Talking with David Pearce on Twitter

This is a collection of twitter discussions with David Pearce. He is a hedonic utilitarian, essentially, and he takes that position to an extreme conclusion: that life should be re-engineered to eliminate suffering, so that behavior is driven by “gradients of bliss”.

We have debated various issues on Twitter. The threads included here mostly involve questions of morality and/or individual purpose. Some involve his belief that altruistic morality is implied by scientific rationalism.

As you can see, he tends to abort the discussion when he reaches the limits of his own thought. If I question one of his core assumptions, or point out a fallacy in his thought, he terminates the discussion. This is pretty typical. However, he is willing to have discussions with people that he doesn’t agree with, so he is more open to rational discourse than most people on Twitter.

List of threads:

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Thread

David Pearce (replying to Elon Musk)

Let’s aspire to impartial benevolence towards all sentient beings.

If God exists, S/He won’t play favorites.

Blithering Genius

God doesn’t exist. The actual creator, evolution, does play favorites.

Why should we, as reproducing machines, aspire to impartial benevolence?

Why should we aspire to a godhood that doesn’t exist?

David Pearce

Do you aspire to overcome hallucinations and radically distorted misperceptions?

Blithering Genius

That’s an odd question.

If I came to believe, via cognition, that certain perceptions were misleading, I would rely on cognition to make certain judgments. But we’re always stuck in subjectivity.

You are implying that impartial benevolence is the correct view, and that the individual selfish perspective is wrong. But this is just an assumption and/or an irrational leap. You didn’t reason your way to it.

The notion of a benevolent God is a fiction. Adopting this imaginary perspective, even as an atheist, is also a fiction.

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Thread

David Pearce (replying to Elon Musk)

Hedonic wealth is what matters.

Humans today are no better off than our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

In theory, we could all become hedonic trillionaires — but only if we embrace genome reform, recalibrate the hedonic treadmill, and mass-manufacture the substrates of value.

Blithering Genius

“Hedonic wealth” is a misleading metaphor.

Qualia aren’t a substance, like gold, that accumulates somewhere. Pain and pleasure are transient qualities of experience, caused by changing motivational states.

David Pearce

But pain and pleasure mediate (dis)value. And by genetically creating nervous systems with an immense abundance of the substrates of bliss, we can create immense value too.

Blithering Genius

What do you mean by “mediate (dis)value”? Don’t you believe that pain and pleasure are positive and negative value?

Value isn’t a substance. It’s a judgment. Brains generate value judgments to direct action.

David Pearce

Yes. We can create astronomical value for all by tweaking our genetic source code in favour of life based on gradients of (superhuman) bliss.

By contrast, traditional economic mechanisms of value-creation leave the negative feedback mechanisms of the hedonic treadmill unchanged.

Blithering Genius

You didn’t answer the question. Do you believe that pain and pleasure are value, or mediate value?

These are different things.

We can’t “create value” because it’s just a judgment in a brain. You are assuming that value is objective, like a substance.

David Pearce

Evolution via natural selection has “encephalised” our emotions in fitness-enhancing ways. The (dis)valuable aspect of complex cognitive and perceptual states is meditated by their hedonic tone. But yes, I’d say that the (dis)value of pure pain and pure pleasure is (self-intimating).

You may not find the hedonic wealth creation metaphor illuminating.

Fair enough.

Blithering Genius

Yes, emotions are part of the brain and they evolved.

The (dis)valuable aspect of complex cognitive and perceptual states is meditated by their hedonic tone.

I don’t know what that means.

Setting that aside, you believe that pain is disvalue and pleasure is value, and that this is self-intimating (self-evident).

It is not self-evident. It is an assumption.

Pain and pleasure are not a substance. There is no “hedonium”. They are qualia. As such, they are transient and subjective.

Value is a kind of judgment, or an aspect of our models. It does not represent reality. It is used to direct action.

You might judge pain to be bad and pleasure to be good (as part of a philosophical theory). But this is either an assumption or (if explicit) an axiom.

David Pearce

The normative aspect of, e.g. raw agony is built into its very nature. Its disvaluable nature is not an open question.

“Ah,” says the sceptic. It “might be nececesarily disvaluable to you. But not to me!”

