Should we be worried about moving the mind to digital space?
Outsourcing the mind… indeed a very interesting idea and goal for humanity, and one of the many, many ideas that we have formulated in our advance towards a brighter future — but this begs the question, once you’ve outsourced your mind… who controls it from there on out…?
I believe that for this idea to come to fruition, in a way that does not destroy human freedom of thought, we need to flesh it out further and concretely materialize the goals that we need to achieve in order to protect our freedom and preserve our humanity… and when completely moving the mind to digital space in order to extend lifespan, this must be said doubly so.
In this article though, I do not discuss these yet-to-be-discovered ideas — I leave that to the pioneers of the future — but I will instead tell you the grave consequences of failing to aptly capture this idea, so that should you be a pioneer of the future, you should understand just how important this truly is… after all, awareness is half the work.
Do not take this as a doom-and-gloom article, but instead as a warning for the future! If people are talking about what might happen if we don’t execute this idea properly, we have a much higher chance of correcting our actions early on, before it’s too late! So, ironically, this bad news is good news. People are already thinking about what may happen, and are striving to stop it.
So, why is the outsourcing of thought so problematic?
Well, as I have already stated — who controls your outsourced thought? This technology, in its earliest iteration, may require computers so powerful that they would not fit inside your pocket, but instead in the cloud — as in, your outsourced thoughts will be going not to you, but a computer that you do not control. And what does that computer do? What does the company that controls the computer do? Is this so-called company secretly accepting payments from another in order to inject thoughts into your brain that promote them? And how are they storing and using your thoughts?
Let’s say you wanted to buy a phone. You outsource your thoughts to decide which one to buy, and a recommendation comes back. Unbeknownst to you, that thought was actually an advertisement that a company had paid to inject into your mind…
See how this can quickly grow out of control? Depending on how much of our thoughts we outsource, our entire ideology can instantly be shifted into whatever the controlling power at the time wants, much like a dystopian society… and once your mind has been moved into the digital realm and has no choice but to outsource its thoughts, this becomes significantly more problematic.
Personally, I would not outsource my thoughts should I have the choice to; after all, you would not let someone do your thinking for you, or to make your decisions for you, since that (at least partially) restricts your freedom — and at that point, another question comes up; are you still even human?
Is there any hope for this idea, then?
There is a solution, but I won’t touch upon its implementation details too much — I will instead focus on the benefits of implementing it properly. If we decentralize the system to which we outsource our thoughts so that it is controlled by the people, for the people, instead of by a single entity such as a government or company which may not always have our best interest in mind, then we can avoid letting this happen.
Governments change, and companies change, and sometimes they do so without your best interest in mind, perhaps they make changes only in the interest of profit and status… but you? You have your own best interest in mind, and so does the rest of humankind as a collective.
In short, we must ensure the democratization of the outsourcing of thought so that it cannot be controlled by any one entity. We must ensure that the software and hardware are untouched by governments nor companies or enterprises. We must ensure that not even one inch has been influenced by such entities.
Collectively, we may be able to build something greater, that allows us to think bigger and better with a reduced risk of what is uncomfortably close to mind control.
Credit to Lisa Morii for the article’s idea.
