Adam Ford

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“It is easy to romanticise, say, tigers or lions and cats. We admire their magnificent beauty, strength and agility. But we would regard their notional human counterparts as wanton psychopaths of the worst kind.”
― David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative

5 likes

“Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?”
― David Pearce

tags: applied-science, bright-new-world, evolution, future, genes, genetic-engineering, transhumanism

10 likes

“It's not that there are no differences between human and non-human animals, any more than there are no differences between black people and white people, freeborn citizens and slaves, men and women, Jews and gentiles, gays or heterosexuals. The question is rather: are they morally relevant differences? This matters because morally catastrophic consequences can ensue when we latch on to a real but morally irrelevant difference between sentient beings.”
― David Pearce

tags: animals, animals-rights, antiracism, antispeciesism, ethics, lgbt, vegan, veganism

19 likes

“I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.”
― David Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative

tags: biology, ethics, experience, genetic-engineering, hedonism, hedonistic-imperative, philosophy, science, suffering

17 likes

“A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.”
― David Pearce

tags: alcohol, drugs, future, nootropics, society, transhumanism, wellbeing

5 likes

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