, experiences, and behaviors. It will probably be possible to genetic engineering on minds to vary any one of those categories separately or to link them to happen together in various combinations.
Religious beliefs could be genetically engineered to be more likely. It might be possible to genetically engineer a mind to be more or less prone to believe in a God and a supernatural. This could probably be done without programming the mind to feel the presence of a supernatural being as a special experience. It might just be necessary to program in an uncritical sense of wonder and awe at life in such a way that a mind would be more prone to interpret their sense of awe as evidence of a supernatural existence outside of our own existence. Of couse, the more direct and heavy-handed approach would be to reinforce religious beliefs by programming a mind to feel periodic heavy doses of feeling like one is in a divine presence.
Experiences and behaviors could be genetically engineered to go together. Imagine a genetically engineered mind that feels a great deal of pleasure from carrying out some repetitive worshipful action. Imagine, for instance, genetically engineering a mind to respond repetitive bowing by feeling a strong sense of an intense presence. That feeling of a presence could be made to be pleasureable. This would encourage the bowing behavior.
Depending on the needs of the particular religion, the bowing could trigger other emotions along with the pleasure. The pleasure would be what is used to encourage the bowing. But the other emotions that accompanied it could be used to encourage types of desired resulting behaviors. For instance, anger or solidarity or other feelings might accompany the feelings of pleasure. One could even design a mind that would use the previous mental state that existed before the bowing activity as an input into some logic (all subconscious) to choose a new emotional state to experience. So, for instance, if a person came to worship with a group and that person felt some emotion that is akin to a feeling of injustice then the bowing could trigger pleasure and anger at the same time.
Or picture a mind that was genetically engineered to periodically have a strong desire to be with groups of people and also to want to bow. Minds could be genetically engineered to prefer a particular style of worship.
How about forgiveness and love? Hey, why not program them to happen? One could make a bowed head, closed eyes, and hands folded together in front of one in combination with some mental state all together cause someone to feel a strong sense of forgiveness. There are enough different aspects to a prayer ritual that it might be possible to combine the elements of the ritual and process them in a genetically engineered mind to trigger a feeling of forgiveness and of dissolving anger.
Depending on the needs of the particular religion the feeling of anger or the feeling of love could be triggered by ritualistic practices. But herein lies the political problem for humanty as a whole. Religious belief systems can conflict. If different groups genetically engineer their offspring with different God programming (different rituals or environmental stimuli as triggers for different emotional states and behaviors then the gaps between how different groups see each other could grow larger. Conflicts could become more intractable. and the resulting conflicts
As I've previously argued, one of the greatest threats from genetic engineering will come from mind engineering. Most discussions of genetic engineering of the mind that I come across are about whether and when it will be possible to raise intelligence. Certainly that will become possible to do and the impact of doing so will be profound. But the biggest threat to humanity from genetic engineering of progeny comes from genetic engineering that makes different groups of humans incompatible with other groups as a result of incompatible personalities. Differences in religious belief will lead to differences in choices of how to engineer the minds of offspring. This will become on of several reasons why humanity may break up into separate and viciously competing groups of mental types.
On the Gene Expression blog Razib has a discussion on (among other things) IQ, scientists, and religious belief. One question is particularly interesting:
I wanted to start my series on religion discussing scientists because many of us who believe in genetic engineering and the promise of the post-human future do not think in great detail about the cultural implications on the individual level. What would changes in the germ-line imply for faith in the soul for instance? Many of us secularists might imagine that high intellectual ability will mean that religions will whither away, and the scientists with their low levels of belief serve as models. But I think close examination of the data and some analysis indicates that scientists might not be the best models, that their atheism is the product of a complex interplay of variables, and not just the result of their super-human levels of intellect (cough, cough).
I believe it will be possible to genetically engineer minds to be more prone to feel something that they will interpret as a divine presence. At the same time, I think it will be possible to genetically engineer minds that do not easily feel anything that seems transcendentally supernatural and that are extremely skeptical, analytical, intensely curious, and altogether faithless. So how will germ line genetic engineering affect people's views of the supernatural? It depends on how their minds will be genetically engineered.
While it is not yet possible to genetically engineer transcendental experiences Michael Persinger has had success in invoking the feeling of being in the presence of an other-worldly being by use of electromagnetic field wavelength patterns.
