god must be atheist
Yes, humans are diverse – by some criteria. On the other hand, we tend to share the same core emotions, same pleasure-pain axis, same sleep-wake cycles, same progression of youth and aging, same kind of egocentric world-simulation (etc) as our primate ancestors. Above all, sentient beings are prone to suffer. Perhaps posthumans will find humans as diverse as we find members of an ant colony. Either way – and most relevant to your question – no one values the experience of unbearable agony or suicidal despair – or even plain boredom. Even ostensible counter-examples to the primacy of pleasure over pain, such as masochism, simply reinforce the sovereignty of the pleasure-pain axis. Masochists love the release of endogenous opioids as much as the rest of us. We’d all be better off if experience below hedonic zero is replaced by a civilised signalling system. We’d all be better off with a motivational architecture based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of well-being. Hedonic recalibration and uplift can radically enhance everyone’s quality of life.

Naively, Heaven might sound monotonous compared to the torments of Hell, or even compared to everyday Darwinian purgatory. In practice, genome editing promises a richer diversity of genes and allelic combinations than is possible under a regime of natural selection. The diversification of sentience has scarcely begun. For example, transhumans will be able to access billions of exotic state-spaces of consciousness as different as is dreaming from waking consciousness. What they’ll have in common is they’ll all be generically wonderful.

Tay San
The idea that pleasure and pain are largely if not wholly relative is seductive. It’s still probably the most common objection to the idea of a civilisation based entirely on gradients of bliss. However, consider the victims of life-long pain and depression. Some chronic depressives can’t imagine what it’s like to be happy. In some severe cases, chronic depressives don’t even understand what the word “happiness” means – they conceive of happiness only in terms of a reduction of pain. Now we wouldn’t (I hope) claim that chronic depressives can’t really suffer because they’ve never experienced joy. Analogous syndromes exist at the other end of the Darwinian pleasure-pain axis. Unipolar euphoric mania is dangerous and extraordinarily rare. Yet there is also what psychologists call extreme "hyperthymia". Hyperthymics can be very high functioning. My favourite case-study is fellow transhumanist Anders Sandberg (“I do have a ridiculously high hedonic set-point”). Anders certainly knows he is exceedingly happy – although unless pressed, he doesn’t ordinarily talk about it. He is also socially responsible, intellectually productive and exceptionally smart. In common with depression and mania, hyperthymia has a high genetic loading. Gene editing together with preimplantation genetic screening and counselling for all prospective parents offer the potential prospect of lifelong intelligent happiness for future (trans)humans. For sure, creating an entire civilisation of hyperthymics will be challenging. Not least, prudence dictates preserving the functional analogues of depressive realism – at least in our intelligent machines. But unlike ignorance, known biases can be corrected.

I’m a dyed-in the-wool pessimist by temperament. But for technical reasons, I suspect the long-term future of sentience lies in gradients of sublime bliss beyond the bounds of human experience.

Pfhorrest
I’m sad to hear of the pushback you’ve received on the forum. Instead of saying one is a “negative utilitarian”, perhaps try “secular Buddhism” or “suffering-focused ethics” (cf.
https://magnusvinding.com/2020/05/31/suffering-focused-ethics-defense-and-implications/). I sometimes simply say that I would “walk away from Omelas”. No amount of pleasure morally outweighs the abuse of even a single child: https://www.cmstewartwrite.com/single-post/a-question-for-david-pearce . If a genie made you an offer, would you harm a child in exchange for the promise of a millions of years of indescribable happiness? I'd decline – politely (I'm British).

Academic pushback? I guess the average academic response isn’t much different from the average layperson’s response. An architecture of mind based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of well-being simply isn’t genetically credible – whether for an individual or a civilisation, let alone a global ecosystem (cf. https://www.gene-drives.com). At times my imagination fails too. Of course there are exceptions – but the academics who’ve directly been in touch to offer support are almost by definition atypical.

A fairly common critical response would probably be Professor Brock Bastian's The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living (2018):
https://www.hedweb.com/social-media/pairagraph.html

counterpunch
“A miracle chip?”
Transhumanists don’t advocate intracranial self-stimulation or unvarying euphoria. For a start, uniform bliss wouldn’t be evolutionarily stable; wireheads don’t want to raise baby wireheads.
Transhumanists don’t advocate getting “blissed out”. Instead, we urge a biology of information-sensitive gradients of well-being. Information-sensitivity is critical to preserving critical insight, social responsibility and intellectual progress.

