Slashdot Mirror
Is Neurostim Becoming a Reality?
destinyland writes "There is a current mass market for 'cognitive enhancement' products — and arguments about the black market potential for neurostim. 'The same neurostim device that uses electric impulses from a brain implant to treat people with Parkinson's Disease can be tweaked by a few millimeters and pulse rates to make cocaine addicts feel like they are high all the time... Mix the glamour of surgical self-improvement with the geekiness of high-tech gadget fetishism and you have a niche cosmetic neurostim market waiting to be tapped...'"
I don't know about anyone else but every person I know who uses drugs on a regular basis is a complete moron and doesn't have anything better to do than getting doped up and hanging out and talking with their friends for hours about nothing. I fail to see how this will be useful for anyone else because I doubt you would want to sit around and read a novel while you are high whether its from drugs or some brain simulation. Now won't you kids get off my lawn so I can sit here peacefully and read a book on my vacation.
Even if cocaine and other drugs were completely harmless, their ability to give serious but unearned pleasure would seriously warrant their banning. I admit, that this sounds religion-motivated, but that's hardly a drawback of an argument...
Consider sex (yes, I said it) — the intense pleasure most participants derive from it is the reward for the excruciating pains of childbirth and hardships of the childrearing. Contrary to the wide-spread misunderstanding, the mainstream religions want us to have sex — as much as possible. They just want it all to be for the purpose of reproduction, rather than simple self-indulgence.
Now, what is the justification for a cocaine-user's pleasure? What did he do to deserve, what a Trainspotting's character describes as "thousand times the most intense orgasm you've ever experienced"?
Of course, one needn't necessarily have earned all the pleasures of life — as long as one's habits don't interfere with others, one ought to be able to enjoy them. This is an individualist view, and I don't fully disagree. I would, however, be rather wary of such people: I wouldn't want one of them to marry my daughter, for example, as he may decide one day to stop caring for her. I wouldn't want my daughter to become such a person either, because I not only want my own grandchildren, I also want the Humanity to continue to exist (preferably — my brand of it, the Western Civilization).
So, even if cocaine did absolutely no harm to the body by itself — and the devices in TFA promise the cocaine-like effects without the chemical additiction — I wouldn't want to be near a user. Not saying, it should be illegal, but certainly frowned upon.
I'd suggest, we use these methods on the people either condemned to death for their crimes (capital punishment), or desiring to end their life on their own (suicide)...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.