I found this link while randomly searching the net for strange new frontiers, so I would like to hear what anybody on this site is willing to put forward on the subject matter.


"...for there is a well-attested correlation between depressed mood and low social status. The manifestations of melancholic depression and, conversely, euphoric mania are also uncannily typical of social animals occupying omega and alpha status-roles. Evolutionary psychology suggests that depression is part of a genetically adaptive coping process. Depressive behaviour involves the passive submission to a prolonged or uncontrollable stress. The persistence into the post-hunter-gatherer era of depressive states continues to foster (relatively) stable hierarchies of social dominance of our hominid ancestors. Yet pecking orders aren't an immutable law of nature. In this sense at least, Aldous Huxley got it wrong. The project of radically enhancing everyone's mood and motivation is likely to be subversive of authority. Enhanced well-being will leave people less, not more, vulnerable to exploitation by a power elite. In Brave New World, members of the populace are (effectively) the opiated dupes of the ruling elites. Soma is used as a pacifying agent of social control. The social consequences of genetically pre-programmed happiness, however, will be very different. This is because everyday mental super-health promises to undermine the biological underpinnings of the dominance- and submission-relationships characteristic of humanity's ancestral environment. Happiness, and an enhanced responsiveness to a wider range of rewards, is empowering. Happiness, and a pharmacologically or genetically enhanced capacity to anticipate happiness, potentially enables people to take greater control of their own lives. This sense of empowerment is in striking contrast to the spectrum of "learned helplesness" and "behavioural despair" so typical of depressive disorders. Boosting the efficiency of tyrosine hydroxylase, for instance, doesn't act merely to elevate mood. The consequent enhanced noradrenaline function in the locus coeruleus tends to diminish subordinate behaviour. Super-well people don't let themselves be bossed around. Contrary to a thousand-and-one sci-fi dramas, our post-human descendants aren't doomed perpetually to re-enact the power-plays of the African savannah..."

"...at some momentous and exactly datable time, probably well before the end of the third millennium, the last unpleasant experience ever to occur on this planet will take place. It will be, perhaps, a (purely comparatively) minor pain in some (to us) obscure marine invertebrate. For just as the smallpox virus was systematically hunted down to extinction, so the precise molecular signature(s) of aversive experience and its predisposing genes can predictably be hunted down and wiped out as well. The application of nanotechnology, self-reproducing micro-miniaturised robots armed with quantum supercomputer processing power, and ultra-sophisticated genetic engineering, perhaps using retro-viral vectors, can assure the eradication of the root of all evil in its naturalistic guise throughout the living world. Eventually, the global ecosystem will be redesigned. The vertebrate genome will be rewritten. The advent of the post-Darwinian era will mark a major transition in the evolution of life on earth and beyond..."

"...today one can't responsibly advocate the use of major psychedelics. The risks to mental health are too high. "Bad trips" are an ever-present possibility for emotionally unenriched Darwinians. "Freak-outs" on LSD may befall even the psychologically robust. Informed consent prior to taking psychedelics is biologically impossible. This is because psychedelia is not just weirder than the drug-naïve mind conceives; it's weirder than the drug-naïve mind can conceive. One can't grasp, in advance, the nature of the sorts of experience to which one is nominally consenting. Yet in consequence of this taboo on chemically altered awareness, a host of unimaginably alien state spaces of consciousness remains off-limits. Trapped in the squalid psychochemical ghetto of Darwinian life, we lack the necessary wetware to conceptualise radically altered states of mind. We can't explicitly represent such states. We haven't even names for the strange new textures of selfhood and introspection that their metabolic pathways disclose. Alas pure reasoning is impotent to access their nature because it lacks the semantic primitives with which to do so. Yet when the vertebrate genome is rewritten, and gradients of genetically-preprogrammed bliss become the norm of mental health, our veil of ignorance can be safely ripped aside. Armed with exquisite cocktails of designer-drugs, even the most outlandish realms of psychedelia can then be investigated in depth. The study of consciousness can become a truly experimental scientific discipline. And crucially, the advent of post-Darwinian genotypes coding for invincible happiness offers a delightful prospect. At last we'll be able safely to explore other-worldly forms of existence in the confidence that they will all, without exception, radiate the sparkle of earthly paradise..."

