David Pearce just published his latest essay: "A welfare state for elephants". It is an important contribution to the literature on wild animal suffering. Below are some relevant excerpts:

Within the next few decades, the exponential growth of computer power will ensure every cubic metre of the planet is computationally accessible to remote monitoring, micro-management and control. Harnessed to biotechnology and nanorobotics, this growth in surveillance and control capabilities presents huge risks and huge opportunities. In a dystopian vein, such technologies lend themselves to advanced war-fighting. Or they could be used to sustain an Orwellian dictatorship. Alternatively, such technologies could deliver compassionate stewardship of the entire living world.

Launching our compassionate stewardship of the living world with free-living elephants might seem an arbitrary choice of species. Why choose elephants for a feasibility study? But from an ethical point of view, elephants are a prime candidate. With a brain weighing just over five kilograms, the African elephant has the largest mind/brain of any terrestrial vertebrate. On some fairly modest assumptions, elephants are among the most sentient nonhuman animals. All the technologies necessary for a comprehensive elephant healthcare program are available, in principle if not yet in practice. Nothing speculative, transhumanist, or even especially futuristic in the way of high technology need be invoked to lay out the foundations of an elephant welfare state, although software tools for efficient remote monitoring and tele-diagnostics need further development. Admittedly, free-living elephants offer a comparatively "easy" example of compassionate species care. Elephants are large, long-lived, "charismatic" and herbivorous. No seemingly irreconcilable interests are involved (e.g. lions versus zebras) in safeguarding their interests because mature elephants typically have no natural predators besides Homo sapiens. The limiting factor on elephant population size in the absence of human predation or artificial fertility regulation is inadequate nutrition.

What would be the financial cost, at contemporary prices, of cradle-to-the-grave healthcare and welfare provision for the entire population of free-living African elephants? The elephant population of the African continent currently stands at around 500,000. Elephant taxonomy is currently in flux; but the half-million figure includes what is commonly known as the savannah (or bush) elephant, Loxodonta africana, and the forest species of elephant, Loxodonta cyclotis. An annual cost of somewhere between two and three billion dollars seems plausible. Most of the same challenges and opportunities arise for securing the well-being of the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus. An estimated 40,000 Asian elephants are left in the wild. So the type of program sketched out below could be implemented at a fraction of the price.

Most human healthcare expenses are incurred in the last six months, and often the last six weeks, of life. In the case of elephants, we simply don't know the upper bounds to life-expectancy, given adequate late-life dentition. Assuming effective orthodontic care, this particular challenge, i.e. managing the age-related infirmities of free-living geriatric elephants, will (presumably) be decades away from the launch of an orthodontic healthcare service. After being GPS chipped, vaccinated and (where necessary) provided with immunocontraception, most free-living elephants could be remotely monitored but otherwise largely left in peace - apart from in years of drought and famine, when costly crisis-interventions will be necessary. To flourish, free-living elephants need a habitat that offers fresh water, plentiful vegetation for grazing and browsing; and some available shade. A mature African bush elephant typically ingests over 200 kilograms of vegetable matter daily. When needed, the cost of providing additional vaccinations, vitamin and mineral supplements, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, parasiticides, sedatives and anaesthetics, antibiotics, antifungals and antivirals, disinfectants and cleaning agents will not be negligible; but the relevant agents are almost all off-patent. Training and labour costs of ancillary support staff in sub-Saharan Africa are comparatively low; and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Close, politically sensitive collaboration with the local human populations will be vital to the long-term success of the project. Elephant healthcare work could provide valuable employment. Some forms of expertise could be delivered only by specialist veterinarians. An air-ambulance service would incur significant transport costs.

