Singularity Rising by James D. Miller

Author:James D. Miller [D. Miller, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936661787
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

DANGEROUS BUT EFFECTIVE COGNITIVE-ENHANCING DRUGS

Dangerous but effective cognitive-enhancement drugs would create a much less drug-friendly political situation. Imagine, for example, that a powerful stimulant would “overclock” a user’s brain, making him smarter than any unenhanced human and nullifying his need for sleep. But suppose that every day you’re on the drug, you face a 1 percent chance of death. Few successful people in rich countries would take the drug, although some would undoubtedly risk death for hyper-genius. People such as second-rate stock analysts might rationally go on the drug for a month and accept the risk of death in return for making tens of millions of dollars if they survive.

If China allowed the drug but the United States didn’t, then US companies would face enormous market pressures to make effective use of the drug. Their first choice would probably be to start branches in China, where their overseas employees consumed the drug. If, however, the United States prohibited its businesses from letting any of their workers use the substance regardless of location, then US companies might buy supplies from companies with pharmaceutically-enhanced workers. For example, a US investment bank might buy research reports written by a Chinese company whose employees use the drug, with the US company claiming that it has no knowledge of drug use by the Chinese company. The Chinese firm producing the research reports would likely facilitate this feigned ignorance by hiding (or at least not officially declaring) its employees’ drug use. The situation would be analogous to a US company buying clothing made by poor children who work in dangerous sweatshops. (As an economist, I feel compelled to point out that working in sweatshops frequently benefits poor children, whose alternative employment often consists of working as prostitutes or sifting through toxic garbage dumps for scraps.)284 I wonder if Chinese companies will put more funds into researching cognitive enhancement drugs because, unlike their counterparts in Western countries, they believe that their government won’t bar the use of effective but dangerous drugs.

Dangerous, effective, but cheap brain-boosting drugs could greatly reduce economic inequality among nations. Consider a drug that would raise the IQ of the average African to that of the typical Harvard student but would also kill 1 percent of its users annually. Even if the drug were legal, most Americans would shun it. But for an African making less than a dollar a day, use of the drug would be quite rational. Indeed, were I such a poor African, I would eagerly consume the drug if it gave me the ability to raise my income by a factor of 100. (Doing so would be a “no-brainer.”)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.