I can see a scenario where BCI totalitarianism sounds like a pretty good thing from a hedonic utilitarian point of view:
People are usually more effective workers when they’re happy. So a pragmatic totalitarian government (like Brave New World) rather than a sadistic one or sadistic/pragmatic (1984, maybe) would want its people to be happy all the time, and would stimulate whatever in the brain makes them happy. To suppress dissent it would just delete thoughts and feelings in that direction as painlessly as possible. Competing governments would have an incentive to be pragmatic rather than sadistic.
Then the risk comes from the possibility that humans aren’t worth keeping around as workers, due to automation.
I can see a scenario where BCI totalitarianism sounds like a pretty good thing from a hedonic utilitarian point of view:
People are usually more effective workers when they’re happy. So a pragmatic totalitarian government (like Brave New World) rather than a sadistic one or sadistic/pragmatic (1984, maybe) would want its people to be happy all the time, and would stimulate whatever in the brain makes them happy. To suppress dissent it would just delete thoughts and feelings in that direction as painlessly as possible. Competing governments would have an incentive to be pragmatic rather than sadistic.
Then the risk comes from the possibility that humans aren’t worth keeping around as workers, due to automation.