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The Hedonistic Imperative
The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life.
The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event.
Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.
The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and morally urgent. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved because they served the fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture - a motivational system based on heritable gradients of bliss. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. It is predicted that the world's last unpleasant experience will be a precisely dateable event.
Two hundred years ago, powerful synthetic pain-killers and surgical anesthetics were unknown. The notion that physical pain could be banished from most people's lives would have seemed absurd. Today most of us in the technically advanced nations take its routine absence for granted. The prospect that what we describe as psychological pain, too, could ever be banished is equally counter-intuitive. The feasibility of its abolition turns its deliberate retention into an issue of social policy and ethical choice.
200 pages, ebook
First published January 28, 2015
69 people are currently reading
786 people want to read
About the author
David Pearce
40 books65 followersDavid Pearce is a British independent philosopher. He believes and promotes the idea that there exists a strong ethical imperative for humans to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His book-length internet manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, pharmacology, and neurosurgery could potentially converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience among human and nonhuman animals, replacing suffering with gradients of well-being, a project he refers to as "paradise engineering". A transhumanist and a vegan, Pearce believes that we (or future evolutions of humans) have a responsibility not only to avoid cruelty to animals within human society but also to redesign the global ecosystem so that animals do not suffer in the wild.
Pearce co-founded Humanity+, then known as the World Transhumanist Association, and is a prominent figure in the transhumanist movement, inspiring a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering and ending suffering.
Pearce is primarily known as the author of The Hedonistic Imperative, a 1995 book-length manifesto in which he theorized how to "eradicate suffering in all sentient life" through paradise engineering. In Pearce's view, suffering is not necessary for humans and only exists because humanity evolved through methods that emphasised survival, rather than happiness. He writes that mental suffering will someday be seen as a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was effectively eliminated with the advent of anaesthesia.
In his work, Pearce outlines how drugs and technologies, including genetic engineering and nanotechnology, could enable the end of suffering in all sentient life. In the short term, Pearce argues, well-being can be helped by designer drugs, especially since safer mood-brighteners are becoming more readily available. In the long-term, however, suffering could be abolished by genetic engineering through biotechnology.
In 1998, Pearce co-founded Humanity+, the international transhumanism association, with fellow philosopher Nick Bostrom, now the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. The association, then known as the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), is a nonprofit organisation that advocates transhumanism – an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Pearce's ideas have inspired a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering. Pearce is vegan, and the increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanist movement has been attributed to his influence.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pe...
http://www.bltc.com/
Pearce co-founded Humanity+, then known as the World Transhumanist Association, and is a prominent figure in the transhumanist movement, inspiring a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering and ending suffering.
Pearce is primarily known as the author of The Hedonistic Imperative, a 1995 book-length manifesto in which he theorized how to "eradicate suffering in all sentient life" through paradise engineering. In Pearce's view, suffering is not necessary for humans and only exists because humanity evolved through methods that emphasised survival, rather than happiness. He writes that mental suffering will someday be seen as a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was effectively eliminated with the advent of anaesthesia.
In his work, Pearce outlines how drugs and technologies, including genetic engineering and nanotechnology, could enable the end of suffering in all sentient life. In the short term, Pearce argues, well-being can be helped by designer drugs, especially since safer mood-brighteners are becoming more readily available. In the long-term, however, suffering could be abolished by genetic engineering through biotechnology.
In 1998, Pearce co-founded Humanity+, the international transhumanism association, with fellow philosopher Nick Bostrom, now the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. The association, then known as the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), is a nonprofit organisation that advocates transhumanism – an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Pearce's ideas have inspired a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering. Pearce is vegan, and the increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanist movement has been attributed to his influence.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pe...
http://www.bltc.com/
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
September 29, 2018
Atrocious, agonising things are happening to people like you, me and our loved ones right now. The full horror of some sorts of suffering is literally unspeakable and unimaginably dreadful. Under a Darwinian regime of natural reproduction, truly horrible experiences - as well as endemic low-grade malaise - are both commonplace and inevitable. Chapter Two argues the moral case for stopping this nastiness. Since 'ought' implies 'can', however, it must first be established that scrapping unpleasant experience really is a biologically feasible option... from an information-theoretic perspective, what counts is not our absolute location on the pleasure-pain axis, but that we are "informationally sensitive" to fitness-relevant changes in our internal and external environment. Gradients of bliss can suffice both to motivate us and offer a rich network of feedback mechanisms; so alas today do gradients of Darwinian discontent.
On what science is for, on the very most we could aim for.
Late one evening, early one morning, I realised that I was not reading a crank on the internet. I'm not sure what exactly tipped me off: the page was called The Abolition of Suffering; the Naturalisation of Heaven. Maybe the extensive and thoughtful series of responses to objections. Not as late as the heart-stopping Alone Amongst the Zombies . Or the mixture of staggering ambition with modesty:
As hedonic engineering develops into a mature biomedical discipline, the generic modes of paradise we opt for can be genetically pre-coded... The innovative, high-specification bio-heavens beyond will be far richer. We lack the semantic competence to talk about them sensibly. Yet however inelegantly our goal may be accomplished at first, the ultimate strategic objective should be the neurochemical precision-engineering of happiness for every sentient organism on the planet.
Sounds flaky? Yes, but then so, originally, has almost every radical reform movement in history (including, of course, the genuinely flaky ones.)
and philosophy with biochemistry. It is difficult to return to what you were studying - mealy-mouthed, apologist, naturalistic-fallacious bioconservative bioethics - after that.
I hadn't considered wild-animal suffering before, the giant and at-best-ignored horror it is. People are at last starting to work on this, but Pearce was there decades ago. We have a long way to go before people stop making it worse even.
More than {Singer, Ord, LessWrong}, Pearce set me on my way with an ideal ethics, which led quickly to effective altruism and AI safety. I'm not a negative utilitarian like him, but unlike almost everyone else I take that challenge seriously.
I've met half a dozen people whose lives he affected this strongly, but the nonacademic setting limits his status.
(The published collection Can Biotechnology Abolish Suffering? is better, newer, covering more ground. I would have called it "The Molecular Biology of Paradise", a site header used elsewhere. Or "Better Living Through Chemistry".)
Galef type:
Data 2 - What does it imply about the world, that X could happen?, &
Theory 1 - models of how a phenomenon works, &
Theory 3 - pointing out a problem, &
Theory 4 - making predictions, &
Values 1 - an explicit argument about values, &
Style 3 - tickles your aesthetic sense in a way that obliquely makes you a more generative thinker.
[Free! here]
July 2, 2017
Please don't let the title fool you - this book isn't advocating that people become self-indulgent rats pulling levers to feel good at the expense of long-term fulfillment (of themselves and of others). Although it's definitely written with a utilitarian bent, you don't need to be a utilitarian per se to find its central claim convincing: that it's technically possible and morally imperative (indeed, urgent!) to abolish the most abject forms of suffering that plague even the most seemingly well-off and privileged humans (and nonhuman sentient animals). Pearce makes an analogy to surgical anesthesia that I found particularly compelling. Just imagine if the development and implementation of anesthetics were ground to a halt, because of people's objections that preventing the pain of surgery was "fantastical" or even "an affront to nature/God." Extrapolate that to suffering itself. That's all it takes, along with a healthy balance of both skeptical recognition that this abolition of suffering will only come very far in the future if at all, and an appreciation for the potential we see in modern genetics.
December 4, 2021
A transhumanist view of an inhumane dream that is becoming a reality, grounded on the unstable foundation of a moral argument. It's not a question of morality but of common sense. Without pain or conflict, humans cannot grow, or, based on their belief that evolution is anything but the theory that it is, cannot evolve. A human trapped in a stagnant state will remain in a gradual decline into depression. If any happiness can be produced by such a genome project, it would only be temporary. The same argument is seen in Robert Nozick's Experience Machine. Although, such a machine would be beneficial to physically impaired or handicapped, it should only be available to these individuals by their own choice after they fully understand the repercussions.
The author here doesn't give a fair look at both the positive and negative impacts in the abolishment of pain and suffering. Instead, he suggests that anyone who disagrees or has experienced the throes of opiate addiction that came out of alleviating physical pain, is in a state of psychosis and isn't thinking clearly. This "manifesto" is nothing more than propaganda for transhumanism, which takes away that which makes us human, under the guise of helping humanity. A vomit-inducing work of crap.
The author here doesn't give a fair look at both the positive and negative impacts in the abolishment of pain and suffering. Instead, he suggests that anyone who disagrees or has experienced the throes of opiate addiction that came out of alleviating physical pain, is in a state of psychosis and isn't thinking clearly. This "manifesto" is nothing more than propaganda for transhumanism, which takes away that which makes us human, under the guise of helping humanity. A vomit-inducing work of crap.
April 10, 2020
2013.07.17–2013.07.25
Contents
Pearce D (1995) Hedonistic Imperative, The
Introduction
0. The Naturalisation of Heaven
1. Saving Vehicles With Bad Drivers
2. Humans Are Not Rats
3. Life In Dopaminergic Overdrive
How?
00. Sabotage At The Mill
01. The Biological Program
02. Pumping Up The Volume
03. The Civilising Neurotransmitter
04. The Cardinal Importance Of Delayed Gratification
05. The Molecular Genetics Of Paradise
06. The Re-encephalisation Of Emotion
07. How Could Anything Be So Good?
08. All We Need Is Love?
09. The Taste Of Depravity
10. On The Misguided Romanticisation Of Feline Psychopaths
11. The Last Twisted Molecule On Earth?
12. The Persistence Of Hard-Core Porn
13. The Growing Pleasures Of Homunculi
14. Post-Perceptual Consciousness?
Why?
00. The Psychology Of Armchair Hedonism
01. How To Contemplate An Introspective Void
02. The Importance Of Banality
03. Vacuous Desires
04. A Dirty Window On The Soul
05. Let's Get Rational
06. The Morality Of Happiness
07. Why Be Negative?
08. The Moral Panacea
09. The Significance Of An Empirical Correlation
10. A Tough-Minded Scientist Replies
11. The Selection Of Mysterious Reds
12. The Formal Successes Of Scientific Triumphalism
13. The Naturalisation Of Value
14. Four Deadly Objections?
15. Alone Amongst The Zombies
16. The Perils Of Idle Scepticism
17. The Price Of Inner Demons
18. Can We All Be Really Good?
19. Equivocal Values
20. Good Vibrations: The Value Of String
When?
0. Our Emotional Future
1. Hedonism After The War
2. On Why We Need Better Drug Pushers
3. Good Code Gets Better
4. The Death-Spasms Of Peripheralism
5. And Yet It Still Grinds
6. The Technology Of Shop-Soiled Utopias
7. Living In The Real World
Objections
00. ...impossible because happiness depends on contrast with sadness...
01. ...brain too complex...negative feedback mechanisms...
02. ...we'd just die out...gruesome fate of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats...
03. ...manifesto flawed by reductionist approach to the human soul...
04. ...unanticipated side-effects...thalidomide...
05. ...would need widespread animal-testing...inconsistent with the manifesto's animal welfarism...
06. ...unnatural...
07. ...perpetual happiness is boring...need for variety...
08. ...happiness should be rationally justifiable...
09. ...to be forced into chemically-driven happiness is wrong…false happiness...freedom to be unhappy is important...
10. ...would turn us into junkies...
11. ...one can sometimes like being sad...too precious to lose...
12. ...would eliminate personal development...lead to stasis...
13. ...why not just get high...?
14. ...no more Newtons, Picassos, Beethovens...end of mankind's intellectual progress...
15. ...makes mockery of current values and life-projects...too absurd to warrant serious debate...
16. ...would leave us helpless... manipulable by ruling elites...
17. ...sheer escapism...the importance of staying in touch with reality...
18. ...wouldn't be me...one is defined by one's sorrows as much as joys...
19. ...selfish distraction from what matters...helping the poor in the Third World comes first...
20. ...affront to human dignity...
21. ...track-record of utopianism is disastrous...terrible crimes committed on assumption the end justifies the means...
22. ...would undermine the basis of all human relationships...
23. ...might lead to (post-)humanity getting irreversibly stuck...
24. ... emphasis on mood-lifting drugs is disproportionate...easy to misinterpret...
25. ...abolitionist project presupposes a utilitarian ethic...HI collapses if utilitarianism is rejected...
26. ...will never be a Post-Darwinian Transition... there will always be selection pressure...
27. ...paradise-engineering is impossible...not evolutionarily stable...
28. ...contradiction...abolitionism can't be reconciled with an absence of compulsion...
29. ...why invoke nanotechnology; isn't genetic engineering enough...?
30. ..."pushy" parents will choose genotypes for children destined to be smart, driven and successful rather than happy...
31. ...persistence of "natural" reproducers with Darwinian genotypes means that suffering won't be abolished...
32. ...cosmic HI? Some pitfalls...
33. ...why stress gradients of well-being? Wouldn't permanent maximum bliss be ethically better...?
34. ...why the headlong rush? Let's wait until we have the wisdom to understand the implications of what we're doing...
35. ...the Simulation Argument suggests suffering can never be abolished...
Conclusion
0. Puppet-Masters Without Strings
1. Could Life Really Have A Happy Ending?
Contents
Pearce D (1995) Hedonistic Imperative, The
Introduction
0. The Naturalisation of Heaven
1. Saving Vehicles With Bad Drivers
2. Humans Are Not Rats
3. Life In Dopaminergic Overdrive
How?
00. Sabotage At The Mill
01. The Biological Program
02. Pumping Up The Volume
03. The Civilising Neurotransmitter
04. The Cardinal Importance Of Delayed Gratification
05. The Molecular Genetics Of Paradise
06. The Re-encephalisation Of Emotion
07. How Could Anything Be So Good?
08. All We Need Is Love?
09. The Taste Of Depravity
10. On The Misguided Romanticisation Of Feline Psychopaths
11. The Last Twisted Molecule On Earth?
12. The Persistence Of Hard-Core Porn
13. The Growing Pleasures Of Homunculi
14. Post-Perceptual Consciousness?
Why?
00. The Psychology Of Armchair Hedonism
01. How To Contemplate An Introspective Void
02. The Importance Of Banality
03. Vacuous Desires
04. A Dirty Window On The Soul
05. Let's Get Rational
06. The Morality Of Happiness
07. Why Be Negative?
08. The Moral Panacea
09. The Significance Of An Empirical Correlation
10. A Tough-Minded Scientist Replies
11. The Selection Of Mysterious Reds
12. The Formal Successes Of Scientific Triumphalism
13. The Naturalisation Of Value
14. Four Deadly Objections?
15. Alone Amongst The Zombies
16. The Perils Of Idle Scepticism
17. The Price Of Inner Demons
18. Can We All Be Really Good?
19. Equivocal Values
20. Good Vibrations: The Value Of String
When?
