Happiness Drugs

There are a certain few drugs that can alter brain chemistry, temporarily granting feelings of happiness and euphoria. The problem is that after a period of use, the body builds up a resistance to those chemicals, and the drugs lose effectiveness. A higher dosage is necessary to compensate for the acquired tolerance. There are two main problems associated with this. First, the acquired resistance persists, even after a long window of time. Second, frequent use of these substances produces the contrary effect of making you feel miserable when you're not on the drug.

I am thinking of a ridiculous but somewhat plausible idea. Let's consume pain-causing pills that simulate the chemical receptors associated with pain, in the hope that the body builds up resistance to the pain signaling chemicals. If the body's mechanisms work in a similar fashion, after a period of use, the body would be more tolerant to pain, even in the absence of the pain-causing drugs.

Similarly, let's create sadness-causing drugs. Then, after a period of acclimatization, by stopping the drug-regime, we would be in a state of anti-sadness (happiness?).

Suicide and Refusal of Life-Extension

What is the difference between the refusal of life-extension procedures and suicide? Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. By this definition, the two seem distinct. But is there a philosophical difference between an act that reduces one's potential life span from X to zero, and refusing an act that increase one's potential life span by X?

The idea seems to be that there is some natural life-span whereby it is immoral to willfully reduce, but perfectly acceptable to refuse to extend. This seems indefensible. If suicide is deemed wrong because it robs us of future choices (as per some arguments from liberty), then it is also wrong to refuse life-extension as it prevents us from enjoying the same future choices. If life is sacred (as per deontological argumenst) and has value in itself, then the loss of this life due to the non-adoption of life-extension procedures is also immoral.

Now, consider this thought experiment. Assume that one's remaining life span can be perfectly predicted in advance, and that that amounts to X years. Now, also assume that there exists some full treatment that can increase one's lifespan by Y years. One also has the option of taking a partial treatment that has a lesser effect, and extends life by only Z years, where Z is less than Y. Now, there are four people.

Person A refuses treatment, and lives X years.

Person B accepts partial treatment, and lives X+Z years.

Person C wants a partial treatment, but the center only offers full treatment. He accepts full treatment, but at the same time he swallows a poison that he knows will kill him in X+Z years time. He lives X+Z years.

Person D accepts full treatment. After X+Z years, he kills himself. He lives X+Z years.

If we accept that A is not immoral by his refusal of the life-extending procedure, then we must accept that B is not immoral by choosing a partial treatment. There is little practical difference between B and C; both live an additional Z years. Can we consider C to have committed suicide? While he has intentionally caused his own delayed death, his motivation is not to die, but instead to extend his life by Z rather than Y years. Therefore we do not consider it suicide.

What about D? Most would class it under suicide. But what are the philosophical differences between D and B,C? In all cases they do not want to live past X+Z years; the difference is only that D has made his choice rather late.

Revival of Extinct Species

Lonesome george died. Well, ok, that's only one extinct subspecies. What's more, it might not be gone forever.

Apparently, one animal has been un-extincted, though only briefly. The Pyrenean Ibex, which first died out in 2000, was subsequently cloned in 2009, though the clone lived for only seven minutes. Still, fairly promising. One factor in favor of reviving Lonesome George is the fact that only the particular subspecies was extinct. Subspecies can capable of interbreeding, that is, they are not differentiated by reproduction. In other words, other subspecies still exist, that are capable of surrogancy for cloning.

While that's fine and good, the thought of reviving extinct species made me wonder if we could indeed resurrect creatures even more far gone, where no direct genetic material, or no subspecies of the like, exist.

Typically, we might imagine evolution to be a one-way process, where species change with time into forms that are more adapted to the existing conditions. Such changes are brought about by recombination and mutation, the reshuffling and flipping of genetic material into new forms. Conceivably, the process is irreversible, or at least difficult to reverse. It is hard to imagine a modern creature evolving assuming ancient, extinct forms. 

Yet, it seems possible to revive extinct species, or some approximation of, through 'devolution' of a modern descendant. First, imagine if environmental conditions were reset to the time of the extinct species. If so, then the optimal adaptation is no longer of the modern evolved creature, but rather of the extinct form! Natural selection therefore favors the evolution of the modern creature towards the ancient, extinct predecessor. Just like how the final products of chemical reactions can vary with temperature and pressure, the direction that evolution takes can be redirected by varying the conditions under which evolution occurs.

