[nine_k]

> suffering and "hard times" are eliminated

There's an ancient intellectual tradition of Buddhism, very much concerned with elimination of suffering. What they came up with is that to stop suffering, one has to stop existing ("break the circle of re-incarnation").

What we can realistically hope for using engineering is to eliminate gross material causes of suffering, like famines, or large-scale warfare, or various illnesses. We can hope to eliminate hardships, but not tragedies, which are endogenous.

Just saying.

[xvector]

Agreed. Elimination of material causes is the best we can do given our current lack of insight into the brain. The discussion becomes much more interesting when we do begin to gain that insight when coupled with the ability precisely and extensively modify it.