Tim Wood
Super well-being?
Let’s say, schematically, that our human hedonic range stretches from -10 to 0 to +10. Most people have an approximate hedonic set-point a little above or a little below hedonic zero. Tragically, a minority of people and the majority of factory-farmed nonhuman animals spend essentially their whole lives far below hedonic zero. Some people are mercurial, others are more equable, but we are all constrained by the negative-feedback mechanisms of the hedonic treadmill. In future, mastery of our reward circuitry promises e.g. a hedonic +70 to +100 civilisation – transhuman life based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of bliss (cf. https://www.gradients.com). Currently, we can only speculate on what guise such superhuman well-being will take, and how it will be encephalised. What will transhumans and posthumans be happy “about”? I don’t know – probably modes of experience that are physiologically inaccessible to today's humans (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#irreversible). But one of the beauties of hedonic recalibration is that (complications aside) it’s preference-neutral. Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning in an extremely good mood – and with their core values and preference architecture intact? Aristotle’s “eudaimonia” or sensual debauchery? Mill’s “higher pleasures” or earthy delights? You decide. Crudely, everyone’s potentially a winner with biological-genetic interventions. Compare the zero-sum status-games of Darwinian life. Unlike getting rid of suffering, I don’t think superhappiness is morally urgent; but post-Darwinian life will be unimaginably sublime.

What about hedonic uplift for existing human and nonhuman animals prior to somatic gene-editing? Well, one attractive option is ACKR3 receptor blockade (cf. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16664-0), perhaps in conjunction with selective kappa opioid receptor antagonism. Enhancing “natural” endogenous opioid function and raising hedonic set-points is vastly preferable to taking well-known drugs of abuse that typically activate the negative feedback mechanisms of the CNS with a vengeance. An intensive research program is in order. Pitfalls abound.

In the long run, however, life on Earth needs a genetic rewrite. Pharmacological stopgaps aren't the answer.

Shawn
Challenges for transhumanism?
Where does one start?! Here I’ll focus on just one. If prospective parents continue to have children “naturally”, then pain and suffering will continue indefinitely. All children born today are cursed with a terrible genetic disorder (aging), a chronic endogenous opioid addiction and severe intellectual disabilities that education alone can never overcome. The only long-term solution to Darwinian malware is germline gene-editing. Unfortunately, the first CRISPR babies were conceived in less than ideal circumstances. He Jianku and his colleagues were trying to create cognitively enhanced humans with HIV-protection as a cover-story (cf. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/02/21/137309/the-crispr-twins-had-their-brains-altered/). All babies should be CRISPR babies, or better, base-edited babies. No responsible prospective parent should play genetic roulette with a child’s life. Unfortunately, the reproductive revolution will be needlessly delayed by religious and bioconservative prejudice. If a global consensus existed, we could get rid of suffering and disease in a century or less. In practice, hundreds if not thousands of years of needless pain and misery probably lie ahead.

Neuralink? It’s just a foretaste. If all goes well, everyone will be able to enjoy “narrow” superintelligence via embedded neurochips – the mature successors to today’s crude prototypes. Everything that programmable digital zombies can do, you’ll be able to do – and much more. Huge issues here will be control and accountability. I started to offer a few thoughts, but they turned into platitudes and superficial generalities. “Narrow” superintelligence paired with unenhanced male human nature will be extraordinarily hazardous.

fdrake
Irremovable human biases?
Yes. One example is status quo bias. A benevolent superintelligence would never have created a monstrous world such as ours. Nor (presumably) would benevolent superintelligence show status quo bias. But the nature of selection pressure means that philosopher David Benatar’s plea for voluntary human extinction via antinatalism (Better Never To Have Been (2008)) is doomed to fall on deaf ears. Apocalyptic fantasies are futile too (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#dptrans).
So the problem of suffering is soluble only by biological-genetic means.

The orthogonality thesis?
All biological minds have a pain-pleasure axis. The pain-pleasure axis discloses the world’s inbuilt metric of (dis)value. Thus there are no minds in other life-supporting Hubble volumes with an inverted pleasure-pain axis. Such universality of (dis)value doesn’t mean that humans are all closet utilitarians. The egocentric illusion has been hugely genetically adaptive for Darwinian malware evolved under pressure of natural selection; hence its persistence. Yet we shouldn’t confuse our epistemological limitations with a deep metaphysical truth about the world. Posthuman superintelligences will not have a false theory of personal identity. This is why I’m cautiously optimistic that intelligent agents will phase out the biology of suffering in their forward light-cone. Yes, we may envisage artificial intelligences with utility functions radically different from biological minds (“paperclippers”). But classical digital computers cannot solve the phenomenal binding/combination problem (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/binding-interview.html). Digital zombies can never become full-spectrum intelligences, let alone full-spectrum superintelligences. AI will augment us, not supplant us.

