Slashdot Mirror
Inside the New Science of Neuroengineering
palegray.net writes "Wired brings us a look into the world of neuroengineering, the science of hacking the brain to improve its function. Dr. Ed Boyden is the director of MIT's Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, focusing on innovative methods of physically altering neuroanatomy for various purposes. As useful as discoveries in the field may be, the work certainly raises moral and ethical questions. From the article: '"If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core," says Dr. Debra Matthews
of The Berman Institute of Bioethics. "We place ourselves in the mind and therefore the brain. (Mood-altering surgery) feels like fundamentally modifying who a person is."'"
> "If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core,"
Wouldn't altering someone's personality by altering their brain imply that 'we are our brain' (which is of course influenced by chemicals produced in other parts of the body, so in a way one could also say 'we are our bodies'), thus answering this boring question?
But there's one better. Try the new Kitteh Linux!
...is somebody changed enough to make them a different person?
If somebody elects to have a procedure done to permanently alter the way their brain works, are they still the same person?
I wonder how effective this would be - even after this mood alteration is done, won't the patient still have memories from their past on how they used to act. It's interesting what kind of stress that would put on somebody's psyche to have an abrupt change in how they act, how they think and how a patient would react to the stress.
I wonder if this could be used to correct mental disorders like schizophrenia where medication has been ineffective.
I wonder if this will ever get to the test phase...
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
It is an interesting take on an old technique. Instead of using direct electrical stimulation to stimulate the brain, he uses virally-transcoded neurons to respond to different wavelengths of light....then pipes a fiber optic cable into a mouse brain. To do what? To make it run in circles.
It's a proof of technology, but nothing more. Engineering the brain would imply we understand how it works, which, more or less, we still don't. Not really at a cellular level, not really at a systems level, not even really at a gross level either. We know an order of magnitude more than we did even a decade ago, but we are no closer to altering behavior than we were when the lobotomy was invented...the first 'neuroengineering'.
I think it is much more likely that we will first have engineered modules, either synthetic neuronal or otherwise, that will process independently and then 'plug into' our pre-existing sensory input pathways, rather than direct brain modification.
Aren't they change personality too?
Like Prozak, Paxil for example - the SSRI(Selective Serotonin Reuptake inhibitors).
People using that drugs are "on" that drugs, they have a changed personality, with no depression, but they are chemically altered - their serotonin reuptake in the brain is inhibited.
I'm bipolar and take lithium to alter the range of moods I experience - does that mean I'm no longer me?
I don't see this as an ethical issue so long as the results are within the limits of what we consider "normal" for human kind. Once we start discussing augmentations to give people x-ray vision, streaming video memory and frickin' lasers attached to their heads then we have an ethical issue.
Whilst AI has produced some fantastic techniques for solving countless problems through the years pretty much everyone in the field accepts that on current computer architecture it's scope is limited. For us to make any advance towards strong AI we'd need much greater computing power and some see biological computing, others see quantum computing as key here.
Perhaps you might just call it a branch of biological computing, but I've thought for a while now and said here a few times that I think realistically what we'll see is that instead of trying to re-create the brain we'll simply start working out how to control the brain and effectively end up programming it. It seems possible that in a few decades we'll be able to grow or harness brain matter for processing at will and this new science of neuroengineering coupled with advanced in biology are I'm sure steps towards that. We will also almost certainly see experts in artificial intelligence from computer science backgrounds involved as well of course and the end result will be convergence between neuroscience, computer science and biology when they realise they all effectively are seeking the same goal in this particular scenario - understanding and perhaps creation of true and customized intelligence.
It's something that sounds like it's from the realm of sci-fi for the most part certainly, but the fact we already are at the stage where we can interface electronics with nervous systems and I don't think it's an unrealistic future.
Of course we'd have a new round of arguments about ethics- if it's intelligent should we be controlling it? countering that, if it's entirely man made then is it really any different to controlling a computer? This is a particularly interesting question should we find out that the brain really isn't much more than an extremely complex computer in the first place, an argument for which there is already a ton of evidence. At that point if there are ethical considerations to be taken into account where do you draw the line in computer complexity before treating it differently? Presumably much of Asimov's ideas can be applied here but is there a difference between organic and electronic ultra intelligent systems?
slashdot chorus of "let us hack away at our bodies, and use all the mind altering substances we want, the enemy here is just narrow-minded busy bodies"
there is a subtle philosophical issue at play here, and the issue is self-perception. for example: you win a chess match, or ace an exam, or win the nobel prize, while under the influence of a concentration enhancing drug, or with some sort of technological mind alteration
the question is: did YOU achieve something, or did your modification achieve something?
