Human Engineering
Manipulating human behavior in the quest to fight climate change and other social ills.
When you hear the word “engineering” you often think of infrastructure, like bridges, buildings, gadgets, etc. Once a qualifier is added like social, geo, or human, it takes on a totally different meaning.
What is human engineering? According to S. Matthew Liao, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University:
Human engineering involves the biomedical modification of humans to make us better at mitigating, and adapting to the effects of, climate change.
“Biomedical modification of humans?” How would this be done?
In his article, Tackling Climate Change Through Human Engineering, Dr. Liao proposed four examples of human engineering:
1) Pharmacological Meat Intolerance
Dr. Liao suggest that to prevent too much consumption of red meat, “ we could artificially induce [in people] mild intolerance to red meat.” This would result in lower CO2 emissions over time.
2) Making Humans Smaller
The premise is that larger or taller people tend to consume more food and energy. Making people smaller reduces the “human ecological footprint.”
3) Lowering Birthrates Through Cognitive Enhancement
Prescribing Ritalin or Modafinil, for example, could be used as cognition enhancements in women with the end goal of ultimately lowering birthrates.
4) Pharmacological Induction of Altruism and Empathy
Getting people to “cooperate for the common good,” is the objective. Dr. Liao suggests that if we:
were generally more willing to act as a group, and could be confident that others would do the same, we may be able to enjoy the sort of benefits that arise only when large numbers of people act together.
This may seem ridiculous now. However, in time this could very well become reality.
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Image by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay.