Can Transhumanism Help Eliminate Aggressive Violence?

Ancap-chan, based on the ideas of Bitarch

The Problem

There is an opinion that the means of fighting aggressive violence offered today are treatments of symptoms rather than the problem itself. What is the point of punishing the manifestation of genetically inherited tendencies; wouldn’t it be more reliable to fix the genes?

To answer this question, I turned to two sources. The first is popular science — Evgenia Timonova’s lecture on aggression. The second is strictly scientific — a review article by a group of Novosibirsk geneticists, “Aggressive Behavior: Genetic-Physiological Mechanisms”. Below is a very brief summary.

• Aggression is determined by the hormonal background. Several different hormones are involved in the regulation of aggression.
• Hormones are released as a response to changes in the body occurring under the influence of both the external environment and internal processes. For example, aggression can be caused by violence, or simply by hunger.
• The predisposition to aggression is partially inherited. The predisposition to hormonal pathologies, which can lead to a sharp change in aggressiveness, is also partially inherited.
• Inherited factors can manifest to varying degrees under the influence of the environment, meaning that the predisposition to aggression can be reduced or developed through upbringing.
• Aggression is a complex behavioral construct linked to other character traits, such as exploratory activity, independence, and the willingness to protect loved ones.
• Specific genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression have not been identified. Even less so have genes responsible for the predisposition to specific types of aggression, particularly the predisposition to initiate aggressive violence. It is clear that there are several genes, located on different chromosomes, not only sex chromosomes.

Throughout human history, there is a clear trend toward the reduction of intra-species aggression. This can be fully explained by Konrad Lorenz’s classical model: the higher the ability of members of a species to destroy their conspecifics, the faster the genes responsible for the predisposition to intra-species aggression are washed out of the population during lethal conflicts. With the mastery of tools, human armament increased sharply, and natural selection went to work, weeding out the most aggressive. However, this happened very recently by evolutionary standards, which is why humans still have disproportionately high levels of aggression compared to their ability to kill people. This, essentially, is what is interpreted as the problem.

What approaches can be taken to solve it at the current level of technological development?

Today’s Approaches

1. Medical. If aggressiveness is treated as a disease, it is effectively cured by barbaric methods such as lobotomy or haloperidol. Along with aggression, everything human in the patient is “cured,” which is hardly different from murder; therefore, an individual approach to each patient using more delicate means must be developed. Complex treatment with an unguaranteed result cannot be practiced on a mass scale, so let us leave this approach only for the most pronounced pathologies.
   
2. Educational. Since the genetic predisposition to aggression can be weakened by good upbringing, it makes sense to focus on raising children without the use of aggressive violence. As a result, a child without pathologies will channel their natural aggressiveness into wonderful things, such as research activity or social activism. And for a child with a pathology, it will at least be manifested in a weakened form.
   
3. Sexual Selection. This means of reducing aggression in the population is already working quite well. If, for a potential partner, feats performed to win them over are not as important as benevolence and care, then carriers of genes with low aggression have a better chance of having offspring — after which aggressive individuals go off to burn through their lives and get along perfectly well without reproducing.
   
4. Acceleration of Natural Selection. When the direct shooting of aggressors in self-defense becomes common legal practice in society, the genes of aggressors are washed out of the population more radically than through sexual selection. The problem here is that the application of lethal self-defense also requires a certain predisposition to aggression; therefore, this approach works well in societies with brutal traditions, contributing to their rapid civilization — after which its effectiveness begins to decline.

Now let’s fantasize a bit to understand what transhumanists might offer us.

Tomorrow’s Approaches

5. Embryo Selection. A DNA sample is taken from the fetus and analyzed for a predisposition to pathological aggression; if the result is positive, the pregnancy is terminated. This is already how more obvious hereditary diseases, such as Down syndrome, are fought. Convincing the mother to make another attempt at conception is a solvable task, provided there are not too many cultural constraints in society prohibiting the termination of pregnancy.
   
