Тег: Violence

Theory of Moral Nativism and Moral Intuition

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Moral nativism is a theory that, in response to the question of where moral intuition, moral judgment, and other important elements of moral psychology come from, provides the answer that they are to some extent innate and emerged as a result of human biological evolution. Moral nativism relies on a two-stage argument. The first argument is that the mind contains a moral grammar: a complex system of principles, rules, and conceptual building blocks that generate and connect various mental representations upon which moral intuition depends. The second argument is that at least some of the fundamental attributes of this moral grammar are innate and are not based exclusively on experience, but rather come “from nature’s hand.” Cultural factors certainly influence the development of morality; nevertheless, a significant amount of evidence suggests that at least some aspects of moral cognition are innate.

How can we confirm the position of moral nativism? Darwin, de Waal, Kropotkin, and other biologists have emphasized that empathetic and altruistic behavior seems to have deep evolutionary roots. Rats experience stress when they hear the cries of other rats and perform altruistic acts to protect them from harm. Great apes experience evident grief over the death or disappearance of those to whom they were attached, and often comfort victims of attacks. Human infants cry more intensely in response to the crying of other infants than to comparable computer-generated sounds or even to a recording of their own crying; this means that “they react to the awareness of another’s pain, rather than simply to a specific pitch of sound.” Human children are also biologically predisposed to recognize and comfort those experiencing emotional distress. In a broader sense, young children are predisposed to help others achieve their goals, share valuable resources with them, and provide them with useful information. Furthermore, clinical and experimental studies have confirmed that specific areas of the brain underlie moral cognition, and that damage to these areas can lead to impaired moral judgments while leaving other cognitive functions intact.

We can also refer to norms that are universal across all societies. Research across hundreds of jurisdictions shows that the prohibition of murder appears to be universal and highly invariant. All known justifications and excusable reasons for committing murder consist of a relatively short list of defensive arguments familiar to everyone. Moreover, the attitude toward intentional killings specifically is even stricter. And a study conducted among ten cultures from different parts of the world, including residents of villages, cities, and even representatives of nomadic peoples, shows that battery, rape, theft, slander, and perjury are assessed as unlawful (i.e., “bad” or “extremely bad”) acts by about 95% of people.

Finally, one cannot fail to mention the theory of the violence inhibition mechanism, according to which many animal species and humans possess strong deterrents against causing harm to members of their own species. In animals, these deterrents are most often expressed through the ritualization of combat. In humans, they consist of unconditioned (innate) and conditioned (acquired during socialization) reflexes, primarily causing a reaction of rejection and internal resistance to witnessing the suffering of other people and performing aggressive actions toward them. Many studies, including anthropological and military ones, confirm that the average healthy individual possesses strong internal resistance to committing violence. And only a few, completely dysfunctional individuals, experience no resistance at all, even to committing murder—these are also called psychopaths.

How dominant behavior arises and what is the difference between social and aggressive dominance

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Dominant behavior is the desire to promote one’s own initiative, guide and control the actions of others. Such behavior is characterized by high self-confidence and confidence in one’s decisions. But why do some animals or people behave in a more dominant manner than others? And what is the connection between dominance and aggression? The answers to these questions may be quite unexpected for some.

Let’s start with an interesting experiment. It involved observations of a group of people who interacted with each other for 28 days. With varying frequency, different participants in the experiment took either a placebo or tryptophan—a substance involved in the synthesis of serotonin. Earlier trials showed that taking tryptophan and increasing serotonin levels in general reduce aggressive behavior in animals and humans. However, it was also known that increasing serotonin levels in animals stimulates dominant behavior. This result was also reproduced in humans.

As part of the experiment, the participants’ behavior was divided into 4 categories. Dominant behavior, such as expressing one’s opinion, setting goals for other people, etc., was significantly strengthened when a person took tryptophan. At the same time, grouchy or quarrelsome behavior, characterized by deception, lack of restraint, raising one’s voice at others, etc., was significantly weakened. Submissive behavior (the tendency to avoid responsibility and follow others even when disagreeing with them) also weakened, but only slightly, while negotiating behavior remained unchanged.

