1
00:00:00,940 --> 00:00:04,840
This is bioethics bytes with me, David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

2
00:00:05,110 --> 00:00:12,580
Bioethics Bytes is made in association with Oxford's Hero Centre for Practical Ethics and made possible by a grant from the Wellcome Trust.

3
00:00:12,880 --> 00:00:23,080
For more information about bioethics bites go to WW W Docs, Practical Ethics, Oecs Docs, AC UK or to choose you.

4
00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:29,710
Suppose a genetic engineering breakthrough made it simple, safe and cheap to increase people's intelligence.

5
00:00:30,550 --> 00:00:37,960
Nonetheless, if you ask the averagely intelligent person on the Clapham omnibus whether we should tamper with our genes to boost our brains,

6
00:00:38,290 --> 00:00:45,250
he or she might recoil at the notion. Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University,

7
00:00:45,580 --> 00:00:50,650
suspects that this reaction may be a result of what he calls status quo bias.

8
00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:54,730
Nick Bostrom, welcome to bioethics bytes. Good to be with you.

9
00:00:55,270 --> 00:00:58,180
We're going to focus on the status quo bias. What is that?

10
00:00:58,660 --> 00:01:07,720
A status quo bias is a preference for the status quo just because it is the status quo, a preference that is inappropriate or irrational.

11
00:01:08,710 --> 00:01:16,690
So could you give an example of that? Well, cognitive psychologists have experimented in different settings with people's responses,

12
00:01:16,690 --> 00:01:23,440
and they find that in many cases, just because an alternative is presented as the status quo, it makes it more attractive.

13
00:01:23,950 --> 00:01:31,810
One experiment subjects were given either a decorated coffee cup or a large chocolate bar randomly.

14
00:01:32,050 --> 00:01:38,680
And then now we're allowed to exchange the particular gift that had been given for the other gift just by holding up a card saying trade.

15
00:01:39,070 --> 00:01:46,480
And it turns out that in this kind of experiment, 90% of the subjects prefer to stick with their original gift.

16
00:01:46,960 --> 00:01:48,610
And this is known as the endowment effect.

17
00:01:48,610 --> 00:01:55,660
As soon as something has become yours, you become unwilling to part with it, even for something that ex-ante would have been just as valuable.

18
00:01:56,080 --> 00:01:56,889
And there are many,

19
00:01:56,890 --> 00:02:06,730
many other cases where it doesn't seem that you can explain this away by postulating that people have formed some special emotional attachment to it.

20
00:02:06,730 --> 00:02:10,900
But it just seems that at least in some of these cases, there is a kind of cognitive error.

21
00:02:11,410 --> 00:02:15,910
That's really interesting you saying that this is generalisable effects across a wide

22
00:02:15,910 --> 00:02:21,580
range of activities and situations where human beings just like to be a bit conservative.

23
00:02:21,580 --> 00:02:23,649
Once they've got something, they stick with it. Yeah,

24
00:02:23,650 --> 00:02:29,740
but one has to be careful to distinguish the cases where it's a genuine bias in the sense of an irrational or

25
00:02:29,740 --> 00:02:36,280
inappropriate response from cases where it's just responding to a brute fact about how human emotions work.

26
00:02:36,490 --> 00:02:43,959
So with a coffee cup, chocolate bar example, you might argue that if you actually find yourself, for whatever strange reason,

27
00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:50,650
emotionally tied to the gift you have been given and it would hurt to give it up, then you are rational responding to that by not trading it in.

28
00:02:51,130 --> 00:02:56,350
But there are other studies where this kind of explanation is implausible.

29
00:02:56,740 --> 00:03:02,200
For example, it turns out that by just changing the wording in how alternatives are presented,

30
00:03:02,620 --> 00:03:05,380
you can make people prefer one alternative or the other.

31
00:03:05,770 --> 00:03:14,079
So if you change, you can save X number of lives to you can prevent x number of deaths, which mean exactly the same thing.

32
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:17,560
You can get people to reverse their preferences about two alternatives.

33
00:03:18,070 --> 00:03:25,060
So you've already started suggesting how the status quo bias could have implications in bioethics.

