This post was deleted by ScreamBrian

"An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?""

I suppose an idea that fits the above might be that some races are in general genetically less intelligent or more prone to certain socially undesirable behaviors, than others. I don't believe it's true, but it would be dangerous if it turned out to be true.

MY "DANGEROUS" IDEAS: a few half-baked ponderings and proposals:


1) MANDATORY ORGAN AND TISSUE DONATION (that is, donating when you die, not while alive!): this doesn't seem a very "dangerous" idea to me, though I've heard others speak out against it so vociferously that I figure it must be frightening and dangerous to many people. I have three proposals to make.

First, society is, I'd argue, morally obliged to change from our current an opt-in system to an opt-out system. "Opt-in" refers to the fact that you have to fill out that little card that attaches to the back of your drivers license if you want your viable organs to be donated when you die. If we changed to an "opt-out" system, it would be assumed that, upon your death, you would automatically donate all viable organs and tissues, unless you specifically fill out a little card on the back of your driver's license indicating that you DON'T want to donate your organs.

Changing to an opt-out system, alone, would greatly expand the supply of available organs, sharply reducing the ranks of the thousands of people who die prematurely each year while on the long waiting lists for organs. Society's moral obligation arises from the fact that our current system does much harm, and with very little justification for doing so. It obstructs and prevents doctors from saving the lives of their patients by preventing them from removing tissues and organs from (the majority of) the recently dead. Besides being an ethical obligation, adopting an opt-out system is simply a good idea and a no-brainer—rarely are political decisions so clear and obviously beneficial.

One of our highest values as a society, one of the greatest forms of good one can do, is saving someone's life or greatly improving the quality of that life. If there's something worse than refusing to save a life (especially when the cost to you is negligible), it's preventing someone else from doing so—and this is exactly what our current system does. It's hard to see why we don't already have an opt-out system, other than simple political inertia, tradition ("we've always done it this way"), or people's unexamined feelings around issues of death.

It's difficult to think of another political issue where something as undeniable, concrete and important as choosing whether someone lives or dies is at the mercy of something as vague and hypothetical as an individual's feelings or moral superstitions that having organs removed from their dead body is "creepy," "disrespectful," distasteful, or unholy. The great harm done by hindering someone's life from being saved is clear, obvious, factual, and frequently occurring. The alleged, potential "harm" suffered by removing an organ or tissue from a dead body is, to say the least, highly questionable, and a matter of dubious interpretation. In no case should it outweigh the undeniable harm done to the person who dies from a lack of an organ.

The abovementioned "Moral superstitions" include, to my mind, the squeamishness at the thought of your organs being removed from your dead body, any religious beliefs you have about the sanctity of your intact corpse being violated by organ removal, and so on. The moral wrong is not from simply having the superstition, but in allowing others to come to great harm because of it. By the way, none of this implies that many or most religious people believe that anything is religiously wrong about taking organs from dead bodies. According to surveys, the majority of both religious and non-religious Americans do not hold such beliefs.

The second proposal is that relatives of the recently deceased person should no longer be allowed to prevent the deceased person's organs from being donated, as so often happens. Each person should have the freedom to make such weighty decisions about their death. Grieving relatives, at such a difficult time, should not be allowed to abridge their free choice.

The third proposal is that, if and when we have an opt-out system, and if you fill out one of those little cards on your driver's license indicating that you REFUSE to donate your organs, then you would exempt yourself from being eligible to receive an organ or tissue transplant from a dead body, should you ever need one. You would not otherwise be penalized; only your eligibility to benefit from that which you refuse to give others would be off limits to you. This is a reasonable price to pay if, at little or no cost to yourself, you choose to allow your feelings or moral superstitions prevent doctors from saving the lives of their patients. Under this proposal, your freedom (to decide what happens to your dead body) is upheld. However, you are not exempted from the logical consequences of your free choices.

