Thanks as always to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links! Also, go over to Glibertarians to read the first in my History of Lever Guns series.
Moving right along: One of these days you might be able to get a brain chip to make you super-intelligent. I’d settle for just making most folks a little less stupid. Excerpt:
In as little as five years, super smart people could be walking down the street; men and women who’ve paid to increase their intelligence.
Northwestern University neuroscientist and business professor Dr. Moran Cerf made that prediction, because he’s working on a smart chip for the brain.
“Make it so that it has an internet connection, and goes to Wikipedia, and when I think this particular thought, it gives me the answer,” he said.
Cerf is collaborating with Silicon Valley big wigs he’d rather not name.
Facebook also has been working on building a brain-computer interface, and SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is backing a brain-computer interface called Neuralink.
“Everyone is spending a lot of time right now trying to find ways to get things into the brain without drilling a hole in your skull,” Cerf said. “Can you eat something that will actually get to your brain? Can you eat things in parts that will assemble inside your head?”
It sounds mind-blowing. Relationships might be on the line.
“This is no longer a science problem. This is a social problem,” Cerf said.
The article goes on to bemoan the possibility of an intelligence gap, compounding the problems we apparently already have with “racial, gender and financial inequalities.”
You know, just once, it would be nice to see an article about a technological advance without a lot of Social Justice Warrior fainting-couch horseshit thrown in.
Anyway… I can see how this would be a good thing, but I can see how it could go sideways, too. Pearl-clutching by Dr. Cerf aside, I’m not so sure sticking a chip in your brain is that hot an idea. From what I understand our understanding of how the brain produces consciousness is roughly at the same stage as when astronomers thought the moon was a light shining through a hole in the roof.
It would be interesting to have an IQ of six thousand. But I’m not so sure the risks are worth it. I think this falls into the “if it ain’t broke” category.
Of course, we could always bechip Congress. There’s too many folks there who, if they were half as smart as they think they are, would be twice as smart as they really are.
