Quick Take: Lesswrong needs more experts in pharmacology and neuroscience
Future of humanity depends on future of technology, and which paths we take. Technologies that change what a human being does seem more important than technologies that don’t do this.
Lesswrong has experts in information tech, genetics and AI. It’s missing experts in the other technologies that can massively change what a human does.
Ways to influence or change a human a lot:
1. Genetics
- main example is genetic engineering of humans
- but could also be genetically engineered plants, animals, bacteria, viruses that make contact with the human body
2. Drugs entering bloodstream (oral, anal, injection) and targetting some part of body
- In theory this could a nanomachine. A nanomachine does blur the line between something passive entering your body (like glucose) and something active (like coronavirus)
- In theory this drug/nanomachine/whatever can reach its target using transport mechanisms besides the bloodstream, you just need a way to break skin and epithelium
- special case: drugs that target the brain—in theory you can simulate every possible input, processing and output done by brain by directly injecting neurochemicals (or nanomachines that release neurochemicals etc). Can simulate audio/visual/touch/smell input. Can simulate thoughts and emotions directly. Can simulate signals to muscles directly. There is a natural range for each of these inputs and processing but you can go way outside the natural range—primitive examples would include heroin and LSD
3. Sensory input
- audio/visual input
- special case: audio/visual input that includes natural language, or face/facial expression/body language of a person. (Our brain has special machinery to handle receiving input from another human, or what it *thinks* is another human) [1]
- input is processed via system1 (fast) and system2 (slow). Inventing porn provides influence via system1, inventing marxism provides influence via system2. Stimulus can be provided within timescale of seconds or timescale of years. Subliminal advertising could be example of longer timescale sensory input provided by changing the entire world environment.
- touch input
- special case: sex—for example a sex machine thats better than sex with another human
- smell input—as of today we don’t have deep understanding of natural or artifically inducible range of human smell. also our ability to generate smells on demand is limited
4. Digital uploads or AGI
- Bypass the biological substrate altogether—preserve what makes humans important (moral patients, intelligent beings, conscious beings, etc) in a different substrate
5. Mix and match the above
- imagine a nanomachine factory residing in your brain that can directly alter your neural connections, and communicate via internet with a similar factory in your friends’ brain, allowing you and your friend to merge brains and create all sorts of experiences you can’t imagine now. Imagine this happens at collective scale not just between two people, and there are AGIs used to steer the hivemind in more productive directions.
(This exact hypothetical is unlikely but the idea is you can do mix-and-match when it is beneficial to do, in a world where multiple of these technologies exist.)
6. ??? Is there any other way to do it ???
[1] most information technology comes in here, both solo (making notes, searching notes, etc) and group (searching for people online, 1-to-1 messaging, mass messaging, digital money and digital status hierarchies, etc). Inventing a new religion or a better way of building organisations or a better culture or better coordination can also be included here
How many conservative laypeople (i.e. not policymakers or similar professionals) have you spoken to about this topic? This post doesn’t mention christianity even once, which may imply you have a poor understanding of the median conservative person’s worldview.