"...day-to-day life may blend, say, the exalted, life-loving euphoria of a potent dopamine releaser and agonist with the serene and mystical love induced by an empathogen such as Ecstasy. Yet using recreational drugs may be counterproductive - even if empathetic euphoriants safer and more sustainable than neurotoxic MDMA ('Ecstasy') can be synthesised. In the reproductive era of designer babies ahead, we will instead have the option of genetically hardwiring [the predisposition to] a spectrum of lifelong empathetic bliss for our future offspring. Somatic gene therapies should be on offer to old-time Darwinians too, coupled with an enriched conception of mental health to mandate their use. Cloud-nine happiness can become the new biological default-condition and homeostatic 'set-point' around which our daily moods fluctuate. For it is feasible to combine states of incisive, goal-directed thought with a profound love and regard for others. The homeostatic mechanisms of the post-Darwinian psyche can ensure 'peak experiences' are as natural as breathing. By contrast, today's norms of so-called psychological health may come to be viwed in a different light. After all, they are just a pathological expression of the workings of Darwinian minds..."


Link

I don’t agree with going to route this author suggests, at least not at the point. He or she does however argue valid poins about our lack of understanding in a great many areas that pertain to human behavior and actions, or relations for that matter. I think understanding such would be paramount for the continued survival of our specie really, to bad many roadblocks exist in the path of such endeavors.

So overall without much more talking here are the debate questions.

1)Would you want humanity to go this route?

2)Do you understand what the author is talking about?

3)Do you think the authors writings are based more in objective, or subjective reality?

4)Do you see any real world applications of such thought in action today?

1)Would you want humanity to go this route?

Not exactly, for reasons that I will explain later.

2)Do you understand what the author is talking about?

I flatter myself that I have some notion. There's a lot of jargon in it, but I think I can bring the basic points of this essay down to earth.

1. Depression (and mania, although the essay only mentions this in passing) are associated with low social status. This is not surprising.

2. At some point in the future, it will be possible to completely eliminate suffering. This seems highly unlikely to me, and not a proper goal.

3. Once the state described in number two is reached, it will be possible to use designer drugs to produce a constant state of bliss, without any form of psychological damage. Personally, I think that state 2 is neither likely nor desirable, nor do I think that state 3 is dependent on state 2. Nor do I think that state 3 is desirable, although it is a little more plausible than state 2. However, there is something to be learned from the description of these two states, which I will describe later.

3)Do you think the authors writings are based more in objective, or subjective reality?

Both. There is some genuine (although very speculative) scientific thinking here, as well as a great deal of wishful thinking, and some highly questionable goals.

4)Do you see any real world applications of such thought in action today?

Here's the important point. What we can learn from this pie-in-the-sky essay is the self-evident fact that depression (and other forms of mental illness) not only result in an immense amount of suffering, but that they tend to lead to a low status in society. This is adding insult to injury. I reject the notion that the complete elimination of suffering is either possible or desirable; there is such a thing as appropriate grief. I reject the notion that we can or should be constantly ecstatic. However, it is certainly appropriate for medical science to develop ways to deal with clinical depression (not just "feeling sad") and other forms of mental illness with safe and effective mood-altering drugs, as well as other methods of treatment. It is, of course, important to avoid misuse and overuse of these substances; but when used properly, they literally save lives, and rescue human beings from unimaginable misery.

This essay is more-or-less a work of science fiction. I love science fiction, and it can be useful in making us think about reality; but it should not be confused with reality.

I agree with most everything you say, but I have to add though.

Genetics is creepy to me, because in essence you take a naturally occurring phenomena, such as evolution, and you interject into a parallel version. Its not creepy in that we do that already with our behavior, as I doubt human beings evolved to be factory workers or ceos, maybe they did, but the point again that I am trying to strive for is science can really make people aware of just how much we don’t know about a whole lot. So overall what is being implied by me is simply that, our day to day behavior and actions, for whatever the cover is not understood in some absolute fashion, which to me is utterly freighting to think about.