34
00:03:25,420 --> 00:03:26,800
Could you say a little bit more about that?

35
00:03:26,860 --> 00:03:35,169
Well, in bioethics, at least insofar as we're interested in making a consequentialist judgement, we face a very difficult challenge,

36
00:03:35,170 --> 00:03:40,990
which is to try to figure out whether the consequences of some intervention will, on balance, be good or bad.

37
00:03:41,290 --> 00:03:44,920
In fact, we face a double epistemic predicament.

38
00:03:45,250 --> 00:03:49,150
We first face the difficulty of predicting what the actual consequences would be.

39
00:03:49,630 --> 00:03:56,770
And then, even if we knew what the consequences would be, it might still be difficult to tell whether, on balance, they would be positive.

40
00:03:56,920 --> 00:04:01,520
And while we should, of course, collect all the relevant facts we can.

41
00:04:01,540 --> 00:04:08,530
There will always be a reliance on subjective judgement in the end to try to weigh up to different arguments for either side.

42
00:04:08,740 --> 00:04:13,870
If you are proposing to increase the tax rate or to reduce infant mortality,

43
00:04:13,900 --> 00:04:18,430
there is no exact science that will tell you what will happen 40 years into the future if you do that.

44
00:04:18,730 --> 00:04:20,470
And the same holds true, say,

45
00:04:20,590 --> 00:04:27,730
if you're proposing to increase average human intelligence or do some other changes in bioethics that have wide ranging consequences.

46
00:04:28,030 --> 00:04:32,020
So, you know, assuming the scientists weren't biased that there is this bias.

47
00:04:32,230 --> 00:04:33,220
Status quo bias.

48
00:04:33,640 --> 00:04:43,420
And you're saying that once we know that we're in a position to start intervening perhaps and removing this tendency in our judgements.

49
00:04:43,750 --> 00:04:51,850
Yeah. So there's some prima facie reason at least for suspecting that in particular judgements in bioethics might be susceptible to status quo bias,

50
00:04:52,180 --> 00:05:00,400
just as so many other human judgements are. So given that there is just reason to suspect that our bioethical judgements might be affected by.

51
00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:07,890
That is called bias. It's interesting to see if we can find some way to reduce or to remove this potentially distorting bias.

52
00:05:08,310 --> 00:05:16,500
And have you found one? Well, one thing you can try is the perhaps counterintuitive approach of trying to reverse your original perspective.

53
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:22,360
So suppose that somebody is suggesting that we should increase average human intelligence.

54
00:05:22,380 --> 00:05:28,800
And in this thought experiment, let's say that there is a medical safe pill that you could take that will improve your IQ a little bit.

55
00:05:29,130 --> 00:05:33,300
And the question now is, if we make this pill available to society at large,

56
00:05:33,300 --> 00:05:38,520
will the long term overall consequences on balance be good or will they be bad?

57
00:05:38,790 --> 00:05:45,330
What do you have most reason to believe? And so here is how you can test whether you might be infected by status quo bias.

58
00:05:45,570 --> 00:05:51,930
Suppose that somebody had instead proposed that we should decrease average intelligence by a small amount.

59
00:05:52,140 --> 00:05:54,900
So almost everybody would immediately say that that would be a horrible idea.

60
00:05:54,900 --> 00:05:59,550
I mean, you can't be serious, like distributing a pill to make people slightly brain damaged crazy.

61
00:06:00,180 --> 00:06:03,899
But if you hold both that it would be bad to slightly increase average

62
00:06:03,900 --> 00:06:08,730
intelligence and that it would be bad to slightly decrease average intelligence.

63
00:06:09,210 --> 00:06:14,370
You seem to be committed to a position that says that we are currently sitting in a local optimum.

64
00:06:14,610 --> 00:06:17,160
Our intelligence is just at the right level.

65
00:06:17,220 --> 00:06:28,000
It couldn't be improved by increasing or decreasing it, but in a generic curve only very few points will be local optimum for most points.

66
00:06:28,020 --> 00:06:32,970
It will be the case either that you would get the higher value by moving up or by moving down.

