9: "We need to systematise benevolence" - David Pearce - Sentientist Conversations

David Pearce is a philosopher & co-founder of the World Transhumanist Organisation, now Humanity+. His work centres on "The Hedonistic Imperative" - a moral obligation to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life."

You can find the video of our conversation here.

We discuss:

- "The Hedonistic Imperative" 

- Using biotech to abolish suffering & replace it with gradients of hedonic bliss

- Compassion, Buddhism, negative utilitarianism & the need to systematise benevolence

- The "3 supers" of Transhumanism: super intelligence, super longevity & super happiness + why non-humans should be included

- Growing up as a 3rd generation v*gan in a Quaker household

- Waiting for god to get in touch at 7-8 yrs old then ceasing to believe at 10-11 yrs

- The centrality of compassion to the values of David's family

- Is morality like supporting a football team?

- We can build our ethics on deep intuitions, then extrapolate

- First person suffering is dis-valuable. Hold your hand in iced water!

- The centrality of our perspective as a highly adaptive illusion. The suffering of others is just as salient to them - each of us is not special

- "My morality is a feature of reality"

- A future connected mega-mind might look back on us as ignorant as well as unethical

- A choice to be immoral is also irrational

- Basing our morality on a naturalistic epistemology & spanning "is-ought"

- How nearly everyone disagrees with Sentientism

- Focusing on the good in religion & working on common ground

- The Bible is light on the bio-tech details of how the lion will lie down with the lamb :)

- If god has given us CRISPR, why not use it to show mercy?

- If humans have compassion, surely god's compassion should be even deeper?

- Not being righteous even when you're right

- Having compassion for people you disagree with & naturalistic humility about your own beliefs

- Religious texts don't prohibit the positive use of tech

- We're all amateurs re: understanding consciousness

- Consciousness/sentience as "just" info proc or something more

- Is the USA conscious? (Eric Schwitzgebel)

- Micro-experiential zombies

- Physicalism plus the intrinsic nature of the physical, is experience the "fire in the equations"?

- Falling asleep doesn't destroy consciousness, it breaks binding

- Eric's "crazyism" - stay open minded

- Powerpointism as an alternative to panpsychism :)

- The temptation to fill gaps / address uncertainty with "woo" and mysticism/magic/god

- Even if consciousness is fundamental, it's not "like anything" to be a rock

- Distinction between panpsychism (consciousness attached to fundamental entities) & non-materialist physicalism (experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical)

- Using genetics to give our offspring better lives - for health and to adjust their hedonic set-points

- Ending animal farming "death factories" - laws will outlaw

- Making it easy to do the right thing

- Mitigating wild animal suffering (fertility regulation - immuno-contraception/gene drives). We are already intervening negatively on a massive scale

- SCN-9A gene, the volume knob of pain

- Converting carnivores to herbivores, providing cultured-meat alternatives, without being constrained by species essentialism

- "Nature is pretty" vs. "Compassion for the suffering"

- Moving from "kill them all" to compassionate interventions

- Using our tech capability to tap into the latent compassion of humans.

See the YouTube video for full show notes.

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