Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons

Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons, thanks to Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Chris Percy at Qualia Research Institute:

The “Slicing Problem” is a thought experiment that raises questions for substrate-neutral computational theories of consciousness, particularly, in functionalist approaches.

The thought experiment uses water-based logic gates to construct a computer in a way that permits cleanly slicing each gate and connection in half, creating two identical computers each instantiating the same computation. The slicing can be reversed and repeated via an on/off switch, without changing the amount of matter in the system.

The question is what do different computational theories of consciousness believe is happening to the number and nature of individual conscious units as this switch is toggled. Under a token interpretation, there are now two discrete conscious entities; under a type interpretation, there may remain only one.

Both interpretations lead to different implications depending on the adopted theoretical stance. Any route taken either allows mechanisms for “consciousness-multiplying exploits” or requires ambiguous boundaries between conscious entities, raising philosophical and ethical questions for theorists to consider.

Source:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365706040_The_Slicing_Problem_for_Computational_Theories_of_Consciousness

More info:

https://qri.org/

The Interface Theory of Perception by Donald D. Hoffman

A goal of perception is to estimate true properties of the world. A goal of categorization is to classify its structure. Aeons of evolution have shaped our senses to this end. These three assumptions motivate much work on human perception. I here argue, on evolutionary grounds, that all three are false. Instead, our perceptions constitute a species-specific user interface
that guides behavior in a niche. Just as the icons of a PC’s interface hide the complexity of the computer, so our perceptions usefully hide the complexity of the world, and guide adaptive behavior. This interface theory of perception offers a framework, motivated by evolution, to guide research in object categorization. This framework informs a new class of evolutionary
games, called interface games, in which pithy perceptions often drive true perceptions to extinction


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Does every experience have some negative valence?

Roger Thisdell holds that every experience has some negative valence and that there are no experiences with a positive hedonic level.

There is a point where you deconstruct perception to basic experiences by not feeding certain mental processes with your attention, they fade out. If I’m not paying attention to thought, the experience and comprehension of concepts and language fade out of experience. You can get to states of mind where there is no high-level conceptual thinking going on. It’s just vague pressures, releases, and contortions. You can have experiences of just vast airy space. For instance, the sense of the body schema, that you have a unified body, can vanish when you haven’t been paying attention to it for a long time and you’ve kept your eyes closed, so you are not updating the perception of the body with new visual stimuli. The body schema as a model falls out of the mind. But you still have awareness of gaseous somatic sensations and in all that there is a subtle contraction. Yeah, I’m saying that. It comes with a disturbance from an ultimate peace of that which is before/beyond concept and phenomenological representation.




Some would say: “Of course, there are pleasant experiences. There can be more intense pleasures. And you can go upwards on the hedonic scale. You can feel better and better. And below all that, you can feel neutral: neither pain nor pleasure; neither unpleasantness nor pleasantness. Below that, you can feel bad, feel minor disturbances, feel horrible, and so on.” So if we have different degrees of disturbances and suffering, then my question is whether there are experiences that are above undisturbedness; the absence of negative valence. I guess, based on your videos and writings, that you would say no; that there are no such experiences.

Yeah. I think “no”. I think there is a way in which suffering and pleasure don’t exist at the same level of abstraction. Pleasure is at a more abstract layer. The label “pleasure” comes from an assessment after the fact of an experience. Once there was a build-up of pressure and then a release, there is a judgment “I am glad for the release”, but it was just the contractive pressure that you wanted to go away. Now it’s gone so you make the comparative judgment after the fact: “That was a good thing that happened”. But had the pressure never built up, had the contraction never been binding and causing you suffering, then you can’t even begin to make that assessment that it was something good to do.

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L’approche systĂ©matique de la souffrance: Un entretien avec Robert Daoust

English | French

L’algonomie est le nom d’une discipline pour l’étude systĂ©matique de la souffrance, proposĂ©e par Robert Daoust. L’Alliance AlgosphĂšre, lancĂ©e par Robert et d’autres en 2011, est un rĂ©seau mondial ouvert et transparent d’individus et d’organisations, dĂ©diĂ© Ă  l’allĂšgement de la souffrance.

 

Sentience Research: Vous ĂȘtes l’un des fondateurs d’AlgosphĂšre. Comment l’organisation a-t-elle dĂ©butĂ© et quels Ă©taient ses principes fondateurs?

Robert Daoust: À ma grande surprise, je me suis rendu compte en 1975 qu’il n’y avait pas de place centrale oĂč aller dans notre culture pour s’occuper du phĂ©nomĂšne de la souffrance lui-mĂȘme, dans toute sa variĂ©tĂ© ou tous ses aspects. J’ai alors proposĂ© la crĂ©ation d’une discipline thĂ©orique et d’une entreprise pratique. Dans les dĂ©cennies suivantes, j’ai constatĂ© que les gens en gĂ©nĂ©ral avaient de la sympathie pour ma proposition, mais personne ne s’est impliquĂ© avec moi jusqu’en 2011, quand Jean-Christophe Lurenbaum m’a contactĂ©, Ă  la suggestion de David Pearce. Jean-Christophe a eu lui aussi dans les annĂ©es 70 l’idĂ©e d’organiser l’allĂšgement de la souffrance dans le monde. C’est dans ce but, dĂ©libĂ©rĂ©ment, qu’il est allĂ© Ă©tudier en Ă©conomie publique et qu’il a ensuite choisi de travailler comme secrĂ©taire Ă  la stratĂ©gie dans la plus grande entreprise publique française avant de prendre une retraite anticipĂ©e, de retourner Ă  l’universitĂ© et d’écrire un livre rĂ©sumant ses idĂ©es. Les miennes ont Ă©tĂ© rĂ©sumĂ©es dans un document de 1986 intitulĂ© L’organisation gĂ©nĂ©rale contre les maux.

GrĂące Ă  la grande expertise de Jean-Christophe, l’Alliance AlgosphĂšre a Ă©tĂ© lancĂ©e en 2013. Il s’agit d’une institution unique en son genre, ouverte Ă  tous ceux pour qui l’allĂšgement de la souffrance est une prioritĂ©. Elle n’est officiellement enregistrĂ©e dans aucune juridiction (elle est libre de toute autoritĂ© extĂ©rieure), elle n’a aucune structure de pouvoir (pas de place pour l’ego ou le power trip), pas d’argent (pas de contrĂŽle par les plus riches), aucune obligation imposĂ©e aux participants (contribuez comme vous le souhaitez) et elle est conçue pour fonctionner lentement, mĂ©thodiquement, pendant des siĂšcles, pour des changements Ă  trĂšs grande Ă©chelle davantage que dans la chaleur de chaque urgence passagĂšre. Elle n’agit pas elle-mĂȘme directement pour allĂ©ger la souffrance, mais plutĂŽt par l’intermĂ©diaire de ses alliĂ©s, chacun dans son domaine d’intĂ©rĂȘt particulier.

 

Sentience Research: Quelle est la principale caractĂ©ristique de l’AlgosphĂšre qui la distingue des autres projets?

