The Goal of Neural Enhancement | h+ Magazine

The Goal of Neural Enhancement | h+ Magazine: "What is the ultimate goal of neural enhancement? It’s obvious many people want to do it, but why? Does it afford fitness advantages for natural selection? Probably, but if this is the case, then it is no different than enhancing the brain through education. If you get a good education you will be able to behave in ways unavailable to those without an education. Maybe this means you can write computer code, or perform complicated surgery, or confidently navigate our dense legal environment. Since the ultimate reason to want any enhancement is the new behavior it will allow (or the new behavior it will cause in other people, like the jealousy you will inspire in others when you buy that Ferrari), the fitness evaluations can only happen on this behavior and not on the enhancement itself. Genotypes are ignored by evolution; they are selected indirectly through the interaction of the phenotype and the environment. So are all enhancements evaluated indirectly through the behaviors they allow. One is only as free as the actions he can think of performing – actually, he is only as free as the subset of actions he can both think of and physically perform. "