HIGH-TECH JAINISM

Introduction

Yet the living world is poised for a major evolutionary transition. Natural selection has thrown up a species able to self-edit its own genetic source code; phase out experience below "hedonic zero"; and engineer the well-being of all sentience in our forward light-cone. Intelligent agents will shortly be able to pre-select their own hedonic range: its upper and lower bounds, and hedonic set-points. Posthuman life can be animated by gradients of intelligent bliss - a default hedonic tone orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

Why Does Suffering Exist?

Fortunately, solving the problem of suffering doesn't depend on our first solving the Hard Problem of consciousness. Neuroscanning and the tools of molecular biology are deciphering the "neural correlates of consciousness". If we use biotechnology to eradicate the molecular signature of experience below "hedonic zero", then on some fairly modest assumptions, phenomenal suffering becomes physically impossible.

So a practical question arises. Which existing psychological functions should we enrich, replicate or scrap? What kinds of function are best offloaded onto smart prostheses rather than biologically tweaked? Ideally, adaptations such as a predisposition to jealous behaviour might be abolished along with their nasty subjective textures. Such Darwinian traits have few defenders, even among bioconservatives. Other roles, notably nociception, will presumably be functionally essential for sentient beings to flourish for the foreseeable future - and perhaps indefinitely. Initially, preimplantation genetic screening of prospective children can ensure tomorrow's humans are endowed with benign, "low-pain" alleles of e.g. the SCN9A(1) gene to modulate pain-sensitivity. People blessed with high pain tolerance aren't vulnerable to the life-threatening information-processing deficits of congenital analgesia. Eventually, the avoidance of noxious stimuli can be offloaded onto smart inorganic prostheses, allowing life based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of bliss.

The Reproductive Revolution

Clearly, "life events" matter hugely to each of us: genetic determinism is facile and simplistic. Genes and culture have co-evolved. Epigenetics, the heritable changes in gene activity not caused by changes in DNA sequence, and the purely conditional activation of different genes and allelic combinations "for" particular psychological traits, complicate the simple-minded storyline told here. Yet twin studies confirm that hedonic set-points - crudely, whether we are temperamentally happy or gloomy - have a high degree of genetic loading. More specifically, studies of e.g. the role of variant alleles of the 5-HTT serotonin transporter(2) ("the depression gene"); the COMT gene(3) (high versus low reward); and deletion variant of ADA2b(4) ("the pessimism gene") corroborate twin studies(5) of our heritable hedonic range. In an era of routine preimplantation genetic screening, prospective parents will presumably select code predisposing to emotional, intellectual and physical superhealth for their children in preference to disease and frailty.

It's unclear when selection pressure for a predisposition toward greater subjective well-being will plateau. Why settle for the mediocre when we can enjoy the sublime?

Credible modelling of the long-term trajectory of selection pressure in the post-Darwinian era is a formidable challenge. Yet it's not complete guesswork. Here a single example must suffice. Imagine you can use preimplantation genetic screening to choose, approximately, the hedonic set-point of your future child. What default hedonic tone would you pick? Oversimplifying, let's designate "minus 10" a predisposition to chronic severe depression; "0" to be hedonically neutral; and "plus 10" a predisposition to lifelong gradients of bliss. Informal straw-polling suggests a mean preference for "plus 7"s or "plus 8"s - with a perhaps surprising number of "plus 10"s. Today, depressives with sub-zero hedonic baselines form a significant minority of the population. A majority of people in the course of a lifetime cluster quite tightly either side of hedonic zero - with varying degrees of equability or emotional volatility. Either way, we needn't assume for the purposes of this thought-experiment that most parents care primarily about their children's happiness per se. For evolutionary reasons, many parents are intensely ambitious for their offspring. Other things being equal, psychologically resilient children tend to be "winners" - and more fun to raise too. So let's assume such anecdotal and impressionistic evidence is borne out by well-controlled studies. What hedonic dial-settings will these (super)happy children choose in turn when as parents-to-be they decide to have children of their own? In consequence of such individual parental choices - and perhaps top-down medical paternalism - default levels of subjective well-being will presumably be ratcheted upwards world-wide as the reproductive revolution unfolds later this century and beyond. Further genetically engineered reward pathway enhancements open up the prospect of an immensely richer hedonic ceiling and an elevated hedonic floor: true genomic rewrites rather than simple preimplantation screening. The negative feedback mechanisms of the hedonic treadmill can still play out; but on an exalted plane. The pitfalls are legion. So are the potential psychological rewards. Living in Heaven is fun.

When will the reproductive revolution take off?

Might traditional sexual reproduction predominate indefinitely?

Early in the twenty-first century, the use of genomic medicine to phase out terrible genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis or Tay–Sachs disease commands widespread but not universal assent. More controversial among bioethicists and prospective parents alike will be phasing out genes and allelic combinations predisposing to anxiety disorders and depression. In the West if not China(6), the spectre of coercive eugenics hangs over the debate. Critics of "designer babies" claim that misery and malaise are "part of what it means to be human". No doubt the critics are right. But low mood is at least as devastating to the quality of life of depressives as genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis. Depressive disorder causes almost a million people in the world to take their own lives each year.

Where should genetic remediation - or enhancement - stop?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

Why not take the WHO definition literally?