If the mind can be trained to experience sensed presences then isn't it likely that genetic engineering could make the mind more easily trainable to have such experiences?Technically speaking, what's about to happen is simple. Using his fixed wavelength patterns of electromagnetic fields, Persinger aims to inspire a feeling of a sensed presence - he claims he can also zap you with euphoria, anxiety, fear, even sexual stirring. Each of these electromagnetic patterns is represented by columns of numbers - thousands of them, ranging from 0 to 255 - that denote the increments of output for the computer generating the EM bursts.
Some of the bursts - which Persinger more precisely calls "a series of complex repetitive patterns whose frequency is modified variably over time" - have generated their intended effects with great regularity, the way aspirin causes pain relief. Persinger has started naming them and is creating a sort of EM pharmacological dictionary. The pattern that stimulates a sensed presence is called the Thomas Pulse, named for Persinger's colleague Alex Thomas, who developed it. There's another one called Burst X, which reproduces what Persinger describes as a sensation of "relaxation and pleasantness."
Again, if all these experiences described below can be induced in minds in a lab then won't they also turn out to be genetically engineerable to happen more easily in people while they carry out their every day activities?_Perceptual and Motor Skills_, 1993, 76, 80-82.
TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION(TM) AND GENERAL MEDITATION ARE ASSOCIATED WITH ENHANCED COMPLEX PARTIAL EPILEPTIC-LIKE SIGNS: EVIDENCE FOR "COGNITIVE" KINDLING?
M. A. Persinger
Laurentian University
Summary. - The Personal Philosophy Inventories of 221 university students who had learned to meditate (about 65% to 70% Transcendental Meditation(TM)) were compared to 860 nonmeditators. Meditators displayed a significantly wider range of complex partial epileptic-like signs. Experiences of vibrations, hearing one's name called, paranormal phenomena, profound meaning from reading poetry/prose, and religious phenomenology were particularly frequent among meditators. Numbers of years of TM practice were significantly correlated with the incidence of complex partial signs and sensed presences but not with control, olfactory, or perseverative experiences. The results support the hypothesis that procedures which promote cognitive kindling enhance complex partial epileptic-like signs.
"...The brain can discriminate and respond to different kinds of very subtle, external magnetic fields, without the individual necessarily being aware of it, except through their imagery."
"We attempted to determine if the light flashing frequency in conjunction with, that is, synergistically, a magnetic field being applied to the brain would enhance suggestibility and imagery. What we found was there was indeed a change in imagery, and that the imagery was specific to those kinds of properties that are unique to temporal lobe activity; feelings of floating, movement, certain complex visual sensations." - Michael Persinger"There is little doubt that the class of experiences that comprise mystical experiences in general, and NDE's in particular, is strongly correlated with temporal lobe activity....Kate Makarec and I have found that all of the major components of the NDE [near death experience], including out-of-body experiences, floating, being pulled towards a light, hearing strange music, and profound meaningful experiences can occur in experimental settings during minimal electrical current induction to the temporal region due to exogenous spike-and-wave magnetic field sources."
"The hypothesis that temporal lobe excitability is tied to these kinds of experiences goes back to the clinical literature, in which we know that there are ceratin personality and subjective experience features that are associated with electrical foci in the temporal lobe, specifically epileptic foci....We found that the normal population shows these symptoms, too, and that they appear to lie along a continuum.""The personalities of normal people who display enhanced temporal lobe activity... usually display enhanced creativity, suggestibility, memory capactity and intuitive processing. Most of them experience a rich fantasy or subjective world that fosters their adaptability. These people have more frequent experiences of a sense of presence during which time 'an entity is felt and sometimes seen;' exotic beliefs rather than traditional religious concepts are endorsed."
- Michael Persinger in Report on Communion by Ed Conroy
Imagine a future in which a religious war is fought over whether people should be genetically engineered to believe in the supernatural. Or imagine a war fought over which types of religiously significant mental states people should have genetic tendencies to experience.
In an article entitled 'Redesigning Humans': Taking Charge of Our Own Heredity writer Gina Maranto (herself author of Quest for Perfection: The Drive to Breed Better Human Beings) reviews Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future by Gregory Stock.
