5 ms·

Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably wo

Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. Also, pretending this whole argument isn't a pathos charged slippery slope analogy. Why would I go bars, restaurants, etc if there was a risk I could expose others to depression. Which I must assume is somehow contagious now, and somewhat fatal? Seems awfully inhumane and immoral to subject people to this new somewhat lethal contagious depression. More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response?

kongin 5y ago
> Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. I'd shoot the nearest billionaire to encourage the others.
- grayhatter 5y ago
  what does that even mean?
  - kongin 5y ago
    It means anyone who is in charge of a society where you need to work 18 hours a day to afford to eat bugs is not protected by the social contract. If enough of those people are killed the rest of them will get the memo that they'll live longer if they hoarded less wealth.
hoseja 5y ago
Depression certainly has fatality rate. And do you think it could not be construed as contagious?
- grayhatter 5y ago
  I think it's misleading to the point of maliciousness to call depression contagious. The phrase "ideas are contagious" is a great concept; because it's obvious on it's face that it's a rhetorical concept, and not really contagious. The average human however wouldn't be able to fairly determine if depression was actually contagious, or if it's just a rhetorical device. It's especially confounding when you consider that depression is both a symptom and disease. I recall a study linking depression to gut bacteria, which is without a doubt contagious. But that's not depression that's contagious, that's a bacterial infection; that has depression as a symptom. That's just the long winded way of saying yes, I think depression as a concept should be considered contagious, but only philosophically. It's wrong to say depression is contagious if the discussion is remotely medical.
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a setting based on a very similar concept, it'll probably be an old hat to most here on HN but I strongly encourage everyone to read it if they haven't already (along with The Doors of Perception). Huxley makes a lot of very good objections to why this "technology to make people happy with their social status" is actually a deeply dystopian notion. Like the Savage, I don't want to live in perfectly happy world where government writ forces me to live my life on rails set for me before my birth, a world where people can only colour within the lines drawn out by the elite and are completely incapable of even conceiving a world outside the one they're born into because they're medically engineered to love their social station and be perfectly happy in the caste they were born into. In the Savage's words: "I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin". I'd rather be authentically unhappy than artificially happy because someone else told me I have to be or I'm defective. Obviously in the case of depression and other mental illnesses it's different, you're aiming to treat a disease rather than make people slavishly compliant with a socio-political establishment. I don't object at all to the former, but I very much object to the latter if there's no way out for people who'd rather not be manipulated into social submission.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  I always thought Huxley's book completely failed as a critique. The savage in the story is quite literally that, a take on the noble savage myth. We're supposed to buy that he's more free because he's just like, authentic man, similar to Orwell's obsession with chocolate and fountain pens in 1984. The dumb worker peons always seemed silly because any sufficiently advanced control society would at the very least lift people up to be more useful, his characters are comical references to socialists (Lenina etc), it's so trite. It's also full of conservative moral panic, for example the sexual freedom and alternative experiences through synthetic drugs never get a serious treatment as potentially positive. Why not celebrate the fact that you can create children synthetically and women are freed from reproductive obligations? The book never goes beyond "oh no the family is dead, orgy porgy!" The book's plagued by the same provincial pastoralism you find in almost any British upper-class writer, be it Orwell, Tolkien, Huxley or C.S. Lewis.
bArray 5y ago
> Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. You would really give over so much control over your person? > More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response? Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt? The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments.
- grayhatter 5y ago
  > You would really give over so much control over your person? You'll not that I never said I'd give up my anatomy, just that I'd be happy regardless of whatever tasks or life I'm living. And yes, absolutely. If I was freed from negative emotions and experience. I could instead spend my time on what I want to, or need to. You didn't state what I think you meant to wrongly imply that it was a mind control device. > Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? I don't know, my current understanding of torture is you can break a person, meaning get them to give up on life. But can't actually ever control how they behave. I have no reason to believe that would change with better technology. Say you do break me, destroy my ability to do anything. I'd have no motivation to do anything at all ever. People suffering from such a severe breakdown or depression lose the ability to function. You can do that with torture now, "new technology allows us do to something faster" isn't impressive, nor revolutionary. > How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt? Never... humans have tried to create manchurian candidates already. It has always failed. Failed so drastically that we've never even come close to getting any human to willingly do something outside what they'd do through positive motivation. So you haven't given me a reason to suspect otherwise. > The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments. Let's pretend for the sake of this argument, that I do agree with you that we're losing additional freedoms that we have. And setting aside the reasons. (For the record, I don't. Arguments that this is a new scary thing we all should be afraid of are made without merit, with a single exception.) I'm assuming you're familiar with one, but not both versions of the slippery slope fallacy. I'll try to refute both. The first being `A will lead to B; B is bad; therefor A is bad`. That's a fallacy, it's not true. A could be good or bad, and B could be good or bad. But that doesn't mean A and B is bad. Billy is a mass murder, he's caught and sent to jail. Him being sent to jail means he's not allowed to do what he really wants, that's bad. A leads to B, B is bad. A and B happening together are still better than not happening. The other; `A might lead to B; B might lead to C, C is SO SO much worse than A and B could possibly be; thus A is bad and should be avoided`. This is the more common one, but it's logically flawed because you both have to prove that C is worse than A (which you haven't in this case), *AND* prove that A MUST lead to C. Which you also haven't done. Requiring people to prove that they have made an attempt to ensure they're not infectious/dangerous before being allowed to interact with a community, is not the same as requiring invasive treatment for a non-contagious disease. And you haven't given me a reason to think anyone's trying to apply that logic to it. One's infectious, the other isn't. You've said nothing to change my mind on this. Just because someone might say or do something stupid, isn't a reason to believe it will happen. There's a reason these fallacies are common, they seem like they could be true, and they're scary. The probability of it happening * how bad it could be = how scary it feels. The problem is, just because they're something that could happen, doesn't mean it's logical or reasonable to think it will happen. Thus it's just an argument people use to make others feel scared. Because they pretty much are pulled from thin air. There's no logical reason to say because all of these things exist, they will all be used together. Microwaves exist, and are good at heating water, humans are mostly water, why don't we heat our homes or ourselves with microwaves? Wireless power transmission exists, the hardware is cheaper than cables, why do we still use cables instead of wireless power? Because it exists, doesn't mean it will be used wrongly or maliciously. Stop being afraid that bad things might happen, instead focus on the bad things that ARE happening. If you don't want vaccines because they're dangerous, prove they're dangerous. Don't be opposed just because it might lead to something that you're afraid of.

