Isn't there a danger that in entertaining transhumanism, we're always 'distracted by expectation' in just this way? — csalisbury

You have a point. I've never read The Beast in the Jungle, but I get the gist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_in_the_Jungle

However, here is a counterargument. Transhumanism at its best aims to promote the well-being of all sentience, or at least all sentience in our forward light-cone. I take a range of pills and potions, and intend to be symbolically cryothanased aged 75 or so with a view to reanimation, but it's not as though I anticipate seeing the Promised Land with any great confidence – quite aside from my scepticism about the metaphysics of enduring personal identity. Rather, our responsibility as intelligent moral agents is to try to ensure that future beings don't suffer in the way that human and nonhuman animals do today. We’re stepping-stones. No one should have to undergo the ravages of aging, witness the death of a loved one, experience psychological illness, or undergo the mundane frustrations and disappointments of Darwinian life. No sentient being should be factory-farmed, perish in the death factories, or starve or fall victim to a predator in Nature. The fact that many / most / all of us will never personally live to see the glorious future of sentience doesn't diminish our obligation to work to that end.

Posthuman heaven is probably just a foretaste of the wonders in store for sentience. Humans don’t have the conceptual scheme to describe life in a low-grade heavenly civilization with a hedonic range of +10 to +20, let alone a mature heaven with hedonic architecture of mind that spans, say, +90 to +100. The puritanical NU in me sometimes feels it’s morally frivolous to speculate on Heaven+ or Paradise 2.0. Yet if theoretical physicists are allowed to speculate on exotic states of matter and energy, then bioethicists may do so too – and bioethicists may have a keener insight into the long-term future of matter and energy in the cosmos.

But first the unknowns. Neuroscience hasn’t yet deciphered the molecular signature of pure bliss, merely narrowed its location to a single cubic millimetre in the posterior ventral pallidum in rats, scaled up to a cubic centimetre in humans. Next, neuroscience hasn’t cracked the binding problem: https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/binding-interview.html
Unless you’re a strict NU, there’s not much point in creating patterns of blissful mind-dust or mere microexperiential zombies of hedonistic neurons. Rather, we’re trying to create cognitively intact unified subjects of bliss endowed with physically bigger and qualitatively richer here-and-nows. And next, how will tomorrow’s bliss be encephalised? The Darwinian bric-a-brac that helped our genes leave more copies of themselves in the ancestral environment of adaptation has no long-term future. The egocentric virtual worlds run by Darwinian minds may disappear too. But the intentional objects and default state-spaces of consciousness of posthumans are inconceivable to Darwnian primitives. Next, how steep or shallow will be the hedonic gradients of minds in different ranks of posthuman heaven? I sometimes invoke a +70 to a +100 supercivilisation, but this example isn’t a prediction. Rather, a wide hedonic range scanario can be chosen to spike the guns of critics who claim that posthuman heaven would necessarily be less diverse than Darwinian life with our schematic hedonic -10 to 0 to +10. Lastly, will the superpleasure axis continue to preserve a signaling function? Or will mature post-posthumans opt to offload the infrastructure of superheaven to zombie AI, and occupy hedonically “perfect” +100 states of mind indefinitely?

Talk of “perfection” is again likely to raise the hackles of critics worried about homogeneity. But a hedonically “perfect” +100 here-and-now can have humanly unimaginable richness. Monotony is a concept that belongs to the Darwinian era.

The above discussion assumes that advanced posthumans won’t be strict classical utilitarians who opt to engineer a hedonium/utilitronium shockwave. One political compromise is to preserve a bubble of complex civilization underpinned by information-signaling gradients of well-being that is surrounded by an expanding shockwave of pure bliss – not an ideal world by the lights of pure CU, but something close enough. — David Pearce

Sounds like one helluva party! Who in his right mind can say "no" to that!

A couple of points...

1. This may sound crazy but I'll say it anyway. The suffering-happiness duo, if one approaches this from a Darwinian angle, serve a function distinct in value from any value that can be attributed to either of the two. In my humble opinion, the things that make us happy are pro-life i.e. in most or all cases, that which makes us happy are that which makes us live longer and conversely, that which makes us suffer are anti-life, shortens our life-span. Thus, happiness and suffering are ultimately about living as long as possible i.e. happiness and suffering, whatever value one may choose to ascribe to them as transhumanists are currently doing, boils down keeping the flame of life burning to the maxium extent possible; in other words, the objective, the end, here seems to be immortality and happiness-suffering are merely the means. The question is, should we spend so much time working on, making a big deal of, the means instead of focusing on, putting our backs into, achieving the end (immortality)? It would be something like obsessively hoarding money (the means) instead of using it intelligently (the end).

2. I'm sure you're familiar with buddhism - it too is a hedonically-charged philosophy and the first line in buddhism reads, "life is suffering." I'm sure you can relate to that but there's a crucial difference between buddha's philosophy and transhumanist ideology if I may describe it as such.

Both buddhism and transhumanism acknowledge suffering as undesirable and happiness as a desideratum. However, to borrow computing terms, buddhism is about updating as it were our software - leave the world as it is but change/adapt our minds to it in such a way that suffering is minimized and happiness is maximized (I'll leave nirvana out of the discussion for the moment) - and transhumanism is about upgrading our hardware - change the world and also change our brains towards the same ends.

The issue is, if happiness-suffering can be modulated by just changing the way we think of the world, isn't transhumanism in that sense a misguided venture? The converse question - if happiness-suffering can only be dealt with by changing our world and our brains physically? - suggests the opposite, that buddhism is a gross misconception of reality.

Sounds like one helluva party! Who in his right mind can say "no" to that! — TheMadFool

Alas, naysayers exist, even on this forum. But yes, transhuman life based on gradients of superhuman bliss will exceed our wildest expectations.

