This article about desire modification technology has to be the most interesting thing I have read this week.
There are many hypothetical technologies that have the power to transform the human experience even more profoundly than any that have gone before. Fusion power and self-replicating networked nanotech are two popular ones, but there are others that have the potential to be even more transformational. For example, personality upload (also called "brain emulation"). Why spend all your wealth rearranging the world we live in, when you can just create your own? An even bigger one is desire modification. Why spend all your wealth creating a better world, when you can make yourself like the one you're in?
I hope I live long enough to see some of this come to fruition. Buddha taught that desire was the root of suffering. When desire is modified to where it coincides what we already have, then suffering would logically turn to exuberance. Such technology could then have humans live in state of permanent blissfulness. Would such a state of mind then count as "real" or "induced" happiness and would the subject be able to tell the two apart. And then there are the infinite ways to abuse such a thing to coerce and brainwash people who are cannot protect their desire from being modified against their will.
There are many hypothetical technologies that have the power to transform the human experience even more profoundly than any that have gone before. Fusion power and self-replicating networked nanotech are two popular ones, but there are others that have the potential to be even more transformational. For example, personality upload (also called "brain emulation"). Why spend all your wealth rearranging the world we live in, when you can just create your own? An even bigger one is desire modification. Why spend all your wealth creating a better world, when you can make yourself like the one you're in?
I hope I live long enough to see some of this come to fruition. Buddha taught that desire was the root of suffering. When desire is modified to where it coincides what we already have, then suffering would logically turn to exuberance. Such technology could then have humans live in state of permanent blissfulness. Would such a state of mind then count as "real" or "induced" happiness and would the subject be able to tell the two apart. And then there are the infinite ways to abuse such a thing to coerce and brainwash people who are cannot protect their desire from being modified against their will.
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