kongin 5y ago

> Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. I'd shoot the nearest billionaire to encourage the others.

grayhatter 5y ago
what does that even mean?
- kongin 5y ago
  It means anyone who is in charge of a society where you need to work 18 hours a day to afford to eat bugs is not protected by the social contract. If enough of those people are killed the rest of them will get the memo that they'll live longer if they hoarded less wealth.

hoseja 5y ago

Depression certainly has fatality rate. And do you think it could not be construed as contagious?

grayhatter 5y ago
I think it's misleading to the point of maliciousness to call depression contagious. The phrase "ideas are contagious" is a great concept; because it's obvious on it's face that it's a rhetorical concept, and not really contagious. The average human however wouldn't be able to fairly determine if depression was actually contagious, or if it's just a rhetorical device. It's especially confounding when you consider that depression is both a symptom and disease. I recall a study linking depression to gut bacteria, which is without a doubt contagious. But that's not depression that's contagious, that's a bacterial infection; that has depression as a symptom. That's just the long winded way of saying yes, I think depression as a concept should be considered contagious, but only philosophically. It's wrong to say depression is contagious if the discussion is remotely medical.

BoxOfRain 5y ago

>Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a setting based on a very similar concept, it'll probably be an old hat to most here on HN but I strongly encourage everyone to read it if they haven't already (along with The Doors of Perception). Huxley makes a lot of very good objections to why this "technology to make people happy with their social status" is actually a deeply dystopian notion. Like the Savage, I don't want to live in perfectly happy world where government writ forces me to live my life on rails set for me before my birth, a world where people can only colour within the lines drawn out by the elite and are completely incapable of even conceiving a world outside the one they're born into because they're medically engineered to love their social station and be perfectly happy in the caste they were born into. In the Savage's words: "I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin". I'd rather be authentically unhappy than artificially happy because someone else told me I have to be or I'm defective. Obviously in the case of depression and other mental illnesses it's different, you're aiming to treat a disease rather than make people slavishly compliant with a socio-political establishment. I don't object at all to the former, but I very much object to the latter if there's no way out for people who'd rather not be manipulated into social submission.

