“A cornucopia of drugs will soon be on sale to improve everything from our memories to our trust in others.” (Prospect)
The age of enhancement
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“I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career… I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate.” —Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)
As that last paragraph suggests, this sort of thing can be at least as dangerous as it is helpful. The existence of a trust enhancer pretty much guarantees that used car salesmen will find a way to dose their customers with it.
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Behind the baseball and orchestra analogies in the article is the assumption that the criteria of “excellence” can be defined in advance. But when all the players in a team or an orchestra have had their qualities maximized in the same direction, the result is monotony. Don’t tell me that a game where every hit is a home run, or a symphony where every note is perfect in pitch and duration, is the best of all ways to spend the evening– it’s just the version that has been optimized for a particular parameter. The empirical world is more interesting than that. Chance and circumstance reveal from moment to moment what is needed to make a game or a performance come off. Surely responsiveness is more admirable than such one-dimensional “excellence”! As with biological evolution, a diversity of inputs makes possible an unpredictable and flexible set of outcomes. So don’t be in a hurry to get yourself optimized, unless your dream is to be purpose-bred like an American supermarket chicken.
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