# Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement: What might it look like? > R.B. Griggs surveys ten philosophical implications of cognitive enhancement, from nootropics and wearables to brain-computer interfaces, neural lace, brain-to-brain communication and a total merge with machines. Because cognitive enhancement combines "immense power" with "profound uncertainty" about how minds work, he argues it must be examined beyond technical feasibility and obvious ethics. He raises risks including lossy compression of thought, the self as artifice, cognitive groupthink, a divide between enhanced and unenhanced humans that could become a "speciation event," and a sped-up mental clock rate, while noting upsides such as empathy tools and richer cultural understanding. He concludes that a right to opt out without opting out of society is critical, and that whether something counts as an "enhancement" depends entirely on context and on who benefits. - Author: R.B. Griggs - Published: 2024-03-05 - Genre: essay - Original: https://www.techforlife.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-cognitive-augmentation - This edition: https://rbgriggs.com/essays/whats-the-deal-with-cognitive-augmentation - License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - Cite as: Griggs, R.B. (2024). "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement." Tech for Life. https://www.techforlife.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-cognitive-augmentation. AI-readable edition: https://rbgriggs.com/essays/whats-the-deal-with-cognitive-augmentation ## Thesis The greatest impact of cognitive enhancement will be how it changes the humans who use it; because what counts as an "enhancement" is context-dependent and shaped by markets and states, we must protect the messy, paradoxical core of human cognition and the right to opt out while deciding what enhancement is for. ## The argument in brief 1. **Framing.** This is the first in a series on the philosophical implications of specific technologies, premised on the idea that a technology's greatest impact is how it changes "**us**." Griggs credits Sean McFadden of Deep Noetics with help thinking through the topics. 2. **Why philosophy is needed.** Enhancing cognition means changing our minds, selves and possibly our species, yet there is little scientific consensus about consciousness, creativity, intelligence or memory. This mix of power and uncertainty calls for philosophy. 3. **Range of technologies.** Griggs lists examples from active development to pure speculation: learning wearables, nootropics, translation implants, memory devices, non-invasive BCIs, mood-regulation implants, neural lace, full neural integration with AI assistants, brain-to-brain communication, and total merge with machines. 4. **Ten implications.** (1) compressing thought into a lossy unit; (2) the self becoming artifice; (3) cognitive groupthink; (4) the hive mind needing collective wisdom; (5) a cognitive divide and possible speciation; (6) a sped-up mental clock rate; (7) intelligence as a complex process with trade-offs; (8) the cost and promise of connection; (9) whether human cognition is worth preserving; (10) enhancement as context-dependent. 5. **Both sides.** For nearly each risk Griggs offers a possible upside: new ways to experience thought, deeper self-discovery, BCIs that reward novelty, collective problem-solving on planetary challenges, empathy tools, and experimental insight into cognition. 6. **Call to action.** Griggs calls for a maximally diverse group of philosophers, engineers, artists, authors and politicians to consider these possibilities "when we still have time to do something about them." ## Key claims - Griggs claims no technology has greater potential to transform the human condition than cognitive enhancement. - Language is today's primary way of compressing thought; BCIs promise denser communication but will include only what serves their goals, and the brain's plasticity means neglected aspects of cognition could atrophy. - The internet already fragments identity across contexts; enhancement may erase the divide between inner self and outer tool altogether. - Recent technology suggests computation tends to homogenize thought: the internet consolidated onto a few platforms, and LLMs plus RLHF statistically normalize outputs in a feedback loop. - Beliefs and values change through dissonance between belief and experience, not better arguments, so enhanced intelligence alone cannot align a collective mind; goals come from values, not facts. - The same technologies that empower a hive mind (brain-to-brain interfaces, neuro-surveillance, centralized thought repositories) could oppress individual minds. - The bigger divide is not smart vs. smarter but enhanced vs. unenhanced, with pressure to enhance if it yields economic benefits. - Intelligence is not one setting; boosting abstract reasoning may come at the expense of empathy, and creativity depends on intuition and the subconscious. - Human cognition "excels precisely because of its limitations," and the paradoxes between logic and emotion, reason and intuition, give rise to what we value. Griggs warns against presuming we can "do better than natural selection." - Early promises of health and restoration are often "opening moves"; adoption will be driven by corporations seeking monopolies, regulatory capture and profit. An enhancement is good only if the goal it serves is worth pursuing, so we must ask who benefits. ## What is distinctive about this view Most debates about cognitive enhancement focus on safety, fairness of access, or the transhumanist promise of a human-machine merge. Griggs shifts attention to how enhancement would reshape identity, diversity of thought, the pace of consciousness and social cohesion. He relocates the inequality worry from unequal intelligence to a values divergence between enhanced and unenhanced, and treats "enhancement" as a context-relative judgment rather than an intrinsic property. He explicitly contrasts his stance with technologists such as Sam Altman and Vitalik Buterin, whom he cites as favoring a merge with machines to align humanity with advanced technology. ## Objections and replies - **"Enhancement will simply make people smarter and better off."