Superdeterminist
Enlightened
- Apr 5, 2020
- 1,877
"David Pearce is a prominent figure within the transhumanism movement and one of the co-founders of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+."
I thought this recent talk of his was interesting and hopeful:
He speaks about "phasing out the biology of suffering" by using the ever-growing power afforded to us by technology. He describes himself as a "soft antinatalist" who believes great care should be taken when bringing new sentience into the world, and that we are obligated to design babies such that their lives won't be miserable due to the wrong set of genes. He forecasts a transhuman/posthuman future where instead of playing the cruel game of pain and pleasure that uncaring nature forced upon us, we engineer a new paradigm where every conscious being only experiences "gradients of wellbeing" and is incapable of suffering ("ensuring nobody's 'hedonic setpoint' ever falls below zero").
What do you think about all this? For me, futurism is really the only thing that gives me any hope or optimism about life anymore. I find the present to just be lacking irredeemably. And I already know the past was in many ways worse for humans (more suffering), so I don't hope to revert back to "the good old days" as some do. I see science/tech as the only enterprise that could ever hope to cure a suicidal brain. Regrettably it hasn't achieved that yet, but I think it's our only hope.
I thought this recent talk of his was interesting and hopeful:
He speaks about "phasing out the biology of suffering" by using the ever-growing power afforded to us by technology. He describes himself as a "soft antinatalist" who believes great care should be taken when bringing new sentience into the world, and that we are obligated to design babies such that their lives won't be miserable due to the wrong set of genes. He forecasts a transhuman/posthuman future where instead of playing the cruel game of pain and pleasure that uncaring nature forced upon us, we engineer a new paradigm where every conscious being only experiences "gradients of wellbeing" and is incapable of suffering ("ensuring nobody's 'hedonic setpoint' ever falls below zero").
What do you think about all this? For me, futurism is really the only thing that gives me any hope or optimism about life anymore. I find the present to just be lacking irredeemably. And I already know the past was in many ways worse for humans (more suffering), so I don't hope to revert back to "the good old days" as some do. I see science/tech as the only enterprise that could ever hope to cure a suicidal brain. Regrettably it hasn't achieved that yet, but I think it's our only hope.