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nnq | 5 years ago

> messing with one's brain is dangerous

Meh. I'd say we're likely stuck in a local optimum - the default programming of our brains is clearly not optimal for our state of evolution... our brains evolved for hunting and gathering clearly don't have good default programming for understanding and exploring the universe.

Hope brain-computer-interfaces come soon and we can do more controlled hacks with those, but until then anything that can nudge our minds out of equilibrium / gradient-pit is great. And some side-effects (eg. small minority of people manifesting psychoses etc.) are a sign we're on the right track imo.

Sure, we can try tweaking external factors, sprinkling in some wars, terrorism, pandemics, riots etc. to occasionally wake some people up, our benevolent true leaders, whoever they are, treat us with these at least... but I'd support more direct and less destructive alternatives :)

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tetris11|5 years ago

You have no guarantee that the next drug-induced iteration will push you towards another local optimum though. If it redefines your current experiences, it could misattribute many things true positives you have learned throughout your life.