Gregory Stock is an optimist about the effects of genetic engineering of offspring. Maranto makes clear that she is more worried than Stock about what humans will do with the ability to genetically modify future generations:
But even if evolution could be steered in a positive direction, why presume that humans have the wisdom to do so? ''Redesigning Humans'' is an act of both boosterism and reductionism. It admits but then ignores the enormous complexity of biological systems; it places biology firmly above social, ecological and economic considerations; and it reduces concepts like success in life to the purely physical, as if health and longevity were the only issues that mattered. Isn't it pretty to think so?
It is perfectly legitimate to have such concerns. Surely any technology can be put to uses that are dangerous. However, what is lacking in the vast bulk of the more pessimistic writings about human genetic engineering is any real analysis of exactly which types of genetically engineered characteristics would pose great threats to civilization. What real dangers to civilization might arise as a result of genetic engineering? The stereotype some critics cite (and an old theme in science fiction) is of clone armies willing to obey the orders of their masters. However, even that stereotype is typically presented without a precise description of which personality characteristics, engineered into human fetuses, would lead to that dystopian future.
The ability to control personality type of offspring poses the largest potential danger of human genetic engineering. But here we have to be precise. Not all imaginable personality types are a threat to civilization. Many people will choose personality types for their offspring that are unlike the personality characteristics that they themselves possess. However, there are many different personalities that one will be able to choose for a child that might simply make them happier or less socially awkward while not in any way making them into people who are greater dangers to the rest of us.
Why do most of us choose to respect the rights of others? Why don't we all do so all of the time? Obviously, details of our personal experiences during upbringing play a role in determining just how fair or how compassionate each person wants to be or is able to be. But there is plenty of evidence (e.g, from comparative studies of twins raised apart) that biology plays a big role in causing differences in human behavior. For instance, men and women have radically different rates of commission of most types of crime. Another example is roid rage. Its caused by steroids that body builders take and it demonstrates how hormones can boost the propensity to commit violent acts.
Its clear that biochemistry can affect personality and behavior. Since that is the case ways will be found to manipulate biochemical states of the brain thru much genetic manipulations. Most drugs that alter mental state have to be taken continuously to maintain a different mental state. By contrast, genetic manipulations will create enduring changes in metal state because the genes are there throughout a person's life. So genetic engineering will allow permanent changes in offspring personality and in behavioral tendencies.
If, for some reason, a small number of people decided they wanted to genetically engineer their kids to be lacking in empathy, compassion, and conscience we'd face the risk of genetically engineered psychopaths living among us. This might even be done by tyrants who want to create progeny who will rule as they do. Imagine someone like Saddam Hussein choosing to make sure his kids are absolutely brutal and manipulative by genetic design.
In most diatribes against human genetic engineering there is a lack of specificity as to what forms of genetic engineering would be most threatening to human civilization. I see this lack of specificity in part a result of a reluctance to accept the degree to which human personality types will turn out to be determined by genetic variations. After all what other types of genetic changes to humans have the potential to causes problems for society at large on the scale the cognitive genetic engineering will be able to cause? Lots of people are really tall or really short with assorted colors of skin, hair, and eyes. Some people are thin and others naturally more muscular or heavy set. Most of these differences are not absolute obstacles to the maintenance of human civilizations. It seems obvious to me that variations in physical shape are not as important as differences in goes on in human minds.
Let us illustrate that last point by looking at lions and tigers. Imagine someone genetically engineered lions to be as smart as humans. Imagine the lions could even talk. Would you want to have lions living in your neighborhood if they still had strong instincts that caused them to look at all other species (including humans!) as something to hunt down and eat? I hope your answer is "NO!".
To acknowledge the key role of genetics in personality formation forces one to confront a number of derivative admissions about the nature of us each personally (what, I'm genetically fated to be [fill in something you don't like about yourself here]?) and also about why some people are more dysfunctional and socially pathological. One result of this unwillingness to accept the genetics-personality link is this rather sterile and unproductive debate about the dangers posed by human genetic engineering.
In future posts I will explore some of the dangers that we will face when genetic engineering gives us the ability to finely control progeny personality types and behavioral characteristics. When we gain the ability to determine progeny personality types we will no longer be able to afford to ignore these dangers.
Aside: to be fair, I haven't read Maranto's book and so I can't say whether she addresses these dangers there.