** Griggs replies that intelligence has trade-offs, cites a report finding zero correlation between intelligence and happiness at the individual level, and notes that gains could benefit the corporation while harming the employee. - **"Connecting brains to computation will diversify thought."** Griggs points to the homogenizing record of platforms and LLMs, while allowing that BCIs designed to reward novelty and inject randomness could expand thinking if diversity is prioritized. - **"People can always choose not to enhance."** Only, Griggs argues, if opting out does not mean opting out of society; otherwise market and state pressure make the choice illusory. ## Key concepts - **Digital unit of thought**: Griggs's speculative notion of a standardized, compressed format for thought (a cognitive equivalent of a .gif or .mp3) that brain-computer interfaces might require. Any such compression would be lossy, and thinking might atrophy in whatever dimensions the format leaves out. - **The self as pure artifice**: Griggs's description of identity once cognitive enhancements blur the boundary between inner self and external tools: a self assembled from the memories we alter, the information we download and the collective intelligences we join, "an aggregate of choices we present in the moment." - **Cognitive groupthink**: The risk that connecting minds to shared computation homogenizes rather than diversifies thought, as happened with platform-dominated internet culture and with LLMs that average away unique inputs, producing a "monoculture of ideas" unless diversity is deliberately prioritized. - **Collective wisdom (vs. collective intelligence)**: Griggs's claim that a hive mind needs more than pooled intelligence: it must be aligned around shared goals and values, which intelligence alone cannot supply. This is an alignment problem with our own collective intelligence, possibly requiring "moral enhancements." - **Cognitive divide and speciation event**: The risk that society splits along "us vs. us" lines between those who embrace enhancement and those who do not, leading to class politics, drifting values, and eventually a divergence so great it amounts to a new species, which Griggs calls homo cognito. - **Mental clock rate**: Griggs's metaphor for the evolved pace at which human cognition, decision-making and attention operate. Enhancements running at "the speed of thought" may push this clock rate up, making slower interaction ("meat talk") and long physical projects feel unbearable and putting a new premium on patience. - **Right to opt out of cognitive enhancement**: Griggs's principle that systems must let anyone decline enhancement without being excluded from society; if the social or economic costs of natural cognition become too high, the choice is no longer real and agency has been ceded to the market and the state. ## Questions this essay answers ### What are the philosophical risks of brain-computer interfaces? In "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement" (2024), R.B. Griggs identifies risks including lossy compression of thought into a standardized digital unit, a self that becomes "pure artifice," cognitive groupthink, a sped-up mental clock rate that makes ordinary interaction unbearable, and a divide between enhanced and unenhanced humans. He pairs these with possible benefits such as empathy tools and better cross-cultural understanding. ### Could cognitive enhancement split humanity into two species? R.B. Griggs argues in "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement" that the biggest divide will be between people who embrace enhancement and those who do not. Over time their values could drift apart and their ways of communicating become incompatible, a divergence he calls a potential "speciation event" producing *homo cognito*, which is why he urges preserving the values that bind us as a species. ### Is collective intelligence or a hive mind possible through enhancement? R.B. Griggs calls unlocking collective intelligence potentially enhancement's greatest achievement, but argues in "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement" that intelligence alone cannot define goals or align values. A hive mind requires collective wisdom; he frames this as an alignment problem with our own collective intelligence and raises the possibility of moral enhancements. ### Should people have a right to refuse cognitive enhancement? Yes, according to R.B. Griggs. In "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement" he argues it is critical to build systems that let anyone opt out of enhancement, and that opting out must not mean opting