Thus, happiness and suffering are ultimately about living as long as possible i.e. happiness and suffering, whatever value one may choose to ascribe to them as transhumanists are currently doing, boils down keeping the flame of life burning to the maximum extent possible; in other words, the objective, the end, here seems to be immortality and happiness-suffering are merely the means. — TheMadFool

My view of Darwinian life is so bleak that I'm more likely to quote Heinrich Heine, "Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all." Sorry. But aging and bereavement are sources of such misery that I share the transhumanist goal of their abolition via science. Mastery of our reward circuitry promises to make the nihilistic sentiments of NU antinatalists like me unthinkable.

Both buddhism and transhumanism acknowledge suffering as undesirable and happiness as a desideratum. However, to borrow computing terms, buddhism is about updating as it were our software - leave the world as it is but change/adapt our minds to it in such a way that suffering is minimized and happiness is maximized (I'll leave nirvana out of the discussion for the moment) - and transhumanism is about upgrading our hardware - change the world and also change our brains towards the same ends. — TheMadFool

Yes. Pain and suffering have always been inevitable. Symptomatic relief is sometimes possible, but not far-reaching. But for the first time in history, we can glimpse the prospect of new reward architecture – not just the alleviation of specific external causes of suffering, but any suffering, and even the conceivability of suffering – and not in some mythical afterlife, but here on Earth. If we opt to edit our genomes, the world's last unpleasant experience may be a few centuries away. Pursuing the Noble Eightfold path can't recalibrate the hedonic treadmill or break the food chain, so a pragmatist like Gautama Buddha born today would surely approve. The hardware/software metaphor for the mind-brain shouldn't be taken too literally, but yes, transhumanism promises a revolution in both.

Another distinction between traditional Buddhism and transhumanism is the role of desire. Buddhists equate desire with suffering. Frustrated desires sometimes cause misery. Biotech can do permanently what mu-opioid agonist drugs do fleetingly, namely create serene bliss - an absence of desire that should be distinguished from the anhedonia and amotivational syndrome experienced by many depressives. However, serene bliss is the recipe for a world of lotus-eaters (cf. Tranquilism (2017) by Lucas Gloor: https://longtermrisk.org/tranuilism/). The prospect of quietly savouring beautiful states of consciousness for all eternity doesn't appal me; but expressing delight in idleness is a culturally unacceptable sentiment, for the most part at any rate. Witness the modern cult of "productivity". So it's worth stressing a viable alternative scenario, a world of gradients of superhappiness and hypermotivation. This combination ought not to be possible if the Buddhist diagnosis of our predicament were correct. Pathological manifestations of this combination of traits can be seen today in euphoric mania. Yet it's an empirical fact that the temperamentally happiest "normal" people today typically experience the most desires, not the least. Many depressives experience the opposite syndrome. Maybe in the very long-term future, advanced superbeings will opt to live in perpetual hedonic +100 super-nirvana. But perhaps a more sociologically realistic scenario for the next few eons is hypermotivated bliss – crudely, a world of doing rather than contemplating, and a civilisation where all sentient beings feel profoundly blissful but not "blissed out": https://www.superhappiness.com/

My view of Darwinian life is so bleak that I'm more likely to quote Heinrich Heine, "Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all." — David Pearce

:rofl: However, jokes aside, this particular brand of thinking has been offered for public consumption at a global scale by Buddhism, especially the part that goes, "...the best thing would to have never been born at all" :point: nirvana which boils down to the statement: head to the nearest exit from the cycle of suffering referred to as samsara and for heaven's sake don't come back! :smile:

My view of Darwinian life is so bleak — David Pearce

And yet you build an entire philosophy out of just one aspect of it viz. happiness/pleasure and suffering/pain. I'm not trying to say anything to the effect that transhumanism is defective/deficient but, in a sense, transhumanism hasn't really left Darwinism behind has it? It's still quite clearly very much in its grips, deeply troubled by the same things - pleasure/pain - that troubled the dinosaurs presumably. A modern solution (transhumanism) for an ancient, ancient problem (suffering/happiness).

Pursuing the Noble Eightfold path can't recalibrate the hedonic treadmill or break the food chain, so a pragmatist like Gautama Buddha born today would surely approve — David Pearce

:up: I second that. I suppose his philosophy suffers from technological ignorance i.e. he didn't have the benefit of modern scientific knowledge and the possibility that there was another way - transhumanism - out of the quagmire of suffering never occurred to him. Had he had even an inkling of what is now bandied about by technologists and futurists as possible, I'm sure he would have seen the light so to speak.

Maybe in the very long-term future, advanced superbeings will opt to live in perpetual hedonic +100 super-nirvana. — David Pearce

I'd like two, no three, no four, no five,.. of that please. :smile:

I suppose transhumanists are calling it as they see it - we can, sit venia verbo, cut all the crap we tell each other and finally, seriously, and like adults, discuss what we really want - superhappiness (supernirvana) - and come up with a good plan how we're going to get there!

...and finally, seriously, and like adults, discuss what we really want - superhappiness (supernirvana) - and come up with a good plan how we're going to get there! — TheMadFool

Absolutely.
At the risk of sounding like a crude technological determinist, some strands of the transhumanist agenda are bound to happen anyway. For instance, radical antiaging interventions won’t need selling. Bioconservatives will seize on the chance to stay youthful as eagerly as radical futurists. Today’s lame rationalisations of death and aging will be swept aside. Likewise with AI and the growth of “narrow” superintelligence, immersive VR and so forth. I’m most cautious about timescales for the end of suffering and the third “super” of transhumanism, superhappiness. When scientific understanding of the pleasure-pain axis matures, the end of suffering and a civilisation of superhuman bliss are probably just as inevitable as pain-free surgery. But the sociological and political revolution needed for all prospective parents world-wide to participate in a reproductive revolution of hyperthymic designer babies is fathomlessly complicated. I fantasise about a WHO-sponsored Hundred-Year Plan to defeat the biology of suffering. Almost certainly, this is just utopian dreaming. Political genius is needed to accelerate the project.