0. Our Emotional Future
1. Hedonism After The War
2. On Why We Need Better Drug Pushers
3. Good Code Gets Better
4. The Death-Spasms Of Peripheralism
5. And Yet It Still Grinds
6. The Technology Of Shop-Soiled Utopias
7. Living In The Real World
Objections
00. ...impossible because happiness depends on contrast with sadness...
01. ...brain too complex...negative feedback mechanisms...
02. ...we'd just die out...gruesome fate of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats...
03. ...manifesto flawed by reductionist approach to the human soul...
04. ...unanticipated side-effects...thalidomide...
05. ...would need widespread animal-testing...inconsistent with the manifesto's animal welfarism...
06. ...unnatural...
07. ...perpetual happiness is boring...need for variety...
08. ...happiness should be rationally justifiable...
09. ...to be forced into chemically-driven happiness is wrong…false happiness...freedom to be unhappy is important...
10. ...would turn us into junkies...
11. ...one can sometimes like being sad...too precious to lose...
12. ...would eliminate personal development...lead to stasis...
13. ...why not just get high...?
14. ...no more Newtons, Picassos, Beethovens...end of mankind's intellectual progress...
15. ...makes mockery of current values and life-projects...too absurd to warrant serious debate...
16. ...would leave us helpless... manipulable by ruling elites...
17. ...sheer escapism...the importance of staying in touch with reality...
18. ...wouldn't be me...one is defined by one's sorrows as much as joys...
19. ...selfish distraction from what matters...helping the poor in the Third World comes first...
20. ...affront to human dignity...
21. ...track-record of utopianism is disastrous...terrible crimes committed on assumption the end justifies the means...
22. ...would undermine the basis of all human relationships...
23. ...might lead to (post-)humanity getting irreversibly stuck...
24. ... emphasis on mood-lifting drugs is disproportionate...easy to misinterpret...
25. ...abolitionist project presupposes a utilitarian ethic...HI collapses if utilitarianism is rejected...
26. ...will never be a Post-Darwinian Transition... there will always be selection pressure...
27. ...paradise-engineering is impossible...not evolutionarily stable...
28. ...contradiction...abolitionism can't be reconciled with an absence of compulsion...
29. ...why invoke nanotechnology; isn't genetic engineering enough...?
30. ..."pushy" parents will choose genotypes for children destined to be smart, driven and successful rather than happy...
31. ...persistence of "natural" reproducers with Darwinian genotypes means that suffering won't be abolished...
32. ...cosmic HI? Some pitfalls...
33. ...why stress gradients of well-being? Wouldn't permanent maximum bliss be ethically better...?
34. ...why the headlong rush? Let's wait until we have the wisdom to understand the implications of what we're doing...
35. ...the Simulation Argument suggests suffering can never be abolished...
Conclusion
0. Puppet-Masters Without Strings
1. Could Life Really Have A Happy Ending?
August 15, 2022
Intelligent and unwise, a popular combination of attributes these days.
That which is irreducible cannot be annihilated, it can only change form.
If you removed all normative traces and left me with a raw analysis of the likely progression of evolution, the inevitability of transhumanism etc, I'd agree. Regarding pain (=growth), (=/= hellish suffering) and it's role in existence however, I think Pearce is diametrically wrong.
That which is irreducible cannot be annihilated, it can only change form.
If you removed all normative traces and left me with a raw analysis of the likely progression of evolution, the inevitability of transhumanism etc, I'd agree. Regarding pain (=growth), (=/= hellish suffering) and it's role in existence however, I think Pearce is diametrically wrong.
August 29, 2018
The foundational text for Transhumanism, and the future for neuroethics. It's hard to pinpoint something because it's such an interconnected system, but within the philosophy of mind, if we CAN move beyond being biologically human, we SHOULD, as in doing so, we would move away from the pain and suffering associated with mental illness, aging, decay, and dying. Extremely, we become superintelligent minds, separated from our biological bodies, engineering our own afterlife, Heaven, Paradise. In becoming transhuman, we would realize that the experience of even the least pleasurable pleasure on the bliss gradient is better than pain and suffering. The least pleasurable is still a higher quality of life, worthy of appreciation, and bioethically valuable. This is the future. This is superhappiness. This is The Hedonistic Imperative.
February 4, 2023
I love David Pearce and what he's trying to do.
My only real let down in the book was getting hyped for an axiom-up argument for a value-naturalist negative utilitarianism at the start of section 2.6. And then... it doesn't quite happen.
Analogies and defenses yes, but I was ready for the ground up argument, line by line for his version of value (ethical) naturalism and negative utilitarianism and I didn't quite get it.
The reader is already pretty far into the book at that point and could handle a more technical philosophical argument that "shows it's work" like a good math problem should.
I know the premises and arguments are there, and I want to hear Pearce's specifically, so ironically my only critique is wanting even more of his personal philosophy on display.
My only real let down in the book was getting hyped for an axiom-up argument for a value-naturalist negative utilitarianism at the start of section 2.6. And then... it doesn't quite happen.
