Brain scanning technology that can detect sociopaths
Perhaps valuable, but we should first figure out what we’d do with them after detection—I do not see a handy moral solution, and without one we can quickly come to overreaction or atrocities.
It’s probably worth distinguishing between people in the following scenarios being scanned and found to be a sociopath: a) a suspect in a crime b) someone found guilty of a crime by other means c) very young child d) adult with no criminal record not currently suspected for a crime
b. I expect that in that case we’d use it primarily to inform sentencing and parole decisions, and that might actually improve those decisions. (I’m not particularly confident that it will, though… say 30%?)
I’d actively prefer we avoid scanning in cases d and a, except perhaps as research on populations, as I don’t trust us to do anything even remotely sensible with the data.
I’m not sure about c… it depends mostly on whether we have any way of intervening usefully in their subsequent development.
Ensure the role doesn’t allow much in the way of status, money, power or any other form of personal gain. Unfortunately that is hard to do given the possibility to gain the aforementioned goods via the opportunity to accept bribes.
The most obvious way to go about prevention would be to institute excessively redundant amounts of transparency.
Ensure the role doesn’t allow much in the way of status, money, power or any other form of personal gain.
Running a big, important research project which will shape decisions about what to do with a large number of people? There’s no way to keep money, status, and power away from that.
Improvement in cryonics technology and storage.
Fully online (accredited by European universities) education
Brain scanning technology that can detect sociopaths
Improved tools for online anonymity
Major study into the genetics of intelligence to complement the work currently done by BGI
Perhaps valuable, but we should first figure out what we’d do with them after detection—I do not see a handy moral solution, and without one we can quickly come to overreaction or atrocities.
It’s probably worth distinguishing between people in the following scenarios being scanned and found to be a sociopath:
a) a suspect in a crime
b) someone found guilty of a crime by other means
c) very young child
d) adult with no criminal record not currently suspected for a crime
In which cases would you most prefer such scans be made?
b. I expect that in that case we’d use it primarily to inform sentencing and parole decisions, and that might actually improve those decisions. (I’m not particularly confident that it will, though… say 30%?)
I’d actively prefer we avoid scanning in cases d and a, except perhaps as research on populations, as I don’t trust us to do anything even remotely sensible with the data.
I’m not sure about c… it depends mostly on whether we have any way of intervening usefully in their subsequent development.
While b sounds useful, it’s hardly the visionary project called for. I suspect Konkvistador had something broader in mind.
This seems relevant.
We should also first figure out how we’re going to keep sociopaths from taking over the program.
Ensure the role doesn’t allow much in the way of status, money, power or any other form of personal gain. Unfortunately that is hard to do given the possibility to gain the aforementioned goods via the opportunity to accept bribes.
The most obvious way to go about prevention would be to institute excessively redundant amounts of transparency.
Running a big, important research project which will shape decisions about what to do with a large number of people? There’s no way to keep money, status, and power away from that.