67
00:06:33,180 --> 00:06:39,419
And so if you hold this, you then face some burden of justification to explain why it is that we can't

68
00:06:39,420 --> 00:06:43,200
make things better by either increasing or by decreasing average intelligence.

69
00:06:44,280 --> 00:06:51,360
What you're saying is then that it's statistically highly unlikely that we are at that optimum points.

70
00:06:51,660 --> 00:06:58,200
So the chances are that if you're saying that we are at that point, that you're subject to this status quo bias.

71
00:06:58,620 --> 00:07:03,660
Well, unless you can give a good reason for thinking that we are sitting in a local optimum.

72
00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:11,580
Well, one reason might be that evolution has over many thousands and perhaps millions of years taking us to that optimal point.

73
00:07:11,850 --> 00:07:18,870
Right. So this is one broad category of answers to this challenge posed by the reversal test.

74
00:07:19,110 --> 00:07:22,730
And for many parameters, this will yield a very good response.

75
00:07:22,740 --> 00:07:29,190
So if, for example, somebody had proposed that we should increase the ratio of the heart size to the body size of humans,

76
00:07:29,490 --> 00:07:32,760
make our hearts larger, I would say it sounds like a pretty bad idea.

77
00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,000
And if somebody had suggested, well, let's make our heart smaller,

78
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:40,240
let's try to shrink our hearts, I'd say that's probably a pretty dumb thing to do also.

79
00:07:40,260 --> 00:07:45,180
And here I could find a good evolutionary argument that we have adapted probably

80
00:07:45,180 --> 00:07:49,080
to have a size of the heart that's appropriate relative to the size of the body.

81
00:07:49,230 --> 00:07:54,810
The question then is if we try to use this kind of argument, in the case of cognitive enhancement, will it work?

82
00:07:55,020 --> 00:07:59,400
And there are several premises needed for this evolutionary argument to get off the ground.

83
00:07:59,580 --> 00:08:06,900
For a start, we have to think about whether the environment in which we evolved is in relevant respects,

84
00:08:07,170 --> 00:08:16,139
identical to the environment in which we now live. So with regard to heart size, arguably there is no relevant difference with regard to intelligence.

85
00:08:16,140 --> 00:08:18,540
There might be a number of factors that have changed.

86
00:08:18,690 --> 00:08:25,050
On the one hand, you can imagine different trade offs that evolution struck between, say, head size,

87
00:08:25,170 --> 00:08:33,540
which we know correlate with intelligence and metabolic energy costs, a huge proportion of the body's total energy body.

88
00:08:33,540 --> 00:08:38,250
It goes to just running the brain and having a larger brain would be metabolically expensive.

89
00:08:38,520 --> 00:08:42,299
And you could see that in the Pleistocene where food was often scarce.

90
00:08:42,300 --> 00:08:47,670
That would be one point where this trade-off would be optimal. And now we're on Mars forests never far away.

91
00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:51,030
We don't suffer from a calorie deficit, but rather the opposite.

92
00:08:51,030 --> 00:08:55,860
We kind of would rather fancy burning more calories. And if we get more intelligent, that's a bonus.

93
00:08:56,370 --> 00:09:01,920
Other things like the size of the head again at birth, limited by the size of the birth canal.

94
00:09:01,930 --> 00:09:11,010
Now we have caesarean sections, a long period of maturation stretching over a decade or two, dangerous and costly if you are living in the jungle.

95
00:09:11,310 --> 00:09:15,270
But now we could afford to be maturing for a longer period of time.

96
00:09:15,450 --> 00:09:21,090
So there are many of these recent studies suggest that the resources available to us are very different on the demand side.

97
00:09:21,100 --> 00:09:25,860
Similarly, the situation has changed radically. When we were living as hunter gatherers,

98
00:09:25,860 --> 00:09:33,990
there was no need for literacy or advanced numeracy or the ability to stay focussed on some abstract topic for hours at an end.