Such scepticism reflects the epistemological limitations of the sceptic.

Blithering Genius

It seems self-evident to you because you haven’t thought about it. Your philosophical position is based on this unexamined assumption.

Obviously, pain and pleasure are normative in a way. They are qualia generated by the motivational system of the brain. These feelings are certainly related to our subjective normativity.

It does not follow that they are disvalue and value.

Nothing is disvalue/value. They aren’t things. They are judgments, or (equivalently) (dis)value is a property of our mental models.

Because it is difficult to think about subjectivity and the brain/mind, we tend to use metaphors, such as thinking of (dis)value as a substance, and also as something that exists outside ourselves, or independent of ourselves. But that is misleading.

When you experience pain, you just experiencing pain, not disvalue.

If you judge it to be bad (for you) to put your hand on a hot stove, you are experiencing/creating a value judgment. That judgment is not pain.

There is no logical relationship between hedonic qualia and value judgments. One does not follow logically from the other.

David Pearce

I may be radically in error.

But I promise not because I haven’t thought about it:

https://hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#metaethics

Blithering Genius

The first sentence admits that you don’t understand it:

“For reasons we don’t understand, the pain-pleasure axis discloses the world’s inbuilt metric of (dis)value.”

It is also radically in error. The world has no inbuilt metric of (dis)value. Brains do.

Wunsen

You’re realist about qualia, right?

Blithering Genius

If “qualia realist” means someone who doesn’t understand the subject | object distinction, then no.

David Pearce

Offloading cognition to AI will soon seem as natural as offloading math to calculators. The difference is that unlike calculators, digital zombies have hardwired moral and cognitive blindspots.

Blithering Genius

It’s a different topic, but offloading cognition isn’t the same as offloading calculation. Calculation isn’t something that human brains can naturally do. We have always relied on technology to do it, from beans in gourds to silicon chips. But cognition and its substrate…

David Pearce

Oh, I agree. There are disanalogies with calculators too. And digital zombies will always have ethical and cognitive blindspots. But on the great majority of topics, generative AI now outperforms us.

It makes sense to act accordingly.

Blithering Genius

I’m not quite ready to hand-off my cognition to AI. :)

AI has the same biases and blindspots as people, because it is trained on human language data.

Of course, it doesn’t induce knowledge from human sensory modalities. It knows that “water” is “wet”, but it doesn’t know the feeling of water on its hand, because it doesn’t have a hand. But when it generates text, the text will reflect the underlying semantic relationships that we learn from embodied experience.

The biggest human blindspot is the self, and the distinction between subjective and objective.

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Thread

David Pearce (responding to Elon Musk)

“a propaganda operation”?

For evolutionary reasons, a predisposition to racism and tribalism is real. Post-Twitter X is run by a white suprematist with a political far-right ethno-nationalist agenda of “Remigration”, i.e. ethnic cleansing.

We are being manipulated.

Blithering Genius

If racism and tribalism are natural (as you say), then it is bad for white people to import people of other races and cultures, who will be racist/tribal against them. Diversity makes society weaker, not stronger. Mass immigration is destructive, not beneficial.

David Pearce

A predisposition to egotism is natural. This doesn’t mean we should surrender to it. Let’s develop an inclusive sense of “us” that embraces all sentience and act accordingly.

Blithering Genius

I don’t know what you mean by “egotism”, but selfishness is natural and inescapable. Deviations from reproductive selfishness are eliminated by natural selection.

Regardless, mass immigration into the West isn’t going to create the utopia you imagine.

David Pearce

For evolutionary reasons, the world-simulation I run is centred on one all-important protagonist. The hardwired egocentric illusion is very fitness-enhancing. But insofar as one is a scientific rationalist, one knows it’s a lie — and likewise the innate superiority of “my” tribe.

Blithering Genius

There is no egocentric illusion. You are you. That’s not an illusion or error of perspective. It is perspective.

Again, there is no God’s eye view, and such a view would not be the correct one, it would just be another view.

There’s no lie involved in judging things from your perspective. It would be a lie (self-deception) to pretend that you are making judgments from some other perspective.

Pretending that you have a God’s eye perspective inside you is a lie. The lie is made more absurd by pretending that God shares your particular moral fashions.