I’m most cautious about timescales for the end of suffering and the third “super” of transhumanism, superhappiness — David Pearce

In the long run[, the end of suffering and a civilisation of superhuman bliss are probably just as inevitable a pain-free surgery when scientific understanding of the pleasure-pain axis matures — David Pearce

If I may say so, some Buddhists (Tibetans mostly I suppose) would, at some point, connect the dots and come to the realization that transhumanists are reincarnations of Siddhartha Gautama :smile: They seem to have as of yet failed to make that connection. I hope they do and soon; I'm sure a little help from the 535 million Buddhists around the world will do the transhumanist cause some good. Expect yourselves to be worshipped at some point is what I have to say.

If I may say so, some Buddhists (Tibetans mostly I suppose) would, at some point, connect the dots and come to the realization that transhumanists are reincarnations of Siddhartha Gautama :smile: They seem to have as of yet failed to make that connection. I hope they do and soon; I'm sure a little help from the 535 million Buddhists around the world will do the transhumanist cause some good. Expect yourselves to be worshipped at some point is what I have to say. — TheMadFool

Hah. You’re very kind. Individual transhumanists are all too human. But your essential point stands. The abolitionist strand in modern transhumanism is really secular Buddhism, minus the metaphysical accretions. Suffering is vile, stupid and computationally redundant.

However, here is a counterargument. Transhumanism at its best aims to promote the well-being of all sentience, or at least all sentience in our forward light-cone. I take a range of pills and potions, and intend to be symbolically cryothanased aged 75 or so with a view to reanimation, but it's not as though I anticipate seeing the Promised Land with any great confidence – quite aside from my scepticism about the metaphysics of enduring personal identity. Rather, our responsibility as intelligent moral agents is to try to ensure that future beings don't suffer in the way that human and nonhuman animals do today. We’re stepping-stones. No one should have to undergo the ravages of aging, witness the death of a loved one, experience psychological illness, or undergo the mundane frustrations and disappointments of Darwinian life. No sentient being should be factory-farmed, perish in the death factories, or starve or fall victim to a predator in Nature. The fact that many / most / all of us will never personally live to see the glorious future of sentience doesn't diminish our obligation to work to that end. — David Pearce

I very much like the emphasis on a general happiness that goes beyond one's own, the idea of the present as a stepping stone to the future. I can definitely see how my post - and references - seemed to emphasize personal happiness - but I'm coming at it from another angle. I've experienced rather harsh psychological illness, and the passing of my mother when I was 25. All of this was - and sometimes continues to be - devastating. But at the same time....I was kind of an asshole before then. And it was going through those experiences, real suffering, that allowed me to shift-tracks from a kind of self-centered hedonism and cultivate something like empathy (partially, I'm still often an asshole, but a little less so)

Now, maybe this is a Stockholm-Syndrome approach: suffering scooped me up and, having no other psychological choice, I was gaslighted into loving it. I can see that take; I don't think it's true....though, to be fair, that's just what the stockholm syndrome'd person would say.

(plus I have a unfair cheat: reincarnation. You mention above metaphysical scepticism about personal identity. I have that scepticism too and have plunged into some of the literature. Doing so has led me to believe in a very qualified kind of reincarnation (not that I'll get my mom back, or that she'll ever be her again ---I've read too many horror stories about rogue alchemists not to know that the desire to resurrect the dead only breeds monsters). Her personal identity ended when she died. But she was blocked by certain harsh emotions and hardened habits, and was released from that...contraction of being, so to speak, into the opener space)

But in general I really do think that there may be something to the old idea that undergoing suffering is a condition for a more finely-tuned happiness. I know that that's a cliche on the face of it (maybe even a particularly pernicious culturally-implanted one!) but I think there is also a robustness to certain ways of approaching it that go beyond the cliche.

To flesh that out would go beyond the scope of posting on here, but the tldr is:

What I meant in my first post isn't that we should prioritize our own happiness at the expense of the future inhabitants of our lightcone, but something like : happiness could be the gradual unfurling that comes when a community agrees to focus on the here and now - which focus means confronting and working-out deferred, repressed suffering ...kneading it out, undergoing it- the future happiness coming organically through the kneading, like the relief from tension in a muscle. I'm thinking of like the serenity after a good, full cry. At the same time you reach catharsis you realize: I need to be a kinder person, and I now have a sense how to. It's the same thing.

I know this might seem wishy-washy! But there's a lot to recommend it - only time and space constraints allow only a quick and simple suggestive pointing.

Now, maybe this is a Stockholm-Syndrome approach...But in general I really do think that there may be something to the old idea that undergoing suffering is a condition for a more finely-tuned happiness. — csalisbury

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 the anguish is very personal. Uniquely, humans have the ability to rationalise their own suffering and mortality. Rationalisation is normally only partially successful, but it’s a vital psychological crutch. Around 850,000 people each year fail to "rationalise" the unrationalisable and take their own lives. Millions more try to commit suicide and fail. Factory-farmed nonhuman animals lack the cognitive capacity and means to do so.

However, rationalisation can have an insidious effect. If (some) suffering has allegedly been good for us, won’t suffering sometimes have redeeming features for our children and grandchildren – and indeed for all future life? So let’s preserve the biological-genetic status quo. I don't buy this argument; it’s ethically catastrophic. For the first time in history, it's possible to map out the technical blueprint for a living world without suffering. Political genius is now needed to accelerate a post-Darwinian transition. Recall that young children can't rationalise. Nor can nonhuman animals. We should safeguard their interests too. If we are prepared to rewrite our genomes, then happiness can be as "finely-tuned" and information-sensitive as we wish, but on an exalted plane of well-being. Transhuman life will be underpinned by a default hedonic tone beyond today’s “peak experiences”.

