David Pearce

I would like to draw attention to a classic transhumanist philosopher whose style has remained consistent for decades. https://www.hedweb.com/ The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event. Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.

This goes by "negative utilitarianism" and I love David Pearce's writings on the subject, including The Hedonistic Imperative. [1] https://www.hedweb.com/negutil.htm [2] https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/tabconhi.htm

Your comment reminds me of the futurist philosopher David Pearce’s work, specifically his Abolitionist Project (https://abolitionist.com) and Hedonistic Imperative (https://hedweb.com).

You and the other commenters piqued my interest in writing a sci-fi short story. I'm currently trying to raise a f&f funding round and then on to a crowd funding round, but I thought maybe I could justify the time if I put a little product placement for my invention in there. I was thinking about it and since we have seen the drug induced super-intelligence story a few times, I was thinking of incorporating some of the ideas of David Pierce, from his seminal work The Hedonistic Imperative. http://hedweb.com Can't promise anything but I'll let you know if I do!

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event. Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice. https://www.hedweb.com/

It seems fit to point out that this is the sort of cheese-paring reframed optimization that is only undertaken by people who don't have access to as a great enough level of happiness, money, or span of life as they would like ... and well know it. To think in terms of "well, at least it was quality time" is to admit that we in fact suffer from a poverty of time. In a world where we had enough time to satiate demand, we genuinely would not care whether we spent it well. Ditto for happiness. This may not be the forum for a consideration of the Hedonistic Imperative, but you might give a few moments of thought for the serious vision aimed at optimizing some measure of happiness and pleasure, rather than some measure of wealth or a count of seconds. http://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm "This manifesto outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world." ----- Though it has to be said that I'm firmly in the count of seconds camp - until you get a decent supply of those queued and flowing in a pipeline, you're burning your candle at both ends. Crazy to be playing the game like it's ten…

This reminds me of another manifesto arguing to expand our ideas of what's possible, 'The Hedonistic Imperative', that takes a mostly pharmacological approach: http://www.hedweb.com/ For that matter, this piece has strong similarities to the Unabomber manifesto, aka "Industrial Society and its Future". http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future All such romantic manifestos are interesting in how they make you think, but the devil is in the details. Humans compete for power, for status, for reproduction; if you somehow remove economic competition you might get something worse, corrupt and oppressive and murderous in another direction. And the hunter-gatherer past was a bit nastier than this piece lets on. Some alternate views: http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civilization.html http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html Pinker summarizes the knowledge of prehistoric combat death rates: "If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million."

I think the idea is to draw a parallel between something we're repulsed by, find abhorrent, and feel we ought to eliminate (like a violent death from being ripped apart by a dragon) and something that we consider a natural and inevitable part of life but that doesn't really differ much from the first thing(death from aging). It's a pretty common metaphor in transhumanist circles. I remember this piece comparing the elimination of "natural" unhappiness to the advent of painkillers making a strong impression on me: https://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm

Some counterpoints: https://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9cgBF6BQ2TRB3Hy4E/and-the-winner-is-ma…

Thought this might be interesting about many-worlds https://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#believes if Feynman and Hawking and others are on board with it. I keep seeing with the string theorists and cosmologists that seem to be the leaders in the field are leaning toward many-worlds as the most sensible explanation. It then makes this article seem less interesting if the majority fall into copenhagen but the ones actually doing the real work are more in the many-worlds camp than not.

Further reading, youthful mental characteristics appear to keep the brain plastic and adaptable to change. Remain childlike, with the accompanying sense of wonder and engagement in the world to retain your intellectual vigor: https://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html From an evolutionary perspective, humans very much resemble juvenile chimpanzees physically. There is something about this neoteny that might give insights to our highly adaptable intelligence.

The Everett FAQ makes even stronger claims about the status of Many Worlds. See http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#interpretation

>Yet nobody really believes that a cat can be simultaneously dead and alive. Except, of course, all those physicists that do. http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm#believes

Possible avenues of escape are under consideration: http://www.superhappiness.com http://www.hedweb.com/hedab.htm http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/09/16/genomic-bodhisattva/ http://www.paradise-engineering.com/heaven.htm

Yes, human mind is genetically encoded to a) care for the weak, like children b) respect strong people who have power. But those are just survival skills that maximize chances of passing genes to next generations. There is no morality outside of human or higher animal mind. By the way, if we define morality as acting for minimization of suffering and pain, then the only real solution is end of the world. http://www.hedweb.com/negutil.htm

perhaps reading this http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm (especially question 7) will help, even though it does not give the name for such an experiment.

I was annoyed at how the article just blithely asserted that wavefunctions collapse, as if that wasn't a matter of ongoing debate. In fact, Penrose is remarkable among big name physicists for being sure that wavefrom collapse occurs. http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#believes

I don't really care what views are popular, (though MWI is popular among top experts to whom it matters), I care which views are true. So what matters to me is which proponents say things that make sense and give good explanations and arguments. Deutsch does, including a powerful and concise argument in chapter 2 of his book. When someone gives a reasonable counter argument then I will reconsider, but that has not happened. And, of course, Deutsch isn't the only example of the MWI side making more sense. Here is another source: http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm Edit: If you can give a non-ridiculous summary of any other interpretation, go ahead...

> cross universes? MWI is a local theory. Changes spread out at the speed of light, they just spread out (and back from) adjacent universes as well. https://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm#local > the universes are identical... Think of a 3D volume of space with a plane wave travelling through it, such as a beam of coherent laser light. An alternative way of thinking about this is that each point emits a spherical wave and the plane wave is just constructive interference of a continuum of spherical waves. In many worlds theories, you can think of each point as also spreading out into non-spatial dimensions that are directions towards other universes. Similarly, aggregate behaviour is the constructive interference of not just the points in "one" universe, but also the points in a neighbouring "volume" of universes. If the neighbouring universes are identical, or nearly so, it's like the coherent laser scenario. If they're all different, it's more like white light -- it's unpredictable and "random", but otherwise it's still just ordinary light. Very slight deviations would result in various interference effects, such as the double-slit scenario.