For now, financial projections of comprehensive free-living elephant care will depend on back-of-an-envelope calculations rather than a rigorous methodology. But a $2.5 billion annual price-tag of full healthcare and welfare provision for the entire population of free-living African elephants may turn out to be pessimistic. Financial planners will just need to bear in mind the potential for cost overruns and unexpected expenses that tend to plague any new enterprise. The likely extent of corruption, maladministration and the growth of a welfare bureaucracy in a elephant healthcare program are hard to quantify. In practice, the great majority of Africa's 500,000 elephant population would need far less than the annual $5000 per head this figure allows. Chipping, individual genome sequencing, vaccinations, GPS tracking and (when appropriate) immunocontraception would cost at most a few hundred dollars. The chipping, individual genome sequencing and vaccinations would typically be a one-off expense rather than a regular part of the annual budget. What's feasible at modest expense for e.g. all UK "domestic" dogs is no less feasible for free-living elephants. Chipping could range from simple tagging to more complex remote-monitoring of health status (e.g. cortisol monitoring. Elevated cortisol levels are suggestive of high stress and consequent need for investigation and possible compassionate intervention.)

What would be the timescale for complete coverage of Africa's elephant population? Perhaps one or two years - but only if an international consensus existed.

If we can underwrite the well-being of elephants, should we aim, ultimately, to extend our compassionate stewardship to the rest of the living world?

I love the idea primarily because it would set a precedent for benevolent human intervention in wild animals, with a candidate species that children love and that has an amicable reputation.

I still think wildlife micromanagement (as compared to replacement) is not optimal as a purely utilitarian solution to wild animal suffering, or an optimal use of resources. Elephants are huge compared to their brain size, which means that they aren't optimal for efficiently generating pleasure. Furthermore, unlike compassionate intelligent humans, they have no skills that could help us prevent more suffering and create more happiness. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, we may want to prevent their extinction, but not necessarily have huge numbers living in the wild.

It also seems unrealistic to actually get someone to raise the required 2-3 billion dollars in a world in which human children still starve, unless some very rich people choose to implement it. I also wonder to what degrees animal welfare interventions are already a part of existing wildlife sanctuaries, national parks and so on. Maybe a local pilot project could be started somewhere, with media coverage that makes the idea salient to the public.

Your comment is a perfect summary of my own reservations about the proposal, Hedonic Treader!

Pablo, Hedonic Treader, many thanks.
On the face of it, drawing up a blueprint that will almost certainly not be implemented is a waste of time.
But many people who stumble across the idea of "policing Nature", let alone extending the principles of the welfare state to other species, still seem to assume it's technically infeasible. So costed proposals that shift the debate from "But It Can't Be Done" to "But It's Not Sensibly Affordable" would be progress - not least because such a response recognises that a reduction of free-living animal suffering is in principle ethically desirable.

If African humans enjoyed American/European standards of living, then I think there would be a compelling case for adopting a free-living elephant care program now.
Clearly this isn't the case. I'm not sure what would be a politically acceptable price-tag for at least a minimal safety-net.

From an ethical utilitarian perspective, elephant and human brains alike are clearly sub-optimal configurations of matter and energy. I ignored the issue above because "politics is the art of the possible". Outlining my views on why posthuman superintelligence should launch a utilitronium shockwave might detract from the credibility of the proposal.

The question of "potential" for doing good [or harm] does indeed complicate any issue of resource-allocation - not just between species, but also between humans.
My worry about elephants (and whales) is that their physically larger "pain centres" [and reward circuitry] translates into a greater intensity of experience - and distress. Such crude "size-ism" may prove naive; but in our current state of ignorance, the risk needs to be taken seriously.

davidpearce wrote:So costed proposals that shift the debate from "But It Can't Be Done" to "But It's Not Sensibly Affordable" would be progress - not least because such a response recognises that a reduction of free-living animal suffering is in principle ethically desirable.

Yes, indeed. It's great to have the essay online.

If African humans enjoyed American/European standards of living, then I think there would be a compelling case for adopting a free-living elephant care program now.

I'm not sure. Are there attempts to create any welfare-state-like interventions in nature in Europe or the US? When the topic of wildlife is raised, it is usually within the context of conservation, usually with concessions to human economic land use interests. I do find discussions about feeding deer and birds during winter, but I'm not sure how systematic this is.

