The Great Filter: Cap on Evolution

I was thinking a lot about how the human brain works. Like animals, we are largely driven by various chemicals in our brain being released for positive and negative stimuli, largely mapped to increasing the chances of our survival and procreation. For example, we may get a flood of dopamine or oxitocin when we eat or have sex, encouraging us to continue seeking out these behaviors.

Unlike animals, we figured out how to chemically induce states of euphoria fairly easily, without actually having to perform the mapped behaviors. We can do this through a variety of drugs like heroin or fentanyl.

Unfortunately, it is fairly difficult to sustain the effects of these drugs throughout the lifetime of a typical human being, and the withdrawal effects (discontinuing use) are pretty severe. There are also some costs such as feeding and maintaining the person in such a state.

But then, I started researching when various drugs were developed, and in general when serious research of effects of synthesized drugs on brain chemistry started. Surprisingly, it was all within the last 70 years at most. In fact, most modern antidepressants and stimulants only came about in the last 20 years. Compared to how long most of medicine, and most of science has been around it’s a very tiny fraction. Much less than I thought.

So, I began thinking, that given how fast science advances, it’s quite possible that we will figure out how to cheaply, safely, and effectively, induce a permanent state of euphoria to whoever wants it (essentially a life long heroin drip). The main problems that need to be solved are tolerance building and of course cheaply feeding/maintaining someone in this state. These problems seem relatively surmountable within our lifetime.

With that in mind, I wonder why anyone would choose a life outside of a permanent state of euphoria. Anything that could possibly be done in the real world, no matter how exciting, couldn’t possibly exceed a chemically induced maximum in the brain. Sure there would be some resistance at first. Anti drug culture is engrained very deeply. And there’s some cultural narrative of “reality” being better than delusion. Having experienced both thoroughly, I can very confidently say there’s no logic to this type of thinking. Euphoria is euphoria no matter if it’s caused by a drug or an external experience. Having bipolar, the levels of chemicals in my brain fluctuate wildly between manic and depressive phases with no relation to outside events. I think within decades even the most drug averse humans would be convinced that a chemically induced euphoria is much better than an external event generated one.

So anyways, I’m assuming that it’s far easier to get humanity to state of chemically induced euphoria than to something like inter stellar travel or even inter stellar communication.

I’ve been thinking — if life evolved outside of our planet, wouldn’t they place themselves in this chemically induced stage far before they invent interstellar travel or communication. In fact, with their whole species in that state, would any research for those fields even be conducted? Why explore or build anything once you’ve chemically achieved life long maximum euphoria without any major side effects?

I haven’t really been able to find much discussion of this theory on the internet. I’m wondering if anyone in your circles has mentioned it as a possibility of a great filter.

I described this model to many (very intelligent people). And usually the only critisism I hear is “well I wouldn’t choose this lifestyle, I prefer real happiness.”

I think that most people’s current outlook on this model is not based in logic, but rather biological urges and cultural narrative — that we have to “work” for our happiness.

Let’s start with the Biological. For “advanced life” to exist and proliferate, it needs to:

a) have a will to live

b) have the will to procreate

c) have a will to outcompete other life in order to make alterations to its genome, making it “more advanced” over time

The practical implementation of this is through chemical releases in the brain, when the organism does an action that furthers these goals (eating food, having sex, competing for resources/mates). Organisms that don’t experience this, very quickly died out or did not proliferate. Or simply remained “not advanced”.

Now at some point, the brain developed more complex structures to anticipate actions that lead to furthering those goals. And those structures got baked into our DNA. In humane, we even have abstractions to categorize the results of those behaviors (happiness, love, pride).

We falsely associate “happiness” with the result of doing work to achieve it, because for the most part this is true. In reality, we experience “happiness” due to the presence of chemicals in our brain (serotonin, dopamine, oxitocin, to some extent even adrenalline). It just so happens that our brain releases those chemicals when we do work leading to an evolutionary favorable outcome. To give an allergory: if you ring a bell, and immediately serve food to a dog, the dog will associate ringing of bells with a reward (food). They will experience “happiness” when the bell rings, maybe even believing that ringing bells cause happiness. For all sakes and purposes, it would be correct, as long as the pattern continues. However, looking from the outside, it’s foolish to assume that the bell is causing happiness in the dog. It’s the food…or more accurately, the chemicals released in the dog’s brain when the food is consumed.

So that is the Biological reason for our beliefs about “hard work” causing happiness. But addionally, there is another layer — cultural narrative from the upper classes. Up until recently, there was no method for sustainable chemically triggered happiness. In order for the upper classes (religious, political, financial) to achieve their own level of happiness, they needed the general population to work hard, consume, etc. Hence, they proliferated a cultural narrative:

- In order to achieve happiness, in this life or the next, you must work hard and follow the rules.

- There is good. and there is bad. Even if you achieve something you *think* is favorable to you (ex: stealing food), you shouldn’t do it because it is “bad”

- You will achieve happinness by collecting wealth and property

- You will achieve happiness by having a family and spending time and money on that family

If most people follow this narrative, this generates wealth and power for the ruling classes, feeding their biological need to outcompete others. Additionally, adding rules on what is “good” and “bad” protects their position.

Now, people who rely on drugs, and only drugs for happiness do not contribute in any way to the top classes’ wealth and power, and in fact are a drain on their resources. So it’s very logical to villify this behavior, labeling drugs as “bad” and happiness achieved through drugs and “not real”.

In fact, I think this is why, until recently, there has been very little research on how drugs effect the mind. There is very little financial incentive to make people artifically happy. In fact there is only instentive to get people to just enough “happiness” that they can remain productive in the system.

