Note: Stephen suggested that my comments
on his follow-up
to my entry about
Human Savants would make for a good posting in their own right. What the
hey, who am I to disagree with Stephen?
I like the idea of being able to switch back and forth. There’s a scene in
Star
Trek: First Contact where Data and Picard are about to face down the Borg
for the first time. Data begins to observe his emotions and realizes that he’s
terrified. So he announces that he’s going to "turn off his emotion chip."
Picard tells Data that he envies him sometimes.
The good side of being able to switch back and forth between normal social
interaction and enhanced — or maybe it’s better to say modified — modes of
mental operation is that we would be more functional in some areas and we woldn’t
be distracted by things that normally get in the way.
I wrote a while back that being able to get "in the zone" like that
could prove helpful to sales people. A sales rep who can bump up her ability
to speak and to think on her feet, and tone down her fear of rejection, is going
to have a substantial advantage over the competition. The downside, of course,
is that it could also prove quite helpful to criminals and/or government officials.
How much easier it would be to commit appalling acts of violence if you can
just switch off your capacity to be appalled. Or maybe closer to the lives of
everyday people — think how much easier it would be to dump somebody.
Yikes.