99
00:09:34,380 --> 00:09:37,950
But in today's society, these cognitive skills are at a premium,

100
00:09:38,280 --> 00:09:46,830
so we have no reason to think that what was maximally adaptive in the evolutionary past would still be adaptive to us today.

101
00:09:47,490 --> 00:09:52,750
So much for the evolutionary argument against the idea that we've reached optimum level.

102
00:09:53,070 --> 00:10:00,030
You could believe that we haven't actually reached an optimum level, but there would be tremendous costs involved in making that.

103
00:10:00,340 --> 00:10:08,350
Or nudge towards the optimal level and that it will actually be better to stay where we are than invest so much in making such a small change.

104
00:10:08,530 --> 00:10:17,680
Yes. So one has to consider transition costs and in some cases this will be a fairly good response to the challenge presented by the reversal test.

105
00:10:17,860 --> 00:10:24,340
If, say, somebody in America propose to switch to the metric system of measurement units, which looks superior.

106
00:10:24,700 --> 00:10:28,330
That might be somebody else countering, saying that even though the metric system would be better,

107
00:10:28,420 --> 00:10:32,890
simpler, more elegant, it just wouldn't be worth it. The transition costs would be too big.

108
00:10:33,070 --> 00:10:38,830
In the case of cognitive enhancement, it seems that this argument from transition cost is impossible.

109
00:10:38,890 --> 00:10:47,200
For a start, the transition cost would be a one off price we would pay, and then we could delay the benefits for an indefinite period of time after.

110
00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:55,100
And although it is true that there would be these transition costs, you know, maybe textbooks would have to be rewritten for more intelligent kids.

111
00:10:55,510 --> 00:10:59,169
Maybe some kids would. If we made a network through, say,

112
00:10:59,170 --> 00:11:06,489
germline genetic enhancement would grow up in families where the parents are not the smartest and maybe they would be bored.

113
00:11:06,490 --> 00:11:13,490
Maybe some games would no longer be interesting. This would be cost to be paid, but they seem utterly trivial in comparison to the benefits.

114
00:11:13,510 --> 00:11:17,500
I mean, school books are constantly rewritten for all kinds of trivial reasons.

115
00:11:17,710 --> 00:11:23,020
Smart kids sometimes are born into dumber families, and although that might cause problems in some cases,

116
00:11:23,020 --> 00:11:28,030
it's not something that would make us think that on balance, it would have been better if all these kids had just been dumber.

117
00:11:28,690 --> 00:11:33,580
Well, what about the risks involved in making a transition, a sort of step into the dark, as it were?

118
00:11:33,910 --> 00:11:40,050
We know where we are now, but we don't really know what's going to happen if we start trying to meddle with genes,

119
00:11:40,060 --> 00:11:43,450
as some people would say, to increase intelligence. Yeah.

120
00:11:43,460 --> 00:11:46,810
So in some cases it would be wise for us to stick where we are,

121
00:11:46,810 --> 00:11:53,620
even if we are pretty sure it's not the optimum because we are so worried about a change making things radically worse.

122
00:11:54,040 --> 00:12:02,109
If you are sitting on the cliff in the dark, you might be well advised to just stay put, even if you think that one direction would lead to safety.

123
00:12:02,110 --> 00:12:05,020
Because if you're walking in the wrong direction, you'll fall off the cliff and die.

124
00:12:05,140 --> 00:12:10,150
And in principle, this this is a valid type of response to the reversal test.

125
00:12:10,510 --> 00:12:14,510
In the case of cognitive enhancement, it's not clear that it works.

126
00:12:14,530 --> 00:12:19,360
However, even if our sole focus was to reduce risk as much as possible.

127
00:12:19,510 --> 00:12:25,660
Increased cognitive capability might also enable us to be better at avoiding many kinds of risk.

128
00:12:25,990 --> 00:12:33,070
More intelligent people, on average, tend to live longer, for example, and avoid many kinds of social mishaps on a social level.

129
00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:43,930
It's at least arguable that we need more intelligent foresight and wiser decision making to meet many of the great challenges of the 21st century.