One strand of thought that opposes the rationalising impulse is represented by David Benatar's Better Never To Have Been, efilism and “strong” antinatalism:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#main
Alas, the astute depressive realism of their diagnosis isn't matched by any clear-headedness of their prescriptions. I hesitate to say this for fear of sounding messianic, but only transhumanism can solve the problem of suffering. Darwinian malware contains the seeds of its own destruction. A world based on gradients of bliss won’t need today's spurious rationalisations of evil. Let’s genetically eliminate hedonic sub-zero experience altogether.

Let’s genetically eliminate hedonic sub-zero experience altogether. — David Pearce

I have a sense that suffering helps us navigate, and altering the genetic hedonic pre-disposition would reciprocally alter the genetic basis of suffering, and leave us incapable of overcoming even the slightest obstacle. Like the fat people in the floaty chairs! Or the 30 million dead colonists on Miranda - in the film Serenity, who had unending bliss forced upon them, and just laid down and died.

This is quite aside from the fact that it's an unsystematic application of science, that by rights should start with limitless clean energy, carbon capture, desalination and irrigation, hydrogen fuel, total recycling, fish farming etc; so as to secure a prosperous sustainable future. I know that would make me, genuinely, much happier.

- delete post if not complete or coherent, am tired-

@David Pearce The following is more of an enthusiastic engagement, that recalls or calls upon several truths you assert in your premise. The very thing you call savage and cruel or even stupid, Darwinian existence, is the thing that formed you and your beliefs, this is nothing other a fact in would seem. So, seeing as Hell creates Heaven it would appear, again from your own statements, what of the following theory.

Ok I remember. I was watching a government ad about the dangers of smoking, some woman lost half her face or something. Alright. So. What if, we endure these horrors, and one day, those who do things that are hazardous to our current biology (smoking, drinking in excess, etc.) continue to do so and yes suffer resulting in a later generation that is no longer subject to the diseases of their predecessors. Meaning, the more we smoke, drink, and yes some will die and suffer horribly, but those who live, will be a generation where they can enjoy the pleasures of smoking and drinking and I suppose for sake of argument other dangerous drugs, without these horrid effects. Isn't the natural system creating transhumans already, per se?

I understand your argument is wishing to skip this altogether, either by simply having no need to indulge in harmful substances for we will already be at bliss. But nevertheless there will always be more bliss to be had, if not is this not a prison your movement attempts to create? People will always seek more pleasure. Will they not?

I have a sense that suffering helps us navigate, and altering the genetic hedonic pre-disposition would reciprocally alter the genetic basis of suffering, and leave us incapable of overcoming even the slightest obstacle. Like the fat people in the floaty chairs! Or the 30 million dead colonists on Miranda - in the film Serenity, who had unending bliss forced upon them, and just laid down and died. — counterpunch

The pleasure-pain axis plays an indispensable signalling role in organic (but not inorganic) robots. When information-signalling wholly or partly breaks down, as in severe chronic depression or mania, the results are tragic. But consider high-functioning depressives and high-functioning hyperthymics. High-functioning hyperthymics tend to enjoy a vastly richer quality of life. Let's for now set aside futuristic speculation on an advanced civilization based on gradients of superhuman bliss. What are the pros and cons of using gene-editing to create just a hyperthymic society – where everyone enjoys a hedonic set-point and hedonic range comparable to today's genetically privileged hedonic elite?

You mention the fictional colonists of Miranda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(2005_film)
Their fate is not a sociologically credible model for a world based on gradients of genetically programmed well-being. Hyperthymics tend to be ardent life-lovers. What's more, the extent to which any of us persevere or "give up" will itself soon be amenable to fine-grained control (cf. "Researchers discover the science behind giving up": https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/researchers-discover-science-behind-giving). If desired, medical science can endow us with fanatical willpower sufficient to appease even the most avid Nietzschean. Depressives are prone to weakness of will and self-neglect.

This is quite aside from the fact that it's an unsystematic application of science, that by rights should start with limitless clean energy, carbon capture, desalination and irrigation, hydrogen fuel, total recycling, fish farming etc; so as to secure a prosperous sustainable future. I know that would make me, genuinely, much happier. — counterpunch

Fish are sentient beings. Intelligent moral agents should enable fish to flourish, not exploit and kill them
(cf. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/horrific-footage-reveals-fish-suffocating-to-death-on-industrial-farms-in-italy).
I promise that transhumanists are as keen as anyone on a prosperous, sustainable future. Upgrading our reward circuitry will ensure that sentient beings are better able to enjoy it.

The pleasure-pain axis plays an indispensable signalling role in organic (but not inorganic) robots. When information-signalling wholly or partly breaks down, as in severe chronic depression or mania, the results are tragic. But consider high-functioning depressives and high-functioning hyperthymics. High-functioning hyperthymics tend to enjoy a vastly richer quality of life. — David Pearce

Hyperthymics engage in denial to rationalise their overly-positive mood. They lose the ability to navigate rationally, and the consequences can be just as tragic. Suffering doesn't go away just because the person isn't weeping. We are after all social beings, and hyperthymics go around inflicting their risk taking, attention seeking, libidinous psychology on others.

Let's for now set aside futuristic speculation on an advanced civilization based on gradients of superhuman bliss. What are the pros and cons of using gene-editing to create just a hyperthymic society – where everyone enjoys a hedonic set-point and hedonic range comparable to today's genetically privileged hedonic elite? — David Pearce

There would be no downsides if people were incapable of experiencing them. The world could be falling apart around them and they wouldn't care. That's my point. People need to be pissed off about things in order to prevent them. Thou shalt not kill. Who cares? Thou shalt not steal. Who cares? Hyperthymics don't care.

