| In a recent post critiquing John R. Shook's look at a the future of "morality enhancing" pharmaceuticals, I posed the question, what might it look like if the Chinese government were to implement these types of pills, to "grapple" with an internal rebellion as Shook mildly described it in his paper. Then I came across this story, (and the accompanying video), in which the Chinese government is apparently forcing imprisoned practitioners of the Falun Gong religion to take psychiatric drugs as part of a larger regimen of torture. Shook, neuroethicists, and transhumanists alike should take note: this is part of the context in which these morality pills would emerge. For those who might dismiss the significance of this reality, force-medicating, brain-excising, organ harvesting, China calls over one seventh of the world population its own, and therefore the insidious effects of a mass-produced, socially-engineering morality pill could be far reaching indeed. | |
Additionally, Chinese companies, which coordinate with their communist government, also have a penchant for stealing so-called intellectual property. According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, the unprecedented level of theft covers a range of industries, including "biotechnology, telecommunications, and nanotechnology, as well as clean energy." This means that a powerful, populous, and human rights abusing nation with an established interest in the technological Singularity, will likely acquire, legally or otherwise, any pharmaceutically enabled means that might arise to suppress its own citizens.