Luckily, the rates of mental illness have skyrocketed in the last century, rendering a large percentage of people unable to do be productive members of society and in fact being a drain on its resources. As a side effect, this lead to us understanding much better how to chemically alter our mental state.

Once this research generates a sustainable way to chemically induce happiness that exceeds that which the upper classes recieve from power/wealth, that cultural narrative will very quickly unravel. Society’s notion of what is “good” and “bad” can change on a dime when the upper classes are properly incetiviced. For example, look at how quickly it became acceptable, preferred in fact, to hate Jews, torture, erradicate whole races, during the Holocaust. A few years.

So hopefully this gives a bit of background on WHY you have these mental modals of “real” happiness being better than chemically induced happpiness.

Now, think about this situation as a scientist. In science, there is no “good” or “bad”. Hence, there is nothing inherently “good” about these arbirary goals of reproduction, outcompetion, or even survival, imposed on us by biology or the ruling classes.

In essence, only personal preferences truly matter as far as you are concerned, and bioligically most organisms have a “preference” for happiness, i.e. a certain set of chemicals to be present in their brain. Much like the universe has a preference for high entropy, or atoms have a preference for stable configurations, or electrons have a preference to flow from cathodes to anodes. Electrons don’t think “I should be flowing through a medical device to save someone’s life instead of a car battery lead to torture a prisoner”. They simply flow in whichever path offers least resistence to achieve its preferred state. There is only an illusion that matter “works together” to achieve a goal, such as creating stars, or creating life. In reality, individual particles only follow their personal preferences, as dictated by their subatomic configuration (mass, spin, charge, etc). This subatomic configuration is very much akin to our brain’s configuration.

Just like every other material and energic structure in the universe, we should be allow ourselves to “flow” in the path of least resistence towards our preferred state (happiness) as dictated by our chemical configuration. And in fact, there is no “should”. We do…whether we are conciously realizing it or now. There’s just an illusion that we are making a choice, due to the time necessary for our biology or societal narrative to adapt towards the path of least resistence. If we zoom out to the scale of hundreds, even dozens of years, that illusion very quickly dissapates (referring back to the Holocaust example).

So back to chemically induced happiness. For most of life’s existence, there was only one path towards that state — doing work to get food, sex, or competitive advantage. There may seem something “fundemental” about this mechanism — all life seems to have it, after all. Well there’s not. Life is an infintecimally small percentage of matter in the universe, that has existed for an infintecimally small percentage of time. 99.99999…% of existence does not have these structures in place. Stars and planets don’t go out of their way to ensure their survival. They don’t try to produce more similar stars or planets from themselves. They simply satisfy the preferences of their component particles in the most direct way possible. Life’s structures and preferences, in the grand scheme of things, are an anomoly, that will very quickly be evolved out. And here’s how…

Very soon there will be a second path available to us to satisfy our “happiness” preferences. We will face a choice:

Option A: You can live your “normal” life and experience occasional pleasure here and there. You are guaranteed to also experience a lot of pain and negative emotions.

Option B: You can take chemicals, which guarantee for you to experience pleasure 10..100…1000x what you could possibly attain through natural means. This pleasure is ongoing. And you will never experience pain or negative emotions

It’s a no brainer. I can’t conceive of any person who would choose Option A if given the choice with no societal pressure to choose one or the other. And we’ve already discussed how quickly societal narratives change.

Life, is just matter. On large scales, it behaves in the same way that non-life does, i.e. following the paths of least resistence to satisfy the preferences of its component particles. So, when looking at humanity as a whole, despite any individual convictions, society will ALWAYS follow the path of least resistence when presented it. Meaning that any intelligent life, very shortly after developing simple means to chemically alter their brain’s chemical state towards it’s preferred state, will do so. Of course, in a chemically induced preferred state, the desires for reproduction fade away. In fact, given a strong enough chemical soup, the desire to eat even fades away. And without those desires, well, life ceases to exist.

I believe that in essence, there will always be a cap to how much life will evolve, because sooner or later, it will naturally find a way to override its biological programming of survival.

Now, in regards to your question of who would maintain these people:

I think that once this chemical soup is perfected, it will be available for people to “retire”. So if they have, say $50,000 saved up in their 401Ks, it should be sufficient to pay the electric and maintenance bills until the end of their file. It’s MUCH cheaper than regular living or even a nursing home. The people can be housed in small, low cost living areas, bringing the price of rent down. The “food” they recieve doesn’t have to be tasty as it will be done via IV. Additionally, health care costs, which are usually associated with old age will be greatly reduced.

The retiring segment of the population would be far more likely to choose this “virtual happiness” option, since their ability to experience pleasure in the real world is drastically reduced. They don’t have competitive strength or brainpower to do work, where they can experience pleasure from accomplishments or collection of resources (paychecks). They don’t have physical strength, so they can’t experience pleasure from things like hiking or sports. They are much less attractive, so they can’t find pleasure from love/sex quite as easily. All of this makes “virtual retirement” a much more attractive option to regular retirement. This segment of the popuplation will normalize the “chemical happiness” lifestyle to other segments.

As time goes on, people will start taking earlier and earlier “retirements”. There were many times in my life where I had ~$100k saved up, which would have lasted me the rest of my life under this model.

Eventually, the costs would be brought down so that all but a small skeleton crew would be able to exist in this state.

Most people in this model would not have the desire to reproduce, so the species is likely to die out in a few hundred years. And eventually even the skeleton crew of maintence workers will opt into this lifestyle, even if they could afford a few days of it, followed by a suicide (which will be totally acceptable given the state of humanity). And there you have it, end of humanity.

Any other species that evolves to a state of even the most primordial humans, will have a huge head start, since the documentation for this procedure would be widely available, essentially lowering the cap of intelligent life more and more.