Technotopia: The Phases of Techno-Induced Happiness and Pleasure

The ultimate tech will move through various phases of happiness and pleasure. Here in a nutshell are the essential points:

Summary of main points:

• Removing limits on pleasure
  • Unlimited eating as nanobots simultaneously remove calories, and other pleasures
• Simulated pleasure – since simulations are always cheaper than real experiences.
  • Stimulate the senses directly
    • Instead of eating, stimulate the senses to fool your body that you are eating
  • Stimulate the reward center directly,
    • If states of ecstasy can be generated, then this may overshadow all other methods.
• Simulated happiness
  • If nanotech can generate dopamine, then why not serotonin?
  • Currently some street drugs and some anti-depressants do this.
  • When perfected, perfect control over our minds and bodies is possible, then continuous, serotonin modification will be just a thought away, ensuring we will never stop smiling.
• Receptor management
  • Creating an infinite amount of more pleasure receptors
  • Removing side effects and repairing burnt out receptors is an essential component, and may be the great differentiator between drugs today and biotech in the future.
• Since staying alive will eventually require no effort, nor inputs (food*), outputs (bodily waste), and likely the elimination of sleep, living in a world of unending happiness and pleasure is a likely outcome. For example, it is likely that we will convert air moisture or other things into direct energy for our cells to use thereby eliminating the need for food, much like how plants get energy from sunlight.

But is there a cost to simulated pleasure and happiness? Only if you care or value the real human experience. One man’s heaven may be another mans hell.

We will increasingly become disconnected from each other as many modern drugs tend to do. It may be also that simulated happiness disconnect us as much since we wont need each other to feel happiness and pleasure. The current rate of growth in pleasure due to technology surely is an indicator that we are on our way to endless dopamine supply.

Perhaps the best metaphor for these changes via Hollywood movies would be “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Host,” and “The Invasion,” in which artificial unending happiness is guaranteed at the cost of real human feelings, experience, pain, and risk.

I should point out that if you think the above is not possible, then it’s worth knowing that the ability to stimulate the brain’s pleasure center was already possible several decades ago via electrical current; an experiment that was shut down perhaps due to ethical concerns. The experimenters could trigger any emotion they wanted, and that was long before the computing/tech age. Future tech will be much more refined, precise and safe.

The above essay is seems the most logical outcome because if humanity does not need anything anymore to survive, then it will clearly not need each other either.

I expect most people, but not all, will accept such changes if offered, much like how we see the varied degrees in consumption of entertainment today.

On a bit of a side note, I wonder how more exotic neurochemicals such as DMT might be manipulated. Time will tell.

* E.g. convert air to energy which can be used directly by our cells