Their fate is not a sociologically credible model for a world based on gradients of genetically programmed well-being. — David Pearce

It's fiction, sure - but it illustrates a point, that relates to my previous comments about a systematic, scientific approach to the application of technology. Start with limitless clean energy from magma, carbon capture, desalination, irrigation - and secure sustainable prosperity for the world, and maybe people wouldn't be depressed. Starting with genetic engineering is exactly why we are headed for extinction; that we use science, but don't observe a scientific understanding of reality, so apply the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons.

Fish are sentient beings. — David Pearce

Are they? I thought they were:

organic (but not inorganic) robots. — David Pearce

Or do you reserve such dehumanising ideas solely for humans? Humans are sentient beings at the top of the food chain. Fish are meat. Humans eat meat, and need to produce it sustainably rather than dredge to oceans to death. I do not condone animals suffering any more than is necessary, but they're mortal, and humane farming is far kinder than nature - which really is red in tooth and claw. Most humans born will reach maturity. That's not so in nature.

I promise that transhumanists are as keen as anyone on a prosperous, sustainable future. — David Pearce

I don't doubt that, but you'll not achieve it with an unsystematic approach to science, and also, I very much doubt that:

Upgrading our reward circuitry will ensure that sentient beings are better able to enjoy it. — David Pearce

Interfering in the human genome, so altering every subsequent human being who will ever live, is a risk that's not justified by depression; for all the reasons stated. I think we need to suffer the consequences of things that are bad for us; and if we don't feel the suffering, we will still suffer, but just won't know that we are suffering.

But nevertheless there will always be more bliss to be had, if not is this not a prison your movement attempts to create? People will always seek more pleasure. Will they not? — Outlander

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 Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I hope that establishment pharmacologists and the scientific counterculture alike can develop more effective mood-brighteners to benefit both the psychologically ill and the nominally well. Yet one reason I’ve focused on genetic recalibration and genetically-driven hedonic uplift is precisely to avoid the pitfalls of drug abuse. Whether you're a hyperthymic with an innate hedonic range of, say, 0 to +10 or a posthuman ranging from +90 to +100, you can continue to seek more – where the guise of “more” depends on how your emotions are encephalised. But an elevated hedonic set-point doesn’t pose the personal, interpersonal and societal challenges of endemic drug-taking. Indeed, we don’t know whether posthumans will take psychoactive drugs at all. I often assume that posthumans will take innovative designer drugs in order to explore alien state-spaces of consciousness. However, maybe our successors will opt to be mostly if not entirely drug-free. After all, if there weren’t something fundamentally wrong with our human default state of consciousness, then would we try so hard to change it? It’s tragic that mankind's attempts to do so are often so inept.

Hyperthymics engage in denial to rationalise their overly-positive mood. They lose the ability to navigate rationally, and the consequences can be just as tragic. Suffering doesn't go away just because the person isn't weeping. We are after all social beings, and hyperthymics go around inflicting their risk taking, attention seeking, libidinous psychology on others. — counterpunch

Is it possible you're conflating hyperthymia with mania? Yes, unusually temperamentally happy people have proverbially rose-tinted spectacles. Their affective biases need to be exhaustively researched before there's any bid to create a hyperthymic society. But the kind of temperament I had in mind is exemplified by the author of The Precipice (2020). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Precipice:_Existential_Risk_and_the_Future_of_Humanity
Extreme life-lovers may take more risks in some ways, but are on guard to avert them in others
(see my disagreement with Toby e.g.
https://www.hedweb.com/social-media/pre2014.html).

Or do you reserve such dehumanising ideas solely for humans? — counterpunch

My describing human and nonhuman animals as sentient organic robots isn't intended to "dehumanise" them. Rather, it's to highlight how our behaviour is mechanistically explicable – and how we can create an architecture of mind that doesn't depend on pain. Inorganic robots don't need a signalling system of sub-zero states to function; re-engineered organic robots can do likewise.

Humans are sentient beings at the top of the food chain. Fish are meat. Humans eat meat, and need to produce it sustainably rather than dredge to oceans to death. I do not condone animals suffering any more than is necessary, but they're mortal, and humane farming is far kinder than nature – which really is red in tooth and claw. Most humans born will reach maturity. That's not so in nature. — counterpunch

Around 20% of humans never eat meat. Humans don't need to eat meat in order to flourish. Instead of harming our fellow creatures, we should be helping them by civilising the biosphere (cf. https://www.gene-drives.com). In the meantime, the cruelties of Nature don't serve as a moral license for humans to add to them via animal agriculture.

Interfering in the human genome, so altering every subsequent human being who will ever live, is a risk that's not justified by depression — counterpunch

Recall that all humans are untested genetic experiments. The germline can be edited – and unedited. But if we don't fix our legacy code, then atrocious suffering will proliferate indefinitely.

if we don't feel the suffering, we will still suffer, but just won't know that we are suffering. — counterpunch

I'm struggling to parse this. Yes, feelings of malaise or discomfort may sometimes be subtle and elusive. But the "raw feels" of outright suffering – whether psychological or physical – are unmistakably nasty by their very nature. "The having is the knowing", as Galen Strawson puts it. Either way, if we replace the biology of hedonically sub-zero states with information-sensitive gradients of well-being, then unpleasant experience will become physically impossible. It won't be missed.