Robert Daoust: L’Alliance propose une convergence des forces au niveau le plus abstrait de gĂ©nĂ©ralitĂ© afin de pouvoir rassembler les divers acteurs s’occupant de l’allĂ©gement de la souffrance – et ce niveau le plus abstrait procure, Ă  mon avis, le plus puissant effet concret dans la pratique parce qu’il simplifie radicalement l’approche de la souffrance. Pour le dire plus clairement peut-ĂȘtre, vous et moi avons chacun nos propres causes mais nous pouvons entrer en synergie en prenant ensemble des dĂ©cisions mutuellement avantageuses, et nous pouvons tous faire cela collectivement grĂące au lieu de rencontre offert par l’Alliance, l’Agora. L’Agora fonctionne comme un outil de dĂ©mocratie directe Ă  l’échelle mondiale, un processus de dĂ©cision dĂ©centralisĂ© et transparent qui repose sur le consentement, c’est-Ă -dire l’agrĂ©ment, c’est-Ă -dire la non-souffrance.

 

Sentience Research: Que s’est-il passĂ© avant cela? Dans vos Notes biographiques, on peut lire les pensĂ©es dĂ©primantes de l’adolescent Robert sur la souffrance: “Les souffrances extrĂȘmes subies par d’innombrables ĂȘtres dans leur marche Ă  travers la vie m’apparaissent comme une dĂ©sespĂ©rante persĂ©cution perpĂ©trĂ©e par des forces inhumaines qu’il faut absolument vaincre.” Cela a-t-il changĂ© avec le temps? Comment ressentez-vous personnellement et Ă©valuez-vous globalement la souffrance dans le monde?

Robert Daoust: Quelle est l’ampleur de la souffrance? Personnellement, ma mĂšre est morte quand j’avais deux ans et demi, mais j’ai rĂ©alisĂ© seulement rĂ©cemment que c’était, pour de vrai, une tragĂ©die douloureuse. Je veux dire
 cela a rendu ma vie, et plusieurs autres vies aussi, compliquĂ©e et pleine d’épreuves, mais cette mort ne m’a jamais Ă©tĂ© douloureuse. J’ai pour la premiĂšre fois Ă©tĂ© confrontĂ© Ă  la souffrance excessive quand j’ai Ă©tĂ© atteint par plusieurs maladies infantiles courantes Ă  l’époque, et dĂšs l’ñge de dix ans, j’ai fait tout ce que j’ai pu pour Ă©viter la douleur physique. De mĂȘme, Ă  la fin de la vingtaine, j’ai progressivement appris Ă  Ă©viter les souffrances psychologiques dues Ă  des causes telles que la dĂ©pression ou la frustration sexuelle. Par la suite, j’ai surtout Ă©tĂ© heureux. Quoi qu’il en soit, je ne vois pas trĂšs bien comment quelqu’un peut Ă©valuer la quantitĂ© de souffrance qui se produit en soi, et encore moins dans le monde entier. Nous avons besoin d’une algomĂ©trie, c’est-Ă -dire une science de la quantification de la souffrance, une sous-spĂ©cialitĂ© de l’algonomie. En gros, je pense que la quantitĂ© de souffrance sur terre a Ă©tĂ© plus ou moins Ă©gale au cours du dernier million d’annĂ©es. Je ne peux pas regarder l’état infernal du monde sans ce que j’appelle des lunettes de soudeur. Je me console cependant avec cette phrase lue dans Maus, oĂč le pĂšre de Spiegelman, un survivant de l’holocauste, parle de son sĂ©jour Ă  Dachau:  “Et c’est lĂ  que mes ennuis ont commencĂ©â€. C’était aprĂšs qu’il ait vĂ©cu assez longtemps Ă  Auschwitz!!!

 

Sentience Research: Vous dites que “toutes les grandes sphĂšres de l’activitĂ© humaine traitent d’une maniĂšre ou d’une autre de la souffrance”, bien que ce ne soit pas leur principale prĂ©occupation. N’est-ce pas lĂ  un paradoxe ou une contradiction?

Robert Daoust: Vous voyez une contradiction?

 

Sentience Research: Je veux dire que la souffrance est omniprĂ©sente dans les vies humaines (et chez les autres animaux aussi, bien sĂ»r) et pourtant il n’y a guĂšre eu d’humains qui ont entrepris de mettre fin Ă  la souffrance. Il semble que la plupart d’entre eux l’acceptent comme un mal nĂ©cessaire ou inĂ©vitable.

Robert Daoust: Oh, oui! Avant la science newtonienne, on pouvait s’occuper de la gravitĂ©, mais seulement jusqu’à un certain point. Il faut beaucoup de rĂ©flexion abstraite pour dĂ©passer l’évidence et commencer Ă  dĂ©couvrir ce qui peut ĂȘtre fait d’autre, comme aller sur la lune. Ce n’est qu’avec l’avĂšnement d’une nouvelle psychologie scientifique au 21e siĂšcle, je crois, que nous commencerons vraiment Ă  comprendre comment Ă©chapper Ă  la gravitĂ© de notre condition de souffrance.  J’ai Ă©galement remarquĂ© que, par dĂ©finition, pour ainsi dire, plus quelque chose est ressentie comme nĂ©cessaire, plus il est difficile de l’obtenir. C’est parce que, je suppose, nous sommes dans un monde oĂč chaque entitĂ© est en concurrence avec les autres pour sa propre construction, sa propre croissance. La concurrence cĂšde la place Ă  la coopĂ©ration lorsqu’un niveau d’activitĂ© est dĂ©passĂ© de maniĂšre inattendue par un autre niveau d’activitĂ©, comme cela s’est produit tout au long de l’histoire de l’évolution biologique, et de l’évolution humaine Ă©galement. Cela explique peut-ĂȘtre, mais pas trĂšs clairement, dĂ©solĂ©, pourquoi il est si difficile de trouver de la collaboration pour des projets comme le mien


 

Sentience Research: L’idĂ©e d’une discipline qui a pour objet principal la souffrance, l’algonomie, est quelque chose qui a mĂ»ri en vous depuis de nombreuses annĂ©es. (Elle est dans votre tĂȘte depuis 1975 au moins!) Comment a-t-elle Ă©voluĂ© depuis lors? Quels sont les dĂ©fis de ce projet?

Robert Daoust: Ça n’a pas beaucoup changĂ©. Au dĂ©but, je l’ai appelĂ© l’algologie. Au cours de la dĂ©cennie suivante, j’ai passĂ© mon temps dans les bibliothĂšques Ă  chercher des ouvrages ou bien des domaines d’études qui existeraient dĂ©jĂ  avec le mĂȘme esprit que l’algonomie. HĂ©las, et Ă  ma grande surprise, je n’ai pas trouvĂ© grand-chose. En 1986, j’ai produit un rĂ©sumĂ© ou un plan de travail, L’organisation gĂ©nĂ©rale contre les maux, et vers 2000-2005 une Introduction Ă  l’algonomie. Je dois dire qu’au tout dĂ©but, dĂ©jĂ , j’avais le sentiment que si l’idĂ©e Ă©tait aussi bonne qu’elle le paraissait, il me faudrait Ă  peine deux semaines pour trouver beaucoup de gens intĂ©ressĂ©s! J’ai encore et toujours un sentiment comme celui-lĂ . La derniĂšre tentative que j’ai faite remonte Ă  2019, alors que j’ai proposĂ© de crĂ©er un Institut d’algonomie: voyez-vous, c’est facile, il suffit de trouver 10 millions de dollars auprĂšs d’un philanthrope milliardaire! Bien sĂ»r, cela non plus ne s’est pas rĂ©glĂ© en deux semaines – peut-ĂȘtre simplement Ă  cause d’un manque d’audace, car aucune demande finalement n’a jamais Ă©tĂ© faite pour obtenir les dix millions.  CrĂ©er une nouvelle discipline consacrĂ©e Ă  la souffrance comporte de nombreux dĂ©fis, mais je prĂ©dis que si nous arrivions Ă  la faire dĂ©coller, elle dĂ©montrerait sa capacitĂ© Ă  Ă©pargner des souffrances et cela lui assurerait un dĂ©veloppement rapide et durable. Parfois aussi, cependant, je pense que tout ça n’est peut-ĂȘtre que l’illusion de toute une vie
 mais c’est un pari, une gageure: puis-je imaginer une façon plus valable d’utiliser mon temps?