As so defined, complete health can be secured only via post-genomic medicine.

Untreated humans would be prone to malaise in the Garden of Eden.



Rapid Genome Self-Editing

Why Recalibration Matters

Two advantages of hedonic recalibration are worth noting here.

First, combining hedonic enrichment and recalibration ensures that critical insight, reinforcement learning, and social responsibility can potentially be retained while simultaneously massively enriching subjective quality of life. Recalibration undercuts the dilemma of hedonic enhancement as standardly posed. Should we choose gritty reality or an escapist fantasy world of self-delusion? The messy real world or Nozick's "Experience Machine"? Authenticity versus drug-addled life on soma? The Red Pill or the Blue Pill? And so forth.

Yet it's a false dilemma. We needn't choose between the Red Pill and the Blue Pill. Genetically enlightened agents can take the Purple Pill, so to speak, combining the benefits of realism and recalibration. For sure, mood-congruent cognitive biases are potentially a risk anywhere on the hedonic scale; without them, low mood might never have evolved in the first instance(8). But rose-tinted spectacles, so to speak, can be corrected with the tools of AI and decision-theoretic rationality. Genetic case-studies can also be conducted of contemporary high-functioning hedonic outliers, i.e. fortunate souls who are temperamentally "hyperthymic" but not manic. There's no evidence that traits such as empathy, intellectual prowess and virtues of character are less common in hyperthymics than depressives(9). What's clear is that other things being equal, life animated by happy experiences is appreciated as more valuable than a life of mediocre experience, just as mediocre experiences are more valuable than nastiness. Compare our appreciation of art, music or literature. If it's not rewarding, it's no good. Other things being equal, superhappy life is supervaluable too - subjectively at any rate: philosophers can endlessly debate its transcendental (in)significance. More informally, take care of happiness, and the meaning of life takes care of itself.

A second reason for embracing recalibration rather than happiness-maximisation is human cultural diversity. We're social primates; most of our preferences implicate others. Across the world, diverse people have diverse religious and secular value systems; and trillions of inconsistent and frequently irreconcilable preferences, trivial and profound. Theists and atheists, deontologists and utilitarians, virtue theorists and contractualists, pluralists and theory-scorning pragmatists dispute how best to live. Logically, let alone practically, there is no way to satisfy even the "idealised" preferences of liberals and conservatives, Christians and Muslims, jealous rivals in love - or fanatical Manchester United and Manchester City supporters. By contrast, reward pathway enhancements can radically enrich everyone's quality of life without forcing choices between "winners" and "losers": the zero-sum games endemic to Darwinian life. Recalibrating your hedonic set-point does not entail reducing neurodiversity, or buying into other people's utopias or their conception of the good life - unless of course you're opposed to the principle of recalibration itself. Hedonic enhancement can preserve whatever values, preferences and human relationships you hold most dear, while discarding states of mind you would gladly lose.

In practice, of course, the pleasures and preferences of posthumans may be humanly inconceivable.

Who Benefits?

The Rise of Full-Spectrum Superintelligence

The Plight of the Cognitively Humble

More controversially, technology can accelerate the transition from harming to helping free-living sentient beings: mankind's fitfully expanding "circle of compassion". The civilising process needn't be species-specific but instead extend to free-living dwellers in tomorrow's wildlife parks. Every cubic metre of the biosphere will soon be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. Fertility regulation via immunocontraception can replace Darwinian ecosystems governed by starvation and predation. Any species of obligate carnivore we choose to preserve can be genetically and behaviourally tweaked into harmlessness. Asphyxiation, disembowelling, and agonies of being eaten alive can pass into the dustbin of history.

Critics warn darkly of hubris. Yet Homo sapiens already "plays God": humans massively interfere with the rest of the living world. What's in question is whether we will act as callous or benevolent deities. Power breeds deepening complicity. It's hard to predict whether recognisable approximations of human or nonhuman Darwinian life will be preserved by posthumans. Perhaps we'll transform ourselves into post-Darwinian superbeings and consign primordial life to oblivion. In the meantime, an ethic of compassionate conservatism offers a compromise between the cruelties of orthodox conservation biology and the outright extinction of Darwinian life-forms. Free-living human or nonhuman animals do not lose some mysterious species-essence when they cease to be "wild"; on this score if no other, conservationists should sleep easy.

Suffering and Existential Risk

Paradise Engineering?

Yet contrary to appearances, the advanced civilisation is guilty of one ethically catastrophic mistake. Its inhabitants have embraced the hedonistic imperative(12) too avidly and turned inwards too soon. They could have launched cosmic rescue missions for pain-ridden Darwinian life on Earth; and assumed responsible stewardship of the physical universe within their cosmological horizon.

In the real world, maybe we're alone. The skies look empty. Cynics might point to the mess on Earth and echo C.S. Lewis: "Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere." Yet our ethical responsibility is to discover whether other suffering sentients exist within our cosmological horizon; establish the theoretical upper bounds of rational agency; and assume responsible stewardship of our Hubble volume. Cosmic responsibility entails full-spectrum superintelligence: to be blissful but not "blissed out" - high-tech Jainism on a cosmological scale. We don't yet know whether the story of life has a happy ending.

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