by Dan | May 3, 2021 | Discerning the Good Itself
What matters more, happiness, or suffering? For almost all of us – utilitarians or not – both positive and negative qualia matter, and register when we make decisions about our own lives or decisions that might affect the lives of others. Negative...
by Dan | Nov 14, 2020 | Discerning the Good Itself
This past week I posted the following on Facebook, in reference to my article Where Should Humanity Steer Sentience?: If utilitronium (a conscious, super-blissful substrate) could simultaneously explore future kinds of “the good” (beyond utilitarianism),...
by Dan | Nov 14, 2020 | Discerning the Good Itself
The philosopher David Pearce has posited that the pain-pleasure axis of conscious experience may well be the “world’s inbuilt metric of value,” a kind of ultimate barometer of good or bad. While I agree with Pearce that positive qualia (positive...
by Dan | Nov 3, 2019 | Discerning the Good Itself, Facilitating Post-human Transition Collaboration, Reflecting on What I've Read
If mind uploading becomes possible, how can we prevent uploaded minds from suffering? While uploaded minds might be able to experience a hyper-intense range of super-bliss, it is obviously possible that the opposite could also happen under the wrong conditions (or...
by Dan | Jul 28, 2019 | Discerning the Good Itself, Exploring the End Game
The following are assumptions that most of us hold as iron truths: Happiness is only made possible because of its opposite: Pain. Without pain, there is no real happiness. If anyone could ever experience continued pleasurable states (no pain), this would diminish all...
by Dan | Jun 3, 2019 | Amoral Solipsism, Discerning the Good Itself
Michel de Montaigne isn’t particularly popular in the twenty-first century. Born to a well-to-do family in 1533 near modern-day Bordeaux, France, Montaigne was a politician and thinker who recorded his thoughts in many essays. Montaigne is widely regarded as the...
