Overflow

Imagine a future historian trying to figure out what life in turn of the 21st century America was like. She goes to look for records, but is puzzled by a tapering off of any hard records or written information after 1996 or so. She encounters vast amounts of what once must have been magnetic recordings of some kind, now degraded and inert. All she can do is conclude that we must have been very short-sighted to capture so much of our information on such a volatile medium.

That’s exactly what the The Long Now Foundation was created to address. A fascinating project. Just try thinking 10,000 years into the future.

So, apparently scientists can make a promiscuous rodent into a monogamous one simply by injecting a gene for vassopressin receptors into the pleasure center of the brain where the dopamine receptors are. Vassopressin is associated with social learning, dopamine associated with feeling good. When the two types of receptors are located apart from one another, the pleasure of mating activity is not associated with a particular relationship. When the two types of recptors are located together, they are associated, producing monogamous behavior. Viola. Genetic neurological “hacking” to produce altered social behavior may be possible.

Of course, any applications to humans are far from clear. But scientists are excited anyway.

Back in grad school, I produced a number of futures scenarios in which neurological programming was developed as a technology to address social ills – social engineering at the “operating system” level. Setting aside for now the obvious Orwellian uses for such a technology and the range of negative scenarios involving neurological “hacking” crimes, just think of the range of positive scenarios that could be opened up by being able to rewire the brain to cirumvent destructive human impulses like, well, the “seven deadly sins.”

I have kind of a personal wish list of stuff I’d like to rewire in myself along those lines. I’d like to:

Reduce or eliminate the delay between my food intake and my brain’s sateity signals.
Increase the association of endorphin receptors with things that are good for me physically (like eating vegetables and exercising)
Attenuate the endorphin reception for activities that are not good for me.
Introduce delays in my behavior cycles involving impusivity.
Lower my sateity levels for my basic physical desires.

You get the idea. My actual list is about twice as long as that, actually, but the programs get increasingly complicated to describe.

Now I know this kind of wishful thinking is just spiritual laziness – wishing for a technological quick fix for all of my toughest spiritual challenges. But it is a rather fun way to do an examination of one’s conscience or take one’s personal “inventory,” to put it in 12 step terms. What root behaviors and impulses would you like to rewire in your brain to “fix” yourself?