The Algernon Conundrum

[jeff_duntemann]

My previous entry on drug prohibition (December 5, 2008) triggered a great deal of discussion, and prompted someone to send me a link to a story on chemical cognitive enhancement. People are using a number of drugs and non-regulated chemicals to give themselves a performance

Comments

[anonymous]

There was an "advertisement" on A Prairie Home Companion a few years ago from one of their fake sponsors, supposedly some sort of drug industry outfit.

"Pharmaceuticals, they're not just for sick people any more."

[billroper]

Well, in the case of this song of mine, it wasn't a case of using drugs, but rather better living through viral genetic engineering. And the conundrum that I saw was that smarter doesn't necessarily correlate well with wiser...

[jeff_duntemann]

Great song--and precisely what I'm talking about here

[jrittenhouse]

Being someone who has a nasty incurable disease, and is over 50 with a nine-year-old kid, the longer life span sounds good to me.

[apostle_of_eris]

A couple of thoughts which passed through my mind as it passed through your musing . . .

"Should we?" is academic. If someone can build it, someone will build it, and someone will buy it.

"for the rich" is transient. Remember the "digital divide"? How only rich people would be able to afford home computers, exacerbating class divisions, blah, blah, blah? At the moment, a "netbook" is about the price of a big screen tv. The lower end big screen tvs . . .

And, speculatively, if there were enormous benefit at enormous cost, there might (story element) develop a social role a little like a shaman, where people with rare, eerie gifts which are beneficial to the tribe/village but have grave personal costs are valued at arms length, with special allowances made for them . . .

fwiw

[apostle_of_eris]

bOING bOING just linked to Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy.
It seems to me a little narrow, but it also seems to be right on topic here, so ymmv &c.