6. Gene Modification in Adults. A virus is created that integrates into human DNA and either switches off the genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression or reduces their expression. The technology of gene modification itself has already been created and is actively developing, but which specific genes should be corrected and how is still poorly understood. Direct switching off of genes most obviously linked to aggression currently leads to many undesirable side pathologies in experiments. Moreover, we are talking about a whole complex of genes in different chromosomes, and modern tools are unable to provide such precise and large-scale correction. Thus, I evaluate the prospects of this specific branch of development as modest. But if the methodology can be refined even to the level of modern pharmacological methods of aggression regulation, it could replace them in psychiatry and also be used as a means of rehabilitating criminals instead of the idiotic practice of imprisonment.
   
7. Gene Modification at the Embryonic Stage. The method is the same as in the previous point, but it introduces changes to the genome that will subsequently be inherited. The task is much easier since changes need to be made to literally one cell, rather than processing the entire brain of an adult. However, while the forced application of correction to adults can somehow be justified by the fact that they committed offenses, ethical problems arise with children. I assume that the implementation of these methods will occur with a significant delay compared to the previous point, despite the relative simplicity.
   
8. Cyborgization. Since aggression is regulated by the hormonal background, it is not absolutely necessary to mess with the genome if the hormonal background itself can be regulated. Currently, this is done with medication, but in the future, implanted hormonal regulators could be used. It is hard to say which branch of development humanity will ultimately follow, but subjectively, the prospect of solving the problem by simply installing an app on a specialized gadget seems very attractive; furthermore, this methodology has minimum ethical barriers — I would gladly acquire such a device for myself.

Conclusion

First of all, I state that the complete eradication of aggression from humanity, similar to the betrization described by Stanisław Lem, is not only technically unrealizable at the current level of capabilities but also undesirable, since aggression is linked to many qualities useful to humans.

Essentially, aggression is a reaction to a stimulus, in which an attempt is made to eliminate the stimulus. Aggression can be opposed, firstly, by patience, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to adapt to its effect without eliminating the stimulus itself, and secondly, by flight, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to avoid the action of the stimulus. If the entire richness of human reactions to stimuli were reduced to patience and flight, it would close off not only the possibility of self-defense but the general ability to remove obstacles, especially if this involves any small amount of risk.

There is uncontrolled pathological aggression. It is usually associated with brain injuries and diseases or serious hormonal imbalances. The forced treatment of such diseases, in my view, is a special case of self-defense, especially since such aggression is usually identified when a person is already violating the NAP. The more the result of the treatment resembles a natural level of aggression, the better; but if medical intervention produces side effects that make a person’s life difficult (for example, if they are completely deprived of manifestations of aggression), this would be an undesirable but justified result. I am also prepared to consider the presence of a predisposition to pathological aggression in a fetus as sufficient grounds for abortion or genetic correction at the embryonic development stage — provided there are reliable, proven methods of diagnosis and correction.

As for the natural level of aggression, it is already gradually decreasing in humanity, and in recent years, this has been accompanied by a significant decrease in violent crimes. Therefore, measures to force this decrease seem completely unnecessary to me. Non-violent upbringing of children is already becoming an ethical norm. Sexual selection is already working fully in favor of caring partners rather than dominant ones. Civilian weapons, for all their utility, already look somewhat archaic. Not yet at the level of crinolines and frock coats, but somewhere at the level of evening gowns and three-piece suits. Cute, sophisticated, but unusual.

And finally, I will note once more that the optimal solution seems to me to be the ability to arbitrarily regulate one’s own hormonal background. For example, through the use of an implant. It would certainly be useful for suppressing outbursts of aggression, but I suspect that I personally would use it for the opposite: in situations where my level of aggression is insufficient. For example, before using a weapon for self-defense. Or in order to stop procrastinating and sit down to write a long-postponed post.