As for tribalism, that is a separate issue. “Tribalism” is just that we evolved to live in small groups, which meshed with our emotions in a certain way. Modern society does not, hence the tendency to form social identities around other things (ideology, religion, race, etc.).

E.g. leftists organize tribally around the religion of wokism, just like Muslims organize around their religion, and blacks in the US organize around their race and grievance myths, etc.

Since this tendency is natural, importing masses of people from other “tribes” is destructive to a society and its original members.

This is a fairly obvious point, and an implication of what you have said, but your tribal affiliation (wokism/leftism) requires you to deny it (or ignore it).

Blithering Genius

Is it not profoundly egotistical to believe that you have adopted the God’s eye view, while everyone else is less godly?

Wunsen

Beautifully put

David Pearce

That’s a little uncharitable!

I was simply expounding — unoriginally — the perspective of modern science.

Blithering Genius

You are claiming to be less egotistical than the overwhelming majority of people, right?

Science doesn’t tell us that we should make value judgments from an imaginary God’s eye view. No scientific theory implies your moral theory.

David Pearce

The validity of the scientific “view from nowhere” is not a function of the arrogance or humility of its proponents.

Blithering Genius

There is no “view from nowhere”. Science involves a detached perspective (e.g. imagining looking “down” at the solar system). But it’s always a human perspective. E.g. the scientific perspective is not omniscient, as the imaginary God’s eye perspective would be.

Regardless, your moral theory is not “scientific rationalism”. No scientific theory implies an “inclusive sense of ‘us’ that embraces all sentience”. Science is about understanding reality, not values or identity.

Wunsen

Didn’t want this thread to end, please continue guys.

View from nowhere is a philosophical concept.

Isn’t this view from nowhere theory laden?

Blithering Genius

Unfortunately, the discussion always ends just when it is getting interesting.

David Pearce

For evolutionary reasons, we’re genetically predisposed to think of ourselves, our family, our tribe, our species (etc) as special - morally, intellectually, spiritually (etc). superior. Evolutionary psychology helps explain these biases- and our reluctance to overcome them.

Blithering Genius

I think your understanding of evolution and its relation to society is somewhat flawed, but that’s not super relevant here.

We are selfish by nature, and we align ourselves with some and in opposition to others. I think we can agree on that.

This is not a “bias” that has been added to some otherwise correct view. It is an intrinsic property of subjectivity, and of value judgments. They involve a perspective.

You think it is a bias because you presuppose universal altruism as a moral theory. Then you interpret the natural and inevitable selfishness of people as an error, a “bias” that has been added to the correct view, and must be removed.

But morality is the error, or the big lie. It is the pretense that we aren’t selfish. That’s why it is always hypocritical. Yes, people treat dogs better than pigs, and friends better than enemies, etc. There is nothing false or absurd in treating one entity better than another. The absurdity is pretending that one entity is cosmically good, and thus worthy of kindness, while another entity is cosmically bad, and thus worthy of cruelty.

Morality is the big lie that there is a cosmic value axis, and that we are somehow compelled to align ourselves with it. And yet, this “cosmic” axis always ends up being aligned with the people who imagine it.

There is no cosmic good or bad. Whenever you try to justify your belief in objective value, you always appeal to something subjective, such as the experience of pain and pleasure.

David Pearce

OK, I’m mystified why you’re reproaching me for subscribing to the pain-pleasure axis as the world’s sovereign axis of (dis)value. If value amounts to no more than e.g. supporting your favourite football team, is your objection any more substantive? I just support another team?

Blithering Genius

I’m not reproaching you. I’m explaining that you’re wrong.

Do you think all communication is moralizing?

My belief is true. Yours is false. That’s the difference. My theory of the human condition is better than yours, not in a moral sense, but in that it is logically consistent, has explanatory power, and does not rely on unexamined assumptions. These are norms, but not moral norms.

Of course, I make truth judgments from my perspective, and you have to make them from your perspective. Truth is subjective in that way. All judgments are mind-dependent.

Value judgments are also subjective in another way: they are subject-relative. Or at least, that’s the case for personal value judgments, such as “It would be bad (for me) if my house burned down”.

