

Eliminating wars by designing and deploying a highly contagious brain virus to change human nature for the better - amichail

Is such a thing feasible?  Would you classify it as terrorism?
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amalcon
Not being a biologist, add a grain of salt and all that, but...

Of course not! It's just not even remotely feasible. There are two reasons,
but I'll start with the big one.

We have shown a marked inability to micromanage "changing human nature for the
better." We just don't understand enough about the brain to make e.g. violent
criminals stop being violent, using psychology, drugs, surgery, or anything
else really. See any crime statistics you like on the subject. The one
exception is wherein we can stop someone from being violent, by basically
stopping them from doing anything -- not a desirable outcome as applied to the
entire human population.

The second reason it's not feasible is, well... What happens to the one guy
who finds out about this, and spends a year in his basement becoming
completely immune to the vector? People are resistant to gene therapy vectors
from time to time, with no deliberate action. Deliberate action just makes
this scenario more likely.

Eliminating violence is a nice sentiment, but this methodology is just not
even remotely feasible. Ethics are a whole other can of worms.

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Zak
Have you seen Serenity? It was the _bad guys_ who tried something like that.

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karzeem
Well, if nothing else, it would probably be one of the weirdest applications
YC has ever gotten.

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as
There's an experimental webcomic about an alternate history of the afghan war
where the military develops a spy network of millions of robotic spiders, but
for lack of operators decides to open source their operation on the internet.

Among other novel uses of tech in warfare, they deploy an 'empathogenic'
aerosol which goes to work on the empathy centers of the brain, making people
permanently unable to kill. The story revolves around an American soldier who
was accidentally exposed to it. See:
<http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/10_knife.html> and
<http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/000_hospital.html> and
<http://www.e-sheep.com/spiders/3.5/11_epilogue.html>

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aristus
Idiotically dangerous, for two reasons. The qualities you would eliminate are
the very ones that help our survival as a species. Second, and more important,
wars are always about population pressure and competition for resources.
Always. Your virus could poop Valium and morphine -- but it wouldn't change
the root cause.

~~~
amichail
_...wars are always about population pressure and competition for resources.
Always. Your virus could poop Valium and morphine -- but it wouldn't change
the root cause._

So what would happen if war is never an option?

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aristus
You're begging the question. There is no 'be violent' chemical in our brains.
It's a complex emergent behavior. So your hypothetical virus would either be
ineffective, or so effective it make the organism (that's YOU) unable to feed
itself.

~~~
amichail
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Effects_on_the_bra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Effects_on_the_brain)

~~~
hemidemisemiqvr
Decreasing our testosterone would reduce violent tendancies, but it would also
mess with our ability to reproduce. And besides, war isn't usually about
irrational aggression, it's often more about fear, which afaik is mitigated by
testosterone

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SamReidHughes
I'd classify it as hubris.

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shiro
You may find Stephen King's short, "The end of the whole mess" interesting.
The point is how to define "better nature".

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jkush
It's feasible, but not terrorism. If developed, aggressive humans would use it
as just another tool to stay in power.

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sanj
The story is called "The Giving Plague", by David Brin:

<http://www.davidbrin.com/givingplague1.html>

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cellis
What if by trying to deploy said virus, you started a war? Because not
everyone, myself included, wants to lose their warmaking ability and/or
skills.

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cmars232
I'd take such an action as a declaration of war on my own free will, and act
accordingly.

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CamonZ
Yeah.... that idea is never gonna backfire at you and wipe out all the human
race

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stuki
....Imagine how powerful you could get by finding a cure for that virus....

~~~
amichail
Cures take time and scientists can work on many such viruses -- though you
would need to ensure that being infected by several such viruses does not
yield bad results.

~~~
stuki
Once you found a cure, you could pick up a sword, or boxcutter, and force
scientists to stop coming up with new viruses.

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jadams
Feasible, no. Terrorism, no. Immoral, yes. Desireable, maybe.