Some may believe that a dominant individual must be aggressive by nature. But as we see, taking a substance known for its anti-aggressive effect led to an increase in dominant behavior. However, there is no contradiction here. Even the study of animal behavior, for example, wolves, shows that alpha males should not be aggressive toward their subordinates or coerce them in any way. Attacks by alpha males on subordinate individuals are extremely rare. And the leader of the pack is usually the oldest male, the father of the family; the myth that the hierarchy in a wolf pack is strictly vertical and headed by the most aggressive male who obtained his position through violence is actually based on the study of wolves kept in enclosures, rather than those in the wild. Also, consider which pack has a better chance of survival—one that is cohesive and cooperating, or one in which some forcibly subjugate others and everyone is at odds with one another?

Research also demonstrates that dominance in humans can be divided into two forms—social and aggressive. Both forms of dominance are characterized by self-confident and leading behavior. However, some dominant individuals choose strategies in which they rely on other people (for example, subordinates) and are prone to social learning (using solutions that proved successful for other people). At the same time, other individuals resort to aggressive and Machiavellian strategies. They are not inclined to rely on social information, even if it may be beneficial. Additionally, socially dominant individuals have better relationships with the people around them and receive greater recognition of their leadership qualities than aggressively dominant individuals.

As we can see, a true “alpha” is not the one who is most aggressive and ready to forcibly compel others to submit, but the one who treats others well, sets an example for them, and gains recognition for their leadership qualities without resorting to violent coercion. And judging by research, such healthy dominant behavior is governed by the serotonergic system (the link is bidirectional—increasing serotonin levels stimulates such behavior, and achieving a high social status leads to greater serotonin production), which is also responsible for the functioning of the violence inhibition mechanism that prevents violent behavior and causing harm to others.

Essentialism and Constructivism

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Perhaps, when you were taking political views tests such as PolitiScales, you encountered a scale such as constructivism–essentialism. If someone is unfamiliar with these concepts, we will briefly describe them in this post, including considering them from the perspective of the problems we are studying here.

The constructivist position is that a person is created by the environment (especially the social one) in which they are located, and their personality traits are acquired. In turn, essentialism claims that there are certain innate and natural characteristics that make a person who they are.

Constructivism can be easily traced when someone attempts to explain certain social phenomena, including social relationships between people, by referring solely to the social environment itself as the cause of their formation in the form in which we observe them. The USSR’s approach can be called extremely constructivist, consisting of creating a new “Soviet man” – changing the very psychology of people through their re-education in a new environment with the indoctrination of communist ideology. The same applies to the approach of gender studies currently conducted in the West, based on which the concepts of man and woman themselves are not biologically determined – one is not born a man or a woman, but becomes one. A similar approach is practiced regarding a person’s sexual orientation. In these and a number of other works, essentialism is subjected to enormous criticism, consisting of accusing this idea of fixing a biologically determined difference between men and women, different races, and ethnicities.

Constructivism can hardly be called a productive approach, at least for the reason that it ignores a truly scientific understanding of how a human is structured, their psychology and behavior. Much in a human is still biologically determined, and the environment participates in their development, including personality development, strictly in conjunction with innate biological predispositions, which most often mediate its influence. We will not now consider the confirmation of such a view in all possible forms of social phenomena, but we will nonetheless turn to the data we have on such a phenomenon in social relationships between people as violence.

For example, it is known that while the tendency toward reactive (affective and impulsive) aggression may be equally explainable by genetics and environment, proactive (instrumental and intentional) aggression is predominantly explainable by genetics, and the environment, if it leads to its emergence, generally does so in the presence of a genetic predisposition to it. Also, antisocial behavior in children in conjunction with certain characteristics of primary psychopathy, such as traits of callousness and insensitivity, is observed at an extremely high level of heritability. Furthermore, such behavior, which is often intentional, is extremely resistant to correction. At the same time, antisocial behavior on its own, without traits of callousness-insensitivity, has only moderate heritability, is often not intentional, and is easily corrected during the upbringing of children.