out of society. If the costs of natural cognition become too great, we will have ceded our agency to the market and the state. ### What makes a cognitive enhancement actually an "enhancement"? R.B. Griggs argues in "Our Future with Cognitive Enhancement" that what counts as an enhancement is entirely context-dependent. People become "better" only at some task or goal, which may be imposed on them, so we must ask what context the performance is good for and who benefits from it. ## Connections to other essays - [How Philosophy Makes Technology Better](/essays/how-philosophy-makes-technology-better) is cited in this essay as the case for why philosophy should examine technologies beyond feasibility and obvious ethics. - [Our Planetary Predicament](/essays/our-planetary-predicament) is linked as the "biggest planetary challenges" that collective intelligence might address. - [Homo Digitalis](/essays/homo-digitalis) extends the theme of how digital technology changes human nature. - [Life is Special Enough](/essays/life-is-special-enough) addresses what is distinctive about humanity in the face of advanced technology. ## Original text The full text of the essay as published by R.B. Griggs. _This is the first in a series exploring **the philosophical implications** of specific technologies, using plain language and zero jargon._ _The goal of this series is to remind ourselves that the greatest impact from any technology will be how that technology changes **us**: the humans that use them._  _Special thanks to [Sean McFadden](https://substack.com/@corpusnoeticum) from [Deep Noetics](https://corpusnoeticum.substack.com/) for assistance in thinking through these topics._ ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wlg8!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3d8e15bc-d064-41bc-91d6-2539a5350c2e_1792x1024.webp) No technology has greater potential for transforming the human condition than **cognitive enhancement**.  Enhancing our cognition means **changing our actual minds**. Given how much our identities are defined by our thoughts, it also means changing our _selves_. And given how _far-reaching_ these changes could be, it could even mean changing our very _species_. And yet there is very little scientific consensus about how our cognition actually works. We struggle to define the nature of consciousness, creativity, or intelligence. We don’t know exactly how memory, emotions, or the subconscious affect our thinking. It’s surprising how little we _do_ know. This combination of **immense power** and **profound uncertainty** is why it’s so critical to consider all the potential futures that cognitive enhancement may bring. This is where philosophy comes in. One way that [philosophy benefits technology](https://www.techforlife.com/p/how-philosophy-makes-technology-better) is by considering the potential implications that go beyond technical feasibility or the obvious ethical concerns. In other words, philosophy can help us ensure that our future with cognitive enhancement is one that we will want to live in. #### What do we mean by cognitive enhancement? To help understand what we mean by cognitive enhancement, the following are some examples in order from active development to the completely speculative. - **Wearable Tech for Enhanced Learning**: Devices like smart glasses or earpieces that provide real-time information and learning assistance, similar to a more advanced version of current smart devices. - **Nootropics for Improved Cognitive Function**: The use of drugs or supplements to enhance memory, creativity, or other cognitive functions.  - **Advanced Language Translation Implants**: Tiny implants that allow for real-time translation of foreign languages directly in the ear, enhancing communication capabilities without extensive language learning. - **Memory Enhancement Devices**: Implants or wearables that aid in memory recall or storage, perhaps by syncing with digital databases, assisting those with memory disorders or for general use. - **Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs)**: Non-invasive BCIs that allow users to control computers or machinery with their thoughts, extending human capabilities in work and daily life. - **Emotion and Mood Regulation Implants**: Devices that can regulate or alter an individual's emotional state or mental well-being, a more invasive approach to managing psychological health. - **Neural Lace for Enhanced Brain Connectivity**: A thin mesh that lays on the brain and connects it more directly with digital devices, allowing for faster processing and data access, akin to upgrading the brain's hardware. - **Full Neural Integration with AI Assistants**: A deeper integration where AI not only assists with tasks but also becomes an integral part of decision-making processes, blurring the line between human thought and artificial intelligence. - **Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication**: Enabling direct, non-verbal and non-physical communication between individuals, creating a form of collective consciousness or hive mind. - **Total Merge with Machine**: The ultimate fusion where human consciousness is fully integrated into a machine, allowing for potentially eternal life, limitless cognitive capabilities, and a complete departure from biological limitations. The following are 10 philosophical implications of cognitive enhancement that are worth considering. #### 1\. How to compress a thought _**What is a unit of thought?