[ExI] David Pearce at TransVision 2010: Fostering Post-Darwinian Life

Giulio Prisco giulio at gmail.com
Tue Jul 6 08:24:47 UTC 2010


http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/david-pearce-at-transvision-2010-fostering-post-darwinian-life/

David Pearce will give a talk at TransVision
2010<http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/david-pearce-at-transvision-2010-fostering-post-darwinian-life/>
:

*Fostering Post-Darwinian Life
The case for paradise-engineering
by David Pearce <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pearce_(philosopher)>

In the state-space of all possible minds, presumably only a tiny percentage
can ever be physically realized – since matter, energy and information in
the accessible universe are all finite. So we need to consider not just
whether intuitively it is ethically good or bad for a sentient being – or
species of sentient beings – to exist, but also the cost of such existence
in terms of opportunities forgone. Some minds are clearly much more
beautiful than others. For example, when the technology matures, would it be
better if all our matter and energy were converted into different species of
posthuman “smart angel”?

Our response to this question may depend at least in part on how it is
posed. Thus if asked whether you’d take a wonderpill that overnight made you
several orders of magnitude smarter, happier and more ethically
sophisticated than you are now, then one might say yes. On the other hand,
if asked whether you’d consent to having your brain reformatted and its
matter reprogrammed into a different sentient being who was unimaginably
more wonderful, then one might say no. For such a supermind wouldn’t be
“me”.

More generally, a problem with being a classical utilitarian is that one is
(apparently) obliged to seek the extinction of all existing species,
including humans. This is because our matter and energy could be used more
efficiently to produce utilitronium – whether in the guise of orgasmium,
hedonium, pleasure plasma or Jupiter brains is still unclear. Critics might
see this conclusion as a reductio of classical utilitarian ethics. Yet in a
world run on utilitarian principles, it’s hard to see how such an outcome
could be avoided, in the long run, on pain of inconsistency. True, the
physical capacity to manufacture utilitronium is decades away at best, and
perhaps centuries or more. So this argument might seem idle philosophizing.
But the classical utilitarian is supposed to recognize that time-discounting
at a rate different from zero is morally unacceptable too.

In this talk, I shall argue that we should strive for an impartial,
“God”s-eye-view” in ethics, just as we do in natural science. Thus we should
aim computationally to maximise the cosmic abundance of subjectively
hypervaluable states in our Hubble volume. This entails fostering the
emergence and spread of post-Darwinian life. I predict our descendants – and
maybe our mature selves – will be wiser and happier beyond the bounds of
normal human experience.*

TransVision 2010 <http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/tv2010/> is a global
transhumanist conference and community convention, organized by several
transhumanist activists, groups and organizations, under the executive
leadership of the Italian Transhumanist Association<http://transumanisti.it/>
 (AIT) and with the collaboration of an Advisory Board. The event will take
place on October 22, 23 and 24, 2010 in Milan,
Italy<http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/logistics/>with
many options for remote online
access<http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/tvirtual/>
.

*Register now <http://transvision2010.wordpress.com/registration/>*

to take advantage of our special early Bird rates, post links to Twitter,
your blogs and websites, and add your name to the TransVision 2010 Facebook
page <http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131547903544971>.
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