 

Sentience Research:  “Souffrance”, “douleur”, “valeur nĂ©gative”, “valence nĂ©gative”, “qualia nĂ©gatifs”, “dĂ©sirs insatisfaits” et “prĂ©fĂ©rences frustrĂ©es” sont des termes concurrents parfois utilisĂ©s de maniĂšre ambiguĂ«. Quel est votre terme prĂ©fĂ©rĂ©? Utilisez-vous des dĂ©finitions diffĂ©rentes?

Robert Daoust: Mon terme prĂ©fĂ©rĂ© est “dĂ©sagrĂ©ment”, que j’ai retenu de mes Ă©tudes en science de la douleur, oĂč il est utilisĂ© pour distinguer les diffĂ©rentes composantes de la douleur physique, tel “l’aversion” (“ne pas vouloir” est diffĂ©rent de “ne pas aimer”, cf Berridge) ou “la souffrance” (dĂ©tresse psychologique secondaire ou tertiaire). Vers 2006-2010, j’ai Ă©crit la majeure partie de l’article de WikipĂ©dia sur la souffrance (en anglais), et notamment la section sur la terminologie. Soit dit en passant, mĂȘme cet article, qui est rĂ©guliĂšrement consultĂ©, n’a pas suscitĂ© beaucoup de collaboration pour son Ă©dition, ce qui est dommage.

La terminologie relative Ă  la souffrance est extraordinairement confuse. Cela rĂ©vĂšle que dans notre culture la souffrance constitue un scotome. Un des premiers services rendus par l’algonomie serait d’adopter une terminologie technique universelle. Peut-ĂȘtre la souffrance serait-elle appelĂ©e “algo”. Alors
 personnellement, je n’utilise qu’une seule dĂ©finition de la souffrance: c’est un ressentir (un feeling) dĂ©sagrĂ©able. Je trouve intĂ©ressant de parler de valence nĂ©gative, mais celle-ci se produit trĂšs souvent sans dĂ©sagrĂ©ment, il me semble, comme quand par exemple un esprit curieux se rend compte qu’il lui manque une information: cela peut ĂȘtre ressenti comme quelque chose ayant une valeur nĂ©gative mais qui est tout de mĂȘme agrĂ©able en tant qu’élĂ©ment d’une plaisante activitĂ© d’exploration. Le plaisir et la souffrance ne sont pas les seules valeurs qui existent, Ă  mon avis, loin de lĂ . Il serait dĂ©sastreux de stopper toute souffrance, ou de promouvoir tout plaisir, s’il s’avĂ©rait qu’une part de souffrance est indispensable, ou qu’une part de plaisir constitue un obstacle, en vue d’atteindre quelque chose de plus grande valeur.

Un autre service de l’algonomie, qui apportera de la clartĂ© dans ce sujet complexe, sera de fournir une taxologie de la souffrance, un outil de collecte et de classification des informations concernant “les types de souffrance, les personnes ou les animaux qui souffrent, les causes de la souffrance, les personnes et les organisations qui provoquent la souffrance, les solutions ou les stratĂ©gies relatives Ă  la souffrance, les personnes et les organisations qui contribuent Ă  arrĂȘter ou Ă  prĂ©venir la souffrance excessive, les documents pertinents pour l’étude systĂ©matique de la souffrance”, etc.

 

Sentience Research: Que pensez-vous de la nature de la souffrance: pourquoi souffrons-nous et comment une expérience consciente est-elle possible en premier lieu?

Robert Daoust: En fin de compte, la nature de la souffrance ou de la sentience dĂ©pend de la nature de ce qui existe au niveau le plus fondamental, par delĂ  nos connaissances actuelles. Nous sommes donc amenĂ©s Ă  nous demander ce qu’est ce monde et quelle est sa valeur. Philosophiquement, je prends le parti de la santĂ© mentale. Je crois et j’espĂšre que l’inconnu sera connu un jour et, surtout, qu’il ne sera pas “trop” mauvais: selon toute vraisemblance, il n’y a pas d’enfer Ă©ternel ou quelque chose de pire encore. Mon point de vue est que nous vivons dans l’univers dĂ©crit par la physique moderne, qui est constituĂ© de matiĂšre-Ă©nergie ou d’ondes-particules. La science contemporaine est en train de dĂ©couvrir comment la sentience Ă©merge de la matiĂšre-Ă©nergie, et Ă  partir de lĂ  elle va comprendre beaucoup mieux ce qu’elle est elle-mĂȘme et ce que sont les concepts qu’elle utilise comme l’espace-temps, la matiĂšre-Ă©nergie, les objets mathĂ©matiques, les objets linguistiques, etc.

 

Sentience Research: Avez-vous tirĂ© des conclusions concernant l’explication la plus probable de la nature de la souffrance et de la conscience en gĂ©nĂ©ral?

Robert Daoust: Pour ce que ça vaut, je pense que j’ai une perspective unique dans le domaine de la recherche psycho-scientifique car je suis un chercheur indĂ©pendant autodidacte, spĂ©cialisĂ© dans un sujet, la souffrance, qui n’a pas Ă©tĂ© systĂ©matiquement abordĂ© jusqu’à prĂ©sent dans le cadre d’une discipline scientifique moderne. La discipline pertinente la plus proche que j’ai pu trouver dans le monde acadĂ©mique est la science de la douleur. Par chance, l’UniversitĂ© McGill, dans ma ville natale, a hĂ©bergĂ© peut-ĂȘtre le meilleur centre de recherche sur la douleur, et j’y ai passĂ© beaucoup de temps pour y apprendre plein de choses.

J’ai quelques certitudes: 1) le tronc cĂ©rĂ©bral est plus essentiel Ă  la conscience que le cortex ; 2) l’émergence de la conscience dĂ©pend des champs d’ondes Ă©lectromagnĂ©tiques gĂ©nĂ©rĂ©s dans le cerveau, plus que des calculs effectuĂ©s par les neurones ; 3) la solution au difficile problĂšme de la conscience nĂ©cessite une explication au bon niveau d’émergence, le niveau psychologique, mais basĂ©e sur les niveaux plus anciens dĂ©crits par la biologie, la chimie, la physique.