These and other similar evidence align well with the theory of the violence inhibition mechanism, according to which a healthy person possesses an innate tendency to feel aversion to causing harm to other people. And the absence of such a tendency should be regarded as a pathology, rather than something arising purely for social reasons. Of course, improving the social environment can significantly reduce the manifestation of such pathology. However, even in the matter of aggressive behavior, the environment does not influence the manifestation of its different forms equally. Therefore, to guarantee a solution to the problem, the pathology must also be treated, since individuals may appear in any environment who do not experience the slightest internal resistance to achieving their goals through the intentional infliction of harm on other people.

How psychopathic predispositions are linked to authoritarian views and what can potentially be done about it

Voluntarist, Bitarch

It would be quite obvious to suggest that among supporters of authoritarian views and violent methods of achieving goals, the number of psychopathically predisposed individuals is higher than among supporters of libertarian and non-violent views. This assumption stems from the simple fact that a person who feels no internal resistance to causing harm to others and is even ready to commit a violent attack under certain circumstances is far more likely to end up in the first camp than in the second. But what can various studies examining people with both right-wing and left-wing authoritarian views say about this?

Most often, such studies are focused on the study of supporters of authoritarian-right views. For example, one of them showed that right-wing authoritarianism, a tendency toward prejudice, and an orientation toward social dominance (a preference for a society in which group hierarchy and inequality exist) are linked to psychopathic factors such as the interpersonal (a tendency to manipulate others and consider oneself superior to everyone) and the affective (a lack of empathy and guilt). It should be noted that the manifestation of these specific psychopathic factors in an individual is most closely linked to a dysfunction of the violence inhibition mechanism, which makes a person capable of causing harm to people without experiencing any repulsion.

The issue of authoritarian-left views is studied much less frequently; even the existing tools for this purpose are quite new. However, existing research shows that a tendency toward left-wing authoritarianism, and especially its component such as the permissibility of carrying out a violent revolution against the established social system, is strongly linked to psychopathy and antagonistic narcissism (the tendency to believe that the world is a highly competitive place in which one must achieve their own dominance over others). At the same time, neither a tendency toward altruism nor a tendency toward social justice were linked to left-wing authoritarianism. This may indicate that some left-wing politicians are not concerned with social justice and equality, but merely use them to justify violence against other people to satisfy their own egocentric needs.

Interesting results were demonstrated by a pilot study on the influence of psilocybin on a person’s tendency toward more authoritarian or libertarian views. After two sessions of taking the substance, authoritarian predispositions in the subjects decreased significantly, and this effect was maintained to a sufficient extent even after 7-12 months. It is very important to note here that psychedelic substances have long been studied for anti-aggressive and empathic effects. They affect the operation of the serotonin system, which plays a key role in the regulation of aggression and is responsible for the violence inhibitor function—more precisely, they are agonists of its 2A receptors (leading to their activation). However, there are studies suggesting that the empathic effect of psychedelics may be linked to the activation of 1A receptors, for which they are often partial agonists.

Serotonin 1A receptor agonists have demonstrated in a number of studies to be some of the potentially most effective anti-aggressive agents, without leading to the suppression of defensive behavior and other side effects characteristic of many agents, including psychedelics. Since the study of therapy for disorders in the regulation of aggression and dysfunction of the violence inhibition mechanism is oriented precisely toward these agents, their influence on a person’s tendency toward authoritarianism should also be tested. Perhaps, as a result of such therapy, a violent and psychopathic individual will not only stop throwing punches and manipulating other people to their detriment, but will also be inclined to stop supporting fellow sufferers of the mental disorder in society and politics, leaning toward more libertarian positions.

Governments may already be considering manipulating people’s feelings and behavior using sprayed preparations, so we too are obliged to resist by biological methods

Voluntarist, Bitarch

There is an extremely interesting study from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, regarding the use of oxytocin for police and military purposes. Oxytocin is a hormone that enhances trust and predisposes one to the building of trusting relationships, which is proposed to be used to forcibly reduce people’s reluctance to interact with security agents. It also considers various methods of oxytocin delivery, the most effective of which is inhalation—releasing oxytocin via a humidifier, an aerosol sprayer, or another device—since upon inhalation, it enters the brain almost instantaneously and begins to take effect.