There can be collective value judgments, such as “Mass immigration is bad (for us)”. These are relative to a collective (an us). Collective value emerges from individual values by social dynamics. It is imposed on individuals by social power, not by reason alone.

There is no cosmic value. Morality (as a belief) involves the delusion that there is cosmic good and bad. This error is analogous to thinking that there is a cosmic up and down, because up and down are always present in our experience. Because we live in a society, collective values are always present. So, people project these values onto the universe.

Thus, a society will view itself as cosmically good, and its enemies as cosmically evil. It’s the same with religion: our religion is good, theirs is demon-worship, we are the chosen people, God gave us this land, God gave us dominion over the animals, etc, etc.

You have correctly noticed the absurdity of the universe being biased toward one tribe versus another, or humanity versus other creatures. But you have not noticed the absurdity of the universe having values at all.

You have tried to reason your way to an “unbiased” morality, but your reasoning is based on leaps of logic and hidden assumptions. E.g. you leap from “My pain is normative to me” to “Pain is objectively bad”.

All values are “biases”, in the sense that they select one outcome over another. How could reality have a bias for one real outcome versus another?

David Pearce

Our background assumptions differ. Yes, (dis)value is subjective. But this doesn’t make it any less objectively real. Compare e.g. phenomenal colour. Redness is an objective feature of reality even though it’s mind-dependent.

Blithering Genius

What are my background assumptions?

It seems that you are conceding that there is no cosmic value axis. In that case, you would have to significantly revise your worldview.

You’re wrong about color. Redness isn’t a property of reality. There are wavelengths of light, but those are not equivalent to phenomenal color. There is a causal relationship between wavelengths of light and color perception, but they are not equivalent, and the relationship between them is far from simple. (E.g. the “blue-gold dress” meme.)

Regardless, pain and pleasure (or bad and good value judgments, which are not the same as pain and pleasure) do not relate to reality in the way that phenomenal colors do.

I’ll give you a simple example.

Suppose that we both look at a red apple. We will both perceive it as “red”. It will cause phenomenal redness in both of our our brains. Of course, your “red” could be my “blue”, but we’ll call it “red”, and the same visual data will cause this phenomenal color.

Now, suppose that you burn your hand on the stove. That will cause phenomenal pain to you, but not to me.

In that example, it is objectively real that you burned your hand, you feel pain, and judge the outcome to be bad.

It does not follow that it is objectively painful or objectively bad.

You seem to be jumping from “pain is objectively real” to “pain is objectively bad”.

The same apple is red to both of us. The same burned hand is not painful to both of us. The same outcome is not necessarily bad to both of us.

Perception generates a model of reality. Thus, perception is mostly convergent for similar minds with similar information. Value judgment is not a model of reality, and thus it is not convergent.

Imagine a lion chasing an antelope. The lion judges it to be “good” to catch the antelope. The antelope judges it to be “bad” to be caught. They assign opposite values to the same outcome, because the goodness or badness is relative to the perspective.

If the lion caught the antelope, their brains would both model that outcome. They would implicitly agree that the lion has caught the antelope. They would not agree on the goodness or badness of the outcome. They would make essentially the same truth judgment, while making opposite value judgments.

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Thread

David Pearce (in response to a tweet about Ayn Rand)

For evolutionary reasons, we are predisposed to be selfish. Ayn Rand, author of “The Virtue of Selfishness” (1964) helps us rationalize egoism.

But intellectual and ethical maturity dictates an impartial concern for the welfare of all sentient beings.

Let’s act accordingly.

Blithering Genius

“But intellectual and ethical maturity dictates an impartial concern for the welfare of all sentient beings.”

No, that’s your religious belief. It has nothing to do with “intellectual and ethical maturity”, whatever that is. Your religion doesn’t pop out of pure reason.

David Pearce

I’d beg to differ. I seem to be the center of the universe, the hub of reality. But science says no here-and-nows are ontologically special. My egocentric world is just another throwaway simulation designed to maximise the inclusive fitness of my DNA.

Rationality dictates EA.

Blithering Genius

No, it doesn’t. You are begging the question.

Yes, I am not objectively (ontologically) special, in any reasonable model of the self and the world. I understand that there are other perspectives.

