Chapter
19: And They Lived Happily Ever After
1.
Happiness. How do you define happiness and how do you know when you are “happy”?
2.
If money and illness don’t affect happiness levels over time, then what does?
How do
expectations
or comparisons play a role?
3.
Why do we seem to need pharmaceutical interventions so much more now, than in
the
past?
4.
To what degree is genetics responsible for our happiness? (Keeping us at
certain levels?)
5.
Does marriage produce happiness, or happiness produce marriages? :)
6.
Pg. 391 Meaning in life. The author argues that “any meaning people ascribe to
their lives is
just
a delusion.” Thoughts?
7.
Does happiness depend on self-delusion?
8.
Buddhist meditation practices - ‘People are liberated from suffering not when
they
experience
fleeting pleasures, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of
feelings
and stop chasing them.’ Agree/Disagree? Anyone using these practices willing to
share
your experiences?
Chapter
20: The End of Homo Sapiens
1.
Is our scientific intelligence (e.g., our ability to modify genes) outpacing
our ethical/moral
intelligence?
2.
How do you feel about GMOs? Would you eat a potato that had some genes from an
Arctic
fish
(to be frost-resistant)? What about bacon from a pig with a worm-gene to make
it
healthier?
3.
If we are able to bring back species like Wooly Mammoths and Neanderthals,
should we?
What
rights would that Neanderthal man or woman have? Would we have the right to
take
his/her
life at a certain age (18?) to examine the brain to “identify what biological
change
produced
consciousness”?
4.
How far do we go? E.g., Cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Would healthy people use
it to get
super-memories?
Implications? How will money play a role in these decisions?
5.
pg. 407: Currently looking to develop “a direct two-way brain-computer
interface that will
allow
computers to read the electrical signals of a human brain, simultaneously
transmitting
signals
that the brain can read in turn.” The author asks the following questions:
1.
What if they can link a brain directly to the Internet?
2.
What if they can link several brains to each other?
3.
What might happen to human memory, human consciousness and human identity if
the
the
brain has direct access to a collective memory bank? Would people lose
individual
identities?
6.
Pg. 408 Suppose you could back up your brain to a portable hard drive and then
run it on
your
laptop. Would your laptop be able to think and feel just like a Sapiens? If so,
would it
be
you, or someone else?
7.
What if computer programmers could create an entirely new but digital mind,
composed of
computer
code, complete with a sense of self, consciousness and memory? If you ran the
program,
would it be a person? If you deleted it, could you be charged with murder?
8.
Personalized medicine - matches treatment to DNA. But what about privacy? Do
insurance
companies
get access to our info? Can they refuse us if we have genetic predispositions
for
ailments?
9.
Do you believe that scientists will be able to engineer spirits as well as
bodies? Will there
be
something/one that will “look at us as condescendingly as we look at the
Neanderthals”?
10.
“The real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do
we want to
want’?
What does this mean?
Afterword:
The Animal That Became a God
1.
“We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles - but
nobody
knows
where we’re going.” :) Where do you think we’re going?
2.
The author asks his final question: “Is there anything more dangerous than
dissatisfied and
irresponsible
gods who don't know what they want?”