Some of the proposed application scenarios are quite harmless and could be useful. These include stimulating trust in a child who is a victim or witness to a crime, in a person expressing suicidal intentions, in hostage situations to conduct successful negotiations, in criminals for their rehabilitation, or in terrorists so that they quickly trust an undercover newcomer.

But extremely bleak scenarios are also proposed, which could allow stationary bandits (states) to consolidate power, even up to the construction of a totalitarian dictatorship, without facing resistance. The first scenario is the control of protests by stimulating the trust of protesters in the police and security forces. The second scenario is the fight against uprisings, including through the mass spraying of oxytocin, in order to gain the trust of the population and predispose them to give up individuals disliked by the authorities.

It should be noted that this study was published back in 2007, and it is marked as “unclassified” and “approved for public release.” What the American military might have come up with since then, which remains classified and not in the public domain, we can only guess. Especially considering that they had ideas in the past such as “gay bombs,” which, when dropped on enemy troops, were intended to make soldiers combat-ineffective by inducing strong arousal.

One thing is clear: we can safely assume that stationary bandits want to manipulate our feelings and behavior by resorting to biological methods of influence. And perhaps, someday, they may even acquire means capable of brainwashing people and making them absolutely submissive.

One effective solution to such a threat can be proposed: to act preemptively, also by resorting to biological means that can be produced easily and cheaply. We are talking about means to enhance the function of the violence inhibition mechanism, the lack of which leads to psychopathic predispositions and the ability to commit intentional and planned acts of violence. The desire to have violent power over people is also a sign of psychopathic traits, and strengthening the violence inhibitor should predispose a person to abandon it. It should also make the security agents of stationary bandits unable to effectively commit acts of violence.

But what about delivering such means to their patients? It should be noted that security agents do not exist in isolation from society. They live among us, walk the same streets; they will not be able to chase dissenters in gas masks, especially if someone throws paint at them—after all, they are recruited directly from society. They are no more protected from biological influence from ordinary people than ordinary people are from such influence from them. They will be especially vulnerable if means for the permanent enhancement of the violence inhibitor, such as gene therapy drugs, become available and cheap. The question is only who will seize the initiative in biological methods of influence, and whether people will manage to overcome such a pathology as violence inhibitor dysfunction and eradicate it from society before the appearance of effective brainwashing tools.

Why the achievement of voluntary free relationships is impossible in a society where too many people are capable of committing violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

There is a view that the only essential condition for achieving freedom of activity, agreement, and association is the creation of significant costs for criminals. Allegedly, it is sufficient that any harm inevitably requires compensation, and that everyone owns weapons, which would make attacks unprofitable (do not think that we are against gun ownership – it is useful for evolutionary selection, but right now we are talking about something else). In such a case, even if everyone were a psychopath, significant violence would not arise in practice. Moreover, some might say that aggressiveness is even necessary for a free person, for example, to easily kill for any encroachments upon oneself and to carry out violent revenge (on the principle of “an eye for an eye”). But we can easily dispute this position and prove why freedom is possible only in a society of peaceful people.

First, it would be foolish to believe that people always act rationally and accurately assess benefits and risks. Even in societies where fingers and hands were cut off for theft, thieves did not disappear completely. This is even more true for psychopathic individuals. As research shows, they concentrate too heavily on their goals, missing important details. For example, in a task where they had to navigate a maze by manipulating levers and avoiding those that delivered painful electric shocks, they handled the first condition well, but were worse than ordinary people at the second. In gambling, they were poor at learning long-term strategies; it was important for them to quickly hit a huge win, even at the risk of putting themselves in the negative. Likewise, psychopathic pilots in World War II would easily chase an enemy, forgetting to monitor fuel, the position of other aircraft, and other factors critical for victory.