Is it possible you're conflating hyperthymia with mania? Yes, unusually temperamentally happy people have proverbially rose-tinted spectacles. Their affective biases need to be exhaustively researched before any bid to create a hyperthymic society. But the kind of temperament I had in mind is exemplified by the author of The Precipice (2020). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Precipice:_Existential_Risk_and_the_Future_of_Humanity — David Pearce

I searched hyperthymia - and those are apparently, associated behaviours. I have no personal knowledge of the condition.

I also read your link on The Precipice, and I think Ord is missing a piece of the puzzle, and it's something that's difficult to understand - I'm trying to tell you about.

Essentially, it's the consequence of Galileo's trial for the heresy. I believe declaring Galileo grievously suspect of heresy divorced science as an understanding of reality, from science as a tool - such that we used the tools without regard to a scientific understanding of reality. We developed and applied technology in pursuit of ideological ends. As a consequence, we've applied the wrong technologies for the wrong reasons - and IMO, that's precisely what you are proposing to do.

Maybe there will come a time when we understand genetics well enough, that the risk of altering the human genome - for every subsequent generation, is a tiny risk worth taking, but that isn't just yet. Right now, we are faced with an existential crisis that is the consequence of the misapplication of technology, for ideological ends. A scientific understanding of reality is the right basis for applying technology, or else you get 'monkeys with machine guns' - or as Ord has it: "We gained the power to destroy ourselves, without the wisdom to ensure that we avoid doing so." That wisdom was denied us by accusations of heresy.

I don't wish to debate vegetarianism with you, because I think it's a perfectly valid choice, but it's absolutely not a moral imperative. Nor is it necessary to a sustainable future. Maybe, one day - we'll be able to grow meat in vats without any conscious agent suffering, but that isn't just yet. Further, I believe agriculture has a vital role to play in resisting desertification. See this Ted Talk by Allan Savory:

https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertification_and_reverse_climate_change

We certainly need to do farming better, and in order to do so - we need limitless clean energy from magma, which is the most scientifically fundamental, most environmentally beneficial, and least disruptive thing we could possibly do to secure the future. I could maybe imagine your genetic proscription for gradients of superhuman bliss working out in a prosperous sustainable future, but while the world is a basket case barrelling toward extinction, being deliriously happy nonetheless, seems to me a sticking plaster on a still gaping wound. I know you keep saying it wouldn't be like that; that we wouldn't lose our ability to navigate a still - hostile environment, but how can you possibly know?

After all, if there weren’t something fundamentally wrong with our human default state of consciousness, then would we try so hard to change it? — David Pearce

The grass is always greener on the other side. We want what we can't or at least don't have. Perhaps this is what you refer to? This is what it means to be human. The curse of want and desire. Without this, what differentiates a transhuman from a robot clothed in flesh?

I searched hyperthymia - and those are apparently, associated behaviours — counterpunch

Hyperthymia is the opposite of dysthymia (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia). When advocating a hyperthymic civilisation, I'm urging a society where everyone has, at minimum, the high hedonic set-point of today's temperamentally happiest people who aren't manic (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mania). That said, apologies; I'd do well to use less jargon.

Maybe there will come a time when we understand genetics well enough, that the risk of altering the human genome — counterpunch

If prospective parents agreed on a moratorium on genetic experiments, then an indefinite delay of genome-editing too would be wise. But at present most people intend to keep reproducing willy-nilly. Parenthood inevitably creates more involuntary suffering. So the question arises whether it's ethical not to load the genetic dice in favour of the subjects of the experiments. The least controversial option will be universal access to preimplantation genetic screening and counselling. But gene-editing is now feasible too. We shouldn’t just assume that the upshot of responsible editing will be worse than random genetic mutations and the genetic shuffling of traditional sexual reproduction.

I don't wish to debate vegetarianism with you, because I think it's a perfectly valid choice, but it's absolutely not a moral imperative — counterpunch

We'd both that agree stopping child abuse is morally imperative. The abuse of sentient beings of comparable sentience deserves similar priority. Perhaps try to empathise, if only for 30 seconds, with what it feels like to be, say, a factory-farmed pig.

I could maybe imagine your genetic proscription for gradients of superhuman bliss working out in a prosperous sustainable future, but while the world is a basket case barrelling toward extinction, being deliriously happy nonetheless... — counterpunch

To stress, I do not advocate becoming "deliriously happy". Hedonic set-point elevation doesn’t work like that.

I know you keep saying it wouldn't be like that; that we wouldn't lose our ability to navigate a still - hostile environment, but how can you possibly know? — counterpunch

If the touted biohappiness revolution proposed that we should leapfrog ahead and try to create hedonic supermen, then you'd have a point. I hope I've clearly flagged that discussion of a future world animated by gradients of superhuman bliss is speculation. What isn't speculative is the existence of today's extremely high-functioning hedonic outliers – and the strong genetic loading of hyperthymia. The Anders Sandbergs (cf. https://quotefancy.com/quote/1695040/Anders-Sandberg-I-do-have-a-ridiculously-high-hedonic-set-point) of this world have more than adequate navigational skills. It's chronic depressives who often suffer from a broken compass. Responsible recalibration of the hedonic treadmill promises wider engagement with the problems of the world. Not least, passionate life-lovers care more about the future of sentience than depressive nihilists.

The grass is always greener on the other side. We want what we can't or at least don't have. Perhaps this is what you refer to? This is what it means to be human. The curse of want and desire. Without this, what differentiates a transhuman from a robot clothed in flesh? — Outlander

Some people cannot imagine life could be different. Suffering shapes their conception of the human predicament and life itself. Other people have tasted paradise and want the world to share their vision. Alas, visions of the ideal society often conflict. Environmentally-based utopian experiments fail. In one sense, the biological-genetic strategy of hedonic uplift is tamer. Potentially, elevated pain thresholds, hedonic range and hedonic set-points can underpin a richer personal quality of life for all, but the manifold social, economic and political problems of society are left unaddressed. I'll bang the drum for a biohappiness revolution for as long as I'm able, but unless (like me) you're a negative utilitarian, it's not a panacea. The end of suffering will still be the most momentous revolution in the history of sentience.