From an ethical utilitarian perspective, elephant and human brains alike are clearly sub-optimal configurations of matter and energy. I ignored the issue above because "politics is the art of the possible". Outlining my views on why posthuman superintelligence should launch a utilitronium shockwave might detract from the credibility of the proposal.

Yes... it also tends to alienate people if they are told we shouldn't waste energy on their continued existence in a better future. Due to the speculative nature of the feasibility of such a project and the inferential distances and philosophical assumptions involved in its desirability, adding it to any other earthly discussion with non-utilitarians is usually not advisable. I didn't mean to suggest that it is.

The question of "potential" for doing good [or harm] does indeed complicate any issue of resource-allocation - not just between species, but also between humans.

Yes. If all humans were perfect - or at least relatively robust - utilitarians, most resources should be invested into empowering humans intellectually. Of course, they're mostly not. I'm still struggling with how much overlap there is between utiltiarianism and general human psychology, i.e. if we should see general human motivations more of a threat or a resource.

My worry about elephants (and whales) is that their physically larger "pain centres" [and reward circuitry] translates into a greater intensity of experience - and distress. Such crude "size-ism" may prove naive; but in our current state of ignorance, the risk needs to be taken seriously.

If affect intensity evolved to modulate animal behavior (both immediate and in the long run though learning), then wouldn't we assume it to correlate with adaptiveness of behavior modulation more than with brain size? If there is a difference, it seems big animals are more stoic than small ones because their movement has higher energy costs. I think assumptions of affect intensity should lead to predictable differences in behavior, which can be observed, hence it's a testable hypothesis. (But this comes from a place of only little ethological expertise.)

Hedonic Treader, that's an interesting evolutionary suggestion about large-animal stoicism. I hope you are right. But would we expect modern humans to be more stoical than Floresian hobbits? Gorillas than bonobos?

I can certainly understand your reservations about implementing a free-living elephant care program now. But technically, at least, the pieces of the welfare jigsaw are mostly to hand. Fertility-control in the form immunocontraception is already practised in Kruger National Park in preference to "culling". Kenya has an elephant orphanage. Electronic tagging of elephants is sometimes practised for research proposes. A Thai veterinarian has successfully fitted a very old female elephant who couldn't feed with custom-made dentures. However, just as in the era of the "night-watchman state" in 19th century England, these are scattered, uncoordinated initiatives by private individuals or charitable organizations. I think we need a costed, comprehensive plan.

I agree with you on the importance of intellectual empowerment. Integral to full-spectrum (super-)intelligence is enhancing our feeble human capacity for perspective-taking, co-operative problem-solving and empathetic understanding. Likewise enhancing our ability to engage, when appropriate, in impartial, rule-bound behaviour - and to overcome arbitrary ethnocentric and anthropocentric bias. So a project systematically to care for free-living members of another species accords well, I think, with amplifying human cognition.

Utilitarianism? A combination of basic benevolence together with a rule-following, systematizing cognitive style lends itself to adopting a utilitarian ethic. So in that sense, utilitarianism and general human psychology needn't be radically divergent. Yet in the interests of building a consensus for compassionate stewardship of the living world, it's presumably (sometimes) prudent to soft-pedal one's utilitarian ethics - and (where possible) highlight the consistency of a compassionate biology with other belief- and value-systems. I find even among avowed utilitarians, all but the most committed super-rationalists tend to balk when confronted with the policy implications that an applied utilitarian ethic entails.

davidpearce wrote:Hedonic Treader, that's an interesting evolutionary suggestion about large-animal stoicism. I hope you are right. But would we expect modern humans to be more stoical than Floresian hobbits? Gorillas than bonobos?

Good question. I would certainly not consider bonobos to be more stoical than gorillas. The hypothesis that brain size is correlated with affect intensity and its behavioral indicators seems implausible given my - admittedly very limited - state of ethological knowledge. It should certainly be testable.