Given a supervised hand, the revival of extinct species from their modern descendants can be made even more viable. If the path of evolution is known, for example the amounts of environmental change, and the corresponding change in the species, it is possible to perform directed artificial selection. By seeking incremental regression along the known evolution history of the species, one can create a ratchet-effect to gradually skip backwards.

Artificial Language

Words shape our thoughts. It is difficult to imagine things that we have no words for; at the same time creating new words for the specific enables our thoughts.

In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, an artificial language is used to dampen thoughts of dissent and rebellion, simply by removing the words corresponding to such thoughts. Of course, it is still possible to achieve the same thoughts through negations of the opposite concept, but the very convoluted nature of such thinking hampers dissent. After all, the human mind has a finite working memory, which ultimately places a ceiling on the complexity of thoughts attainable. Creating new words to condense complex concepts into a single, concise form is one way of side-stepping the problem.

Current languages are evolved more than constructed, born out of a series of conveniences rather than deliberate steps. I wonder if it is possible, in a fashion opposite to Nineteen Eighty-Four, to manipulate language in a benign manner. Would the removal of words related to race destroy discrimination? Would naming all implements of war with a single word reduce our taste for war? Would excising  words referencing the supernatural help us clear our minds?

I suspect it may.

Missing Keys in the Pocket

I have recently encountered an interesting problem online, which requires knowledge of conditional probability to solve.

You leave your apartment groggily one morning, closing the door behind you. Suddenly, you are hit by a terrifying question: Do you have your keys, or are you now locked out?

You stand there thinking about it for a few seconds, before deciding that yes, you probably have your keys, further estimating that 80% of the time, you have them. You also decide that there is an equal chance of your keys either being in your left pocket or your right pocket, and if they aren’t in either pocket then you don’t have them at all.

Slowly, perversely enjoying the sweat, you slide your hand into your right pocket, and find that your keys are not there. What should you now think is the probability that your keys are in your left pocket? 

The answer:

Two-thirds. To solve this without (much) explicit calculation, imagine all the scenarios where your right pocket is empty. 60% of the time, your right pocket will be empty (20% of the time because you forgot the keys, and 40% of the time where you remembered the keys but they were in the left pocket). The given information puts you in this 60%. Of this 60%, 2/3 of the time you actually have the keys. 

Of course, the above could be expressed more elegantly in equations.

Tabula Rasa

Let's assume that utopia is possible, or if it’s not, let's instead imagine the state closest to utopia. Nobody would assert that today's world is that utopia. In fact, my suspicions are that it is impossible to ever arrive at that utopia via incremental steps.

One essential property of a utopia must be stability; it must be robust to degeneration into a state of non-utopia. I believe that achieving this single property requires the elimination of several unbalancing factors in today's world, as there are simply too many causes for conflict that would otherwise result in a collapse of the utopian society.

I then considered the design of an ideal society, without constraint. One important feature must be sustainability. Several ills can be attributed to the over-extended reach of humanity, which results in sub-optimal assignment of resources. If the population is to be distributed and controlled according to reasoned principles, then human numbers would be small, but localized to the most habitable regions where resources are ample and the incidence of natural disasters minimal.

My suspicions are also that social and familial structures would be different under a utopia. Social and familial structures are institutions founded on principles and assumptions that may not be the most optimal, but are merely too costly to change en masse.

A final, though dangerous, thought is that the people of an ideal society must themselves be superior to modern humans, not only in manner and philosophy, but perhaps, also in nature. There may be several genetic traits most conducive to an ideal society. Two properties that should, if possible, be selected for are empathy and restraint. Other physical advantages, such as resistance to disease or improved physical and mental abilities, are also boons that are almost certainly beneficial.

These lines of reasoning lead me to believe that it is difficult to form an ideal society, due to inertia and resistance. It is not possible to change social structures overnight, nor can the world population be reduced or redistributed. Incremental changes are simply not feasible.

Granted that the utopia is stable, any utilitarian must surely conclude that it is acceptable to usher in such a golden age via any means. Imagine if a dark age were declared specifically for the execution of 'any means', and any atrocity pardoned if it follows the grand plan. Utopia should then be treated as if it were founded on a blank slate.

The sole weakness of this idea is that it royally screws the present for the eternal future, which is why Utopia will never be realized.

A Personal Writing Challenge 2

Last year, I challenged myself to write a hundred words a day.

I succeeded, though with no assurances on quality. In 2011, I wrote 40239 words for the challenge over the span of 11 months. Averaged over the year, that's 110 words a day, though there were 3 months where I wrote less than 100 words a day.

This year, I aim to write more than the last.