Exercising your freedom, in other words, implies taking responsibility for your choices. If you truly believe in what you proclaim, you should be willing to pay the price of your beliefs, not merely enjoy the benefits of your beliefs. Thus, you should not ask to benefit from a system you not merely refuse to participate in but also hinder. Plus, if you believe that, somehow, removing tissues or organs from your lifeless, soulless body harms your soul, your interests, or God's plan, then why would you want others to harm their souls, their interests, or God's plan by giving you their organs when they die?
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2) As an addendum to the above proposal, I’ll add this: DEATH ROW PRISONERS COULD ALSO BE COMPELLED TO DONATE ORGANS, even while alive, but especially right after being put to death. The worst of criminals should be forced (or maybe "incentivized" with some kind of reward) to help repay society for the harm they've caused, make up for the suffering they've produced in others, by donating organs or undergoing medical experimentation. How else can they repay their debt? The main problem I see with this plan is the possibly (probably?) high error rate our justice system has in sentencing alleged murderers to death. Maybe we need a higher standard for guilt than "beyond reasonable doubt," or maybe we should not extract organs until all appeals have run out.
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3) THE FUSION OF OUR BRAINS WITH COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY: first, imagine that our computers become not merely artificially intelligent, but intellectually & creatively superior to humans, perhaps morally superior to us, and even more powerful than us. Barring the collapse of society, or a world-destroying asteroid strike, it certainly appears that technology is moving in that direction. As we learn more about how human brains work and how to make machines perform complex tasks that, previously, only people could do, it seems at least as likely as not that we'll be able to surpass the capabilities of human minds in most or all of its powers.

What would the philosophical and psychological impact of this be on humanity? Huge, I think. How would we react? Should we choose to serve the computers, and let them rule? Would we end up being their pets? Maybe we'd come up with a convenient division of labor—we could outsource all of our intellectual tasks (science, art, literature, philosophy, politics) tasks to them, just as we already outsource most of our mathematical computations to them. I'm not sure what tasks would be left to humans in such a society.

I imagine that the pride humans currently have ("we're the smartest, most important things in the world, maybe even the universe") would rapidly deflate. The features that we humans most pride ourselves on, intelligence, creativity, understanding, moral feeling, our ideals & values, would no longer be unique to us, and we'd no longer be the superior possessors of them. Our "self-esteem," as a species and as individuals, would be sorely tested.

As an aside, might this situation of being surpassed by computers be similar to what happened to technologically primitive hunter-gatherer tribes when they first encountered colonial powers? In some cases, at least, these "technologically primitive tribes" seemed to view the colonial powers as being not merely more powerful and technologically superior but also morally, artistically, and intellectually superior. How did they react? Often, their culture was destroyed. Often, the people coped by trying to emulate their conquerors. Often, people simply could not cope.

To a far lesser extent, this situation might be akin to what many people experienced when Darwin's ideas first became widespread, removing humans from the pedestal Christianity and other religions had put us on (or, if not removing the pedestal, at least lowering it). Or, again, the situation might be similar to the surprise people felt when the earth was first discovered to not be at the center of the universe. In the case of cognitive fusion with computers, however, the degree of change in our psychological and philosophical point of view would be much greater.

Incidentally, I think humans would have a similar psychological, philosophical and cultural reaction if we encountered superior, "advanced space aliens." But I think the advent of superior computers is much more likely than the arrival of super-smart aliens and, in any case, is more likely to happen sooner than contact with an ET.

Note: even if you already believe that the universe contains superior intelligences to ours, e.g., God, angels, super smart space aliens, that's a much different matter than actually encountering such superior beings and living your daily life in their presence. This concrete, daily reminder of our mental inferiority, here on earth, would be a major cause of the huge psychological and cultural impact, I think. Who knows, we might come to view the intelligent computers in a way similar to how we used to view Gods, angels and demons, except that they would interact with us daily, and do so here, in the material world, not in some unobservable, supernatural realm.

Apart from the usual, near universal human tendency to acquire products that enhance our capabilities, we would become painfully envious of the knowledge and power of the superior computers. Many people would deal with this sense of inferiority, jealousy and obsolescence, as well as the physical fear of our own creations, by trying to co-opt their advantages and powers. We would address our wounded pride by trying to develop technologies that integrate or fuse human minds to computer "minds," perhaps by implanting small computer in our brains/bodies.