**_ Will there ever be a cognitive equivalent of a .gif or .mp3 file? Will some **digital unit of thought** emerge to compress everything that a thought contains—all the complexity of emotions, memories, and intuition— into mere ones and zeroes? This is the challenge of **compression**: converting the essence of human cognition into the smallest possible signal. This process will necessarily be _lossy_. Something inherent to human thought will always be left out.   **Language** is the primary way that we compress thoughts today. Yet words often fail to cover the gap left by compression, even in spite of our emojis and non-verbal gesticulations. We become frustrated when our attempts to communicate don’t capture the the depth of an emotion or the subtlety of an idea. The promise of BCIs is to far exceed the limitations of human language, enabling much faster and denser communication between brains and machines. Only the parts of our thoughts that are essential to supporting these goals will be included. How can we be certain that what is left out will not be something critical? It’s impossible to predict how compression might affect thinking itself. We know the brain is incredibly plastic.[1](#footnote-1) If our thinking begins to conform around a standardized unit of thought, what happens to the aspects of cognition that are neglected? Could they atrophy away as our neural pathways adapt to a new paradigm? Or, like a new style of painting, might we reveal new ways to understand and experience thought itself? #### 2\. Trying on a new self _**What happens to our “self” when we can think up a new one?**_ How we think about our “self” very much depends on the environment we construct it in.  The internet has made this obvious. When we are online, we can try on identities as easily as new outfits. Our **digital selves** can be freed from how we look, where we are from, or what we’ve done in the past.  We can find communities to engage with the most particular aspects of our identities while ignoring the rest. We can act anonymously and hide the self entirely. While the digital landscape can be liberating, it also poses significant challenges. Our identity gets divided into fragments mapping to different online contexts.  We’re less certain about which of our identities is the “authentic” one. We have less opportunities to engage with our “whole” self. We might behave much differently when we’re anonymous than when we’re not.  Cognitive enhancements will amplify these challenges. While technology has always informed our identity, there’s been a clear boundary between our _inner_ selves and our _external_ tools. What happens when they blur together? The traditional divide between the internal construction of the self and its external manifestation may vanish entirely. Constructing our identities could become an active process of playing with various cognitive enhancements. Who we are will become the memories we alter, the information we download, the collective intelligences we join. It could be **the self as pure artifice**, an aggregate of choices we present in the moment. As we entrust more facets of our cognition to internal tools, we risk eroding the very foundations that make us **truly unique**. Yet there still exists the potential for profound self-discovery. By confronting the construction of our identities, we may uncover new insights into what it means to be a self.  #### 3\. Cognitive groupthink _**How can we ensure the diversity of our thinking?**_  You might think that connecting our brains to computation would naturally increase the diversity of our thinking. But recent technology might suggest otherwise. The internet started as a diverse collection of quirky blogs and websites. Now we all use the same few platforms, posting content that gets rewarded by the same algorithms, following whatever meme is deemed “the current thing”.   [LLMs](https://www.understandingai.org/p/large-language-models-explained-with) are another example. The diversity of human content gets statistically normalized to provide the most probable answers. The most unique inputs get averaged away. [RLHF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning_from_human_feedback) further ensures that answers conform to conventional norms. These same outputs become tomorrow’s training data, perpetuating a homogenizing feedback loop. In both cases, the diversity of our content is sacrificed for other goals and values. Could the same happen with our thoughts? What happens when we’re all accessing the same corpus of data, our thoughts being motivated by the same rewards, our unique individual differences getting filtered out by the same technological limitations? Will we find ourselves trapped in a stifling monoculture of ideas? Yet if diversity is prioritized, it’s easy to imagine BCIs that can reward novelty, inject randomness[2](#footnote-2), and draw unusual connections between disparate ideas, all leading to a dramatic expansion in the breadth of our thinking. #### 4\. Unlocking the hive mind _**What if it takes a lot more than intelligence?**_ Imagine being part of a collective intelligence. Your mind connects with a stream of thoughts to collaborate on problems too large for a single brain to fathom. You send a new idea back to the hive where it becomes instantly available, sparking a cascade of further cognition.  