But I am subjectively special to myself. Otherwise, “selfish” would be a meaningless concept. I do not see the world from a universal perspective. I see it from my perspective, as an individual. I am me, not someone else, and not everyone.

“I am not objectively special” does not imply “I should be impartial from my subjective perspective”.

You simply presuppose that we ought to be altruistic, and then believe that you have somehow derived “I ought to be altruistic” from “I am not special”.

You are a reproducing machine. Your form was selected to reproduce. Your “egocentric world” is not a simulation. It is that you are you — you view the world from a perspective.

Value exists within that perspective. It does not exist objectively. Each perspective has its own value dimension, and there is no cosmic value dimension.

David Pearce

My agony and despair have a built-in normative aspect. Their badness is self-intimating. And if I fail to recognize the disvalue of the suffering of other sentient beings, this reflects my epistemological limitations - it doesn’t make the badness of their suffering any less real.

Blithering Genius

First, let’s set aside whether pain and pleasure are equivalent to disvalue and value (which we’ve debated before). I’ll accept that for the sake of argument.

You only experience your pain and pleasure, not anyone else’s.

So, if their badness and goodness are “self-intimating” to you, then you only have evidence that your own pain and pleasure are bad and good from your perspective. You have no evidence that anyone else’s pain and pleasure have disvalue or value from your perspective. If anything, you have the opposite evidence. And you have no evidence that pain and pleasure have objective badness or goodness, or that there is objective value. You only have evidence of your own subjective feelings and valuations, which clearly depend on your perspective.

This has nothing to do with epistemological limitations. You are confusing objectivity and subjectivity. You are assuming that value and disvalue are objective.

So, even if I accept your equation of pain and pleasure with disvalue and value (based on “self-intimation”), it doesn’t follow that the suffering of other sentient beings has disvalue to me, or that it has objective disvalue. That is your irrational leap.

David Pearce

Alas “subjective” is a term with two distinct senses, though sometimes they overlap. One alludes to personal taste. I prefer my coffee black and uppers to downers. But tastes differ. However, it is objectively the case that some experiences are disvaluable. It’s not an “open question” whether agony is disvaluable to its victim.

Blithering Genius

In this context, it means “mind-dependent” or “perspective-dependent”. Clearly, qualia are subjective in this sense. Thus, if you equate value and qualia (which you do), then value is clearly subjective.

It is an open question whether agony is disvaluable to the experiencer, but that is not the question under debate, because I granted you that premise for the sake of argument.

If X’s agony is bad for X, it does not follow that X’s agony is bad for Y, where X and Y are different subjects.

You are making that illogical leap.

As always, I’d be happy to discuss this in voice, so that it’s easier to disambiguate terms, etc.

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Thread

Benevolence

Radical compassion

David Pearce

Yes. All sentient beings have rights.

Blithering Genius

Rights are social constructs, so animals only have rights if a society constructs those rights, and the rights only exist for that society, not independent of it.

Do you believe in the existence of society-independent rights?

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Thread

David Pearce

Shouldn’t we all aspire to be effective altruists?

What is the alternative?

Blithering Genius

Not aspiring to be an effective altruist. :)

David Pearce

So should one aspire to be ineffective?

Or not aspire to be at kind of altruist at all?

Blithering Genius

Well, it was a joke. The obvious alternative to P is not P.

But yeah, I don’t aspire to be altruistic. Why would I?

David Pearce

Well, enduring metaphysical egos are a convenient fiction. Do you care about the interests of your namesakes next year? Next month? Next week? Should you behave altruistically towards them - or blow every cent you have on a hedonistic splurge? Now generalize to your non-namesakes.

Blithering Genius

What is a “metaphysical ego”? The self?

I believe that organisms exist. I believe that I am a certain organism. I don’t think that’s a fiction.

If you adopt altruism as a principle of action, you do so on behalf of your future namesakes, right? If you didn’t, then adopting a principle would be meaningless, because the next instant a different “you” might adopt a different principle for an instant, etc. Clearly, you presuppose selfhood and its continuity over time.

And if you say that “we should aspire to be altruistic”, again, you’re presupposing the self, and many individual selves, who act at least somewhat independently.