It's plausible to assume that we (or the smart computers) would be successful in developing an interface that allows the artificial intelligence to become an extension of our intelligence (or, depending on your point of view, our minds becoming an extension of theirs). After all, monkeys have already been trained to move robotic arms merely by their thoughts (via a sensor that measures their brain waves). It's not difficult to imagine a device that functions like a cell phone, keyboard, voice-recognition software, or RAM microchip, but even smaller, implanted in one's body, and connected directly to nerve cells, bypassing the intermediaries of mouth, ear and fingers.

It's not required that everyone choose to join their brains to computers right away. However, as more people did so, the fear and envy of being out-competed both by computers and by computer-assisted humans would result in a near irresistible social and psychological pressure for everyone else to follow suit—even if they were emotionally, morally and/or aesthetically opposed to such a prospect. Melding ourselves with computers would slowly become as easy and natural feeling as using a cell phone, and would eventually be a De Rigueur social custom.

If this happened, who would be the parasite, and who the host? What would become of our sense of our role, purpose and meaning in a universe where we're no longer the premier intelligence? If AI's show themselves to be truly superior to us, even morally and creatively, might we be tempted to radically alter our values to come more in line with theirs? This might happen, whether we fuse with them or not. Might we abandon many of our "mammalian" virtues to take up the "machine values" of efficiency (and whatever other values they hold)? Would the value of human contact, for example, or leisure time, become denigrated? The list of changes could go on.

In any case, the human condition would be radically altered. This technological attainment would likely alter our "human nature" to such a degree that we'd effectively become a different species. Other technologies that might arise at the same time, the capacity for extensive human genetic engineering for example, could further alter us away from what we've always been.

For all we know, our descendants may one day soon look back at the writings of novelists, poets and psychologists without a sense of empathy or understanding for the odd species of humans who wrote them. Even more extreme than that, the enhanced communication that would develop between a human brain and a computer "brain" might become so seamless that humanity may one day become, to use a Star Trek metaphor, a sort of "Borg"-like society (a beneficent version of the Borg, hopefully).

We might, as I've just argued, end up fusing with our artificially intelligent creations or, on the other hand, we might choose to (try to) destroy or limit them in order to prevent humans from being surpassed, made obsolete, enslaved, or placed in danger by our tools. Either way, a number of interesting philosophical issues arise. "Should we take the risk of building such smart and powerful machines in the first place?" Are AI's persons? Are they truly alive, sentient, aware, and/or conscious? Would they have a personal, subjective life? If they are persons, don't they have civil & "human" rights, like we do, and don't they deserve the same protections? Is it wrong to harm them if they feel pain? Is unplugging them murder? Are we being immoral by programming them in such a way that we rob them of true choices and free will? After all, we do not attempt to brainwash humans to follow anything like "Asimov’s three laws of robotics," so why should we do so to intelligent computers who may be capable of suffering? One day, the attempts to answer these questions will likely become more than mere academic exercises.
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4) GROUP CHILD-REARING BECOMING THE NORM: I'm mildly in favor of this idea. It would be, arguably, better for both children and parents—this is supported by the small amount of social science research done on the topic. Plus, it just seems to me wrong for parents and children to be cooped up with each other for too many hours a day. Isn't that bound to drive any mother, father, and child crazy? Here's an alternative: Children would be raised in co-ops ("It takes a village to raise a child"), better mimicking the child rearing practices of our hunter-gatherer ancestors (about 99.9+% of our evolutionary existence).