L’expĂ©rience consciente est rendue possible par l’évolution grĂące Ă  l’avĂšnement de systĂšmes complexes de cellules spĂ©cialisĂ©es dans les impulsions Ă©lectriques. Ces impulsions reprĂ©sentent des activitĂ©s sensorielles, motrices ou associatives inconscientes. MalgrĂ© leur sophistication, les insectes se comportent “probablement” sans conscience, grĂące seulement Ă  leurs rĂ©seaux neuronaux d’apprentissage profond. Mais chez les vertĂ©brĂ©s et certains invertĂ©brĂ©s, les reprĂ©sentations Ă©lectromagnĂ©tiques deviennent si nombreuses et si bien reliĂ©es entre elles qu’elles forment un ensemble, un champ d’ondes complexe oĂč peut prendre forme un théùtre de valeurs signifiantes: les qualia constituent des courants d’interrelations oĂč ils signifient-et-valent quelque chose l’un pour l’autre, au sein d’un “rĂ©cit”.

Je suppose que la partie “valeur” a son substrat physique dans des forces d’attraction et de rĂ©pulsion prenant diverses configurations symĂ©triques et dissymĂ©triques. La partie “signification” dĂ©pend des calculs neuronaux et ne peut pas ĂȘtre consciente sans sa contrepartie “valeur”. Nous souffrons parce cela contribue Ă  la survie. Les tendances Ă©volutives les plus fondamentales sont l’entropie et la nĂ©guentropie, c’est-Ă -dire la dĂ©-struction et la con-struction. Une simple cellule bactĂ©rienne, par exemple, subit une tension qui l’amĂšne vers un nutriment ou l’éloigne d’une menace. Dans un organisme composĂ© d’un milliard de cellules comme le nĂŽtre, un systĂšme spĂ©cialisĂ© est Ă  l’Ɠuvre et contribue Ă  la -struction.

 

Sentience Research: Selon vous, quelle est l’étendue du “nous”, lorsque nous parlons de nous tous, les ĂȘtres conscients qui souffrent?

Robert Daoust: Mon sentiment est qu’en fait, il n’y a pas de “je” qui ressent. Chaque souffrance est une instance de conscience indĂ©pendante. Le “je” en tant que propriĂ©taire de la conscience est une illusion, mais socialement, il reprĂ©sente un agent fictif commode, souvent amplifiĂ© par l’identification Ă  divers “nous”. Techniquement, l’expĂ©rience, le contenu de l’expĂ©rience et le sujet de l’expĂ©rience sont tout simplement une seule et mĂȘme chose (voir Strawson). La conscience, j’aime Ă  le dire, est ce qu’on ressent quand on est un champ d’ondes Ă©lectromagnĂ©tiques dans certaines circonstances appropriĂ©es. Donc
 l’étendue de la conscience, pour autant que nous puissions le dire, serait qu’elle est apparue sur terre il y a des millions d’annĂ©es, elle est probablement apparue aussi en d’innombrables endroits ailleurs dans l’univers, et dans un avenir lointain elle Ă©mergera probablement dans toute la matiĂšre-Ă©nergie qui peut ĂȘtre utilisĂ©e Ă  cette fin.

C’est pourquoi l’antinatalisme, le nihilisme, le dĂ©sespoir sont inutiles comme solution. PlutĂŽt que de compter sur la fin des espĂšces malfaisantes comme la nĂŽtre, nous ferions mieux de compter sur la part d’ange en nous et de faire ce que nous pouvons pour organiser durablement l’allĂ©gement de la souffrance.

 

Sentience Research: Pensez-vous que la souffrance puisse ĂȘtre quantifiĂ©e? Comment mettre en relation l’intensitĂ© de la souffrance avec le nombre d’individus touchĂ©s? Comment dĂ©cider d’agir sur un cas de souffrance plutĂŽt que sur un autre lorsque le nombre d’individus touchĂ©s et l’intensitĂ© de leurs souffrances sont diffĂ©rents dans les deux cas?

Robert Daoust: Oui, quantifier la souffrance n’est pas impossible, comme beaucoup le disent, mais ce n’est pas aussi facile que d’autres semblent le penser. L’algomĂ©trie est une discipline incontournable, Ă  part entiĂšre, pour laquelle j’ai fait ces Notes prĂ©paratoires pour la mesure de la souffrance. J’invite les lecteurs intĂ©ressĂ©s Ă  consulter ce document. Il faudra plusieurs millions de dollars pour dĂ©marrer sĂ©rieusement l’algomĂ©trie en tant que sous-discipline de l’algonomie.

 

Sentience Research: Dites-nous-en plus sur la situation actuelle de l’AlgosphĂšre. Comment cela fonctionne-t-il et qu’en attendez-vous? Quels sont les obstacles Ă  la rĂ©alisation de ses objectifs?

Robert Daoust: L’Alliance AlgosphĂšre fonctionne depuis sept ans maintenant. Elle invite tout le monde Ă  se rassembler et Ă  faire en sorte que la souffrance soit dĂ©sormais assiĂ©gĂ©e, encerclĂ©e, approchĂ©e de toutes parts
 Une cinquantaine de personnes sont devenues des alliĂ©s, et une centaine d’autres se sont inscrites sur le site. Six organisations sont Ă©galement des alliĂ©s. C’est un dĂ©but lent mais solide. L’une des principales composantes de l’Alliance est sa plate-forme de collaboration, oĂč chacun fait ce qu’il trouve intĂ©ressant. Diverses choses s’y dĂ©veloppent, la plupart du temps de maniĂšre souterraine. Depuis avril dernier, un grand remaniement de l’AlgosphĂšre est en cours, avec un comitĂ© de cinq personnes qui travaillent fort. L’objectif est de repenser l’ensemble du fond et de la forme afin de faire comprendre au grand public ce qui se passe dans l’AlgosphĂšre. Plus de nouvelles Ă  ce sujet bientĂŽt
 Nous pensons qu’au cours de ce siĂšcle, grĂące Ă  nos alliĂ©s, la souffrance deviendra une prioritĂ© pour la plupart des gens sur cette planĂšte, lorsqu’il s’agira de prendre des dĂ©cisions importantes, collectives ou individuelles. S’il y a un obstacle Ă  la rĂ©alisation de cet objectif, c’est bien le dĂ©fi du changement culturel: comment les cƓurs et les esprits peuvent-ils s’impliquer dans une opĂ©ration collective globale pour freiner le phĂ©nomĂšne de la souffrance? Des plans sont mis en place, espĂ©rons qu’ils fonctionneront bien.

 

Sentience Research: Quelles sont les stratĂ©gies pour abolir la souffrance, et que pouvons-nous faire aujourd’hui en tant que mouvement?

Robert Daoust: Les stratĂ©gies ont Ă©tĂ© exposĂ©es par David Pearce dans son chef-d’Ɠuvre The Hedonistic Imperative. En rĂ©sumĂ©, nous devrions Ă©tudier les facteurs biologiques ou gĂ©nĂ©tiques qui sont Ă  l’origine de l’apparition de la souffrance et, Ă  partir de lĂ , nous devrions construire un meilleur arrangement des composants cellulaires ou sous-cellulaires de notre psychĂ©. En attendant, une action sociale et politique peut Ă©galement ĂȘtre nĂ©cessaire, bien qu’insuffisante, pour atteindre l’objectif. La voie Ă  suivre est relativement claire et simple, bien qu’elle soit semĂ©e d’embĂ»ches. Le principal obstacle pourrait ĂȘtre un effondrement de la civilisation causĂ© par l’un des risques existentiels qui nous menacent. Un autre obstacle pourrait ĂȘtre que la souffrance constitue une partie indispensable du fonctionnement normal et libre de la conscience: nous pourrions construire des organismes qui ne ressentent aucune souffrance, mais Ă  mon avis, si leur comportement n’était pas techniquement restreint, ils s’autodĂ©truiraient, en raison de la volontĂ© de puissance nĂ©guentropique inhĂ©rente qui amĂšne chaque entitĂ© Ă  faire tout son possible pour se con-struire. Dans un organisme conscient, le rĂ©gulateur ultime est la souffrance insupportable. Pour surmonter cet obstacle, il faudrait nous assurer que la rĂ©surrection Ă  volontĂ© soit possible, que les ĂȘtres conscients libres-et-non-souffrants soient immortels.