Barrin92 5y ago
I always thought Huxley's book completely failed as a critique. The savage in the story is quite literally that, a take on the noble savage myth. We're supposed to buy that he's more free because he's just like, authentic man, similar to Orwell's obsession with chocolate and fountain pens in 1984. The dumb worker peons always seemed silly because any sufficiently advanced control society would at the very least lift people up to be more useful, his characters are comical references to socialists (Lenina etc), it's so trite. It's also full of conservative moral panic, for example the sexual freedom and alternative experiences through synthetic drugs never get a serious treatment as potentially positive. Why not celebrate the fact that you can create children synthetically and women are freed from reproductive obligations? The book never goes beyond "oh no the family is dead, orgy porgy!" The book's plagued by the same provincial pastoralism you find in almost any British upper-class writer, be it Orwell, Tolkien, Huxley or C.S. Lewis.

bArray 5y ago

> Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up. You would really give over so much control over your person? > More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response? Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt? The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments.

grayhatter 5y ago
> You would really give over so much control over your person? You'll not that I never said I'd give up my anatomy, just that I'd be happy regardless of whatever tasks or life I'm living. And yes, absolutely. If I was freed from negative emotions and experience. I could instead spend my time on what I want to, or need to. You didn't state what I think you meant to wrongly imply that it was a mind control device. > Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? I don't know, my current understanding of torture is you can break a person, meaning get them to give up on life. But can't actually ever control how they behave. I have no reason to believe that would change with better technology. Say you do break me, destroy my ability to do anything. I'd have no motivation to do anything at all ever. People suffering from such a severe breakdown or depression lose the ability to function. You can do that with torture now, "new technology allows us do to something faster" isn't impressive, nor revolutionary. > How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt? Never... humans have tried to create manchurian candidates already. It has always failed. Failed so drastically that we've never even come close to getting any human to willingly do something outside what they'd do through positive motivation. So you haven't given me a reason to suspect otherwise. > The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments. Let's pretend for the sake of this argument, that I do agree with you that we're losing additional freedoms that we have. And setting aside the reasons. (For the record, I don't. Arguments that this is a new scary thing we all should be afraid of are made without merit, with a single exception.) I'm assuming you're familiar with one, but not both versions of the slippery slope fallacy. I'll try to refute both. The first being `A will lead to B; B is bad; therefor A is bad`. That's a fallacy, it's not true. A could be good or bad, and B could be good or bad. But that doesn't mean A and B is bad. Billy is a mass murder, he's caught and sent to jail. Him being sent to jail means he's not allowed to do what he really wants, that's bad. A leads to B, B is bad. A and B happening together are still better than not happening. The other; `A might lead to B; B might lead to C, C is SO SO much worse than A and B could possibly be; thus A is bad and should be avoided`. This is the more common one, but it's logically flawed because you both have to prove that C is worse than A (which you haven't in this case), *AND* prove that A MUST lead to C. Which you also haven't done. Requiring people to prove that they have made an attempt to ensure they're not infectious/dangerous before being allowed to interact with a community, is not the same as requiring invasive treatment for a non-contagious disease. And you haven't given me a reason to think anyone's trying to apply that logic to it. One's infectious, the other isn't. You've said nothing to change my mind on this. Just because someone might say or do something stupid, isn't a reason to believe it will happen. There's a reason these fallacies are common, they seem like they could be true, and they're scary. The probability of it happening * how bad it could be = how scary it feels. The problem is, just because they're something that could happen, doesn't mean it's logical or reasonable to think it will happen. Thus it's just an argument people use to make others feel scared. Because they pretty much are pulled from thin air. There's no logical reason to say because all of these things exist, they will all be used together. Microwaves exist, and are good at heating water, humans are mostly water, why don't we heat our homes or ourselves with microwaves? Wireless power transmission exists, the hardware is cheaper than cables, why do we still use cables instead of wireless power? Because it exists, doesn't mean it will be used wrongly or maliciously. Stop being afraid that bad things might happen, instead focus on the bad things that ARE happening. If you don't want vaccines because they're dangerous, prove they're dangerous. Don't be opposed just because it might lead to something that you're afraid of.