Love and other drugs

My life is brilliant

My love is pure

I saw an angel

Of that I'm sure

She smiled at me on the subway

She was with another man

But I won't lose no sleep on that

'Cause I've got a plan’

You're beautiful. You're beautiful

You're beautiful, it's true

I saw your face in a crowded place

And I don't know what to do

'Cause I'll never be with you

- James Blunt, in "You’re beautiful"

A single smile from the “subway girl” was enough for James to feel attracted to her. At first sight, this sounds very lame. Few of you might be even questioning his character, “Really, just a smile? how desperate!” But for time being, let’s pull back our judgemental beasts and consider that some of us did get attracted to that “special person” in a similar way as James did. Amidst all the people, across all voices and whispers, our eyes did catch a glimpse of a stranger. Whether it was their charming nature or their cute idiosyncrasies or their unique perspective towards life, we did fall head over heels for them.

If you are not like James and other folks, you must have tasted the other flavor of attraction. It might be that you were friends and out of the blue, one day you realized that you are attracted to your friend. Whatever be the origin of your story, did you choose that you want to be attracted to that “special person”? Did James consciously choose that he wants to be attracted to the subway girl? If I ask you to shout out loud right now, many of you will choose not to shout while some of you will choose to shout. It was your free choice to shout or not to shout. In contrast, did any of us have free choice in the earlier case? It happened naturally, right?

For centuries, we humans have struggled to find a definitive answer to this question but often lacked the necessary tools to do the investigation. Today, owing to advances in science and technology, our scientists are equipped with elegant tools and theories to tackle this problem. So let us take a Neurological route and discuss this with my favorite neuroscientist, Mr. Noob Noob.

“Why is it that one day out of the blue, I find myself attracted to a particular person? Or Why did James fall for that angel on the subway?”

“Our thoughts and desires are the results of the firing of neurons in a particular way (electrochemical processes) inside our brain. You are attracted to someone because of some specific electrochemical processes. These processes, in this case, the ones leading to attraction, are influenced by your genetic makeup and your upbringing.”

“Wait, I know that we were evolved to like beautiful faces. But my heart doesn’t skip a beat for every pretty girl I’ve seen. Why is that, out of many, I am attracted to a particular person?”

“For this, First you should understand that we don’t control these processes at our will. By controlling these processes I mean that we fire neurons at our will. We don’t do that, right? That is why when you see a person, you can’t control your thoughts and desires (output of electrochemical processes). You can only feel them and act accordingly.”

“You are telling me that I am no master of my thoughts and desires. James, other folks, and I had absolutely no control over the forementioned scenario. I’m having an existential crisis right now!”

“Slow down turbo, this is the first half of the story. We are no masters of our thoughts and desires but that does not mean we are absolute slaves either. Pay attention now! Neuroscientists claim that they can predict the desires of a person a few seconds before the person is aware of these desires. One such experiment involved 14 participants. These participants were placed in an fMRI machine and were shown one pattern of red horizontal stripes and one pattern of green vertical stripes. They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose which pattern they want to visualize. Once they’d made a decision, they were asked to press a button and were given 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Finally, they were asked, “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?”

“Using the fMRI to monitor brain activity, researchers not only were able to predict which pattern participants would choose but also they were able to predict how strongly participants were able to imagine the visualizations that took too few seconds before the participants consciously made the decision.” 

“The study suggests that traces of thoughts exist subconsciously before they become conscious. In this case, when participants were asked to choose whether they want to visualize red horizontal stripes or green vertical stripes, traces of thought that will lead them to choose one option over other were already present subconsciously”

“This explains why we are not the masters of our thoughts and desires”

“Also, when the decision of which pattern to visualize is made, the executive areas of the brain choose the stronger thought trace. If in my subconscious there is any preexisting brain activity for red horizontal stripes, executive areas of my brain are more likely to choose to visualize red horizontal stripes over green vertical stripes”

“Coming over to the previous question, like everyone else James must have fantasized about his ideal love (pre-existing brain activity). On the subway, when he saw an angel thought traces in his brain might have been similar to that of his fantasy ideal love. And without consciously being aware, her gaze pierced his guard and took away his soul. Now you can reason out Why were you attracted to your special person.”

Mr. Noob Noob signing off! 

So far, we have established that we are not the masters of our thoughts and desires i.e we lack the free will to them. Now let us see applications exploiting this principle. I'll start off with a straightforward example and then gradually increase the complexity. Hang on tight!

Consider the case of Kamlesh, a 10-year-old non-addict of Bhopal. When he was offered sulochan (yes, our first case study is a meme, coz why not) for the first time, he didn't have a desire to consume it so he firmly said no. One day, out of curiosity Kamlesh tried sulochan and got hooked to it. Fast forward 3 years, Kamlesh is now sulochan addict. He craves sulochan and if offered, he is highly likely to consume it. In this simple case,  drug has stimulated a desire in a person and thereby biased his action.