Analogies and defenses yes, but I was ready for the ground up argument, line by line for his version of value (ethical) naturalism and negative utilitarianism and I didn't quite get it.
The reader is already pretty far into the book at that point and could handle a more technical philosophical argument that "shows it's work" like a good math problem should.
I know the premises and arguments are there, and I want to hear Pearce's specifically, so ironically my only critique is wanting even more of his personal philosophy on display.
January 20, 2024
This was an amazing book that changed my perspective on life.
July 27, 2022
Let's just begin with the fact that he wants to eradicate CATS because they play with mice. I should have stopped reading right there and delete but I don't walk out on movies nor give up on books. Here: "the practice of continuing to breed pre-programmed feline killing machines in homage to Nature is ethically untenable too. It is not, needless to say, the fault of cats that they are prone to torturing mice; but then, given the equations of physics, it isn't the fault of Nazis they try to persecute Jews."
I became fairly sure this was written by an evil nazi AI with an infinite vocabulary. Trying to appear medical and smart, the words are so advanced that I don't think anyone fully understands them (and I read decades-old financial texts for fun). Every noun is preceded by an adjective. It's exactly like when Joey found the thesaurus on Friends "they are humid prepossessing Homo Sapiens with full sized aortic pumps"... - I don't understand. - Some of the words a little too sophisticated for ya? (I can imagine a conversation with the author to be like this, with a smug smile on his face.).
Certain words didn't even show a match upon long pressing on the Kindle, it's that bad. With regard to killing innocent animals, God murders a puppy everytime someone begins a sentence with For instead of Because. Here is what to expect, this is not a quote but a mix of what it feels like to read the book, using its parts:
For the epistemically encephalized nastiness pervading the dogmatic brevity of dopaminergic transduction-mechanisms, the exogenously notorious ventral-tegmental stupor and morally precepting writ enunciated the inexorable discernment while banishing the putative baser carnal passions. Obviously, the monistic panpsychism affects the perspective of the molecular signatures of simulacra-ersatz while the delusion of squalor follows the substrates of atavistic untermenschen.
Here is a quote though, I have no earthly idea wtaf he is talking about (like most of the time):
"Given that, by every indication, Hitler was sincere in reporting at least this aspect of his mental states, albeit under another description, then from the value-naturalist perspective persecuting Jews would have to count as valuable: not as valuable as the exalted states alluded to in this paper, admittedly, but morally worthwhile nonetheless."
Anyway if you try to argue or object, he'll come up with the same countering words just in different order and ultimately convince you that everyone currently is genetically inferior to what he envisions the future will hold, therefore we can't understand how good that will be. In his view present equals a malignant primitive hell, while the future is some amazing place where everyone is high all the time.
I have no idea what kind of "suffering" he encounters on a daily basis, I hardly do, but reading this was definitely such. I think he is unable to feel happy about a drop of water on an autumn leaf, dance in the rain, or make snow angels. Thanks but I'm perfectly happy with my current genetic makeup and can already feel all the joy I need.
I found this book after reading the Code Breaker, as recommended by Bill Gates. I'm very open to genetic engineering and can't wait for us to germline-edit out the genetic diseases and the arrival of the baby marketplace where parents can choose the eye color of their babies with a color picker (then many will be born as blondes with blue eyes). That book merely touched the possibilities, and I was interested in more, but this one took it way too far. As in eradicating pain and sorrow and turning the whole ecosystem into GMOs.
As learned from the Lion King, it's the cycle of life that one animal eats the other, the carnivore dies, the body decomposes and grass grows on it, that gets eaten by a grazing animal and it goes on and on.
Also, I think for the balance, we need a high dynamic range of emotions from including all the bad to the good, so we can appreciate good times and they need to be sufficiently different from the bad times. In his world, I imagine a funeral where attendants are high on permanent extasy wihout a single tear shed. Thankfully, none of us will be alive to experience his dystopic pipe dream.
Easily the worst book I've ever had the displeasure of reading and I rarely give out 1-star ratings. It took me a month I'll never get back, as (perhaps for the better, so it doesn't reach as many) it has no audiobook version. Avoid.
I became fairly sure this was written by an evil nazi AI with an infinite vocabulary. Trying to appear medical and smart, the words are so advanced that I don't think anyone fully understands them (and I read decades-old financial texts for fun). Every noun is preceded by an adjective. It's exactly like when Joey found the thesaurus on Friends "they are humid prepossessing Homo Sapiens with full sized aortic pumps"... - I don't understand. - Some of the words a little too sophisticated for ya? (I can imagine a conversation with the author to be like this, with a smug smile on his face.).
Certain words didn't even show a match upon long pressing on the Kindle, it's that bad. With regard to killing innocent animals, God murders a puppy everytime someone begins a sentence with For instead of Because. Here is what to expect, this is not a quote but a mix of what it feels like to read the book, using its parts:
For the epistemically encephalized nastiness pervading the dogmatic brevity of dopaminergic transduction-mechanisms, the exogenously notorious ventral-tegmental stupor and morally precepting writ enunciated the inexorable discernment while banishing the putative baser carnal passions. Obviously, the monistic panpsychism affects the perspective of the molecular signatures of simulacra-ersatz while the delusion of squalor follows the substrates of atavistic untermenschen.
