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The Hedonistic Imperative
Table Of Contents

The Abolitionist Manifesto

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

  • 0.1 The Naturalisation of Heaven
  • 0.2 Saving Vehicles With Bad Drivers
  • 0.3 Humans Are Not Rats
  • 0.4 Life In Dopaminergic Overdrive

HOW?

  • 1.0 Sabotage At The Mill
  • 1.1 The Biological Program
  • 1.2 Pumping Up The Volume
  • 1.3 The Civilising Neurotransmitter
  • 1.4 The Cardinal Importance Of Delayed Gratification
  • 1.5 The Molecular Genetics Of Paradise
  • 1.6 The Re-encephalisation Of Emotion
  • 1.7 How Could Anything Be So Good?
  • 1.8 All We Need Is Love?
  • 1.9 The Taste Of Depravity
  • 1.10 On The Misguided Romanticisation Of Feline Psychopaths
  • 1.11 The Last Twisted Molecule On Earth?
  • 1.12 The Persistence Of Hard-Core Porn
  • 1.13 The Growing Pleasures Of Homunculi
  • 1.14 Post-Perceptual Consciousness?

paradise-engineering

WHY?

  • 2.0 The Psychology Of Armchair Hedonism
  • 2.1 How To Contemplate An Introspective Void
  • 2.2 The Importance Of Banality
  • 2.3 Vacuous Desires
  • 2.4 A Dirty Window On The Soul
  • 2.5 Let's Get Rational
  • 2.6 The Morality Of Happiness
  • 2.7 Why Be Negative?
  • 2.8 The Moral Panacea
  • 2.9 The Significance Of An Empirical Correlation
  • 2.10 A Tough-Minded Scientist Replies
  • 2.11 The Selection Of Mysterious Reds
  • 2.12 The Formal Successes Of Scientific Triumphalism
  • 2.13 The Naturalisation Of Value
  • 2.14 Four Deadly Objections?
  • 2.15 Alone Amongst The Zombies
  • 2.16 The Perils Of Idle Scepticism
  • 2.17 The Price Of Inner Demons
  • 2.18 Can We All Be Really Good?
  • 2.19 Equivocal Values
  • 2.20 Good Vibrations: The Value Of String
extending the circle of compassion

WHEN?

  • 3.0 Our Emotional Future
  • 3.1 Hedonism After The War
  • 3.2 On Why We Need Better Drug Pushers
  • 3.3 Good Code Gets Better
  • 3.4 The Death-Spasms Of Peripheralism
  • 3.5 And Yet It Still Grinds
  • 3.6 The Technology Of Shop-Soiled Utopias
  • 3.7 Living In The Real World
The Good Drug Guide

OBJECTIONS

  • 4.0 ...impossible because happiness depends on contrast with sadness...
  • 4.1 ...brain too complex...negative feedback mechanisms...
  • 4.2 ...we'd just die out...gruesome fate of intra-cranially self-stimulating rats...
  • 4.3 ...manifesto flawed by reductionist approach to the human soul...
  • 4.4 ...unanticipated side-effects...thalidomide...
  • 4.5 ...would need widespread animal-testing...inconsistent with the manifesto's animal welfarism...
  • 4.6 ...unnatural...
  • 4.7 ...perpetual happiness is boring...need for variety...
  • 4.8 ...happiness should be rationally justifiable...
  • 4.9 ...to be forced into chemically-driven happiness is wrong...false happiness...freedom to be unhappy is important...
  • 4.10 ...would turn us into junkies...
  • 4.11 ...one can sometimes like being sad...too precious to lose...
  • 4.12 ...would eliminate personal development...lead to stasis...
  • 4.13 ...why not just get high...?
  • 4.14 ...no more Newtons, Picassos, Beethovens...end of mankind's intellectual progress...
  • 4.15 ...makes mockery of current values and life-projects...too absurd to warrant serious debate...
  • 4.16 ...would leave us helpless... manipulable by ruling elites...
  • 4.17 ...sheer escapism...the importance of staying in touch with reality...
  • 4.18 ...wouldn't be me...one is defined by one's sorrows as much as joys...
  • 4.19 ...selfish distraction from what matters...helping the poor in the Third World comes first...
  • 4.20 ...affront to human dignity...
  • 4.21 ...track-record of utopianism is disastrous...terrible crimes committed on assumption the end justifies the means...
  • 4.22 ...would undermine the basis of all human relationships...
  • 4.23 ...might lead to (post-)humanity getting irreversibly stuck...
  • 4.24 ... emphasis on mood-lifting drugs is disproportionate...easy to misinterpret...
  • 4.25 ...abolitionist project presupposes a utilitarian ethic...HI collapses if utilitarianism is rejected...
  • 4.26 ...will never be a Post-Darwinian Transition... there will always be selection pressure...
  • 4.27 ...paradise-engineering is impossible...not evolutionarily stable...
  • 4.28 ...contradiction...abolitionism can't be reconciled with an absence of compulsion...
  • 4.29 ...why invoke nanotechnology; isn't genetic engineering enough...?
  • 4.30 ..."pushy" parents will choose genotypes for children destined to be smart, driven and successful rather than happy...
  • 4.31 ...persistence of "natural" reproducers with Darwinian genotypes means that suffering won't be abolished...
  • 4.32 ...cosmic HI? Some pitfalls...
  • 4.33 ...why stress gradients of well-being? Wouldn't permanent maximum bliss be ethically better...?
  • 4.34 ...why the headlong rush? Let's wait until we have the wisdom to understand the implications of what we're doing...
  • 4.35 ...the Simulation Argument suggests suffering can never be abolished...

CONCLUSION

  • 5.0 Puppet-Masters Without Strings
  • 5.1 Could Life Really Have A Happy Ending?



HedWeb
DP Interview
Future Opioids
Superhappiness
Superintelligence
Social Media (2024)
The Good Drug Guide
Utopian Neuroscience
The Abolitionist Project
Quora Answers (2015-24)
MDMA: Utopian Pharmacology
The Post-CRISPR Biosphere (2016)
Critique of Huxley's Brave New World


E-mail Dave
dave@hedweb.com

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