A completely different question: I am currently trying to get an overview of the most efficient charities to address various utilitarian topics. Wild-animal suffering and factory farming have been discussed, but it seems that hedonic enhancement research - or any basic research on the path to hedonic enhancement - could also be a promising venue. By hedonic enhancement, I mostly mean a technological grasp on physical pain intensity and other forms of suffering, but also increases in non-addictive pleasure, formal scientific descriptions of the neurological correlates of affect and so on. In other words, any type of research that can make the Abolitionist Project or its plausible precursor stages more probable, or speed up progress to get there. Do you see any non-profit organization or research institution that could transform financial contributions to marginal increases of expected utility in that direction?

"We hope...the discoveries will unite pleasure and purpose, elevating everyday experiences to something truly satisfying, and perhaps even sublime."
http://?www.scientificamerican.com/?article.cfm?id=new-pleasure-cir?cuit-found-brain

From a technical perspective, I think deciphering the molecular signature of pure bliss in our cubic-centimetre-sized "hedonic hotspots" will be a huge breakthrough. What exactly is so special about the gene expression profile of neurons in the ventral pallidum and rostral shell of the nucleus accumbens?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/

However, I think the greatest source of severe, chronic and readily avoidable suffering in the world today is man-made: factory farming. One implication of an antispeciesist ethic is that factory farms should be outlawed and their surviving victims rehabilitated. Although I advocate global veganism, a transition to global invitrotarianism is probably more realistic - at least if we're to get factory farms and slaughterhouses closed down within decades rather than centuries.
So the organization I'd donate money to is:
http://www.new-harvest.org/
Or possibly:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57493 ... or-dinner/

davidpearce wrote:"We hope...the discoveries will unite pleasure and purpose, elevating everyday experiences to something truly satisfying, and perhaps even sublime."
http://?www.scientificamerican.com/?article.cfm?id=new-pleasure-cir?cuit-found-brain

From a technical perspective, I think deciphering the molecular signature of pure bliss in our cubic-centimetre-sized "hedonic hotspots" will be a huge breakthrough. What exactly is so special about the gene expression profile of neurons in the ventral pallidum and rostral shell of the nucleus accumbens?
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~berridge/

However, I think the greatest source of severe, chronic and readily avoidable suffering in the world today is man-made: factory farming. One implication of an antispeciesist ethic is that factory farms should be outlawed and their surviving victims rehabilitated. Although I advocate global veganism, a transition to global invitrotarianism is probably more realistic - at least if we're to get factory farms and slaughterhouses closed down within decades rather than centuries.
So the organization I'd donate money to is:
http://www.new-harvest.org/
Or possibly:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57493 ... or-dinner/

Yes, interesting. I knew about New Harvest and donated to it in the past. That said, I hope innovating towards better meat substitutes will be a viable for-profit investment soon. Thanks for the pointers!

davidpearce wrote:So the organization I'd donate money to is:
http://www.new-harvest.org/

I agree with this recommendation. I'm seriously considering donating to New Harvest in the coming months.

Incidentally, please note that NH works on advancing all types of meat substitutes, not just in vitro meat. So even if one is pessimistic about the prospects of lab-grown meat being produced on a mass scale within the next few decades, this organization might still be worth supporting due to its potential impact on the development of plant-based substitutes, such as Beyond Meat.

Is more information available about New Harvest to get a better look at donations? While IV meat and meat substitutes do seem like a good cause, the "Cause X is good, therefore Organization A in Cause X is good" is a fallacy. My point being, how do we know New Harvest is cost effective in the same way we have (very rough) estimates for Vegan Outreach?

peterhurford wrote:My point being, how do we know New Harvest is cost effective in the same way we have (very rough) estimates for Vegan Outreach?