Understanding this, would anyone still think that psychopathic individuals can be reasoned with or intimidated enough to ensure they definitely do not commit violence, do not organize criminal gangs, or even avoid trying to forcibly subjugate everyone and create their own power in a society where none exists? Let us not forget that current states arose precisely through the violent subjugation of people. And striving for the position of a “stationary” bandit, “nomadic” bandits ignored the risk of death at the hands of defenders and their competitors.

Second, there are many ways to cause harm to people without direct violence. Various kinds of manipulations, including gossip, blackmail, threats, pitting people against each other, provoking a hostile reaction (to make you look unstable to others), wearing someone down, psychological and economic violence, etc., which are often used by psychopaths in the pursuit of their own benefit. It will be impossible to write deterrent factors and punishments for all such scenarios. This means that the more psychopathic individuals there are around, the more such manipulations will be applied to you personally, and instead of productive activity, you will spend all your time defending yourself from attempts to walk all over you. Also, psychopathic individuals are prone to sabotaging collective work for personal gain.

Now imagine the opposite situation – psychopathic individuals are absent or negligibly few. In such a society, freedom of relationships would occur instantly and without additional requirements. At the same time, in a society of psychopaths, one could likely expect something similar to what is currently happening in Haiti or the scenario of the movie “New World,” where rapists sent to live on an island organized a mass slaughter, and at some point, a small portion of them even forcibly subjugated all the others and monopolized the possession of resources. And if you would not want to participate daily in a war of all against all in a “free” society, you should first think about eradicating such a pathology as the dysfunction of the violence inhibition mechanism, which makes some people psychopathically predisposed and capable of easily causing harm to other people.

Can psychopaths experience empathy and how does it differ from the empathy of normal people

Voluntarist, Bitarch

It is a commonly held opinion that psychopathic individuals experience little empathy or do not manifest it at all. This, of course, makes them cold-blooded and callous, capable even of easily committing murder if there is a reason for it and no significant risks. But besides this, their lack of empathy has long cast doubt on the possibility of providing easy and effective therapy for their condition.

However, a study of psychopathic criminals found that they can experience empathy. Moreover, during the experiment, they exhibited the same level of activation of mirror neurons—which are responsible for the ability to learn through imitation of other people and are believed to be involved in the manifestation of empathy—as healthy individuals.

However, psychopaths have one very important difference. While empathy manifests spontaneously in normal people, regardless of whether the person wishes to experience it, psychopaths can intentionally control this process. Their normal state is switched-off empathy; they manifest it only when they want to. And within the experiment, normal activation of mirror neurons in psychopaths was observed only when the researchers explicitly asked them to show empathy.

The results of this study align with what psychopaths often claim about themselves, for example, on question-and-answer websites like Quora. If you search there for questions asked to psychopaths about whether they are capable of experiencing empathy, you will see many positive answers, but with the note that they can literally turn empathy on and off whenever they want, as if they have a switch for it. However, there are also psychopaths who claim a complete inability to feel empathy. But, given the data already known to us, it can be suggested that they simply do not know how to turn it on within themselves.

Researchers do not yet know how to turn the empathy that psychopaths can manifest intentionally into the spontaneously manifested empathy characteristic of most people. However, the fact that psychopaths can show empathy, at least under certain conditions, gives therapists something to work with.

It is also worth hypothesizing that empathy can be made spontaneous quite easily by using certain agents that activate specific serotonin receptors and favorably influence the function of the serotonin system as a whole. Pharmacological activation of serotonin 1A and 1B receptors in animal experiments often leads to them ceasing aggressive attacks on their peers, or even becoming more predisposed to help them—for example, by sharing food, even if it brings the subject no personal benefit. This effect is linked to the activation of a violence inhibition mechanism, which in humans plays an important role in the development of empathy.

The results of this study provide an answer to another important question. Someone might easily find and point to individuals who, in their ordinary social life, are normal family men, good friends and colleagues, law-abiding citizens—that is, full members of society—despite the fact that under certain conditions, for example, while serving in law enforcement or as a soldier on the battlefield, they easily committed violence and even murder without feeling the slightest repulsion. As is known from a number of studies, including military ones, the ability to easily commit violence and murder in such conditions would still be a manifestation of an individual’s high psychopathy. But there is no contradiction here. For perhaps such cases are precisely explainable by the fact that psychopathic individuals can be empathic when they intentionally want to be, for example, wishing to have a full social life. However, it should not be forgotten that such individuals can decide not to experience empathy at any moment, and this carries certain threats to society.