Here is a quote though, I have no earthly idea wtaf he is talking about (like most of the time):
"Given that, by every indication, Hitler was sincere in reporting at least this aspect of his mental states, albeit under another description, then from the value-naturalist perspective persecuting Jews would have to count as valuable: not as valuable as the exalted states alluded to in this paper, admittedly, but morally worthwhile nonetheless."
Anyway if you try to argue or object, he'll come up with the same countering words just in different order and ultimately convince you that everyone currently is genetically inferior to what he envisions the future will hold, therefore we can't understand how good that will be. In his view present equals a malignant primitive hell, while the future is some amazing place where everyone is high all the time.
I have no idea what kind of "suffering" he encounters on a daily basis, I hardly do, but reading this was definitely such. I think he is unable to feel happy about a drop of water on an autumn leaf, dance in the rain, or make snow angels. Thanks but I'm perfectly happy with my current genetic makeup and can already feel all the joy I need.
I found this book after reading the Code Breaker, as recommended by Bill Gates. I'm very open to genetic engineering and can't wait for us to germline-edit out the genetic diseases and the arrival of the baby marketplace where parents can choose the eye color of their babies with a color picker (then many will be born as blondes with blue eyes). That book merely touched the possibilities, and I was interested in more, but this one took it way too far. As in eradicating pain and sorrow and turning the whole ecosystem into GMOs.
As learned from the Lion King, it's the cycle of life that one animal eats the other, the carnivore dies, the body decomposes and grass grows on it, that gets eaten by a grazing animal and it goes on and on.
Also, I think for the balance, we need a high dynamic range of emotions from including all the bad to the good, so we can appreciate good times and they need to be sufficiently different from the bad times. In his world, I imagine a funeral where attendants are high on permanent extasy wihout a single tear shed. Thankfully, none of us will be alive to experience his dystopic pipe dream.
Easily the worst book I've ever had the displeasure of reading and I rarely give out 1-star ratings. It took me a month I'll never get back, as (perhaps for the better, so it doesn't reach as many) it has no audiobook version. Avoid.
July 7, 2025
Learned a lot here about our potential futures. This is Atul Gawande on performance-enhancing drugs!
October 12, 2023
If anyone wondered how a contemporary idealist sounds like:
"In mainstream academia, any study of consciousness as a true experimental discipline rather than as a topic of scholastic disputation is nearly impossible. Accounts of systematic first-personal manipulation of its only accessible instance is generally reckoned unpublishable and discreditable. Ironically, we mock the obtuseness of Galileo's clerical opponents for refusing to look through his telescope. Yet we treasure our own peace of mind no less dearly; so there is little reason for intellectual complacency. In our repressive drug laws we, too, outlaw and penalise forms of knowledge truly disturbing to the established order. Psychedelics trigger changes of mind which are radically subversive of the existing social, political and academic power-structure and its definitions of reality. The severe penalties for publicly advocating and spreading such dangerous knowledge are not notably more merciful than those of the Inquisition - our prisons are brutal places - though likewise public recantation and penance can sometimes mitigate the full rigour of punishment.
The psychedelias of post-human ecstatics are too hard to contemplate. Predictions for the more distant future of even affective states in the universe are liable to get wilder too. Not merely are we ignorant of the newly synthesised and discovered emotions that biotechnology will deliver. We can't possibly know what neo-cortical "cognitive" processes they will saturate and enrich.
Will consciousness in its current guise of phenomenological and quasi-computational mind take on post-cellular or prosthetically enriched forms? Or, in defence of carbon chauvinism, is there a micro-functionalist argument that the unique structure of the carbon atom and its valence properties means that only organic experiential manifolds and their infused emotions are feasible? Will there come, eventually, a post-personal era in which discrete, gene-generated superminds choose progressively to coalesce; or will the fragmented island universes left over from the depths of the Darwinian past continue in semi-autonomous isolation indefinitely? If consciousness is ontologically fundamental to the cosmos, rather than a tacked-on "nomological dangler", do superstrings [or branes, etc] vibrating at energies orders of magnitude higher than ours support modes and intensities of experience correspondingly greater than those of the current low-energy regime? Or do they really lack what-it's-like-ness altogether?"
"In mainstream academia, any study of consciousness as a true experimental discipline rather than as a topic of scholastic disputation is nearly impossible. Accounts of systematic first-personal manipulation of its only accessible instance is generally reckoned unpublishable and discreditable. Ironically, we mock the obtuseness of Galileo's clerical opponents for refusing to look through his telescope. Yet we treasure our own peace of mind no less dearly; so there is little reason for intellectual complacency. In our repressive drug laws we, too, outlaw and penalise forms of knowledge truly disturbing to the established order. Psychedelics trigger changes of mind which are radically subversive of the existing social, political and academic power-structure and its definitions of reality. The severe penalties for publicly advocating and spreading such dangerous knowledge are not notably more merciful than those of the Inquisition - our prisons are brutal places - though likewise public recantation and penance can sometimes mitigate the full rigour of punishment.