what happens is we develop a poverty of self-perception. you begin to think: without various crutches, i cannot achieve what i achieved. such that you have no confidence, and you have no real self-regard. you begin to think of yourself as just a piece of meat channeling some sort of technology or drug. that you yourself are not the key to your own performance
meanwhile, to achieve something without any hackery or artificial boost is to replenish self-regard and confidence
in other words, the issue is not what other people think of you, or what shrill narrow minds think of you. the issue is the damage you do to what you think of yourself with these deep modifications
emphasis: deep modifications. no, sorry, we are most certainly talking about modifications to your performance nothing at all like a good meal or a good night's sleep. some will say radical modifications are no different philosophically from simple sustenance in terms of contributing to performance. but hydrating before an exam is absolutely nothing like taking a cognition enhancer in terms of contributing something to your performance, really
if you really have to ask why, it has to do with what goes on in the mind, with the self, with your core competency, not simple rote material contribution on the periphery of what it takes to pass an exam. for example: you can't complete an exam without a pencil, and you also can't complete an exam without your mind. to think of them as equivalent contributions to your self-regard and your performance is not a valid or logically coherent argument
if you yourself don't even think any of your accomplishments are due to your own innate abilities, then you eventually have no drive in life, you become empty and self-loathing. quality of life and happiness is not defined by pure accomplishment. quality of life is derived from self-regard. it is possible to win at everything, and hate yourself, and be an unhappy person. it is also possible to try hard, do mediocre, but still have high self-consideration
when you achieve something, and you don't even believe it is because of your own abilities, you have developed a hollow, rotten chasm in your ability to enjoy your own life
in this way, a lot of you really need to pause and reconsider cognition enhancers, technological tweaks on mental abilities, and the like. no: it is not no big deal. it is a deeply serious deal, and it has absolutel ynothing to do with judgmental busy bodies, but simply because of subtle philosophical alterations on the idea of "self" that can lead to terrible consequences for your own happiness
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because you are a clueless moron
you can also ask a completely logically valid question about the implications of a given technology
for you to confuse the two motivations makes you just as big as a fool as the busy body morons you detest
really
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
#1: that i'm a shrill busy body trying to dictate what other people do with their own bodies
#2: that mind alterating technologies is essentially like drinking coffee, or having proper nutrition
these are both points of view that i completely addressed in the post you are responding to
so what i suggest for you is that the next time that you respond to someone's post, you actually fucking read what they fucking said first
i know, i'm kind of a wacky guy that way
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i already addressed your point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most still apply Cartesian dualism (mind and brain as separate phenomena) to the brain. This error has propagated from Decartes' own self-admitted fear of The Church. He feared being persecuted as was Galileo unless he offered a sacrosanct seat for the soul. Scientifically he had no such leanings. Nor should we now, with our understanding of dynamics in complex systems. (Not to say we understand the complex system of the brain -- we don't -- but we know better why we don't.) It is probably best to consider mind in terms of process rather than object ("the" mind). More simply, "Brain is a noun, mind is a verb. Mind is what brain does." (Karl Pribram)
The subjects under consideration in TFA are no more engineering than bashing millions of atomic particles together in an accelerator is quantum engineering. Compared to the subtle and highly interdependent Hebbian cellular assemblies where processing occurs, they are massive invasive assaults.
To consider (as per the example) changes in personality only in terms of electrical and surgical interventions exemplifies the engineering slant and belies the lack of understanding of the neuro-. Changes in personality also occur due to chemical (including dietary) influences, as well as environmental factors during (life-long) development, not to mention social and other learning factors. If the ethical questions are regarding "self" and its generation, all must be considered. Thus these should not be considered (and are not) new questions for bioethics. Given the lack of subtlety of the interventions discussed, they should hardly even be grounds for considering a new outlook on the questions.
Changes in personality are probably the worst example to use. Our best understanding of personality is based on statistical correlations of test answers, self-reports and observations by trained and familiar observers, the best of which reach r=0.3 (30% correlation). That means they can explain less than 10% (for r=0.3, r^2=0.09) of the variance in the observations. Leaving 90% of the variance unexplained means you've said almost nothing useful. Since much of basic personality theory statistics are based on subjective consideration of the data ("trained" judgement in how much to rotate axis of plotted data to maximize the results) as well as subjective judgement of test results themselves (ie. inkblot test scoring) we're probably explaining for closer to 0% of the variance. Any results, then, are as illusory as personality itself.
That last statement is ironic -- an anti-truism. Despite the failure of science (especially statistics) to prove the existence of personality and its components, we continue to exhibit them. The failure is probably in our understanding and the language thereof. That being said, what was said regarding personality in TFA probably shouldn't have been either because despite the consensual agreement of its existence, we don't know much at all about what we're talking about.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
This concept has been a real-life concern for many years already. Some autistics fear the consequences of "curing" autism. They have a rather angry relationship with groups like Cure Autism Now. These activists feel that the only way to offer such a cure would be to erase the person that now exists in their body. This dilemma was well presented in 2001 in the book "The Speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon.