En tout cas, chacun de nous qui rĂ©alise l’importance de contrĂŽler le phĂ©nomĂšne de la souffrance peut agir par le biais des diffĂ©rentes organisations axĂ©es sur la souffrance qui sont apparues rĂ©cemment:

Et tous ceux d’entre nous qui comprennent la valeur de la synergie peuvent se joindre à l’Alliance Algosphùre. De nombreux autres projets restent à mettre en place, par exemple:

  • Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential: nous devons exploiter cette ressource cruciale au niveau le plus gĂ©nĂ©ral pour amĂ©liorer notre monde.
  • Toward an Institute of Algonomy: nous ne pouvons pas aller loin sans une telle base institutionnelle pour la connaissance systĂ©matique, la bibliographie, la taxologie, l’algomĂ©trie, l’analyse stratĂ©gique, etc.
  • “AllĂ©ger ma souffrance”: il s’agit d’un projet, chez AlgosphĂšre, d’un centre d’information et de ressources pour rĂ©pondre aux demandes des individus.
  • Algomedia: il s’agit d’un autre projet d’AlgosphĂšre concernant l’utilisation de toutes sortes de mĂ©dias pour populariser les nouvelles et les activitĂ©s axĂ©es sur la souffrance.
  • Projet de stratĂ©gie globale: ce projet est encore Ă  dĂ©velopper, il concerne la jonction de divers groupes, comme l’altruisme effectif, le bouddhisme, la recherche de la compassion, etc. autour d’une sorte de programme politique.
  • Équipes d’action pour une minimisation organisĂ©e des souffrances inacceptables: il s’agit d’une version rĂ©cente d’un projet que j’essaie de mettre en place depuis des dĂ©cennies afin de lier l’action pratique directe et le contrĂŽle systĂ©matique de la souffrance.

 

Sentience Research: Y a-t-il encore quelque chose Ă  dire? De quoi d’autre devrions-nous parler dans cette entrevue pour faire un tour complet de vos pensĂ©es et actions les plus importantes?

Robert Daoust: La foi en Dieu a Ă©tĂ© importante pour moi jusqu’à l’ñge de 17 ans. Je voulais devenir un saint, et un prĂȘtre. J’ai perdu la foi, principalement Ă  cause de l’idĂ©e absurde d’un enfer Ă©ternel créé par un pĂšre infiniment aimant. Aussi parce que la science moderne explique le monde d’une maniĂšre plus sensĂ©e. J’ai Ă©tĂ© particuliĂšrement impressionnĂ© par un livre lu en 1966, Les prodigieuses victoires de la psychologie moderne. J’ai essayĂ© de retrouver une sorte de foi jusqu’à la mi-trentaine, en Ă©tudiant les religions orientales et la parapsychologie, avant de conclure que rien, dans ces domaines spirituels, ne rĂ©siste Ă  l’examen. Aujourd’hui, je crois qu’il y a plus de choses dans la matiĂšre matĂ©rielle que ce dont rĂȘvent les philosophes et les mystiques.

BientĂŽt, je vais rencontrer des collĂšgues que j’ai connus Ă  l’école il y a environ 55 ans. Je me rends compte que j’étais un enfant pauvre quand j’étais Ă©tudiant, et que je suis restĂ© pauvre toute ma vie, que j’ai suivi sans trop m’en apercevoir le vƓu de pauvretĂ©. Je n’ai pas eu d’enfants. Ça a Ă©tĂ© long avant que je rencontre des filles, dans ma vingtaine. J’ai Ă©tĂ© pour de bon dans un couple entre 44 et 69 ans. Heureusement, sur le plan intellectuel, financier, social et Ă©motionnel, mes frĂšres et sƓurs ont tous Ă©tĂ© une bĂ©nĂ©diction pour moi, et la plupart de mes amis les plus chers aussi. Mon principal problĂšme dans la vingtaine, Ă  part trouver une femme et un dieu, Ă©tait de trouver une carriĂšre. J’ai finalement optĂ© pour ĂȘtre un “penseur”, parce qu’ĂȘtre philosophe ou Ă©crivain Ă©tait trop exigeant pour moi. Et j’ai visĂ© de dĂ©couvrir quelque chose, parce que c’est le travail le plus efficace que l’on puisse faire: par exemple, en tant que potier vous pouvez fabriquer un certain nombre de pots dans votre vie, mais en tant qu’inventeur de la machine Ă  fabriquer des pots vous en produisez incomparablement plus en fin de compte .

Je ne crains vraiment qu’une chose: qu’il y ait un enfer Ă©ternel, ne serait-ce que pour un seul ĂȘtre conscient. Je ne peux pas supporter cette pensĂ©e plus de quelques secondes. Je crois qu’il y a un aspect fondamental de la vie humaine qui se rattache Ă  cette crainte: chaque individu rencontre la souffrances insupportable, en tant qu’enfant par exemple quand on met la main sur le brĂ»leur de la cuisiniĂšre, mais plus tĂŽt aussi, probablement en tant que nouveau-nĂ© ou mĂȘme en tant que fƓtus. DĂ©couvrir la souffrance insupportable est incroyablement et trĂšs fondamentalement traumatisant. Non seulement nous ne pouvons pas faire ou avoir tout ce que nous voulons, mais nous pouvons aussi ĂȘtre accablĂ©s par quelque chose de terrible, capable de nous faire souffrir indĂ©finiment. Donc, nous sommes tous atteints du syndrome de stress post-traumatique. Et c’est si terrible que nous devrions l’oublier, n’est-ce pas? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a Ă  la tĂ©lĂ© ce soir?

NĂ©anmoins, il y a d’autres choses importantes dans la vie Ă  part la question de la souffrance: tout cela que nous aimons. J’ai retenu de mon Ă©ducation religieuse que nous appelons sacrĂ© ce que nous aimons vraiment, c’est-Ă -dire ce que nous voulons sain, entier, bien con-structurĂ© plutĂŽt qu’affreusement dĂ©-structurĂ©. J’aime ceux qui me sont proches et chers, j’aime la science et la connaissance, j’aime la beautĂ© et le plaisir et le pouvoir glorieux si je le crois bĂ©nĂ©fique, et j’aime les forĂȘts, les montagnes, les lacs, les riviĂšres, les mers et les cieux


 

Sentience Research: Merci beaucoup Robert, ce fut un plaisir.

Robert Daoust: Merci de m’avoir donnĂ© l’occasion d’exprimer mes pensĂ©es, le plaisir Ă©tait pour moi aussi.

