Today is the birthday of David Pearce, a utilitarian philosopher and a co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association along with Nick Bostrom. The above image is from an interview with David in the German edition of Vanity Fair.

David Pearce is the primary founder of the modern philosophy of abolitionism, the idea that all involuntary suffering is unacceptable and must be eliminated. To me, David, and a few others like Nick Bostrom and Pablo Stafforini, this is common sense, but to most of the public, it’s an unfamiliar idea. David’s notion of abolitionism includes completely remaking the ecosystem so that predators do not cause the suffering of prey. You might say, “but that’s not natural!”, but the fact of the matter is that “natural” can be cruel and evil. If you were being consumed by wolves in the forest, I’d doubt you’d say “I accept and support this natural outcome, lol”. Most animals do not have the benefit of human technology for them to protect themselves from suffering, disease, and profound discomfort.

I was reading the Pearce interview in Vanity Fair, and wanted to pick out a few choice tidbits:

VF What about the suffering of animals?

D.P. When it is possible to produce genetically engineered “vat food” that is both tastier and cheaper than food from intact animals, you are likely to see a switch to global veganism. It’s likely that this technological development is going to happen in the next 50 years.

I totally agree with this one — everyone will be a vegan soon, if for nothing else, that in vitro meat will be better and cheaper. When we’re no longer compelled to mass murder animals in factory farms, many people will stand up and say, “well, we knew it was wrong all along”. Amazing how morally sophisticated people can get when practical alternatives to the immoral behavior emerge! (I’m guilty of this just as much as anyone.)

One more:

VF And do you want all animals to become vegans, too?

D.P. Fanciful as it sounds, yes – though this switch would require massive genetic rewrites and ecosystem redesign. In terms of Nature, I’m not a great one for romanticizing wildlife – which is often pretty brutal. We’re inconsistent. People think cats are beautiful and forgive them for tormenting mice. But to someone who, say, romanticizes blond Aryan supermen in their occasional savagery we would be less forgiving. If I pass a butcher-shop, to be honest, I think of Auschwitz. Yes, the non-human animals that we raise in factory farms and kill are not particularly intelligent; but they suffer horribly, just like human babies and toddlers. We tend to associate intensity of consciousness with intelligence. In fact the most distinctively intelligent human traits like our language capacity or mathematics – their accessibility to introspection is very subtle at best. Whereas the most intense emotions like pain, thirst and hunger tend to be extremely primitive. It’s doubtful whether a pig, for instance, suffers any less than a human infant.

Well… let’s do it! A task this huge seems to be a job for benevolent superintelligence.

Again, happy birthday to David Pearce. Today’s a perfect day to look over all his stuff and get (re)familiarized with his ideas.