Peter, that is a good point and I'm actually skeptical. I visit their website very frequently, but they update it only infrequently. As far as I can see, there is no public information on their total budget or expenditures, or how exactly those are being used. I wrote them an email with some questions in 2011 and received a quick response (see here and here). There was one study about the environmental impact of in-vitro meat and several symposia they (co-)funded. Beyond that, I actually don't know what exactly they are funding.

When a lot different charities perform similar or heavily overlapping roles, then the question of comparative cost-effectiveness should be extremely relevant to any rational donor. The role of New Harvest, however, has been unique - which narrows one's options.
[even so, I should have flagged that I haven't done a detailed study or anything of its workings or finances. I've just been bowled over by its success in getting favourable mainstream media coverage for what was until recently just sci-fi.]

davidpearce wrote:When a lot different charities perform similar or heavily overlapping roles, then the question of comparative cost-effectiveness should be extremely relevant to any rational donor. The role of New Harvest, however, has been unique - which narrows one's options.

I agree that the role of New Harvest has been unique. But again, "Cause X is excellent, therefore Organization A in Cause X must be excellent" is a fallacy. Just because New Harvest is doing seemingly awesome things (something I'll grant, but still want more evidence for) doesn't mean it is doing those things well.

I agree with the media coverage point, that was clearly helpful. What I don't have is a clear picture of how efficiently additional donations to New Harvest would actually cause speedups in the development of better meat substitutes for the consumer markets.

New Harvest is unusual in a number of other respects too.
First, its leading light (cf. http://jgmatheny.org/ )
is plugged right in to the heart of the global power matrix:
http://www.iarpa.gov/,
[no, alas IARPA aren't yet funding New Harvest, which would make things easier. I'd be tempted to make a pitch on the lines of how developing in vitro meat could play a vital strategic role in safeguarding America's food supplies.]

Secondly, I think one of the reasons behind the media success of New Harvest is the way they've underplayed the most compelling reason for developing cultured meat, namely humanity's atrocious treatment of nonhuman animals. [I'd just blurt out how I think posthumans will regard factory farming and slaughterhouses as a monstrous evil on a par with the (human) Holocaust or the Atlantic slave trade - which would be counterproductive.]

A number of animal advocates have in fact been critical of New Harvest's low-key approach, saying that in vitro meat is a distraction from the struggle against animal exploitation. But thanks to the broadly favourable media coverage, a perhaps surprising number of meat-eaters say that they would make the switch if / when cultured meat products come to market ("But I love the taste too much too give up eating meat", etc) IMO anything that directly or indirectly forces people to face up to the story behind what's on their dinner plates is good news. By saying they'd switch to cultured meat, consumers are implicitly recognising that there is a problem - and signalling a potentially huge market for cruelty-free invitrotarian products. One difficulty is that purely commercial investors typically don't have a time horizon of more than ten years or so. A well-funded research program running at breakneck pace might make this timescale feasible. Alas my best guess is that cultured meat products won't hit the supermarket shelves until the mid-to-late 2020s - when they will snowball.

The horrors of factory-harming might seem far removed from wild animal suffering. In one case there is human complicity, and in the other, we are blameless. But an implication of the infotech / biotech / nanotech revolution is that this distinction is shortly going to blur - and then disappear. Opting not to help a distressed elephant will be akin to not pulling toddler out of a shallow pond. Ethically, there's little difference between passively watching him drown and pushing him into the water yourself.

Peter, like you I hope in future we're going to have an amazing amount of fun. On the other hand, fun is only one kind of well-being. Will tomorrow's subjective well-being take the form of fun, spiritual ecstasies, orgasmic bliss, Mill's "higher pleasures", or [my best guess] modes of experience humans can't even conceptualise?

If I have a reservation about stressing a future of fun - and I think Eliezer does a fantastic job - it's that Eliezer himself is uncharacteristically ambivalent about phasing out all [involuntary] suffering, both in humans and nonhuman animals. I've never quite been able to tease out why. I hope in future SIAI will give the issue greater prominence. Researching pain, suffering and depression can itself be depressing, i.e. not fun at all. But this doesn't detract from the moral urgency of their abolition.