Perhaps try to empathise, if only for 30 seconds, with what it feels like to be, say, a factory-farmed pig. — David Pearce

Why? Do you suppose I advocate factory farming? I said specifically that we need to do agriculture better, and that I don't condone unnecessary cruelty to animals. But okay. I get plenty of food, and I like food. Otherwise, I've got no idea what's going on - and know nothing to compare it with. I'm loaded onto a truck, and driven to an abattoir. Someone puts something near my head and the world disappears in an instant. Now you imagine your life as a pig in the wild being ripped apart and eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs. Any thoughts on the Allan Savory video? He explains why we need animal agriculture.

Otherwise, I've got no idea what's going on - and know nothing to compare it with. I'm loaded onto a truck, and driven to an abattoir. Someone puts something near my head and the world disappears in an instant. — counterpunch

Consider e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOD7hxUGI8
Worse happens off-camera. Animal agriculture is a crime against sentience.

Now you imagine your life as a pig in the wild being ripped apart and eaten alive by a pack of wild dogs. — counterpunch

Hence the case for:
https://www.reprogramming-predators.com/

Any thoughts on the Allan Savory video? He explains why we need animal agriculture. — counterpunch

For a rebuttal, perhaps see e.g.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-savorys-ted-talk-is-wrong-and-the-benefits-of-holistic-grazing-have-been-debunked.html
Civilisation will be vegan.

For a rebuttal, perhaps see e.g.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-savorys-ted-talk-is-wrong-and-the-benefits-of-holistic-grazing-have-been-debunked.html — David Pearce

And if you'd like to see successful trial of Savory's methods, see here:

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment
Grazing management impacts on vegetation, soil biota and soil chemical, physical and hydrological properties in tall grass prairie

W.R.Teague S.L.Dowhower S.A.Baker N.Haileb P.B.DeLaune D.M.Conover

► We evaluated the impacts of multi-paddock grazing and continuous grazing. ► We measured impacts on soils and vegetation on neighboring ranches in three counties. ► Multi-paddock grazing had superior vegetation composition and biomass. ► Multi-paddock grazing had higher soil carbon, water- and nutrient-holding capacities. ► Success was due to managing grazing adaptively for desired results.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167880911000934?via%3Dihub

Civilisation will be vegan. — David Pearce

No, it really will not, and anyone who's a foodie can assure you that's never going to happen. I always think that, vegans don't really like food; don't like to cook - and take no pleasure in eating.

You massively underestimate what a cultural shift if would be - because individually, you can just stop eating meat, and you think that's it. But it's very different universally. And if Allan Savory is right, there wouldn't be civilisation for very long after.

Have you ever wondered why vegan foods mimic meat? Ever wondered why vegans need supplements for Vitamin B12, Vitamin D, Long-chain omega-3s, Iron, Calcium, Zinc, and Iodine? It's because we are carnivores. As a personal choice - choosing to be a herbivore is fine. That is, until you can take a pill and not have to eat at all! But I love food, I love cooking and eating, and you put yourself between me and a pork chop at your peril!

Some people cannot imagine life could be different. Suffering shapes their conception of the human predicament and life itself. — David Pearce

This is my point essentially. Let's not pretend you've never suffered. Without it, you and these "some people" are one and the same. We're just circling back, essentially. What you claim to wish to eliminate not only nurtured you but in fact created you! Sure, as a creation progresses it wishes or desires to eliminate that which hampers its own progression but at what cost?

Other people have tasted paradise and want the world to share their vision. — David Pearce

Again, this "other people" and yourself appear to be one and the same.

Environmentally-based utopian experiments fail. — David Pearce

Of course, any otherwise successful experiment can be interrupted of perhaps halted by a skeptical, perhaps even religious (though they'll never admit it) interlocutor. What of it?

Potentially, elevated pain thresholds, hedonic range and hedonic set-points can underpin a richer personal quality of life for all, but the manifold social, economic and political problems of society are left unaddressed. — David Pearce

Yes, and potentially a currently unproven theory, like yours, and perhaps God, can allow me to fly after jumping off a cliff. These are all in the same bucket of unproven theories. My main question is as follows: what is a "rich" personal quality?

It's not because you are happy and successful for no merit or purpose where others are the same, it's because there is something to stand on so to speak.

The end of suffering will still be the most momentous revolution in the history of sentience. — David Pearce

I don't disagree diametrically however I do disagree tangentially. Let us hearken back to the basics. There is no love without something to hate. No joy without something to annoy. No fun without something to bore. Is this true or false, young David

There is no love without something to hate. No joy without something to annoy. No fun without something to bore. Is this true or false, young David — Outlander

This gets more and more interesting but it's likely that I speak from ignorance rather than any real knowledge. The best way to express my concern here is to bring up the matter of duality. I hope we're all on the same page here. The only serious study of duality that has been undertaken in good faith and were/are by Eastern philosophers (Indian & Chinese). Of the Indians, I know very little but of the Chinese, Lao Tzu (Taoism) is quite well-known and by and large well-received by the West.

The gist of Taoism (Yin-Yang) is duality in that if there's something, say x, then there's always an anti-something (aniti-x) but that's not all. This particular point of view puts the Western notion of symmetry on a pedestal but given how things are, this seems fully justified. After all, every thing stands out as the thing against a backdrop of other things that are not that thing. How Yin-Yang is relevant to the issue at hand is that happiness wouldn't make sense without suffering and vice versa because each provides the contrast for the other, in effect making them both discernible to our mind.