"The present study reports a first attempt to unravel the neurochemical background that underlies the difference in behavioural profiles between aggressive and non-aggressive male mice. For this purpose two bidirectionally selected lines for attack latency (SAL and LAL) were used. In pursuit of Cools'9 approach, the susceptibility of individuals of both selection lines to the dopamine agonist apomorphine was measured. The apomorphine was injected subcutaneously at dose levels of 2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg. Apomorphine is considered to stimulate the dopamine receptors in the telencephalon and induces stereotyped behaviour. The responsivity to apomorphine can be rated as a total stereotypy-score. SAL (aggressive) mice showed a significantly greater enhancement of stereotyped behaviour in response to apomorphine than LAL (non-aggressive) mice. In addition, it was demonstrated that this difference is of a quantitative rather than qualitative character. Pharmacokinetic variation between the two lines could be ruled out as cause of the difference. Hence, it was concluded that SAL mice are more sensitive to apomorphine than LAL males, which provides evidence for a difference in the dopaminergic system between the two selection lines. It was suggested that this difference underlies the difference in flexibility in behaviour between aggressive and non-aggressive male mice."

Such studies really should be able to be conducted on all organisms, from a protist to a human being, and of course individuals should be used. I mean take into account the idea of a worldview, well how much does a worldview impact brain structure and function, or has that question even been looked at? This mountain of ignorance if you will does not of course stop the world from turning, sad as it is to me to say that.

Now I don’t want to start an evolution debate, which is something of a problem in relation to this article or debate, so for purpose maybe the term developmental aspects of behavior in relation to biology would be better, or simply put nature I guess, rather then nurture. I am sure if you would like to debate this more we could easily skip the need to directly reference evolution overall is all, to much of a hot topic issue and no need to draw that in. I don’t think the need to understand though would in itself put the need to genetically engineer a society overall. I think just utter and complete factual understanding on its own could bring utopia all on its own.

Although it might not bring "utopia," I agree that knowing as much as we can about how the human brain works is an important goal. This does not have to lead to some kind of nightmarish version of Brave New World. It can lead to a world where many more people are able to free themselves from genuinely crippling mental illness, and lead full lives.

Even on a level beyond severe mental illness, this kind of scientific understanding can be useful in our daily lives. I can offer an example that I have seen more than once. In the hospital where I work, when a severely ill patient dies, sometimes a physician will offer a family member a Valium tablet. Some might say that this is a way of making the bereaved person's experience less authentic. However, if used properly, I see nothing but good in reducing the pain of grief, without denying the reality of the loss.

Yes, understanding does not equate into doping, even if many times over I view modern day psychology as legal drug dealing, along with those commercials that show you can be happy at work with a pill.

Understanding nature, or our nature would be one of the greatest achievements our specie could make overall. The reality of such though is simply philosophy or some form of it alone is not going to cut it, hard sciences will have to be involved at some point. Rational reaction to this instead of fighting it and denying it or whatever could then lead to acceptable ways to go about such.

Simply put going from individual to individual the relationship of nature to nurture on a more metabolic level could be understood in simple ways without having to do much doping, maybe some draws of organic fluids but hey, it could be a starting point. As I imagine not all males have the same levels of testosterone, or for that matter may even have testosterone act the same in a similar environment, and I do find such questions paramount overall to understanding. Its a gigantic or colossus endeavor, one that would cross many disciplines overall.

The simple idea though as this article has pointed out to me is such thought is really far removed from mainstream thinking even while being conducted in some other name.

1)Would you want humanity to go this route?

Perhaps. Depends on how it is done. We know many people are born with a genetically determined “brain chemistry” that dooms them to suffer, depression, fear, anxiety, compulsive behavior, etc. If you had the ability to guarantee that a child you were having would not suffer any of these conditions would you do it?

We also know that violent behavior is tied directly to low intelligence and brain chemistry.



3)Do you think the authors writings are based more in objective, or subjective reality?

We have the drugs today (anti-depressants) to alter brain chemistry to correct some forms of depression. If this could be done genetically we might want to consider doing it.

4)Do you see any real world applications of such thought in action today?

We are decades, or more away from identifying all of the genes that effect all aspects of mental health and ‘happiness”. But you can bet people are working on this. The Human Genome Project was just the first baby step. What will follow will make future generation healthier, happier and longer living.