Limits of Performance Enhancement
posted by Frank Pasquale
Imagine it’s 2020, you’ve begun working at a firm, and you’re having trouble keeping up. All the other employees are working 75 hours a week, take no vacations, and seem both alert and happy all the time. You ask some confidantes there “how do you do it?” All mention some variety of cognitive enhancement: one takes modafinil to concentrate, another uses chemicals that were originally designed for fighter pilots. Do you take the pills to keep up?
That was one of a few hypos posed yesterday during a presentation I made to the Yale Information Society Project. Though I thought the problematic nature of that situation pretty intuitive, I got pushed to specify exactly what was wrong. So here are some ideas, from different perspectives:
1) Safety: What if the drug shortens lifespan? Surely that’s a problem that would make this scenario pretty analogous to steroids in sports. I hope no one seriously thinks that we want to allow athletes to risk terrible consequences in the future to compete better today. I also think that even a small increase in risk to health ought to render the “super worker” pills problematic. . . . though I admit it’s hard to specify how much. Shortening life expectancy by a month? a year? 10 years? I’ll admit that the choice between those options is an inevitably ideological one.
But let’s assume for now these pills are as safe as caffeine. What’s the harm then? Four takes below the fold…
2) Human Essentialism: Might we think that it is human nature to be a bit overwhelmed, somewhat harried, by a 75-hour workweek with no breaks? I suppose there are always some pleasure-wizards among us able to spin the straw of exertion into golden good cheer. But this is a case where that naturally small portion of us is becoming a new norm–or at least a group with disproportionate chance of success.
3) Unfair Competition: Though I’m partial to the view that there is an essential human nature, let’s now set the argument in a “thinner” version of public reason, ala Larry Solum and Rawlsian political liberalism. What if only a few employees know about the cognitive enhancement pills? There could be some norms of disclosure, or laws requiring it. But what if cognitive enhancement options are very expensive? They might end up amplifying existing class stratification. But imagine the pills are well-known and cheap–are they still a problem? I think so, for two reasons.
4) Bad Evolution: Here’s where the illustration above comes in. Robert Frank has been looking at parallels between evolutionary theory and economic theory. He worries that certain competitive dynamics in the workplace mirror unhealthy evolutionary processes in animals. For example, it’s of great advantage to one elk in a herd to have much bigger antlers than the rest. But an antler arms race may well destroy his relative advantage. And it threatens to weigh elks down, increasing health problems. Peacocks are another classic example.
5) Sacrifice of Objective Well-Being: Of course, the question raised by 4) is–what are the analogs to the health problems caused by massive antlers? If we can’t come up with anything along the lines of 1) above, we’ve got to go back to a “thicker” rationale. My hunch is that we can develop such an idea by developing some of Martha Nussbaum’s ideas about emotions as implicit judgments of value. When technology affects the emotional responses that commonly underlie judgments of value, the cart is before the horse: instead of using our values to judge technology, we are letting technology itself erode those values.
So for instance, here, if we commonly had a value that a weekend day was for rest and recreation, the pills I’ve mentioned may do more than simply focus workers on their tasks and brighten their mood. That focus may well be achieved by blunting the sense of unease or discomfort that motivates our adherence to a “day of leisure” ideal. To the extent we want (successful) people devoted to more than their job, loss of that ideal is objectively bad.
May 10, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Posted in: Bioethics, Intellectual Property, Law and Humanities, Legal Theory, Philosophy of Social Science, Politics
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Responses (6)
Amy Alkon - May 10, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Very interesting points, and I’m pleased that you linked to that photo from my blog (I took it at the 2006 Human Behavior & Evolution Society Conference in Philly at Robert Frank’s lecture).
As far as “performance enhancing” drugs go, I take Ritalin for ADHD, which I see, not as a disease but simply as a different form of brain function. (I would contend that, for a woman, I have a perfect hunter-gatherer brain: able to look for dinner while watchin for prey and making sure the furry little children don’t crawl off a cliff.) In our “evolutionarily novel” age, in which I work, not as a mother, but as a syndicated newspaper columnist and blogger, Ritalin helps me sit and focus for long periods of time — in situations where others with a different brain composition probably wouldn’t have such a hard time sitting still and doing their work. So, is it an enhancer or simply an equalizer? (In other words, should I go drug free and work in a gas station instead?)
Frank - May 10, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Thanks for commenting, Amy–I’m a big fan of your blog.
The issue you raise is the hardest one–on some level, these new technologies “level the playing field” that was made uneven by the genetic lottery.
A human essentialist might respond to you: well, the given is superior to the made, and nature to this manifestation of culture, so let’s respect it. But that response may prove too much.
Another response might focus on limiting access to drugs like Ritalin/Adderall to those on, say, the bottom 5 or 10% of the attention bell curve (who probably often are at the top 5 or 10% of the creativity bell curve!).
Some might worry that, over time, everyone will eventually get displaced into the bottom 10% by those who, there at time 1, take the drug and are outside of it at time 2. At that point, I suppose we as a society have to try to find some objective, as opposed to a relative, measure of (lack of) attentiveness or focus that would make one eligible for the pill.
Amy Alkon - May 10, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I would say that society is benefited by anyone who improves themself in any way — whether it’s by chemically altering themselves or more “naturally” improving themselves. I put that in quotes because, evolutionarily, it is “natural” to try to improve yourself to better meet the requirements of your environment, as Ritalin does for me. (Let’s just say I’m ill-equipped to work in a gas station!)
As a libertarian (small “l,” not one of the wackadoos), I’d like to see much more choice when it comes to drug use — including the currently illegal ones.
And thanks for the complimentary words about my blog. Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.
James Grimmelmann - May 12, 2007 at 9:37 am
As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.
In a Glengarry Glenn Ross-type workplace situation, performance-enhancing drugs are interesting because they ameliorate some hardships of what would otherwise be backbreaking levels of effort. You can push yourself harder in the do-or-die competition without dying from pushing yourself. Which sounds, all, you know, humane and stuff, except that someone still will end up getting third prize. As with search engine keyword advertising, these ladder-type competitions have strange, counterintuitive strategies, and it’s indeterminate how much harder and more viciously each salesman will work if sleep suddenly becomes biologically option.
James Grimmelmann - May 12, 2007 at 9:39 am
And I’m sorry I missed the talk — I was out of the country, but I’d have loved to see it.
Paul Gowder - May 15, 2007 at 2:40 pm
It seems like the solution is in part to directly regulate the bad stuff: not the cognitive enhancements, but the 75 hour workweeks. Non?
Way too many policy-type arguments seem to be of the form “Letting people do X, which might be good, will cause them to do Y, which is bad, so we should ban X.”
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