"If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality... that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we are at our core,"
Really?
If we drug up someone so as to flatten their emotional responses, don't we change their Neuroticism level (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)? Is that not changing their personality?
We probably don't want to do that for its own sake, but suppose it happens as a side-effect.
How's this different?
My view on this: There is no soul or similar at the core. The "core" we think to perceive is actually our consciousness, it is an observer of our actions, thoughts and feelings. As long as there is consciousness, "you" exist, although a certain amount of intelligence and something for your consciousness to observe (i.e. feelings, memories) might also be required. Your consciousness is a product of the same infinitely complex chemical factory that is also responsible for the rest of "you" (those memories, etc.). Look at these as plug-ins. Or maybe the OS to your system. You can't alter your consciousness, but you can alter the rest. When you do that, whether through drugs or something else, you change. As in, "you" change. So in answer to circletimessquare's question "did YOU achieve something, or did your modification achieve something?", I would say YOU achieved something. Whether you feel like you did or not, is another question, though it's not an important one, since you can alter everything about your psychological self (though not yet, of course), including the image you have of yourself, how happy you are or any other variety of things. I know a lot of people will have serious problems with this theory, but, well.. I really don't have anything to say to them, I mean, you're allowed to disagree. I personally think this is the future; people need to get a lot smarter if the human race (or should I say conscious thought?) is going to survive on this planet.
I've never heard Algol described as being "Object Oriented", in fact, that term was unknown in 1965 when Algol was invented.
At best, it facilitated "structured programming", but even later languages based on Algol weren't Object Oriented (i.e. PL/I).
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
All my abilities are either genetic luck of the draw or results of my environment, fatalistic, but rational.
I cannot think as well as some, or socialize as well as others, so this treatment could be argued as therapeutic. All of a sudden many people said "oh its therapeutic, that's OK then". They have some idea of a threshold of what abilities are "natural" and as long as we are bringing people up to that threshold we are fine, but going past it would of course be hubris. I should stop feeding trolls, or else poison the food.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
...since without them I couldn't achieve this post.
Radical modifications are certainly different from a good meal or a good night's sleep. That's why school our children, instead of simply feeding them and putting them to bed -- we need to make the radical changes in their mental and emotional structures that allow them to read, to write, to interact successfully with others, and to engage effectively with our society and culture.
If surgical or pharmaceutical enhancements allow us to better control our thought processes, to better perceive and respond to our environment, or to better achieve whatever we individually perceive as "success", please stay the hell out of our way as we take advantage of them.
Every human (who lives long enough) will go through puberty. Not every human will be able to afford 'enhancements.' So, should we build a society with 2 classes of humankind?
It seems to me, that's one of the reasons moralists are raising issues. Maybe we should get ready to bow and scrape to the supermen. Maybe that will be good. But certainly don't you think we ought to talk about it a little?
Your attitude and mood are already affected by sleep, food, medicine, and other environmental factors.
Taken over a long time, this defines your personality.
There's a reason grumpy old men become grumpy old men, for most of them it's not because they were born that way.
Direct brain manipulation is just one of many ways to alter a personality.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Dr. Mengele?
Scientology has a Flash ad for their "video channel" on this page about neuroengineering, when they are intensely opposed/mistrustful of psychiatry (another brain-altering profession). Ha.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
> "If we surgically or electrically modify someone's personality...
> that raises many questions about personal identity, (of) who we
> are at our core," says Dr. Debra Matthews of The Berman Institute of Bioethics.
Screw that!
Just give me a chip I can plug-n-play a yappy personality so I can get with hot chicks like this.
How many dudes have you given the "can't we just be friends line" to, Debra? I got news for you, some people have no problem scrapping parts of their personality. Unload that shit like a deformed leg for a beautiful one grown in a lab, thanksforplayingbie.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is awesome. I guess it would void the warranty to overclock your brain, but imagine the FPS you could get. Might need some water cooling. Anyways, nice!!
I realise arguing against the faceless mods of /. (a duty we've all shouldered from time to time) makes me look like an idiot, but really WTF? Someone posts opposing all barriers to medical research and gets +5, I point out restrictions were put in place due to Nazi atrocities and get called a troll (maybe it's because I used a naughty word?).
Yea I know this is stupid, but I've had a few so what the hey.
Nick
if we did our computers will be ... ummm better
but we don't know how our brains work yet ....
how can you upgrade something when you don't even know how it works? ....(stupid idea) just seeing some result from an affect does not count .... have you noticed how many people are freaking messed up? we cannot even normalize ourselves into a meaningful society ... duh
is simple humanism
i support your desire to destroy religious and nationalistic bases for morality
but unless you replace the substandard form of moralities you outline above with another morality of your own choosing, you are a nihilist, and are therefore worse in effect on your world than any of the examples you cite above
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it