It's counterintuitive. But "disincentives for (i.e. intrinsic negative feedback of) antisocial and immoral behaviors" can play out just as effectively...
Direct interventions to enhance emotional well-being could enrich everyone's default quality of life. For sure, whether we consider using drugs, genes...
A qualified version of psychological hedonism may be true. But the commission of atrocities is a function of ignorance. Full-spectrum superintelligenc...
In practice, almost all intellectual and moral progress depends on false belief, namely the existence of enduring metaphysical egos. If pressed, one m...
Other things being equal, it's better to be rich than poor. But compare e.g. https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-happiness-report The hedonic rank of Indo...
But the problem, to quote Wittgenstein, is that "Death is not an event in life". Even if we share a Benatarian pessimism about the human predicament, ...
Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, mature humans can rationalise and practise adaptive preference formation (aka "sour grapes"): https://www.indep...
Antinatalists recognize that creating children with a progressive genetic disease is morally problematic. Aging ravages and then kills its victims. Bu...
fdrake, thank you. And good heavens – you're right about time! I hope it's nothing to do with enjoying having the last word... https://www.psychologic...
Current scientific evidence does not support the therapeutic benefit of prayer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16569567/ ("Study of the Therapeutic E...
Where in this chronology would you call a halt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_medicine_and_medical_technology ? Or do you advise against o...
Recall I'm an antinatalist: https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#agreeantinatal My view of life is bleaker than David Benatar's. So no, I won't be c...
Please forgive me if I've missed a post / point you'd like to see addressed. If you let me know, I'll do my best! (High-tech Jainism: https://www.hedw...
Remediation is harder than prevention. Preimplantation genetic screening and counselling are available now. By contrast, the gene-repressing strategy ...
Apologies, I've done my fallible best to respond, and cited your comments verbatim in my replies. Possibly the conceptual gulf that separates us is to...
"Responsible" adults are engineered by evolution to maximize the inclusive fitness of their genes, not impartially to weigh whether it's ethical to ge...
Children don't consent to be born. If lack of prior consent is the key issue, one should stay child-free. If one believes that antinatalists are wrong...
Germline interventions are not irreversible. They merely change the genetic default. Might a future hyperthymic civilisation revert to creating babies...
In our discussion, I've glossed over the role of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (cf. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/parents-emotion...
Science doesn't understand existence. Our conceptual scheme is desperately inadequate. Cosmology is in flux, the foundations of quantum mechanics are ...
Yes. Words fail to communicate the awfulness of severe pain. Extreme suffering corrodes one's values, personality and life itself. Philosophers are wi...
The worst source of severe and readily avoidable suffering in the world is simply remedied. Without slaughterhouses, the entire industrialized apparat...
A "genetic arms race" sounds sinister. It's not. Even inequalities in hedonic enhancement aren't sinister. Consider a toy example. Grossly over-simpli...
A nonhuman animal who suffers a grisly death at the hands of a shooter might well have experienced more suffering in the course of a lifetime if allow...
The first step towards a hyperthymic civilisation is ensuring universal access of all prospective parents to preimplantation genetic screening and cou...
Do you believe that existing people with high hedonic set-points indirectly cause more suffering? Why exactly do you believe that a whole world of tem...
Humans should actively be helping non-human animals, not terrorising them and then rationalising their bloodlust. On consequentialist grounds, we shou...
One of the risks of ethical advocacy is losing one's critical detachment and turning into a propagandist. There are forms of propaganda more obnoxious...
What's in contention isn't whether humans should or shouldn't intervene in Nature. Humans already do so on a massive scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/w...
Evolution via natural selection is a cruel engine of suffering, not a performance art. I tiptoe far more gingerly than, say, Freeman Dyson (“In the fu...
Both a genetic crapshoot and targeted germline interventions carry risks. Antinatalists refuse to gamble; but they won't inherit the Earth. So instead...
Stonewalling? Philosophers need to acquaint themselves with what's technically feasible so we can have a serious ethical debate on what should be done...
Tracing the historical antecedents of one's ideas is very different from appealing to religious authority. In this case, I was simply noting how the v...
You're not serious?! Since the age of ten or eleven, I've been a secular scientific rationalist. My reason for alluding to the "peaceable kingdom" of ...
If we were discussing some academic question of art or literature, fair enough. But the problem of suffering is morally urgent – and calls for radical...
The prospect of ending the cruelties of Nature isn't a madcap scheme some philosopher just dreamed up in the bathtub. It's a venerable vision: the "pe...
On some fairly modest assumptions, a world where all sentient beings can flourish is ethically preferable to a world where sentient beings hurt, harm ...
Once again, the intuition is deeply rooted. IMO it's just not supported by the empirical evidence. The temperamentally happiest people are simply born...
Yes, it's a powerful intuition. But if the existence of pain and pleasure were inseparable, then there would be no victims of chronic pain or depressi...
I assume you're trolling. But if not, I promise vegans love food as much as meat eaters. Visit a vegan foodie community if you've any doubt. If so, th...
Consider e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOD7hxUGI8 Worse happens off-camera. Animal agriculture is a crime against sentience. Hence the case fo...
Some people cannot imagine life could be different. Suffering shapes their conception of the human predicament and life itself. Other people have tast...
Hyperthymia is the opposite of dysthymia (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia). When advocating a hyperthymic civilisation, I'm urging a socie...
Is it possible you're conflating hyperthymia with mania? Yes, unusually temperamentally happy people have proverbially rose-tinted spectacles. Their a...
Indeed. Even an “ideal” pleasure drug could be abused. The classic example from fiction is soma (cf. https://www.huxley.net/soma/somaquote.html) in Al...
The pleasure-pain axis plays an indispensable signalling role in organic (but not inorganic) robots. When information-signalling wholly or partly brea...
Allow me to pass over where we agree and focus on where we may differ. Each of us must come to terms with the pain and grief in our own lives. Often t...
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