130
00:12:44,110 --> 00:12:48,400
And although there might be new risks introduced by changing average intelligence,

131
00:12:48,730 --> 00:12:54,670
that might also be many new means of reducing risk that would be made available to us if we were smarter.

132
00:12:55,090 --> 00:13:01,569
There is an additional consideration in this context that is relevant, which is that we need to look not just at the risks,

133
00:13:01,570 --> 00:13:10,210
but also the potential upsides that could be surprising and unanticipated benefits, as well as surprising and unanticipated negative consequences.

134
00:13:10,510 --> 00:13:17,260
With regard to cognitive enhancement, it's possible that these potential upside risks, as it were, are quite enormous.

135
00:13:17,500 --> 00:13:25,180
You could imagine if a few hundred thousand years ago some Australopithecus were sitting around the campfire and pondering this question

136
00:13:25,180 --> 00:13:31,149
whether they should sort of try to enhance their intelligence and the risks involved in that and the benefits that they could foresee.

137
00:13:31,150 --> 00:13:36,490
You know, we would be better able to to hunt some meat and maybe to pick more bananas more efficiently.

138
00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:38,530
This might be the benefits they could foresee.

139
00:13:38,560 --> 00:13:46,030
What they wouldn't have foreseen would be all of mill's higher pressure that we now think constitute perhaps the main good of the human condition art,

140
00:13:46,030 --> 00:13:51,940
literature, music, complex games, cultural achievements, language, all of these things.

141
00:13:52,090 --> 00:13:59,380
It would seem kind of presumptuous for us to think that that our current outlook, we are able to anticipate all the important benefits.

142
00:13:59,740 --> 00:14:04,299
So the response to the risk argument would be that, A, there might be these very important benefits,

143
00:14:04,300 --> 00:14:07,990
some of which are not foreseeable, and that might outweigh the risks.

144
00:14:07,990 --> 00:14:14,200
And B that even if we were only focussed on risks, it's still not clear that it wouldn't be a bad idea to increase intolerance.

145
00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:20,590
I've listened to your responses to the arguments that I gave that about why somebody

146
00:14:20,590 --> 00:14:25,510
might believe that they had reached the optimal point in terms of human intelligence,

147
00:14:25,510 --> 00:14:31,090
for instance. What if I'm still not convinced? Have you got any other argument that might persuade me?

148
00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:36,190
Well, there is one thing we could try, which is the double reversal test.

149
00:14:36,790 --> 00:14:41,110
Maybe it's best explained by considering the following thought experiment.

150
00:14:41,830 --> 00:14:45,190
Disaster poison is leaking into the water system.

151
00:14:45,310 --> 00:14:50,470
This will result in widespread brain damage. An average intelligence will decline.

152
00:14:50,770 --> 00:14:55,240
Fortunately, at just the same time, scientists have made a breakthrough in genetic engineering,

153
00:14:55,420 --> 00:14:59,770
and they've come up with a somatic gene therapy that will slightly boost intelligence.

154
00:15:00,210 --> 00:15:08,550
And it turns out that this intelligence boost for gene therapy would just about offset the intelligence decrease that would arise from the poisoning.

155
00:15:09,060 --> 00:15:14,490
So now the question is, do you think under these special circumstances that it would be on balance,

156
00:15:14,490 --> 00:15:22,319
good to introduced a gene therapy to offset the intelligence decrease that would otherwise occur, assuming there weren't huge risks associated?

157
00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:26,520
Yes, definitely. Excellent. Now, let's suppose that this is what this idea does.

158
00:15:26,970 --> 00:15:36,060
So intelligence stays the same. Now it's ten years later, and it turns out that the poison is gradually being removed from the water system.

159
00:15:36,750 --> 00:15:42,690
And scientists predict that if we do nothing, then people's brains will gradually start to heal.

160
00:15:42,960 --> 00:15:49,260
And that will result in an increase in average intelligence, because the gene therapy enhancement is still in effect.

161
00:15:49,260 --> 00:15:55,410
It's permanent, and if the brain damage is removed, that will result in an increase in average intelligence.