Today a multitude of animal species including rats, moths, beetles, pigeons, dogs, sharks, etc. can be remotely controlled by exploiting a simple fact that our thoughts and desires are a pattern of firing neurons and organisms don't have free will to choose desires. Watch the video below to see this in action.

Creepy, isn't it? When the operator presses the remote control, the rat “wants” to move to the left, which is why she moves to the left. When the operator presses another switch, the rat “wants” to climb a ladder, which is why she climbs the ladder. If you ask the rat about why she is turning left or climbing a ladder, she might reply, ‘Sure I have free will to choose my desires! Look, I want to turn left – and I turn left. I want to climb a ladder – and I climb a ladder. Doesn’t that prove that I have free will to choose my desires?’ 

Armies and corporations are showing a keen interest in such technologies hoping they might prove useful in many tasks and situations. For example, Roborats might help detect survivors, locate bombs, booby traps, and map underground tunnels and caves. Robosharks can search hostile waters with sensors that detect explosives, cameras that record intelligent photographs, detect oil spills, gather data on the behavior of sharks in their natural habitat, etc. 

Humans too share the same fate as other animals. It is possible to create or annihilate even complex feelings such as love, anger, fear, and depression by stimulating the right spots in the human brain. In Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, doctors have pioneered a novel treatment for patients suffering from acute depression. They implant electrodes into the patient’s brain and wire the electrodes to a minuscule computer implanted into the patient’s breast. On receiving a command from the computer, the electrodes use weak electric currents to paralyze the brain area responsible for the depression. The treatment does not always succeed, but in some cases, patients reported that the feeling of dark emptiness that tormented them throughout their lives disappeared as if by magic.

Due to obvious ethical restrictions, researchers implant electrodes into human brains only under special circumstances. Hence most relevant experiments on humans are conducted using non-intrusive helmet-like devices (technically known as ‘transcranial direct current stimulators’). The helmet is fitted with electrodes that attach to the scalp from outside. It produces weak electromagnetic fields and directs them towards specific brain areas, thereby stimulating or inhibiting select brain activities.

The American military experiments with such helmets in the hope of sharpening the focus and enhancing the performance of soldiers on the battlefield. Sally Adee, a journalist for the New Scientist, was allowed to visit a training facility for snipers and test the effects herself. At first, she entered a battlefield simulator without wearing the transcranial helmet. Sally describes how fear swept over her as she saw twenty masked men, strapped with suicide bombs and armed with rifles, charged straight towards her. ‘For every one I manage to shoot dead,’ writes Sally, ‘three new assailants pop up from nowhere. I’m clearly not shooting fast enough, and panic and incompetence are making me continually jam my rifle.’ Luckily for her, the assailants were just video images, projected on huge screens all around her. Still, she was so disappointed with her poor performance that she felt like putting down the rifle and leaving the simulator.

Then they wired her up to the helmet. She reports feeling nothing unusual, except a slight tingle and a strange metallic taste in her mouth. Yet she began picking off the terrorists one by one, as coolly and methodically as if she were Rambo or Clint Eastwood. ‘As twenty of them run at me brandishing their guns, I calmly line up my rifle, take a moment to breathe deeply and pick off the closest one, before tranquilly assessing my next target. In what seems like next to no time, I hear a voice call out, “Okay, that’s it.” The lights come up in the simulation room . . . In the sudden quiet amid the bodies around me, I was really expecting more assailants, and I’m a bit disappointed when the team begins to remove my electrodes. I look up and wonder if someone wound the clocks forward. Inexplicably, twenty minutes have just passed. “How many did I get?” I ask the assistant. She looks at me quizzically. “All of them.”

Amazing, isn't it? with superhuman focus, superhumans learning ability, etc. we all can achieve our wildest goals. In reality, this technology is premature but it has a fighting chance to realization. I personally feel that if in the matter of decades, a building-sized computer can be shrunk into a pocket-size mobile phone with million times more computing power then we shouldn't be surprised to expect a serum of love or a drug of happiness or a pill of creativity devoid of any side-effects in near future. 

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” Our body sends roughly 11 million bits of information to the brain for processing, and interestingly enough, our conscious mind can process only 60-70 bits of information per second. So it's normal that we don't pay much attention to our desires. If I have a desire to surf Facebook, I'll surf Facebook who cares! But the problem is sometimes we don't realize that our desires are being manipulated. Social media is highly designed to seek our attention. More you spend time on it, good for their business, right? I’m not denying the fact that it's useful but like most of the things in life, there is some bad in this good. So next time, when the bad in it is overpowering the good, beware! After all, once an old man had a philosophy that “peace means having a bigger stick than other guys.”

This article was inspired by the chapter “Time Bomb in Laboratory” From the book “Homo Deus”. If this post has stimulated a desire to subscribe this blog, please do it, it's free! Also, As always, don't hesitate to share your valuable comments and reviews. Waiting on the other end of the mailbox!

Stay Safe!