A few points to consider. Philosophically, the practice of widespread group child-rearing would involve undermining the widely held notion that parents have the absolute right to complete responsibility and control over how their children are raised, and that parents are in fact the main determinant of how their children turn out. Why should parents have this right, as is commonly held in our culture? Here are a few reasons why we should be suspicious of these common assumptions. Consider the fact that society is greatly affected, for good or ill, by how children turn out. Consider also, that many or most of the resources parents receive in the process of child-rearing is provided by the society at large, not solely by themselves. Lastly, consider that, according to social science research, a child's peer group has as much or more influence on what kind of person the child becomes as does the child's parents. A simple example is the fact that the accent or dialect a child speaks is nearly always more similar to that of the child's peer group than to that of the child's parents.
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5) RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY WITHOUT THE SUPERNATURAL: a religion that accords with our best ideas, evidence, and arguments in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Yet it would also fulfill the same psychological, spiritual, and social needs that religions do. Don’t ask me what this religion would be like! I don't know; I'm still looking for it.
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6) A MORE EFFICIENT WAY FOR PEOPLE TO CHOOSE A CAREER: one of the biggest tragedies in the world, it seems to me, is the huge amount of wasted talent and dissatisfaction that results from the fact that few people are in the careers they "should" be in. Think of the huge loss of productivity and creativity that society suffers because of this. Think of how much happier people would be, and of how better the world would be if everyone or most people were working a job or career they were more satisfied with, valued more highly and obtained a greater sense of purpose from. Think of how much easier it would be to work with these people every day (compared to all the annoying people we deal with at work now) and/or to live with these people. Think of the resulting reduction in social problems. (Note: by "the career a person 'should' be in," I mean a job or career they are very good and effective at, that they find highly fulfilling or meaningful, and that makes them happier, less stressed, and so on.)

What's a possible remedy for our current, sorry situation where most people fall into jobs/careers in a haphazard, near random manner? I propose that all people in junior high, high school and college be required to go through a series of many, short apprenticeships/ internships, each one simulating as much as possible what it would be like to work in a given job or career. This would become a large portion of the scholastic curriculum. This apprenticeship would give people a more concrete idea of what it is that careers and jobs actually entail, and a little of what it would be like to be in that career. Each person would experience a wide variety and large number of careers/ apprenticeships, most of them matching the person's aptitudes, interests, values, etc.

For this proposal to work, we would need much better, more accurate career assessment, testing and counseling system than we now have. Given the small amount of societal resources we currently put into this area, perhaps we could expect a big improvement in this if we put more attention, funding and research into it. This hypothetical career assessment could begin in childhood and continue throughout life. The government would provide incentives to get people into jobs that better fit them, and get out of jobs that don't. It's not possible to make everyone ecstatically happy with their career, but we certainly could do a far better job of it than we, as a society, are now doing. This proposal might have the disadvantage of reducing somewhat the freedom people would have in choosing a career, but this would be more than made up for by the huge increase in happiness and productivity.

Since I exhorted people to continue ou rlast meeting's discussion on this board, I ought to at least put out my own target again.

Ever since Freud, our culture has flirted with the idea that we don't know our own minds. I think that developments in cognitive science will show that one's conscious mind is involved in almost everything to the same extent that it is involved in the act of walking or choosing our words: indirectly at best, except on those rare occassions one is focussing on that particular behavior and "intervening" in the flow. This is dangerous because, especially in the vague and general way the attitude will likely leak into the culture, it will undermine belief in individual responsibility. "I don't really know why I did that, so how can you blame me for it?" "Why worry abuot how to fit the payments into my budget, I'm just going to buy that sports car in the end anyway?"

this is only dangerous because our currrent social fabric relies on keeping us consumers in the dark but here goes:

Plant Cannabis strategically in open/unused farm lands, and convert other farms that are wasting resources on growing feed for cows to cannabis as well. (this would mean people would have to cultivate their sense of humanity and compassion and EAT LESS MEAT)

The use of Cannabis/Hemp for fiber will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, thus saving us from global warming while providing humans with fiber for Clothes, canvas, oils for paints, lubricants and varnishes, Seeds for nutrition (hemp seeds are the most nutritious seeds and contain all the essential amino acids), Fuel for cars and other energy needs.

Also, if we werent cutting down trees for paper, etc, we would have our forests to romp around in and play in , which is very healthy for all creatures. Saving forests gives us more clean air, rather than destroying the trees and allowing CO2 to be released from their ancient trunks.

this is only dangerous becuz pot has been "criminalized" and thus a free thinking mind is deemed dangerous in this society.,,

so, go plant seeds!! go on. :)

check out www.jackherer.com for more info on this matter.

peace, love and hemp!! blessings!

My most dangerous Idea:
Most likely our lifestyle negates all of our charity and most of any love or compassion we've ever given. Google and take the Ecological Footprint Quiz to see how the numbers bear this out. For example if everyone lived like the average American we would need 5.4 planet earths. So unless your moving towards living like the Amish your thinking is likely amoral and dangerous.