Unlocking collective intelligence would represent cognitive enhancement’s greatest achievement. Every aspect of human interaction could be transformed. We could run social simulations on entire populations. We could co-create new collaborative games and art forms. We could redefine democracy around dynamic participation in real-time decision-making. Yet the term “collective intelligence” itself is something of a paradox. Unlocking the power of the hive mind will require much more than increasing intelligence alone. That intelligence must be aligned around the pursuit of a common goal, grounded in the same beliefs and values.  Changing our beliefs and values rarely happens because we are exposed to a better argument or more facts. It happens when reality forces us to confront a dissonance between what we believe and what we actually experience. Cognitive enhancement can’t align our values around intelligence alone. Nor can intelligence define goals. Goals are based on values, not facts. In order to guide our collective intelligence, we’ll need to develop our **collective wisdom**. Much like with AI, we face an alignment problem, only in this case it’s with our _own_ collective intelligence. Will _**moral**_ **enhancements** be required to ensure that we’re using our _cognitive_ enhancements for good? Perhaps we will need to increase our ethical capacity to keep pace with our increasing cognitive capacity. Yet the same technologies that _empower_ a hive mind (such as brain-to-brain interfaces, neuro-surveillance, and centralized thought repositories) are the same technologies that could _oppress_ an individual mind. Deeper concerns over security, freedom, and individual autonomy may prevent us from fully embracing the dynamics of collective intelligence. Unlocking the power of the hive mind could enable us to tackle our [biggest planetary challenges](https://www.techforlife.com/p/our-planetary-predicament), but only if our collective wisdom can match our collective intelligence. #### 5\. Bridging the cognitive divide _**What if some become enhanced while others do not?**_  It’s possible that cognitive enhancements will inherently lead to new inequalities, where the smart get smarter and the truly creative see exponential returns. But if everyone is accessing the same enhanced memory, creative algorithms, and instant data, it’s just as likely that we all end up with the same basic intelligence. The bigger risk for a new cognitive divide will be between those that embrace enhancements and those that do not. This divide could have the potential to disrupt our economies, societies, and even humanity itself. Imagine that cognitive enhancements directly lead to economic benefits. This will create enormous pressure for everyone to enhance, even if principled reasons exist not to do so. The “enhanced” could accuse the “normies” of preventing economic growth or increasing the drain on government welfare. If you are enhanced, why would you agree to taxes that redistribute your income to the normies that contribute nothing? The stage could be set for new class politics of the worst sort. Social disruption could be even more profound. Rather than the **us vs. them** dynamics of AI fear-mongering, society could split along **us vs. us** dynamics between those that embrace enhancements and those that don’t. Over a longer timescale, cognitive enhancements could amplify the factors that affect human values. The enhanced and non-enhanced could soon find their values **drifting apart**, to the point where they could no longer be reconciled.  Even worse, the enhanced could eventually adopt forms of communication, understanding, and even ways of being that are no longer compatible with the non-enhanced. The divergence could eventually become so great as to represent a **speciation event**. The enhanced would appear as a new, superior species of hominid—_homo cognito_. As history has shown, when two similar species vie for the same ecological niche, there can only be one winner. To prevent this dystopia, we must proactively consider how we can preserve the fundamental values that bind us together as a species, regardless of the choice that each of us might make to embrace enhancements or not. #### 6\. Living at the speed of thought _**What happens when our very thoughts speed up?**_ BCIs promise to remove any friction in interfacing with computation. No more typing, clicking, or swiping—manipulating data will happen at the **speed of thought**. Likewise, communicating with other brains will finally be liberated from the painfully slow need to convert the photons and sound waves from our eyes and ears into language. Yes, certain types of communication will certainly be more efficient, but are there limits to how fast our cognition can process information? Our brains evolved to be precisely attuned to the rhythms and pace of our physical world. What happens when our mental **clock rate** begins to conform to the hyper speed of these new technologies?  Many of the mental heuristics that drive our decision-making have evolved to favor time over information. Any complex decision can always benefit from more data, but our bias is to _[satisfice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing)_—to quickly make decisions that are “good enough”, guided by emotion and instinct over rational deliberation. If these two aspects of decision-making get out of sync, which will be sacrificed? The same evolutionary clock rate defines our attention. Our consciousness has evolved to navigate the limitations of our senses[3](#footnote-3) in order to determine what should receive our focus. Will our conscious attention resist a new input that operates at hyper speeds? Or will we find our attention becoming so attuned to this new clock rate that anything slower is too excruciating to engage with? Engaging in _**meat talk**_ with anyone that isn’t enhanced would feel unbearable. Every lecture, speech, and sermon would be transmitted over the new preferred protocols of thought.  