Ergo, setting aside posthumans who have memories of suffering against which they could compare superhappiness to, those posthumans born after the abolishment of suffering ( :clap: ) who know only superhappiness wouldn't really be able to appreciate what they have. Perhaps such posthumans would create education camps for themselves where they're given small doses of pain to give them an idea of what suffering is if only so that they can see the true value of superhappiness which to their ancestors was the very definition of a perfect life. However, if we've modified pain systems in our brains to achieve superhappiness this doesn't seem possible and this takes us back to the statement Outlander seems to be interested in: superhappiness is meaningless without some suffering to serve as a foil in a manner of speaking.

I always think that, vegans don't really like food; don't like to cook - and take no pleasure in eating. — counterpunch

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.

It's because we are carnivores. — counterpunch

If so, then it's mysterious why scientific studies suggest vegetarians tend to be slimmer, longer-lived and more intelligent than meat-eaters:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#scientificvege
Strict veganism is relatively new. Perhaps see:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vegan-meat-life-expectancy-eggs-dairy-research-a7168036.html
("Vegans Live Longer Than Those Who Eat Meat or Eggs")
Many vegans (and indeed non-vegans) do indeed prudently take a B12 supplement. Alternatives are fortified nutritional yeast (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_yeast) or the natural plant source Wolffia globosa (cf. "Wolffia globosa–Mankai Plant-Based Protein Contains Bioactive Vitamin B12 and Is Well Absorbed in Humans": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7600829/ ).

But I love food, I love cooking and eating, and you put yourself between me and a pork chop at your peril! — counterpunch

Is the level of pleasure someone derives from harming his victims – human or nonhuman – a morally relevant consideration?

Let us hearken back to the basics. There is no love without something to hate. No joy without something to annoy. No fun without something to bore. Is this true or false, — Outlander

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 depression. Chronic pleasure and happiness aren't harder to engineer genetically; but perpetual euphoria wasn't fitness-enhancing in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Biotech is a game-changer. Humanity now has the tools to create life based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of well-being – and eventually superhuman bliss.

this takes us back to the statement Outlander seems to be interested in: superhappiness is meaningless without some suffering to serve as a foil in a manner of speaking. — TheMadFool

Once again, the intuition is deeply rooted. IMO it's just not supported by the empirical evidence. The temperamentally happiest people are simply born that way – and they don't experience deficits of perceived meaning.

Or consider the rarest of the affective psychoses, unipolar euphoric mania. People in the grip of (hypo)mania find life indiscriminately meaningful. Everything is supercharged with significance.

Transhumanists don't advocate or predict a world of (hypo)mania. But if the hyperthymic civilisation I anticipate comes to pass, then its inhabitants won’t need a contrast with suffering to give meaning to their existence, or fully to savour what they enjoy. A pervasive sense of meaning will be built into the fabric of life itself:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#david
In a civilised world, the "foil" should come from information-sensitive dips and peaks of bliss, not from seesawing between pain and pleasure.

I assume you're trolling. But if not, I promise vegans love food as much as eaters. Visit a vegan foodie community if you've any doubt. — David Pearce

Funny because, I assume the same of vegans - that they troll normal people with their presumed moral superiority.

Is the level of pleasure someone derives from harming his victims – human or nonhuman – a morally relevant consideration? — David Pearce

It's you broadcasting moral claims based on your personal choices, that seek to cast me, and much of the rest of the world in a bad light. So, who's the troll here?

If so, then it's mysterious why scientific studies suggest vegetarians tend to be slimmer, longer-lived and more intelligent than meat-eaters — David Pearce

Scientifically, that would be such an incredibly difficult finding to prove - that I know any such study is seriously methodologically flawed. Two identical babies - one raised vegan, the other normal, would have to be followed all their lives - to draw such conclusions.

I suspect that vegetarianism is a cultural practice that occurs among a particular type of person, that are already more intelligent than the average. They're slimmer because they don't really like food, don't like to cook, and don't enjoy eating - and I suspect that's because they are hung up on the Freudian anal stage of development, and have some childhood trauma around defecation that subconsciously influences adult behaviour.

Tell me which describes you best:

* hate mess, obsessively tidy, punctual, and respectful to authority, or -
* messy, disorganized, rebellious, inconsiderate of others' feelings.

Is the level of pleasure someone derives from harming his victims – human or nonhuman – a morally relevant consideration? — David Pearce

In terms of what we owe each other, my only moral obligation to the animals I eat is to minimise the suffering of a mortal creature that is a food animal. It exists for that reason, in nature - and in farming, because that's where that kind of animal is on the food chain. I'm glad I'm human, because I'm at the top of the food chain, and I'm not the 'pull down the ceiling to make everything equal' type. There are inherent inequalities in life. Animals are not all equal. There are predators and prey. I'm a predator.

There are predators and prey. I'm a predator. — counterpunch

On some fairly modest assumptions, a world where all sentient beings can flourish is ethically preferable to a world where sentient beings hurt, harm and kill each other. Biotech makes the well-being of all sentience technically feasible. So let's civilise Darwinian life, not glory in its depravities:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#worldvegan

On some fairly modest assumptions, a world where all sentient beings can flourish is ethically preferable to a world where sentient beings hurt, harm and kill each other. Biotech makes the well-being of all sentience technically feasible. So let's civilise Darwinian life, not glory in its depravities: — David Pearce

So you "modestly assume" you have the wisdom and technological ability to genetically alter all life on earth that doesn't meet your ethical standards? Evolution has produced the lifeforms that exist, by testing them mercilessly over one and a half billion years - and rendering extinct those that are unfit, that fitter lifeforms can take their place. This is the basis for the apparent design in nature - how everything works together to a productive end, and you would presume to take this process on yourself? You should consider Orgel's Second Rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."