Conversations about the badness of involuntary suffering

I have the intuition that voluntary suffering might not be bad. This is primarily due to personal experience: I often feel sad (sympathy) when I encounter sad stories or sad situations, but I don’t have the intuition that this is bad for me, because I don’t feel like I ought to look away or stop feeling sad in response to these and I often feel like thinking/learning/reading more about these situations even if I feel more sadness because of it (and I usually do). This happens to me with both real and fictional situations (I was a fan of tragedies for a while). Furthermore, sometimes in the past, when I’ve been depressed about my own life, I didn’t want to be happy and even preferred to be miserable.




It’s suffering that’s bad, intrinsically (though suffering can be instrumentally good)




I’m a hedonistic utilitarian, and I think that even voluntary suffering is be intrinsically bad, as long as it’s still suffering at that point.




Buddhism would say that if you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness but you don’t suffer from it.




My intuition is that suffering is bad, but sometimes (all things considered) I prefer to suffer in a particular instance (e.g. in service of some other value). In such cases it would be better for my welfare if I did not suffer, but I still prefer to.




I think we don’t quite have the words to distinguish between all these things in English, but in my mind there’s something like

  • pain – the experience of negative valence
  • suffering – the experience of pain (i.e. the experience of the experience of negative valence)
  • expected suffering – the experience of pain that was expected, so you only suffer for the pain itself
  • unexpected suffering – the experience of pain that was not expected, so you suffer both the pain itself and the pain of suffering itself from it not being expected and thus having negative valence

Of them all, unexpected suffering is the worst because it involves both pain and meta-pain.




I noticed that reading only “positive” and “joyous” stories eventually feel empty. The answer seem that sad elements in a story bring more depth than the fun/joyous ones. In that sense, sadness in stories act as a signal of deepness, but also a way to access some deeper part of our emotions and internal life.

Source

 

The systematic approach to suffering: an Interview with Robert Daoust

English | French

Algonomy is the name of a discipline for the systematic study of suffering, proposed by Robert Daoust. The Algosphere Alliance, launched by Robert and others in 2011, is an open and transparent global network of individuals and organizations, dedicated to alleviating suffering. 

 

Sentience Research: You are one of the founders of the Algosphere. How did the organisation start, and what were its foundational principles?

Robert Daoust: To my great surprise, I realized in 1975 that there was no central place in our culture where one could go to deal with the phenomenon of suffering itself, in all its variety or aspects. I then proposed the creation of a theoretical discipline and a practical enterprise. In the following decades, I found that people in general had sympathy for my proposal, but no one got involved with me until 2011, when Jean-Christophe Lurenbaum and I met through David Pearce’s mediation. Jean-Christophe also had in the seventies the idea of organizing the alleviation of suffering in the world; for that purpose, deliberately, he studied in public economics and then chose to work as a secretary for strategy at the largest French public corporation before retiring early, going back to university and writing a book summarizing his ideas. Mines were in a 1986 document called L’organisation gĂ©nĂ©rale contre les maux.

Thanks to Jean-Christophe’s great expertise, the Algosphere Alliance was started in 2013. It is a unique kind of institution, open to all those for whom the alleviation of suffering is a priority. It has no registration in any jurisdiction (it is free from any external authority), no power structure (no place for ego or power trip), no money (no control by the wealthiest), no obligation imposed on participants (contribute as you wish) and it is designed to operate slowly, methodically, for centuries and for very large-scale changes, more than in the heat of each passing emergency. It does not act by itself to alleviate suffering but rather through its allies, each in their particular fields of interest.

 

Sentience Research: What is the main feature of the Algosphere that makes it different from other projects?

Robert Daoust: The Alliance proposes a convergence of forces at the most abstract level of generality that can bring together the diverse actors dealing with the alleviation of suffering — and that abstract level is in my opinion the most concretely powerful in practice because it radically simplifies the approach to suffering. To say it more clearly perhaps, you and I do our things but can get into synergy by taking decisions together that are mutually advantageous, and we all can do that collectively thanks to the meeting place offered by the Alliance, the Agora. The Agora works as a worldwide direct democracy tool, a decentralized and transparent decision-making process that is based on consent, i.e. non-disagreement, i.e. non-suffering.

 

Sentience Research: What happened before that? In your biographical notes we can read depressing thoughts of teenage Robert about suffering, “Extreme pain endured by innumerable beings in their march across life appears to me like a hopeless persecution perpetrated by inhuman forces which we must absolutely defeat.” Has this changed in time? How do you actually experience personally and assess globally suffering in the world?

Robert Daoust: How much suffering is there? Personally, my mother died when I was two years and a half, but I realized only recently that this was, for real, a painful tragedy. I mean
 this made my life, and several other lives too, complicated and full of hardship, but that death never felt painful to me. I first encountered excessive suffering when I was ill with various common childhood illnesses, and from the age of ten I did all I could to avoid physical pain. Similarly, in my late twenties, I progressively learned to avoid psychological suffering due to causes such as depression or sexual frustration. After that, I have mostly been happy. Anyhow, it is not clear to me how someone can assess the amount of suffering that occurs in oneself, let alone in the whole world. We need an algometry, a science of suffering quantification, a subspecialty of algonomy. Roughly, I think that the amount of suffering on earth has been more or less equal during the last million years. I cannot look at the hellish state of the world without what I call welder’s goggles. I take solace, however, in this sentence from Maus, where Spiegelman’s father, a holocaust survivor, says about his stay in Dachau:  “And that’s where my troubles began”. That was after he had been in Auschwitz for a long time!!!

 

Sentience Research: You say that “all major spheres of human activity deal in one way or another with suffering”, although it is not their main concern. Is this not a paradox or contradiction?

Robert Daoust: Do you see a contradiction?

 

Sentience Research: I mean, suffering is ubiquitous in human lives (and in other animals too, of course) and yet there have hardly been any humans who have set out to end suffering. It seems as if most accept it as a necessary or inevitable evil.

Robert Daoust: Oh, yes! Before Newtonian science you could deal with gravity but only up to a certain point. It takes a lot of abstract thinking to get beyond the obvious and start discovering what else can be done, like going to the moon. It is only with the advent of a new scientific psychology in the 21st century, I believe, that we will really begin to understand how to escape the gravity of our suffering condition.  I noticed also that, by definition so to speak, the more something is needed, the harder it is to get it. That is because, I guess, we are in a world where each entity competes for its own construction, its own growth. Cooperation instead of competition occurs when one level of activity is unexpectedly surpassed by another level of activity, as it has occurred throughout the history of biological evolution, and of human evolution as well. That explains perhaps, but not very clearly, sorry, why it is so hard to find collaboration for projects like mine


 

Sentience Research: The idea of ​​a discipline that has suffering as its main focus, algonomy, is something that has matured in you for many years. (It has been in your head at least since 1975!) How has it changed since then? What are the challenges of this project?

Robert Daoust: It did not change much. At the start I called it algology. Over the subsequent decade, I spent my time in libraries looking for works or fields of study that already existed in the spirit of algonomy. Alas, and to my unending surprise, I did not find much. In 1986, I produced a summary or blueprint L’organisation gĂ©nĂ©rale contre les maux, and around 2000-2005 an Introduction to Algonomy. I should say that from the very beginning, my feeling was that if the idea was as good as it seemed,  it would take only two weeks to find plenty of interested people! I still have the same feeling. The last attempt I made was in 2019, when I proposed to create an Institute of Algonomy: it’s easy, all you  have to do is find 10 million dollars from one billionaire philanthropist! Of course, that too was not settled in two weeks — because of a lack of audacity, I suppose: not a single request was made to obtain ten millions.  A new discipline dedicated to suffering includes a lot of challenges, but I predict that if we could get it off the ground, it would be so successful, in terms of spared sufferings, that its development would be quick and lasting. Sometimes, however, I think all this might be a lifelong delusion
 but it’s a bet, a wager: could I imagine a more meaningful way to use my time?

