Post date: Jul 9, 2015 2:55:55 AM
There's a great thought experiment about the value of technology in a recent paper by Savulescu and colleagues. The idea isn't all that insane. What are your intuitions regarding whether the technology in the experiment (1) enhances people's well-being and (2) is good or bad?
It is 2100. The mobile phone evolved into a brain-computer interface allowing a wide range of communications under direct mind control. One could communicate just by thinking and directing one's thoughts to a target person or artificial intelligence. The iPhone 10EEE was so useful and successful that every parent implanted one into the earlobe of their children, like an earring. People without the iPhone 10EEE came to be seen as disabled because they could not communicate sufficiently. They were the deaf and blind of their generation. Governments soon implanted these cheap devices into all newborns as a way of enabling their lives and securing their human rights.
Technology progresses relentlessly and exponentially in other directions. It becomes possible to evaluate and intervene in human intention by hacking into the iPhone 10EEE communications network. A small government spin-off perfects MT, or moral technology. It can pick up intentions and intervene to change human actions. Rogue actors from the spin-off implement MT to prevent all actions prohibited by a particular Christian interpretation of their Old Testament, ranging from gross wrongs such as rape and murder to less severe errors such as lying and cheating. The implementation is a success. No one is the wiser.
Adapted from J. Savulescu, T. Douglas, and I. Persson, "Autonomy and the Ethics of Biological Behaviour Modification," in A. Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 102-103.