The Anatomy of Happiness – David Pearce
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The Anatomy of Happiness – David Pearce

David Pearce in interview on the The Anatomy of Happiness. While researching epilepsy, neuroscientist Itzhak Fried stumbled on a ‘mirth’ center in the brain – given this, what ought we be doing to combat extreme suffering and promote wellbeing? 0:00 Mastery of reward circuitry 0:25 Itzhak Fried’s experiments on stimulating ‘the Humor Centre’ of the…

Abolitionist Bioethics – David Pearce
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Abolitionist Bioethics – David Pearce

A talk at EAGx Melbourne by David Pearce about suffering and how to get rid of it. David predicts we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today’s peak experiences. David Pearce: First, I’m going to outline…

Reason – Philosophy Of Anti Aging: Ethics, Research & Advocacy
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Reason – Philosophy Of Anti Aging: Ethics, Research & Advocacy

Reason was interviewed at the Undoing Aging conference in Berlin 2019 by Adam Ford – focusing on philosophy of anti-aging, ethics, research & advocacy. Here is the audio! And the video: Topics include philosophical reasons to support anti-aging, high impact research (senolytics etc), convincing existence proofs that further research is worth doing, how AI can…

On Consciousness, Qualia, Valence & Intelligence with Mike Johnson
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On Consciousness, Qualia, Valence & Intelligence with Mike Johnson

Andrés Gómez Emilsson joined in to add very insightful questions for a 3 part interview series with Mike Johnson, covering the relationship of metaphysics to qualia/consciousness/hedonic valence, and defining their terms, whether panpsychism matters, increasing sensitivity to bliss, valence variance, Effective Altruism, cause prioritization, and the importance of consciousness/valence research . Andrés Gómez Emilsson interviews…

Towards the Abolition of Suffering Through Science
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Towards the Abolition of Suffering Through Science

An online panel focusing on reducing suffering & paradise engineering through the lens of science. Panelists: Andrés Gómez Emilsson, David Pearce, Brian Tomasik and Mike Johnson Note, consider skipping to to 10:19 to bypass some audio problems in the beginning!! Topics Andrés Gómez Emilsson: Qualia computing (how to use consciousness for information processing, and why…

The Point of View of the Universe – Peter Singer
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The Point of View of the Universe – Peter Singer

Peter Singer discusses the new book ‘The Point Of View Of The Universe – Sidgwick & Contemporary Ethics’ (By Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer) He also discusses his reasons for changing his mind about preference utilitarianism.   Buy the book here: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/97… Bart Schultz’s (University of Chicago) Review of the book: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/49215-he-poin… “Restoring Sidgwick…

Suffering, and Progress in Ethics – Peter Singer
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Suffering, and Progress in Ethics – Peter Singer

Suffering is generally bad – Peter Singer (who is a Hedonistic Utilitarian), and most Effective Altruists would agree with this. Though in addressing the need for suffering today Peter acknowledges that, as we are presently constituted, suffering is useful as a warning sign (e.g. against further injury). But what about the future? What if we…

Peter Singer & David Pearce on Utilitarianism, Bliss & Suffering
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Peter Singer & David Pearce on Utilitarianism, Bliss & Suffering

Moral philosophers Peter Singer & David Pearce discuss some of the long term issues with various forms of utilitarianism, the future of predation and utilitronium shockwaves. Topics Covered – long term impacts of various forms of utilitarianism – Consciousness – Artificial Intelligence – Reducing suffering in the long run and in the short term –…

The Knowledge Argument Applied to Ethics
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The Knowledge Argument Applied to Ethics

A group of interested AI enthusiasts have been discussing Engineering Machine Consciousness in Melbourne for over a decade. In a recent interview with Jamais Cascio on Engineering Happy People & Global Catastrophic Risks, we discussed the benefits of amplifying empathy without the nasty side effects (possibly through cultural progress or technological intervention – a form…

The Life You Can Save – Interview with Peter Singer by Adam Ford
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The Life You Can Save – Interview with Peter Singer by Adam Ford

Transcript of interview with Peter Singer on ‘The Life You Can Save‘: I’ve been writing & thinking about the question of global poverty and what affluent people ought to do about it for more than four years now. The first article I published on that ‘Famine Affluence & Morality’ came out in 1972. But I’d…