 

Sentience Research:  “Suffering”, “Pain”, “Disvalue”, “Negative Valence”, “Negative Qualia”, “Unsatisfied Desires” and “Frustrated Preferences” are conflicting terms sometimes used ambiguously. Which is your favourite term? Do you use different definitions?

Robert Daoust: My favorite term is unpleasantness, which I retained from my studies in pain science, where it is used to distinguish between various components of physical pain, such as ‘aversion’ (“to not want” is not “to dislike”, cf Berridge) or ‘suffering’ (secondary or tertiary psychological distress). Around 2006-2010, I wrote most of the Wikipedia entry on suffering, and especially the section Terminology. By the way, even this article, which is regularly consulted, has not attracted much collaboration for its edition, which is a pity.

Terminology about suffering is extraordinarily confusing. It reveals how much suffering is a blind spot in our culture. One of the first uses of algonomy would be to adopt a universal technical terminology. Perhaps suffering would be called ‘algo’. So
 personally I use only one definition of suffering: unpleasant feeling. I find negative valence interesting, but I think it very often occurs without unpleasantness, like when for instance an inquisitive mind realizes that a piece of information is missing: this may be felt as a disvalue, but within a stream of pleasant exploration. Pleasure and suffering are not the only values that exist, in my opinion, far from it. It might be disastrous to stop all suffering (or to promote all pleasures) if it turns out that some of it is necessary (or is an obstacle) to reach something of great value.

Another use of algonomy, that will bring light into this complex topic, will be to provide a taxology of suffering, a tool for collecting and classifying information concerning the “kinds of suffering,  people or animals who suffer, causes of suffering, people and organizations who cause suffering, solutions or strategies relative to suffering, people and organizations who contribute to stop or prevent excessive suffering, documents relevant to the systematic study of suffering,” etc.

 

Sentience Research: What are your thoughts on the nature of suffering: why do we suffer and how sentient experience is possible in the first place?

Robert Daoust: Ultimately, the nature of suffering or sentience depends on the nature of what exists at the most fundamental level, beyond our current knowledge. So, we are left to wonder what this world is and what value it has. Philosophically, I choose sanity, I believe and hope that the unknown will become known someday and most importantly, that it will not turn out to be “too” bad: in all likelihood there is no eternal hell or something even worse. My view is that we live in the universe described by modern physics, which consists of matter-energy or waves-particles. Contemporary science is in the process of discovering how sentience emerges from matter-energy, and as a consequence it will understand much better itself and its concepts like space-time, matter-energy, mathematical objects, linguistic objects, etc.

 

Sentience Research: Did you reach any conclusions regarding the most probable explanation of the nature of suffering and sentience in general?

Robert Daoust: For what it may be worth, I think I have a unique perspective in the field of psychoneural research because I’m a self-taught independent scholar, specialized in a topic, suffering, that has not been systematically approached until now within the framework of a modern scientific discipline. The closest relevant knowledge I could find in the academic world was pain science. By chance, McGill University in my hometown had perhaps the best pain research community, around which I hung out for several years and learned a lot.

I hold a few things as pretty certain: 1) the brain stem is more essential to sentience than the cortex; 2) the emergence of sentience depends on electromagnetic wave-fields generated in the brain, more than on computations made by neurons; 3) the solution to the hard problem of consciousness requires an explanation at the right level of emergence, the psychological level, but based on previous levels described by biology, chemistry, physics.

Sentient experience is made possible by evolution through the advent of complex systems of cells specialized in electrical activities. Those activities represent insentient sensory, motor, or associative activities. In spite of their sophistication, insects “probably” behave without sentience, thanks only to their deep learning neural networks. But within vertebrates and some invertebrates the electromagnetic representations become so numerous and well interrelated that they form a complex blob or wave-field where a theater of meaning-values can take place: qualia constitute streams of interrelationships where they mean-and-are-worth something to each other, within a “narrative”.

I hypothesize that the value part has its physical substratum in forces of attraction and repulsion taking various symmetric and dissymmetric configurations. The meaning part depends on neural computations and it cannot be conscious without value. We suffer because it contributes to survival. The most basic evolutive tendencies are entropy and negentropy, i.e. de-struction and con-struction. A single bacteria cell, for instance, undergoes a tension that brings it toward a nutrient or away of a threat. In a billion cell organism like ours, a specialized system is at work and contributes to -struction.

 

Sentience Research: So, in your view, how broad is “we”, when we speak of us all, the sentient beings who suffer?

Robert Daoust: My feeling is that as a matter of fact there is no ‘’I’’ that feels. Each suffering is an independent instance of sentience. The “I” as the owner of consciousness is an illusion, but socially it represents a convenient fictional agent, often self-aggrandized by identification to various “we”. Technically, the experience, the content of experience, and the subject of experience are just and simply one and the same thing (see Strawson). Sentience, I like to say, is what it feels like to be an electromagnetic wavefield under certain circumstances. So
 the extent of sentience, as far as we can tell, would be that it emerged on earth millions of years ago, it probably emerged also in countless places elsewhere in the universe, and in the far future it will probably emerge in all matter-energy that can be used for that purpose.

That’s why antinatalism, nihilism, despair are useless as a solution. Rather than count on the end of wicked species like ours, we’d do better to count on the better angels of our nature and try to sustainably organize the alleviation of suffering.

 

Sentience Research: Do you think suffering can be quantified? How to relate the intensity of suffering with the number of individuals affected? How do we decide to take action over one case of suffering instead of over another when the number of individuals affected and the intensity of their sufferings are different in both cases?

Robert Daoust: Yes, quantifying suffering is not impossible, like many say, but it is not as easy as others seem to think. Algometry is a whole discipline by itself, for which I made those Preparatory Notes for the Measurement of Suffering. I invite interested readers to look at that document. It will take several million dollars to seriously start algometry as a subdiscipline of algonomy.

 

Sentience Research: Tell us something more about the current situation of the Algosphere. How does it work and what do you expect from it? What are the bottlenecks for achieving its goals?

Robert Daoust: The Algosphere Alliance has been in operation for seven years now. It invites everybody to gather and make sure that suffering is now under siege, encircled, approached from all sides
 Some fifty persons have become allies, and a hundred others have registered on the website. Six organizations are also allies. It’s a slow but solid start. A main component of the Alliance is its Collaborative Platform, where everyone does what they find interesting. Various things have been growing there, mostly underground. Since last April, a major revamping of the Algosphere is underway, with a committee of five people working hard. The goal is to rethink the whole substance and form in order to make the general public understand what is going on in the Algosphere. More news on this coming soon
 We expect that during this century, thanks to our allies, suffering will become a priority for most people on this planet, when it is a question of making important collective or individual decisions. If there is one bottleneck for achieving this goal, it is the challenge of cultural change: how can the hearts and minds become involved in a global collective operation to restrain the phenomenon of suffering? Plans are set up, let’s hope they work.

 

Sentience Research: What are the strategies for abolishing suffering, and what can we do today as a movement?