The psychedelias of post-human ecstatics are too hard to contemplate. Predictions for the more distant future of even affective states in the universe are liable to get wilder too. Not merely are we ignorant of the newly synthesised and discovered emotions that biotechnology will deliver. We can't possibly know what neo-cortical "cognitive" processes they will saturate and enrich.
Will consciousness in its current guise of phenomenological and quasi-computational mind take on post-cellular or prosthetically enriched forms? Or, in defence of carbon chauvinism, is there a micro-functionalist argument that the unique structure of the carbon atom and its valence properties means that only organic experiential manifolds and their infused emotions are feasible? Will there come, eventually, a post-personal era in which discrete, gene-generated superminds choose progressively to coalesce; or will the fragmented island universes left over from the depths of the Darwinian past continue in semi-autonomous isolation indefinitely? If consciousness is ontologically fundamental to the cosmos, rather than a tacked-on "nomological dangler", do superstrings [or branes, etc] vibrating at energies orders of magnitude higher than ours support modes and intensities of experience correspondingly greater than those of the current low-energy regime? Or do they really lack what-it's-like-ness altogether?"
December 29, 2020
A short, heady read filled with ideas that, even if unrealistic, are absolutely worth consideration.
The Hedonistic Imperative is a relatively early attempt at outlining a concrete transhumanist program centered on the "abolition of suffering" - the biotechnological mitigation of all unpleasant subjective experience. The author has a nuanced vision of a future where (post)humans can more or less constantly enjoy what we would today call transcendent or blissful states of mind, experiencing peak mental well-being without necessarily "wireheading" our way into total dissociation from reality. The idea of hacking our minds to engineer our own happiness does have a hubristic, Icarian ring to it, but Pearce makes a strong case that it can be done without begetting some sort of Brave New World-flavored dystopia.
Though it sounds rather fantastical, and the technology is at least hundreds of years away, Pearce fervently argues that carrying out the abolitionist project is in fact a moral imperative given certain utilitarian axioms. His writing does come across a bit grandiose, and I had to remind myself at times that I wasn't reading sci-fi, but Pearce's thinking is nothing if not principled. I appreciated both his rigorous treatment of a wide variety of possible objections and his embrace of even the more apparently outlandish extensions of this line of thinking (e.g. re-engineering organisms and ecosystems to eradicate the suffering of non-human animals, even in the wild).
The Hedonistic Imperative is a relatively early attempt at outlining a concrete transhumanist program centered on the "abolition of suffering" - the biotechnological mitigation of all unpleasant subjective experience. The author has a nuanced vision of a future where (post)humans can more or less constantly enjoy what we would today call transcendent or blissful states of mind, experiencing peak mental well-being without necessarily "wireheading" our way into total dissociation from reality. The idea of hacking our minds to engineer our own happiness does have a hubristic, Icarian ring to it, but Pearce makes a strong case that it can be done without begetting some sort of Brave New World-flavored dystopia.
Though it sounds rather fantastical, and the technology is at least hundreds of years away, Pearce fervently argues that carrying out the abolitionist project is in fact a moral imperative given certain utilitarian axioms. His writing does come across a bit grandiose, and I had to remind myself at times that I wasn't reading sci-fi, but Pearce's thinking is nothing if not principled. I appreciated both his rigorous treatment of a wide variety of possible objections and his embrace of even the more apparently outlandish extensions of this line of thinking (e.g. re-engineering organisms and ecosystems to eradicate the suffering of non-human animals, even in the wild).
December 23, 2022
The prose in this book felt stilted and pretentious, while Pearce's style of reasoning often drifted into arrogance. But the book's central idea is provocative and important enough to merit real consideration. I am far less certain than Pearce that the kind of infinite bliss he envisions is attainable, although, like him, I find most of the normative arguments against it lacking. Perhaps the end-stage version of the kind of world he describes is beyond most of our lifetimes, but it's worth grappling with these possibilities as we begin to approach technological frontiers in more scaled-down ways.
October 13, 2022
Hell yeah, let's go for it! One of the most important quests for humanity to accomplish.
However I would say that AI alignment is far mor important and urgent and that if we manage to align AI, we solve suffering and ageing as well.
However I would say that AI alignment is far mor important and urgent and that if we manage to align AI, we solve suffering and ageing as well.
June 7, 2024
For a manifesto, the writing inside the book is genuinely beautiful.
The ideas are thought-provoking and revolutionary. I honestly have a bit of mixed feelings after reading this but the author did a good job to carry utilitarianism into the realm of bioethics.
The ideas are thought-provoking and revolutionary. I honestly have a bit of mixed feelings after reading this but the author did a good job to carry utilitarianism into the realm of bioethics.
September 7, 2022
Important ideas to think about. Hard to read though. Not super accessible.