On New Harvest

New Harvest is just too much of an unknown quantity for me. Following GiveWell's approach, my focus is to identify their room for additional funding -- what would they do with the additional funds? How would additional funds accelerate their research time table?

Additionally, while they may have had some successes in the past, I would like to know how likely they are to be successful with the additional funds -- thus, going past the existence of room for more funding to some sort of understanding that such funding would translate into cost-effective success. Here, I'd be willing to accept anything from an academic literature review article summarizing many different randomly controlled trials (see Givewell on AMF) or something closer to a simple logical argument that can get me "here from there" (like how Alan at least lays out an explanation for how funding for Vegan Outreach can create more vegetarians).

Also, specifically for New Harvest, I'm interested in the article "Beyond Meat vs. New Harvest" from the Effective Animal Altruism website which argues it may be more effective to create more demand for New Harvest's results than to fund New Harvest directly...

~

On "Fun"

davidpearce wrote:Will tomorrow's subjective well-being take the form of fun, spiritual ecstasies, orgasmic bliss, Mill's "higher pleasures", or [my best guess] modes of experience humans can't even conceptualise?

I agree that it is exceedingly unlikely we currently are able to conceptualize the optimal mode of being for posthumans. The reason why I use "Fun" however, is that I think it effectively captures the need for an approach that doesn't locate well-being solely in mental states. While I think orgasmic bliss is definitely good every now and then, I'm wary of permanent wireheading (to the exclusion of all other activities) for reasons discussed starting here and starting here.

~

davidpearce wrote:Eliezer himself is uncharacteristically ambivalent about phasing out all [involuntary] suffering, both in humans and nonhuman animals.

Ambivalent in what way? Too unwilling to recommend phasing out all involuntary suffering, or too willing to do so?

Beyond Meat is a superb initiative. I don't know whether the Beyond Meat or New Harvest approach to replacing live animals will ultimately win out - or something else altogether [For example, mastery of both our reward circuitry and the molecular biology of gustatory experience may make future eating akin to feasting on the ambrosial food of the gods - even when you are simply eating a snackbar. Who knows.]
I'd stress again that I was only responding to Hedonic Treader's question, not making a fund-raising pitch.

Recalibrating the hedonic treadmill doesn't sound paricularly exciting. Reading papers that begin "The Catechol-O-Methyl Transferase Val158Met Polymorphism..." (cf. http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v33/n ... 1520a.html) probably won't set one's pulse racing. But I think there are powerful reasons to prioritise preimplantation genetic diagnosis for all our prospective children, followed by designer zygotes and autosomal gene therapy, to elevate default hedonic set-points world-wide. Not merely will subjective quality of life be hugely enriched. Recalibration is consistent not just with all flavours of utilitarian ethics, but also with deontological ethics, virtue ethics and much else besides. And of course you will be primed to have more Fun. By contrast, there will presumably be strong selection pressure against wireheading or its functional equivalents for the foreseeable future, and perhaps indefinitely.

Even so, shouldn't the classical utilitarian ultimately be aiming, not for life based on information-sensitive gradients of bliss, but to decommission the signalling role of the pleasure-pain axis altogether, i.e. pure utilitronium? Insofar as value can be naturalised, it's hard to argue against a universe with more subjectively hypervaluable states and in favour of a universe with fewer subjectively hypervaluable states. I'm happy to leave this dilemma to our distant descendants.

Perhaps Hedonic Treader - who knows Eliezer quite well(?) - could clarify Eliezer's position on the abolition of suffering. But IMO it would be excellent if the Singularity Institute could include in its statement of core principles an explicit commitment to phase out all [involuntary] suffering - and indeed all [involuntary] experience below hedonic zero - in human and non-human animals alike, and in any sentient beings we may create. The well-being of all sentience strikes me as the bedrock of any future civilisation - irrespective of our diverse "positive" visions of what such a civilisation entails.

davidpearce wrote:But I think there are powerful reasons to prioritise preimplantation genetic diagnosis for all our prospective children, followed by designer zygotes and autosomal gene therapy, to elevate default hedonic set-points world-wide.