162
00:15:55,650 --> 00:16:02,160
So now the question is, would you say it would be all things considered good to go and pump poison into the

163
00:16:02,160 --> 00:16:07,410
tap water to give people brain damage to prevent their intelligence from increasing?

164
00:16:08,070 --> 00:16:10,340
That would be bizarre. That would be bizarre, I think.

165
00:16:10,350 --> 00:16:17,129
And that then seems to suggest that from a consequentialist point of view, you think it would be better, all things considered,

166
00:16:17,130 --> 00:16:22,650
if we end up in the stage where average intelligence is increased and this double

167
00:16:22,650 --> 00:16:28,950
reversal test works by contrasting two different kinds of perception of the status quo.

168
00:16:29,070 --> 00:16:37,080
So on the one hand, status quo can mean the current state of affairs, and we preserve the status quo by making sure that things don't change.

169
00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:43,890
Another understanding of status quo is that which will happen by default if one doesn't intervene to change it.

170
00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:48,840
And in this thought experiment, of course, these two different status quo concepts conflict.

171
00:16:48,840 --> 00:16:55,290
And so by interpolating between them, we can sort of pinpoint the effect that the fact that something is the status quo has in your judgement,

172
00:16:55,290 --> 00:17:04,170
and then extract out your status quo bias. It's interesting that we still do have a status quo bias and it presumably has some evolutionary origin.

173
00:17:04,530 --> 00:17:08,700
But why on earth would we have it if it leads us to make judgements which are not reliable?

174
00:17:09,210 --> 00:17:15,330
This I don't know, and this is indeed one of the main remaining question marks surrounding these issues.

175
00:17:15,930 --> 00:17:23,700
I would be much more confident about all of these arguments if I knew what exactly the reason is that we have status quo bias in the first place.

176
00:17:24,540 --> 00:17:32,190
There are some partial explanations. So in some situations, status quo bias might be related to this endowment effect,

177
00:17:32,430 --> 00:17:35,640
where as soon as something is yours, you really don't want to lose it.

178
00:17:35,670 --> 00:17:45,240
Now, perhaps in our evolutionary past, being the kind of person that people could often take things from would be bad for your reputation.

179
00:17:45,570 --> 00:17:51,620
Not having the things in the first place might not be as embarrassing as if somebody could trick you out of something that was already yours.

180
00:17:51,630 --> 00:17:58,290
You would look like a fool. So maybe we evolved to become very averse to these situations where something was kind of taken away from us.

181
00:17:58,620 --> 00:18:02,970
But whether that's a true part of the story or all of the story, I'm not sure.

182
00:18:03,670 --> 00:18:07,440
Suppose we could completely eliminate the status quo bias?

183
00:18:07,890 --> 00:18:12,800
What would be the implications for bioethics? It might make us favour cognitive enhancement more.

184
00:18:12,810 --> 00:18:14,580
That's the case we've been focusing on here.

185
00:18:14,730 --> 00:18:23,430
For example, more funding for developing pharmaceutical means of enhancing memory and cognition would be seen more favourably or in genetic means,

186
00:18:23,880 --> 00:18:27,570
for the same reason that we think it would be better if the education system worked better.

187
00:18:27,660 --> 00:18:34,680
One then has to go through on a case by case basis other proposed interventions to see whether our intuitive

188
00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:39,480
judgements do in fact change when they are put through the reversal test or the double reversal test.

189
00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:46,080
In some cases our judgements will not change and that mightn't mean simply that they were not infected by status quo bias.

190
00:18:46,410 --> 00:18:52,560
Certainly the conclusion is not that we always have reason to want to change either up or down.

191
00:18:52,860 --> 00:18:55,430
In many cases, sticking with the status quo is rational.

192
00:18:55,440 --> 00:19:03,600
But in so far as we judge that the status quo is best just because of this bias, then removing the bias will enable us to make better judgements.

193
00:19:04,140 --> 00:19:06,600
Nick Bostrom, thank you very much. My pleasure.

194
00:19:07,290 --> 00:19:15,840
For more information about bioethics bites, go to WW Dot Practical Ethics, Dot Oaks Dot, AC, Dot, UK or iTunes U.