How tears affect aggressiveness

Voluntarist, Bitarch

From the theory of the violence inhibition mechanism, we know that a healthy individual, when observing the suffering (distress signals) of another person, begins to experience a feeling of aversion and becomes predisposed to ceasing aggressive actions toward them. This effect is psychological; the neural pathways responsible for it are activated as a result of observing suffering as a social signal. At least, this is what we used to believe. However, some new discoveries indicate that the impact of certain distress signals on the violence inhibitor—specifically, crying—may be chemical in nature.

Several years ago, a study on rats revealed that rubbing female tears onto the face and other body parts of males, who played the role of “intruders” in the experiments, reduced the aggressiveness of the “residents”—the males whose cages they entered. Given that all necessary conditions of the resident-intruder paradigm are met, an aggressive attack by the resident on the intruder is expected. However, it was found that if the intruder smells of female tears, no aggression is shown toward them. At the same time, male tears do not possess this effect.

Recently, a similar result was reproduced in humans. To measure the aggressiveness of men, a money game was used involving provocations and the possibility to “get revenge” for them, without receiving any personal benefit from the revenge. Players were told they were playing against another person, although they were actually playing against a computer. Before the game, men were given 1 ml samples to smell 13 times at intervals of 35 seconds. The first three times it was a saline solution; the remaining ten were also saline solution for the control group and female tears for the experimental group.

As a result, aggressive gaming behavior (the desire to avenge provocations) in men who smelled female tears was 43.7% lower than in the control group. Additionally, MRI scans revealed that their prefrontal cortex and the anterior part of the insular cortex in the brain were not as strongly activated as a result of provocations during the game.

Of course, as psychologists note, certain questions may arise in real-life situations—for example, why tears, despite the remarkable results of the experiments, do not always play a significant role in stopping domestic violence. There is a suggestion that tears may not be significant in relationships between adults, and that the evolutionary role of their anti-aggressive effect is to protect children, who are unable to state that aggression must stop but will cry a lot if it occurs. Experiments with children’s tears are still planned. Research is also planned to find the specific component of tears that causes the anti-aggressive effect. This could help in the creation and production of a highly effective, humane means of self-defense that causes no harm to the attacker.

What to do if you do not want to repeat Navalny’s fate

Voluntarist, Bitarch

In connection with what has happened, I would like to express my own opinion. Of course, many are grieving and expressing their condolences. However, now would be the time to talk about what this story can teach us. The point is that opposing the established system—moreover, in many countries of the world—absolutely openly, playing by its own rules and resorting to standard and well-known practices, as the tragically deceased Alexei did, can be very dangerous and ultimately unproductive. But in the modern world, it is possible and necessary to resort to alternative approaches that, in principle, do not involve direct confrontation.

As a good example, I would point to how a certain anonymous individual (or group of anonymous individuals) under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto destroyed the “sacred” monopoly of stationary bandits (states) over money by creating Bitcoin. He was never reliably deanonymized, and his tool was designed so that even in the event of full deanonymization, or even the physical liquidation of the creator, it would not cease to exist and function, as it is decentralized. Meanwhile, the anonymous and state-uncontrollable payment methods and electronic currencies that existed before Bitcoin, such as E-gold and Liberty Reserve, were destroyed by the US government due to their centralized structure and the presence of specific, non-anonymous creators and managers, who ultimately received very long prison sentences.

Ideally, stationary bandits should not even be aware that someone is opposing them, and should not have the ability to track down those who are doing so. The methods of opposition should be extremely unconventional and non-traditional, most likely relying on modern technologies. Here, one could also mention current wars—with the popularization of modern drones, states have lost the ability to effectively destroy the production of high-tech weaponry when attacking someone. No matter how well-protected or hidden a large centralized military plant producing traditional weapons by traditional methods is, sooner or later it will be bombed. But with hundreds of small private enterprises producing thousands of drones a day and not united by any single management structure, absolutely nothing can be done. Such a modern, non-traditional approach to the production of high-tech weaponry is capable of providing protection even to those facing an enemy vastly superior in strength.

