Mental rejuvenation would solve some of the issues. But what is this supposed to be specifically? Increased memory consolidation or some kind of amnesia? What about habits and motor memory? Without more elaboration, it amounts to hand-waving. Also, the body wouldn’t adapt to the environment, e.g. new foods. Positing additional drugs for ‘reprogramming the body’ might help but again what would they do? You can of course stack fixes on fixes with drugs. I’m not sure how this compares to regular evolution.
My estimate of what could plausibly be achieved in the near future is my model of “the thing that happens during childhood”, maybe with better control by the individuum. This would be some phases of heightened learning rate/‘priority’ for different parts of our mind (fear and recognizing safe/unsafe situations; calibrating and exploring perception and motion; status and norms; sexuality; sense of self and identity; …). I assume that this ‘emotional rejuvenation’ could work relatively well ‘for a few rounds’ even with relatively crude methods. As dkirmani notes, psychedelics do have effects that seem related. But for things like memory or systematically replacing old/mortal neurons, this would likely not suffice.
Mental rejuvenation would solve some of the issues. But what is this supposed to be specifically? Increased memory consolidation or some kind of amnesia? What about habits and motor memory? Without more elaboration, it amounts to hand-waving. Also, the body wouldn’t adapt to the environment, e.g. new foods. Positing additional drugs for ‘reprogramming the body’ might help but again what would they do? You can of course stack fixes on fixes with drugs. I’m not sure how this compares to regular evolution.
Good points!
My estimate of what could plausibly be achieved in the near future is my model of “the thing that happens during childhood”, maybe with better control by the individuum. This would be some phases of heightened learning rate/‘priority’ for different parts of our mind (fear and recognizing safe/unsafe situations; calibrating and exploring perception and motion; status and norms; sexuality; sense of self and identity; …). I assume that this ‘emotional rejuvenation’ could work relatively well ‘for a few rounds’ even with relatively crude methods. As dkirmani notes, psychedelics do have effects that seem related. But for things like memory or systematically replacing old/mortal neurons, this would likely not suffice.