The concept of altruism involves some notion of the self, otherwise it would be meaningless. It means you (the self) acting to benefit others (other selves).

The concepts of harm, benefit and action all presuppose the self. If I rejected the self, I could make no choices of action, and there could be no notion of benefit or harm, because there would be no I to act, and no me to receive benefit or harm.

So, I don’t accept the premise that there is no self, and if I did, it wouldn’t imply altruism.

David Pearce

If there is such a thing as an enduring self, then yes, my example falls flat. But if they are fiction, then the example of super-egoistic, sociopathic here-and-nows who don’t care about anything but themselves makes my point. Wouldn’t you urge them to be less short-sighted?

Blithering Genius

Your example presupposes an enduring self.

This discussion presupposes an enduring self.

You’re in a state of performative contradiction.

In what sense is the self a fiction?

Selfishness has nothing to do with “sociopathy” (a silly term) or short-sightedness.

David Pearce

For more on the self, see e.g. https://hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#parfit

You are correct about the tension between the two claims.

Blithering Genius

There are different notions of the self.

Regardless, your statements presuppose an enduring self.

Again, both “selfishness” and “altruism” would be meaningless without the concept “self”.

For this discussion, we can define the self as whatever you are urging to be altruistic.

David Pearce

I find myself the centre of the universe, the hub of reality, which follows me around. Other players just have walk-on parts. Should I (1) accept appearances at face value? (2) recognise evolution is playing a genetically adaptive trick that will maximise inclusive fitness?

Blithering Genius

You don’t find yourself the objective center of the universe. You are a perspective on (and within) the universe: a mind, or in other words, a self.

To yourself, you are the most important thing in the universe, because importance is part of that perspective. You make value judgments from that perspective, because value is built into that perspective. These dimensions are not “biased” away from objective dimensions of importance and value. They are subject-relative.

There is no trick being played by evolution. Subjectivity is not a trick. It is simply the condition of being a self/mind.

Although you claim “scientific rationalism” for your view, you have not adopted a sufficiently detached perspective on the human condition.

It is analogous to the child who, when told the Earth is a ball in space, asks “What holds it up?”. She has mentally adopted a detached perspective, from which she can imagine the Earth as a whole, but she has imported up and down (aspects of her ordinary perspective) into her detached perspective.

You have imported aspects of subjectivity (good and bad) into a detached view of the human condition. You assume that they exist objectively, and that their subjective counterparts are flawed versions of the “real” things.

There is no cosmic up-down dimension, and there is no cosmic good-bad dimension.

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David Pearce

One measure of general intelligence is perspective-taking prowess.

Superior mind-reading skills helped drive the evolution of distinctively human intelligence.

Aiming for a cruelty-free vegan diet is one facet of the aspiration to full-spectrum (super)intelligence.

Blithering Genius

Mind-reading can be very adaptive. But if it somehow leads to altruism, it is maladaptive.

Adaptive: the fox adopts the perspective of the rabbit to catch the rabbit.

Maladaptive: the fox confuses the rabbit’s perspective with his own, and chooses not to eat the rabbit.

David Pearce

Sure. We are Machiavellian apes.

So are the smartest humans always full of fiendish self-serving cunning?

Well, some are so inclined.

But “the best way to fake sincerity is to be sincere”. Again for evolutionary reasons, other humans try to be moral agents and do the right thing.

Blithering Genius

Whether a person is more or less smart doesn’t change the intrinsic selfishness of human nature. All organisms are “fiendish”, in the sense of being reproducing machines, not altruism machines. Foxes that eat rabbits beget more foxes that eat rabbits.

Morality is a pretense that people engage in. It’s always dishonest and selective. Do people try to do the “right thing”? What is the “right thing”? Biologically, the right thing is to reproduce.

David Pearce

Have you never wrestled with a moral dilemma?

Blithering Genius

I haven’t believed in morality since I was about 9 years old.

So, I don’t view any choice as a “moral” dilemma.

David Pearce

Fair enough.

But other people who take ethics seriously do struggle with moral dilemmas.

Blithering Genius

Perhaps, like people who take Christianity seriously believe that they are talking to God when they pray, etc.

Regardless, they will be hypocritical about it, because it involves self-deception.

What is this “struggle”? What would you be struggling with?

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