Hacking People For Good

In the future a wave of biologic super-enhancements will make you and me faster, smarter, stronger and healthier… but what about BETTER? Can science enhance our moral character the same way it can enhance our physical character? Imagine a world where people are hard wired for good, where crime, greed and war cease to exist. In a sense, we’d all be superheroes! But who decides what’s moral? Are concepts of morality too fluid to force on a society? And what about free will? This week we look at the thorny issue of moral bioenhancements!

What do you think? Would moral bioenhancements improve the world, or is the word ‘enhancement’ not applicable in this case? Share your thoughts below!

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[accursedblackmage]

the problem with having morality mandated to the populous, is that the ones doing the mandating are the most morally bankrupt.

[AnonymousUser]

Technologically enforced thought policing is one of the most dystopian things I've heard about in a very long time.

[Adderoo]

This would be completely unethical.. It's technically brain washing.

[TehJimlad]

'Inherent reward system that makes you feel better when you help another person out'
Most people already have this.

[GamerFromJump]

When I hear about "moral enhancement", I reach for my gun, to borrow a phrase.

If someone's doing such a thing, it means that someone's idea of "moral" is being imposed, and what happens if the one setting the "morality" is what you would consider immoral?

[Masterk]

What shows like Ghost on the Shell: SAC and Psycho-Pass have taught me; is that a single anomaly, within such a technologically integrated system, can end up create an insane amount of havoc.

[undecodable]

you cant ask for moral society from immoral social engineers

[swardinc]

There is a few issues with this but lets take the fantasy/science fictional books for a minute there has been a lot of books that you start off making sure your people are doing right and they live by a system that is supposedly impossible to break and it so good you supposedly don't want to break. Yet the bad guy comes along and is immune to the law so he can do whatever he wants too. A recent anime i watched was like that the police had guns that if you had not committed no wrong the gun would not shoot you so somehow this guy was able to shoot and kill and the guns did not realize he had done anything at all. In fact the system was like you cannot keep him he did nothing wrong.

[forgivennow]

It seems to me that to avoid problems the "programming" for moral standard of goodness in people would need to be done by a maximally good and omniscient being something like the one described in the Bible (our Creator). The Bible describes "writing" God's moral law on our hearts and being born from above a new creation. We can look at His moral code in Exodus 20, Mathew 5-7, 1 Corinthians 13 and see the results in Revelation 21-22.

The best part is we can have it now and not wait for some technological advancement which could lead to totalitarian government.

[Mortagus]

It's remind me an episode of the an old show called 'sliders' : the heroes arrived in a world where war doesn't exists because of a special lottery. people can take how many money they want from some sort of ATMs but if they do, their name goes to a list.
People from that list have a chance to be selected to be killed on a TV show. The result are quite interesting in the episode. I'm wondering what would happen in such circumstance.

[Arjun-jtyb]

If crimes go down, war ends and everyone lives better life then that's good optimization function for human brain.

[kenmiskiw]

If any of you seen Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet an anime that has two groups The Galactic Alliance of Humankind and the Evolvers.The Evolvers became consumed by the idea of living with out machines, and make the human race stronger and live on any environment. While the Galactic Alliance of Humankind was focused one building a defens with machines

[GeneralSpecSam]

I say that this be an option for criminals. either go to jail, or have their morals modified. There are some things that we cant be exactly sure if its ethical or not but there are also plenty that we all can agree on. Murder, theft, assault, and chield abuse just to name a few.

[late]

You want to define what's morale or not ? If you are confronted to multiple options, always chose the one that benefits the more and disenfranchised the less people. Of course it's not an exact science, and it doesn't help solve every moral issues but it seems to me to be a good path to decide if something is morale or not :)

[mickbosscher]

just imagine how boring a world would be where everyone had superpowers and no villains because people are being manipulated in being what the government thinks is right yeey

[vova]

what if those enhancements didn't give us a set of moral guidelines to live by but instead enhanced our own ability to stick to our owm moral codes, our ability to empathize with humans and other creatures. What if we had batter psychological coping mechanisms. Our psychology hasn't kept up with demands of modern world and we can fix it.

[mikekolaski]

When he says that everyone would have super powers, they wouldn't be super because it would become normal life to us. " Once everyone's super, no one will be" Syndrome, from the incredible's.

[sunosis]

Quite honestly I feel like this is Deus ex the game cause there will always be a side of good and a side of evil, which is basically the yin and yang situation you can't have one because it needs the other to survive so it's really the same saying as, "There can't be life without death" which is the same saying as good and evil. There would also be some that would revolt the moral enhancement. I mean some will need it like sociopathic people, or any person that might have violent ways, but we cannot have a higher being in power to make his or her judgement as the only way and others as not allowed. there is a limit on morals and what can be done to our minds or judgement if you force humanity into that state, then the war would be on the verge.

[sadisticsquirrels]

This is terrifying, but you did handle it fairly well. I think it's obvious that we can't force morality on people. It would make us too immobile and sheeplike, and we already are those things. It's the ultimate impingement of freedom of speech, because it legally mandates thought.

[DakuHonoo]

i could do that, i mean, be the moral authority, with my clear disregard for the value of a human life