hedonologist

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He is basically saying humanity will rid the world of what we commonly refer to as pain of the "emotional" sort. This has profound theological, moral, and psychological implications. I put this in the moral forum regarding the question "Should we (want to) make this a goal?"

I think that genetic engineering will work to this end to some extent, but that when people have very much control over their *own* pleasure (such as with a "wire-head" or drugs to the extent these drugs are conveniently acquired), they tend to sacrifice the longer term pleasure for the shorter term.

Is it possible, assuming we (or God) had unlimited genetic tweaking ability, and knew what the results would be, to do away with any need for "pain" and use as motivators only gradients of "pleasure" for this purpose? If not, what would prevent this?

Would pleasure or pain even be logically necessary as a motivator?

Assuming materialism, maybe a "mental program" could be written to cause the experiencer to survive and take long-term pleasure into account in its/their decisions, while experiencing the most pleasure possible (as opposed to experiencing less pleasure if he/she/it makes a mistake). If not, what would prevent this?

Assuming mind-body dualism, maybe experiencers could just choose to survive and take long-term pleasure into account, while experiencing the maximum of types of pleasure, which are not debilitating by nature. Do such types of pleasure or experiencers exist? If so, is there any way to increase the number of such experiencers (either politically or before they are born)? Is there any way to make organisms with more of such types of pleasures which do not coerce the experiencer to sacrifice more future pleasure than is optimal for total overall pleasure, per lifetime or per moment (while also not coercing the experiencer to live for overall pleasure *by* leading them with "immediate" pleasure, either)?

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: hedonologist ]</p>