As a temperamentally depressive negative utilitarian, I find lifelong happiness hard to conceive too. But a civilisation based on gradients of superhu...
The only kind of idealism I take seriously just transposes the entire mathematical apparatus of modern physics onto an experientialist ontology: non-m...
If a global consensus emerges for compassionate stewardship of the living world, then the problem of suffering is tractable. We're not going to run ou...
We could engineer a world with hedonic range of 0 to +10 as distinct from our -10 to 0 to +10. But we could also engineer a civilisation of (schematic...
Yes: https://www.wireheading.com/hypermotivation.html Wireheading is not a viable solution to the problem of suffering. In my view, the right way to s...
It's a question of timescales. Classical utilitarianism is often held to be agent?neutral. But in the long run, it's unclear whether classical utilita...
The underlying cause of the opioid crisis is that we are all born endogenous opioid addicts. The neurotransmitter system most directly involved in hed...
I'm mystified why you value life per se rather than certain kinds of life. Do you really believe we should value and attempt to conserve, say, the par...
Thank you. You are very kind. I'm curious though. You believe there is potentially a cure for suffering, but it's not transhumanism. First, we need to...
Any solution to the problem of suffering must be technically and sociologically credible. It's a daunting challenge, but I know of no alternative: htt...
Darwinian malware had no choice about being born. Under a regime of natural selection, the lives of most sentient beings are “nasty, brutish and short...
It was J. L. Austin (of all people!) who acknowledged that "common sense is the metaphysics of the stone age". Folk physics is not my point of departu...
If pain-ridden Darwinian ecosystems exist within our cosmological horizon, then I would indeed hope future transhumans will send out cosmic rescue-mis...
What do you think it feels like to be eaten alive? The horrors of "Nature, red in tooth and claw" are too serious to be written off with jokes about e...
Biotech (genome editing, synthetic gene drives, etc) turns the level of suffering in Nature into an adjustable parameter. Yes, traditional conservatio...
Aging is a frightful disorder. Medical science should aim for a cure. More generally, mental and physical suffering are vile. A predisposition to suff...
In my view, instrumentalism threatens to collapse into an uninteresting solipsism. Instead, we'd do well to interpret the mathematical formalism of mo...
What makes you suppose I want to change myself into a computer?! (cf. http://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#braincomp) Either way, power breeds compli...
Consider lucid dreaming. When having a lucid dream, one entertains the theory that one's entire empirical dreamworld is internal to the transcendental...
Olivier5 It's possible your recent comment has been deleted. But the reason I don't advocate the extinction (as distinct from genetic tweaking) of the...
counterpunch I hope you'll forgive me for ducking questions of art here. However, when it comes to science, I'm a realist and a monistic physicalist, ...
Michael Thanks, your striking footprint / boot analogy hadn't occurred to me; but yes, in a sense. I'm still thinking about the coffee! Either way, th...
OglopTo Thank you. You are very kind. The Transhumanist movement is diverse, indeed fragmented. For instance, Nick Bostrom and I both advocate a futur...
Pfhorrest Very many thanks. Yes, I remarked that most critics don't find an architecture of mind based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of ...
Olivier5 The problem of suffering can't be solved by tigers killing their victims any more than it can be solved by psychopaths killing orphans. Well-...
Metaphysician Undercover I believe in the existence of mind-independent reality (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#idsolipsism). Its status, ...
Michael Thanks, a lot to unpack there. I worry that the expression "perceptually given" is doing a lot of work in your account. One's experience of a ...
Counterpunch The fact that we each run a phenomenal world-simulation rather than perceive extracranial reality doesn't entail that our world-simulatio...
Olivier5 True, a tiger does not apologise. Nor does a psychopathic child killer. Their victims are of comparable sentience. Unless rather naively we b...
Counterpunch Modern physics reveals that mind-independent reality is radically different from our egocentric virtual worlds of experience. I say a bit...
Olivier5 Complications aide, sentient beings exhibit a clearly expressed wish not to be harmed. So compassionate biology doesn't entail "engineer ever...
counterpunch The inferential realist account is more epistemically demanding. The perceptual naïve realist believes that (s)he directly communes with ...
Counterpunch Recall I argue against the view that reality is subjectively constructed. But each of us runs a phenomenal world-simulation that masquera...
Jkg20, counterpunch As far as I can tell, physical reality long predates the evolution of phenomenally-bound minds in the late Precambrian. As I said,...
fdrake Thank you. Suffering and the extended mind thesis? (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis) One of the authors of the extended ...
Bitter Crank Many thanks. Could environmental degradation derail transhuman civilisation? I'm sceptical. But I suspect a climate catastrophe such as t...
Down The Rabbit Hole Many thanks. Should human intuitions of absurdity weigh more in ethics than in, say, quantum physics? That said, I defend what mi...
Olivier5 The conjecture that predation among species is inevitable is no more tenable than the conjecture that predation among races is inevitable. Th...
Olivier5 Boredom? Its elimination will be trivial compared to defeating the biology of aging: https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#eliminate Predati...
Outlander, I share your dark view of humanity. Yet should we discourage a scientific understanding of depression and its treatment for fear some peopl...
Olivier5, If I might quote Robert Lynd, “It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering.” You say, “I tend to ...
Oliver5 Could the future be worse than the past? It’s a horrific thought. I promise I take s-risks seriously – although not all s-risks: https://www.h...
Marchesk Utopia, dystopia or muddling through? It’s a question of timescales. I’m sceptical experience below hedonic zero will exist a thousand years ...
Michael The prospect of a “triple S” civilisation of superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness still strikes most people as science fiction...
Outlander Each of your points deserves a treatise. Forgive me for hotlinking. Two classes of humans, enhanced and unenhanced? Yes, it’s a possible ris...
Schopenhauer1 I share your bleak diagnosis of Darwinian life: https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#antinatal But David Benatar and other “hard” anti...
3017amen Thank you. Yes, transhumanists aspire to end involuntary suffering. It’s tempting to be lazy and normally say just “end suffering” but the “i...
Pinprick Thank you. What is the relationship between superintelligence and super-wellbeing? It’s tricky. The best I can manage is an analogy. Consider...
Down The Rabbit Hole Thank you. Yes, I accept a version of the asymmetry theory. The badness of suffering is self-intimating, whereas there is nothing...
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