The problem with PGD is that it can't actually be used to create designer babies - it can only be used to select from a given set of embryos who still carry a random distribution of their parents' genes. Another problem is that we need more knowledge about the genetic basis of suffering and pleasure and some account of side-effects. This may be relatively simple for single-point mutation diseases, but a lot more complex with relatively high-level traits such as happiness and peak pain intensity etc. Furthermore, PGD is much more costly and stressful than a normal conception, which is why people don't usually use it for gene selection unless it's really medically pressing. And then there's the political and public skepticism of anything related to eugenics. These points make an implementation of the current technology on all - or even a significant proportion - of our prospective children unrealistic. (Or maybe just not have children? A child not born is a child not suffering, and not building more torture chambers.)

Perhaps Hedonic Treader - who knows Eliezer quite well(?) - could clarify Eliezer's position on the abolition of suffering.

Not that well actually. I only know his position from the less wrong posts (the Fun sequence etc.) and comments and from some talks and discussion videos online (e.g. I think I remember a Google tech talk where he pointed out he considers hedonic wireheading (for himself) a dystopic outcome he would want Friendly AI to prevent or at least not enforce). He also features a quasi utilitarian faction (the "Superhappy People") in his short story Three Worlds Collide - aliens who use hedonic enhancement and who want to make it mandatory for other species, especially their children. The story does not indicate a clear moral stance on Eliezer's part, as far as I could see. I do think, however, that I remember some comments of his indicating that in a FAI-created utopia he envisions, at least direct infliction of suffering by some on others against their will would be ruled out and prevented by the system. But I no longer remember where I read that.

But IMO it would be excellent if the Singularity Institute could include in its statement of core principles an explicit commitment to phase out all [involuntary] suffering - and indeed all [involuntary] experience below hedonic zero - in human and non-human animals alike, and in any sentient beings we may create.

Yes, it would be nice to have that made more explicit.

Hedonic Treader, you are right about the limitations of PGD. These very limitations perhaps make it easier to sell as a "natural" procedure - for those who worry about such things - to responsible prospective parents. For we are simply choosing genetic variations that sexual reproduction has already thrown up "naturally". PGD is still horribly inefficient; hence the case for true "designer zygotes".

Yes, PGD is typically used in the West to diagnose potentially serious physical disorders. But already PGD is widely used in China and India for what is less obviously a serious medical condition, namely the risk of having a girl.

As you say, there is still the dreaded "E" word. But China, for instance, has a different historical memory from the West.

The issue of unanticipated side-effects from genetically planned parenthood is critical. However, every single child is a unique genetic and epigenetic experiment. [leaving aside monozygotic twins, who may still exhibit all sorts of epigenetic variations.] I don't think the risks or potential side-effects of pre-selecting benign alleles or allelic combinations will be worse than simply shaking the genetic dice as now - and the payoffs are potentially huge.

Variance in traits like intelligence is a function of hundreds of different alleles. Even our core emotions and pain-sensitivity may be modulated by dozens of alleles. So responsible world-wide use of PGD to ensure robust psychological superhealth might seem a futuristic fantasy. Sociologically, this may be so. Yet what's striking is how a handful of benign or malign alleles play a pivotal role in pain-sensitivity and normal hedonic tone. Pre-selecting benign variants of the SCN9A and COMT genes, for instance, would stack the odds in favour of our having happy, healthy, pain-free children - even if more ambitious interventions are decades away.

I'm sympathetic to antinatalism. The problem is that opting not to have kids just exerts selection pressure against a predisposition to be caring and res[ponsible, and in favour of the feckless, the reckless and religious fundamentalists who believe they have a duty to "go forth and multiply". IMO, this Argument From Selection Pressure is the decisive technical objection against David Benatar's compassionate plea for human extinction via voluntary childlessness. (cf. http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have ... 0199296421 ) If we want to get rid of suffering from the world, we can't just reproductively opt out. We need to ensure genetically that our children - and members of other species - are blessed with high pain thresholds and high hedonic set-points.