May 16, 2019
Bring together possible technological inventions biotechnology in the near and far future, mix it with an utilitarian ethos of minimizing suffering and maximizing happiness and spice it up with the trans-humanist belief that (almost) everything is possible to do within the laws of physics and you get "The Hedonistic Imperative". It is wild ride driving over many common sense bumps on the road without a care in the world. Religious people will balk at the idea of a heaven on earth, environmentalists will rage against the idea of transforming ecosystems and removing/genetically engineer predators and everyone who feeling a bit uneasy about humans controlling everything on earth will shake their heads. But all this is what makes this manifesto, which it is, so good. Pearce just steams ahead taking arguments to their logical conclusions no matter how extreme and filling in the knowledge gaps of science with the most hopeful theories about what future research will bring.
As said it will upset some people, but it will certainly also exhilarate some. This is the kind of book that every kind of movement needs; A book which shows a glorious future which the movement tries to achieve even though the details can differ between people within the movement.
With that said I believe a lot of trans-humanists are focused on computers and digitization these days which is to a large degree missing in this book. Pearce is very skeptical of for example mind uploading. Instead his focus is on the promises of biotechnology.
As long as Pearce can be a visionary it is very good. But when he in chapter four start to list objections against the vision laid out in the book and argues against them it do get a bit tedious and to me he here and there fails to make a good argument. I do like he chose to put in the fourth chapter for the sake of letting critics have a say, but it is a clear brake from the very visionary chapters which preceded it.
I can't say I agree with everything Pearce is writing (I for example thinks the negative utilitarian position he adopts is absurd), but I did like my time spent with his hopes for the future. Recommended!
As said it will upset some people, but it will certainly also exhilarate some. This is the kind of book that every kind of movement needs; A book which shows a glorious future which the movement tries to achieve even though the details can differ between people within the movement.
With that said I believe a lot of trans-humanists are focused on computers and digitization these days which is to a large degree missing in this book. Pearce is very skeptical of for example mind uploading. Instead his focus is on the promises of biotechnology.
As long as Pearce can be a visionary it is very good. But when he in chapter four start to list objections against the vision laid out in the book and argues against them it do get a bit tedious and to me he here and there fails to make a good argument. I do like he chose to put in the fourth chapter for the sake of letting critics have a say, but it is a clear brake from the very visionary chapters which preceded it.
I can't say I agree with everything Pearce is writing (I for example thinks the negative utilitarian position he adopts is absurd), but I did like my time spent with his hopes for the future. Recommended!
December 31, 2015
"The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life."
The book does this, however mostly in chapters 1 (How), 3 (When), and a few of the good objections.
These parts are very good to read, but should probably just be done online instead.
Chapter 2 (Why) basically reminds me of: “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”
Ultimately, I give the book 2.6 stars. There are many very good ideas and food for thought. The right parts of the book are a great introduction to a part of transhumanist thought that gets too little focus =]
However, the content is all over the place and prone to overly-pedantic rambling analysis. When arguing 'why', the author comes _very_ close to essentially arguing for maxed-out-bliss wire-headism. Of course, that's easy to do if you argue that 'value' is inherently a feeling 'in our heads'. (Ultimately, he would have benefited from using subscripts, as he may have conflated two different meanings of 'value' / 'valuable.) He does rectify this both earlier and later in the book though :p
(But then to what extent does the earlier argument hold?)
I think the book could probably benefit from a chapter that outlines and goes through the details of all the foreseen steps. While it may seem simple, there is more content for this outline than the introduction contains.
Nonetheless, it's worth a look through in addition to the Abolitionist Wikipedia page ;-)
The book does this, however mostly in chapters 1 (How), 3 (When), and a few of the good objections.
These parts are very good to read, but should probably just be done online instead.
Chapter 2 (Why) basically reminds me of: “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”
Ultimately, I give the book 2.6 stars. There are many very good ideas and food for thought. The right parts of the book are a great introduction to a part of transhumanist thought that gets too little focus =]
However, the content is all over the place and prone to overly-pedantic rambling analysis. When arguing 'why', the author comes _very_ close to essentially arguing for maxed-out-bliss wire-headism. Of course, that's easy to do if you argue that 'value' is inherently a feeling 'in our heads'. (Ultimately, he would have benefited from using subscripts, as he may have conflated two different meanings of 'value' / 'valuable.) He does rectify this both earlier and later in the book though :p
(But then to what extent does the earlier argument hold?)
I think the book could probably benefit from a chapter that outlines and goes through the details of all the foreseen steps. While it may seem simple, there is more content for this outline than the introduction contains.
Nonetheless, it's worth a look through in addition to the Abolitionist Wikipedia page ;-)
June 6, 2013
Good.
April 21, 2014
If nothing else, very interesting.
to-keep-reference
February 29, 2016Discutido en Visión de Paralaje Pág.250
Read
February 4, 2022I love this, but David Pearce should have titled the book differently. The term "hedonistic" has negative connotations and will mislead potential readers about the contents of the book.
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