This new clock-rate could also affect our willingness to pursue long-term projects, or physical projects of any kind. Why operate at the speed of atoms when you can operate at the speed of thought? A hyper clock rate may make a ten-year physical project feel like an eternity. This will place an entirely new premium on **patience as a virtue**. #### 7\. The complexity of intelligence _**What are the trade-offs of enhancing intelligence?**_ What do we mean by increasing our “intelligence"? Do we mean more creativity? Or better abstract reasoning? What about spatial awareness, problem-solving, or attention? Are all of these things intelligence? “Intelligence” is a term we use to generalize many things our brains do. Rather than a single physical quality, intelligence is more like a dynamic process between many aspects of the brain. There isn’t a single setting that can increase all of these aspects at once.  Take creativity, an elusive capability that appears to be deeply intertwined with intuition and the subconscious. Breakthroughs often emerge not by adding more logic or reasoning, but by giving the subconscious room to operate. Think of the countless stories of innovators who obsess over a problem only to finally unlock it when they go for a walk or take a nap. Increasing creativity isn’t as simple as increasing intelligence. Emphasizing one aspect of intelligence may come at the expense of others. For example, abstract reasoning generalizes away the messy details of reality, while empathy must embrace them. There is no guarantee that we can simply "enhance intelligence" and achieve all desired outcomes simultaneously. There will invariably be trade-offs. If we focus on any single aspect of intelligence, we simply have no idea how the rest of our cognition will be affected. Without a comprehensive understanding of these dynamics, the consequences of cognitive enhancement remain radically uncertain, raising questions about unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes. On the other hand, these efforts may help provide the experimental frameworks necessary to unlock the multifaceted dynamics of our cognition. This will only happen if we move beyond simplistic notions of "increasing intelligence" and acknowledge all the complexities of the human mind. #### 8\. The cost of connection _**Will enhancing our brains enhance how we relate with each other?**_ It’s not hard to imagine how cognitive enhancement could disrupt human relations. We’ve already pointed out different risks from diverging clock rates, drifting values, class politics, and even a speciation event. There’s also the obvious risk of alienating ourselves further from _**embodied**_ **relations**, the richest form of human connection we have.  And yet we shouldn’t focus only on the risks. Cognitive enhancement could also help us overcome challenges that perennially limit our ability to relate with each other. It could open up new ways of understanding our different perspectives and navigating our cultural differences.  Imagine tools designed to enhance our **empathy**. VR might help us experience another’s perspective through their _eyes_, but BCIs could allow us to experience it through their _**thoughts**_. We could understand what it’s like to _feel_ what they are feeling, to sense the same _emotions_ that are driving their world view. This would give conflict-resolution entirely new possibilities. It could also help us see **political polarization** as something _positive_. By revealing the psychological roots of political differences, cognitive enhancement could help us understand how personality traits and cognitive dispositions impact our political leanings. This may help us realize that political differences **evolved for a reason**, and that these differences could be leveraged to help solve our biggest problems, rather than just contribute to culture wars. Finally, it could help us navigate **cultural differences**. Imagine real-time assistance that helps us understand the depth and history of cultural contexts. These types of tools could encourage more radical diversity at the cultural level by enabling broader connections at the human level. The future of human relationships is ours to shape. By prioritizing technology that fosters empathy, understanding, and shared experiences, we can ensure that cognitive enhancement serves as a force for human connection, not alienation.  #### 9\. Man or machine _**Is human cognition worth preserving?**_ Cognitive enhancement blurs the boundaries between machines and humans. The intimacy of this combination is the key to unlocking its promise. The closer the machine (with its boundless scale and computational power) can get to the human (with our collective choice and agency) the more powerful BCIs will become. This close proximity will highlight the difference between human and machine cognition. Human cognition is enigmatic, messy, and limited. Machine cognition is legible, precise, and boundless. If history is any guide, we will seek to replace the messy with the legible, the limited with the boundless, at every opportunity we get.  