Better tools of decision-theoretic rationality?
Compare the metaphysical individualism presupposed by the technically excellent LessWrong FAQ (cf. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2rWKkWuPrgTMpLRbp/lesswrong-faq) with the richer conception of decision-theoretic rationality employed by a God-like full-spectrum superintelligence that could impartially access all possible first-person perspectives and act accordingly (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#individualism).
So how can humans develop such tools of God-like rationality?
As you say, it’s a monumental challenge. Forgive me for ducking it here.

Bitter Crank
The future we imagine derives mostly from the sci-fi we remember. Life in the 24th century will not resemble Star Trek. Not merely does the “thermodynamic miracle” of life’s genesis mean that Earth-originating life is probably alone in our Hubble volume. The characters in Star Trek have the same core emotions, same pleasure-pain axis, same fundamental conceptual scheme and same default state of waking consciousness as archaic humans. Even Mr Spock is all too human. It’s hokum.

Realistic timescales for transhumanism? Let’s here define transhumanism in terms of a “triple s” civilisation of superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness. Maybe the 24th century would be a credible date. Earlier timescales would be technically feasible. But accelerated progress depends on sociological and political developments that reduce predictions to mere prophecies and wishful thinking. In practice, the frailties of human psychology mean that successful prophets tend to locate salvation or doom with the plausible lifetime of their audience. I’m personally a lot more pessimistic about timescales for a mature “triple S” civilisation than most transhumanists. Sorry to be so vague. There are too many unknown unknowns.

Environmental collapse? The only way I envisage collapse might happen is via full-scale thermonuclear war and a strategic interchange between the superpowers. Sadly, this is not entirely far-fetched. Evolution “designed” human male primates to wage war against other coalitions of human male primates. I fear we may be sleepwalking towards Armageddon. Note that environmental collapse wouldn’t entail human extinction, though relocating to newly balmy Antarctica (cf. https://motls.blogspot.com/2019/10/60-c-of-global-warming-tens-of-millions.html) would be hugely disruptive. Let’s hope these fears are wildly overblown.

Capitalism? Can a system based on human greed really deliver the well-being of all sentience? I'm sceptical. Free-market fundamentalism doesn’t work. Universal basic income, free healthcare and guaranteed housing are preconditions for any civilised society. Above all, murdering sentient beings for profit must be outlawed. Factory-farms and slaughterhouses are pure evil (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#slaughterhouses). The cultured meat revolution will presumably end the horrors of animal agriculture. But otherwise, I think some version of the mixed economy will continue indefinitely. Anything that can be digitised soon becomes effectively free. This includes genetic information. The substrates of bliss won’t need to be rationed. In the meantime, preimplantation genetic screening and counselling for all prospective parents would be hugely cost-effective – especially in the poorest countries. I hope all babies can be designer babies rather than today’s reckless genetic experiments.

Thank you, Philosophy Forum, for inviting me. I'll be answering questions – and any critical follow-ups! – this week. Please forgive any delay. I'll do my fallible best to respond to everyone.

darthbarracuda
Most transhumanists are secular scientific rationalists. Only technology (artificial intelligence, robotics, CRISPR, synthetic gene drives, preimplantation genetic screening and counselling) can allow intelligent moral agents to reprogram the biosphere and deliver good health for all sentient beings.
Global warming? There are geoengineering fixes.
Overpopulation? Fertility rates are plunging worldwide.
Famine? More people now suffer from obesity than undernutrition.

I share some of Jacques Ellul's reservations about the effects of technology. But only biotechnology can recalibrate the hedonic treadmill, eradicate the biology of involuntary pain and suffering and deliver a world based on gradients of intelligent bliss:
https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/sentience-interview.html

Jacques Ellul himself was deeply religious. He felt he had been visited by God. Most spiritually-minded people probably feel that transhumanism has little to offer. Perhaps they are right – my own mind is a desolate spiritual wasteland. But science promises the most profound spiritual revolution of all time. Tomorrow’s molecular biology can identify the molecular signatures of spiritual experience, refine and amplify its biological substrates, and deliver life-long spiritual ecstasies beyond the imagination of even the most god-intoxicated temporal-lobe epileptic.
Will most transhumans choose to be rationalists or mystics?
I don’t know. But biotech can liberate us from the obscene horrors and everyday squalor of Darwinian life.