Exactly which methods can be proposed is for those who possess the necessary competence in a given field to decide. But we, within the framework of our project, can put forward one approach relying on science and modern technology. Understanding that the ability to commit intentional, planned, and targeted acts of violence without experiencing any internal repulsion or resistance is the result of an individual having a disorder—a dysfunction of the violence inhibition mechanism—makes clinical therapy of violent behavior possible using means that enhance the function of this mechanism. And in the event of a threat of violence from certain private individuals or representatives of some organized structure, it would be worth considering the creation of a combat version of such a biological solution. You can always find more details about the violence inhibitor concept in our materials.

Cheap AI drones are one of the most dangerous weapons of the future

Voluntarist, Bitarch

When discussing what weapons could be extremely lethal yet very cheap and accessible for creation by almost any group of people or even a single individual, viruses likely come to mind. Given the rapid development and decreasing cost of biotechnologies, there is a threat of “basement laboratories” that can be easily opened and moved from place to place. However, the list of lethal and accessible weaponry does not end there. As noted in Alexander Rozov’s “LiveJournal,” AI-powered drones could become such weapons.

To provide context, it is first worth quoting a comment from user alekseymeeres, to which Rozov was responding:
Light drones have changed the battlefield. Today, this is a flying sniper that terrorizes everyone—people and even armored vehicles. The cost of a kamikaze drone is 1,000 dollars (approximately), which is practically one enemy soldier. A million dollars is a thousand enemy soldiers. A billion dollars is a million enemy soldiers. Even by WWII prices, this is dirt cheap.

Further, based on technological patterns, Rozov makes predictions that:
– light drones costing 100 dollars and produced at 100,000 units per day will appear, which is entirely realistic;
– drones for destroying drones will appear as the only possible defensive measure against drone attacks; however, manual control of them will be impossible due to such a complex target, making them autonomous, which will also make them resistant to signal jamming;
– the decision-making barrier will disappear; humans will no longer make decisions about whether to launch an attack or in which direction to conduct it if the drones are already in the air.

But what is more important to us is not how drones will be used by states in wars. We are concerned with the consequences for society as a whole:
– due to the simplicity and low cost of the technology, it cannot remain a secret; any extremist or mafia group with any political or economic goals will be able to use it;
– no civilian object in the world will ever be safe again;
– the boundary between peace and war will disappear.

Most likely, many will be able to create drones at home simply by following instructions from the internet; it will not be much harder than making a children’s electric toy. Ensuring autonomous control resistant to EW suppression is also not a problem at the current level of AI development. And any person with a dysfunction of the violence-inhibiting mechanism and psychopathic predispositions will easily use such drones to commit violence. Moreover, tracking and punishing the perpetrator will be extremely difficult, unless they decide to openly release a swarm of drones in broad daylight, which would encourage an even greater number of psychopathic individuals to commit violence. What the drones are equipped with is also unimportant, even without access to explosives or their components. For example, they could carry flammable substances, and if the target of the attack is just one person, a swarm of drones might be able to beat them down by brute force. In such a world, there would be no possibility to engage in full productive activity, to develop, or even just to live peacefully. Perpetrators will establish total terror for both each other and ordinary peaceful people.

As some researchers believe, avoiding irreparable harm in the future will only be possible either through a complete renunciation of freedom and the introduction of a totalitarian system of round-the-clock surveillance of every person, or through “moral bio-enhancement.” To implement the second scenario, it would be sufficient to develop and distribute a therapy that restores the full functioning of the violence-inhibiting mechanism in psychopathic individuals. Only this way can the threat they create in the violent pursuit of their goals be reliably eliminated. Furthermore, even politicians, who will not soon have the technical capability to monitor what every single citizen does behind closed doors, should consider the idea of moral bio-enhancement, as they too will not be safe.