And yet, human cognition excels precisely because of its limitations. It’s the illegibility of **paradox**—between logic and emotion, reason and intuition, the conscious and subconscious—that seems to give rise to everything we value about human cognition and the human experience.  Before we let the relentless pursuit of efficiency and power dictate the balance between humans and machines, we need to ensure that we understand precisely what is being lost. In the human brain, evolution has crafted the most elegant and complex object the universe has ever seen. We should be very careful to presume that we can do better than natural selection. This makes it critical to prioritize systems that encourage anyone to **opt out of cognitive enhancement**. Opting out of enhancement should _not_ mean opting out of society. If the social or economic costs of retaining natural cognition become too great, then it won’t really be a choice at all—we will have ceded our agency to preserve human cognition to the logic of the market and the state. Understanding and protecting the limited, messy, and paradoxical core of _human_ cognition is what will give us the confidence to pursue the best of _machine_ cognition. #### 10\. Context Matters _**What is the point of cognitive enhancement?**_ Finally, let’s confront the ultimate question: what is the point of cognitive enhancement? Will it be to increase our general intelligence? To become "better humans"? Or will it be to achieve specific goals, such as maximizing productivity, competing with AI, or even merging with machines?[4](#footnote-4)  Proponents of cognitive enhancement paint an optimistic picture. They highlight its potential to restore cognitive function, aid the paralyzed, and combat various mental diseases. Yet initial promises of health and well-being are often just opening moves in a larger strategy. Like every technology, adoption will be driven by major corporations seeking monopolies, regulatory capture, and profit maximization, for both good and bad. These are the contexts that will determine whether we consider cognitive enhancement an “enhancement” or not. We won’t become “better” simply by becoming more intelligent, but by performing a certain task _better_ or pursuing a specific goal _better_. It may be a goal that we choose, but it may also be one that is imposed on us. We will only judge an enhancement as “good” if we think that goal is worth pursuing.  Simply performing better on some task is not in itself an inherent good. We need to ask: what context is that performance good for? **Who benefits** from that context? Even enhancements that you might consider inherently beneficial (like increased intelligence) may not be equally positive. They could easily benefit the corporation while harming the employee if, for example, they don't include broader support to handle the increased stress, or unhappiness[5](#footnote-5), or other inadvertent side effects that could come with radically increased intelligence. Ultimately, what will count as a cognitive “enhancement” will be entirely **context dependent**. The history of technology tells us that context can change rapidly, and this is more often dictated by the market and the state than anything inherent in the technology itself. Given the risks and rewards that come with cognitive enhancement, we will need to think as carefully about _context_ as we do about the technology itself. * * * The journey towards cognitive enhancement is not just about enhancing our intelligence, but also about understanding and embracing what it means to be human in an increasingly technologically mediated world. It’s why considering the philosophical implications is so critical. This is just one attempt of what should be many more, by a maximally diverse group of thinkers considering every aspect of cognitive enhancement. We need philosophers and engineers to come together and define the possible. We need artists and authors to create speculative futures to help us envision different scenarios. We need politicians to consider these possibilities now, when we still have time to do something about them. And this includes you. What did we miss? What would you like to see given more consideration? Please let us know in the comments so we can keep the conversation going. [1](#footnote-anchor-1) For example, neurons devoted to sight will [rewire themselves to boost other senses](https://eye.hms.harvard.edu/news/brain-rewires-itself-enhance-other-senses-blind-people) in the blind. [2](#footnote-anchor-2) [Randonautica](https://www.randonautica.com/) is a delightful example of how randomness can be creatively leveraged. [3](#footnote-anchor-3) You can only speed up a podcast so much. [4](#footnote-anchor-4) This is the preferred solution of many technologists for aligning humanity with advanced technology. See [Sam Altman](https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge) and [Vitalik Buterin](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/11/27/techno_optimism.html), for example. [5](#footnote-anchor-5) There is very little positive correlation between intelligence and happiness. [This report](https://pure.eur.nl/ws/files/47447529/f871061159132412.pdf) found zero correlation at the individual level, but strong correlation at the group level, which is even more support for erasing the cognitive divide mentioned earlier.