Many thanks for the Eliezer exegesis!

davidpearce wrote:The problem is that opting not to have kids just exerts selection pressure against a predisposition to be caring and res[ponsible, and in favour of the feckless, the reckless and religious fundamentalists who believe they have a duty to "go forth and multiply". IMO, this Argument From Selection Pressure is the decisive technical objection against David Benatar's compassionate plea for human extinction via voluntary childlessness.

Against the goal of extinction, yes. But not necessarily against the goal of reducing suffering on the margin. The idea behind the selection pressure argument seems to be that, if only we reproduce more, the feckless, reckless and mad people will reproduce less. But what would cause this to actually be true?

Do we hope our children's children will kill their children's children? If so, why not save two painful steps and kill them now, or just leave their children's children to kill each other for some minor disagreement over something vaguely important, which they undoubtedly will anyway?

Or do we hope that resource pressure from our children's consumption will reduce their children's available resources and make them starve off? This is only true if resources are limited in this way, and if our children won't innovate to compensate the increased demand, and if our children are the ones who win the resource competition, rather than starve to death themselves. And even if all this is true we might just as well just burn resources now, rather than channeling them through more suffering child brains.

Or do we think our children's children will pass our moral memes into the future, convincing their children's children of our superior morality? Why would we expect this to work if we can't convince the crazy people now? And why would we expect our moral memes to even arrive at our descendants' brains two generations down the road, in any way that would actually affect their behavior, rather than ending with our own kids saying, "Screw it, I'll do whatever" when they are 12?

One additional thought on antinatalism and selection effects: The people most likely to accept antinatalist ideas are not only the most empathetic people, but also the people who can most easily be convinced that life is a harm rather than a benefit. If pain sensitivity, hedonic set-points etc. are genetically correlated, and if the selection pressure argument is true, then it would still be better for the people who don't like living very much to leave reproduction to those who like it better.

Hedonic Treader, yes, I agree. For what it's worth, I have no intention of passing my bad code on to anyone else.

More generally, the nature of selection pressure changes in the post-genomic era when evolution ceases to be "blind" and reliant on [effectively] random genetic variations. Eventually, I think most prospective parents will choose the genotypes of their children-to-be in anticipation of their likely behaviour and psychological effects. But this momentous reproductive revolution is many decades if not centuries away. Sceptics doubt such a revolution will happen at all, and argue [or simply assume] that "natural" sexual reproduction will continue to predominate indefinitely - although I don't think such traditional procreative freedom is consistent with phasing out ageing later this century and beyond. (cf. http://www.reproductive-revolution.com/)

Transhumanists may be sceptical on other grounds. Perhaps one reason transhumanists haven't explored the nature of selection pressure in an era of designer babies in more depth is the common assumption of an imminent Technological Singularity, whether of the Kurzweilian or SIAI variety, and a transition to nonbiological posthuman superintelligence. I won't rehash my doubts here. As you know, IMO biological life in the "meat world" is likely to persist for millennia, albeit transformed beyond recognition, not least thanks to the novel selection regime in prospect.

It's just as hard to predict the future of other species of Darwinian life. If we're utilitarians, then presumably Darwinian life based on natural selection should eventually be replaced in its entirety. But most people today are aghast at the prospect of losing "charismatic mega-fauna". Hence conservation biology. On the other hand, it's hard to see us conserving the traditional cruelties of Nature. Everyone I know who has responded - not a representative sample admittedly - says we should intervene when presented with horrors like: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ambia.html.

I don't know how the impasse will ultimately be resolved. A minimal welfare state for large vertebrates in our wildlife parks is a messy and inelegant compromise that keeps our options open for the future.