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

Addressed in another thread. — Wayfarer

You’re not even articulating the issue, let alone solving it - simply making stuff up. — Wayfarer

Google definition of "value": the numerical amount denoted by an algebraic term; a magnitude, quantity, or number. "the mean value of x"
— TheMadFool

:grimace:

Value: noun
1. the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.
"your support is of great value"

2.principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life.
"they internalize their parents' rules and values"

Quantify that! — Wayfarer

Consider completing the following sentences:
"My happiness is based on ..."
"What I value is based on ..."

Can you complete the sentences in a way that doesn't feel like something is lacking or remiss? — baker

So, with the cancer example, if we suppose it's for an unknown greater good, then the right thing would be not doing anything about it.

There seem to be weird absurdities along this line of inquiry, which makes me think it started out wrong. — jorndoe

As far as it goes. But it doesn't extend to value, which is, after all, the name of the OP. — Wayfarer

It originates with the techniques used in Galileo's physics and Cartesian algebraic geometery. It's very effective at whatever can be objectivised and quantized. 'But', said Einstein, 'not everything can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts'. — Wayfarer

The thread took a turn — jorndoe

If we cannot say that relief from cancer is good, then we have nothing. (Martinez, StJude) — jorndoe

Whereas Hume is at the onset of the Enlightenment, 'what truly is' is 'what can be measured' - only what can be quantified is to be considered, the remainder is private or subjective — Wayfarer

Could you give examples of things that have a limit and do not occupy a space or of things that are limitless and occupy a space? — Daniel

I think you're focused too much on proof by contradiction. — InPitzotl

We can also prove things like "there are no even numbers greater than 2 that are prime"; such is also an easy proof, but it does not require proof by contradiction per se... — InPitzotl

If you wish to measure the difficulty of proving something, you need to account for all methods of proof, not just proof by testing each case. — InPitzotl

If I'm trying to show there are black dogs, but it turns out there aren't, I still have to test every dog before I find out my mistake. If I'm trying to show there aren't any black dogs, but it turns out there are, I still stop early once I find the black dog. — InPitzotl

There are no two integers p, q such that (p/q)^2=2. — InPitzotl

Indeed, you're right! There are occasions in which if a reductio ad absurdum is feasible, it's easier to prove a negative statement than a positive one. Unfortunately (if we want to know that is) or fortunately (if there are things we shouldn't know), a reductio ad absurdum isn't always possible. Do you agree then that in such cases it's easier to prove a positive existential claim than a negative claim that asserts no such thing as posited by the positive existential claim exists? I should've caught on earlier when you mentioned the horse running inside your fridge! :lol: Thanks. Will get back to you if I think of anything. — 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." — David Pearce

My view of Darwinian life is so bleak — David Pearce

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

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

1) For certain believers, this is a problem they go to great lengths to explain any which way they can. Question: why does it need explaining? — tim wood

The underlying problem concerns equating suffering with evil - at a human level justified, imo. But if God is, and it's all his, suffering and all, then, for certain believers, calling it evil must be a heresy because it presupposes knowledge of the mind and intentions of God, even assumes those are God-capacities.

The human logic of this is inescapable. That is not to say human logic trumps or is superior to divine logic, only that any claim to know divine logic is laughable or contemptible, inevitably the latter. . — tim wood

Yes, I think it likely jorndoe is talking about God — bert1

Statement 1: A healthy mind requires a constant stream of stimulus - that is to say things that elicit dopamine, serotonin and other feel good neurotransmitters. Unhealthy minds (eg depression) lack adequate levels of such stimulus. — Benj96

Statement 1: Healthy activities generally demand delayed gratification: more effort, slower and extending dopamine release, more planning and self control and maintaining a view of the “bigger longterm picture” - think studying, exercise, diet, active entertainment- reading and writing, investing in relationships etc. — Benj96

Because it's simple. Whatever is simple can't be explained in other terms. — Wayfarer

In classical philosophy, the ability to know 'what is', was itself a virtue - the virtue of sagacity. — Wayfarer

Whereas Hume is at the onset of the Enlightenment, 'what truly is' is 'what can be measured' - only what can be quantified is to be considered, the remainder is private or subjective — Wayfarer

Your dog examples and 'being beaten' examples are irrelevant to the question — Wayfarer

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

Right - the point being, ‘good’ is a simple idea - it can’t be explained in other terms, for instance, in terms of adaptive fitness. Being a ‘simple idea’ means not being reducible or explainable in other terms. You will note the constantly recurring theme that what society and culture considers to be good, is likely a result of natural selection. This calls that into question. — Wayfarer

Brains are never self-aware. Beings are self-aware. — Wayfarer

'and the reason this problematic thing exists is because, on the savannah, it was adaptive to do x when a lion appeared, even if we no longer encounter lions' — csalisbury

No, that would be the naturalistic fallacy - that because something is natural, it's therefore good. A lot of what goes under 'evolutionary ethics' would fall under that. — Wayfarer

'How things are' is, however, a very vague and sweeping description. I think, from the viewpoint of many forms of classical philosophy and religion, there is intrinsic suffering in existence, because existence itself is inherently imperfect. 'COMPARED TO WHAT?' I hear you ask. And there's the big question. — Wayfarer

Whereas humans have, not only a sense of self, but also a sense of possessions, of 'me and mine', my family, tribe, and so on - realistically something which evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. — Wayfarer

You were told wrong — TonesInDeepFreeze

There are no two integers p, q such that (p/q)^2=2. — InPitzotl

It depends on how reasonable the claim is. — InPitzotl

The question is supposed to be about burden of proof. — InPitzotl

(b) you searched all of the dogs on the planet. — InPitzotl

I think that to pursue an answer to this question will necessarily lead to an unsatisfactory result, because both happiness and value need to come with a sense of being apriori or else they lose their lustre. — baker

Buddhism would be less challenged by the modern theory of evolution than some interpretations of Christianity — Wayfarer

Actually an interesting fact is that the reason Thomas Rhys-Davids used the word 'enlightenment' to translate the Buddhist term 'bodhi', is that it suggested a compatibility between Buddhism and Enlightenment values, which was very much in vogue in the late 19th c. — Wayfarer

The problem is that religions provide a value system - they're not a scientific theory at all. — Wayfarer

somehow humans sense something beyond even that. — Wayfarer

I think most scientists would object to the assertion that evolution has any purpose whatever — Wayfarer

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land,
So the little minutes,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity — Julia carney (Little Things)

evolutionary ethics. — Wayfarer

Despite the fact that you are, actually. The OP is entirely based on evolutionary ethics. — Wayfarer

Despite the fact that you are, actually. The OP is entirely based on evolutionary ethics. — Wayfarer

I think it’s a mistake to attribute agency to evolution, and also to try and orient philosophical questions with respect to purported evolutionary advantage. — Wayfarer

My answer would be, "it depends". — InPitzotl

I'm not faulting the article. I'm pointing out that the article says explicitly the exact opposite of how you described it. — TonesInDeepFreeze

We can only prove what is true. So it is always easier to prove what is true, since there is no proof of a falsehood. That applies whether it's ExP or ~ExP. — TonesInDeepFreeze

My point has been to show that your arguments are specious. That doesn't not require "taking a stand" on anything other than what I have said. — TonesInDeepFreeze