Robert Daoust: The strategies have been spelled out by David Pearce in his masterpiece The Hedonistic Imperative. Essentially, we should investigate the biological or genetic factors that are to blame for the apparition of suffering and from there we should build a better arrangement of the cellular or sub-cellular components of our psyche. Meanwhile, social and political action may also be necessary, although insufficient, for reaching the goal. The road ahead is relatively clear and simple, although fraught with obstacles. The main obstacle might be a collapse of civilization through one of the existential risks. Another obstacle might be that suffering represents an essential part of the normal and free functioning of sentience: we might build organisms that feel no suffering at all, but in my opinion they would self-destruct, if their behaviour is not technically constrained, because of the inherent negentropic will to power that makes every entity do everything it can to con-struct itself. In a sentient organism, the ultimate regulator is unbearable suffering. To overcome that obstacle we would have to ensure that resurrection is available, that pain-free-and-free-choosing sentient beings are immortal. 

In any case, each of us who realizes the importance of controlling the phenomenon of suffering can act through the various suffering-focused organizations that appeared recently:

 

And all of us who understand the value of synergy can join together in the Algosphere Alliance. Many other projects remain to be set up, for instance:

  • Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential: we have to harness this crucial resource for improving our world on a global level.
  • Toward an Institute of Algonomy: we cannot go far without such an institutional basis for systematic knowledge, bibliography, taxology, algometry, strategic analysis, etc.
  • “Alleviating my suffering”: this is a project, at Algosphere,  of an Information and Resources Center for responding to individuals’ requests.
  • Algomedia: this is another project at Algosphere, concerning the use of all kinds of media for popularizing suffering-focused news and activities.
  • Global strategy project: this is still to be developed, it has to do with the junction of various groups, like effective altruism, Buddhism, compassion research, etc. around some kind of political program.
  • Action-Teams for an organized minimization of inacceptable sufferings: this is a recent version of a project that I have been trying to set up for decades in order to link direct practical action and the systematic control of suffering.

 

Sentience Research: Is there anything left to say? What else should we talk about in this interview for it to be a complete review of your more important thoughts and actions?

Robert Daoust: Faith in God was important for me until I was seventeen. I wanted to become a saint, and a priest. I lost faith, mainly because of the absurd idea of an eternal hell created by an infinitely loving father. Also because modern science made more sense for explaining the world. I was especially impressed by a book in 1966 Les prodigieuses victoires de la psychologie moderne. I tried to recover a kind of faith until my mid-thirties, studying oriental religions and parapsychology, before concluding that nothing, in those spiritual realms, stands up against scrutiny. Now I believe there are more things in material matter than are dreamt of by philosophers and mystics. 

Soon, I will meet with colleagues I knew at school some 55 years ago. I realize that I was a poor kid as a student, and I remained poor all my life, inadvertently following the vow of poverty. I did not have children. It was long before I met girls, in my twenties. I was for good in a couple between the ages of 44 and 69. Fortunately, my brothers and sisters have all been a blessing for me, and most of my dearest friends too, intellectually, financially, socially, emotionally. My main problem in my twenties, besides finding a girl and a god, was to find a career. I settled for being a ‘thinker’, because being a philosopher or a writer was too demanding for me. And I settled for discovering something, because this is the most efficient work one can do: for instance as a pot maker you can make a number of pots in your life, but as the inventor of the pot making machine you produce an incomparably greater number of pots.

I really fear only one thing: that there be an eternal hell for any sentient being. I cannot stand that thought for more than a few seconds. I think that this is a fundamental fact of human life: everyone meets unbearable suffering, for instance as a child who puts a hand on the stove burner, but also sooner, probably as a newborn or even as a foetus. Discovering unbearable suffering is incredibly and very fundamentally traumatic. Not only we cannot do or have all what we want, but also we may be overpowered by something that is terribly awful, that will make us suffer endlessly. We all are affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s so terrible, we should forget about it, shouldn’t we? What’s on TV tonight?

Nevertheless, there are other important things in life besides the question of suffering: everything we love. I retained from my religious education that the object of true love takes the status of the sacred, of what we want to be holy, whole, well con-structed rather than awfully de-structed. I love those who are close and dear to me, I love science and knowledge, I love beauty and pleasure and the glorious power that I find beneficial, and I love forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and seas and skies


 

Sentience Research: Thank you very Much Robert, it has been a pleasure.

Robert Daoust: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my thoughts, the pleasure was mine too.

 

A comprehensive list of ways in which reality may be distorted by perception, by David Pearce

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”  —William Blake

1. You don’t perceive the environment. There is no public world. Instead, your local environment partially selects your brain states, some of which are experienced as your external surroundings. Mind-independent reality is a speculative metaphysical inference, sadly a strong one, IMO. Contra William Blake (and Aldous Huxley), there are no see-though doors of perception in need of a good wash, just cranial prisons.

2. Whether you are awake or dreaming, your world-simulation is populated by zombies. When you are awake, these zombies are the avatars of sentient beings, but the imposters loom larger than their hypothetical real-world counterparts.

3. Your egocentric world-simulation resembles a grotesque cartoon. Within the cartoon, you are the hub of reality, the most important being in the universe


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Andrés Gómez-Emilsson on Logarithmic Scales of Pleasure and Pain: Rating, Ranking, and Comparing Peak Experiences Suggest the Existence of Long Tails for Bliss and Suffering

I briefly explain that while some distributions (e.g. the size of the leaves of a tree) follow a Gaussian bell-shaped pattern, many others (e.g. avalanches, size of asteroids, etc.) follow a long-tail distribution. Long-tail distributions have the general property that a large fraction of the volume is accounted for by a tiny percent of instances (e.g. 80% of the snow that falls from the mountain will be the result of the top 20% largest avalanches).

I then explain that based on previous research we have conducted at the Qualia Research Institute we have arrived at the tentative conclusion that the intensity of pleasure and pain follow a long-tail distribution. Why?

First, neural activity on patches of neural tissue follow log-normal distributions (an instance of a long-tail distribution).

Second, the extremes of pleasure and pain are so intense that they cannot conceivably be just the extremes of a normal distribution. This includes, on the positive end: Jhana meditation, 5-MeO-DMT peak experiences, and temporal lobe epilepsy (Dostoevsky famously saying he’d trade 10 years of his life for just a few moments of his good epileptic experiences). On the negative end, things like kidney stones, cluster headaches, fibromyalgia, and migraines top the charts of most intense pain.

And third, all of the quantitative analysis we conducted on a survey about people’s best and worst experiences showed that the ratings, comparisons, and rankings of such experiences was far more consistent with a long-tail distribution than a normal distribution.

I then conclude by saying that this is an *important*, *tractable*, and *neglected* cause.

1) Important because we may be able to reduce the world’s suffering by a significant amount if we just focus on preventing the most intense forms of suffering.

2) Tractable because there are already many possible effective treatments to these disorders (such as LSD microdosing for cluster headaches, and FSM for kidney stones).

3) And neglected because most people have no clue that pain and pleasure go this high. Most utilitarian calculus so far seems to assume a normal distribution for suffering, which is very far from the empirical truth. Bentham would recoil at the lack of an exponent term when additively normalizing pain scales.

I conclude by adding that in Effective Altruism there might be an implicit “youth” bias involved in the lack of knowledge of this phenomenon – due to the age of the people in the movement, most EA activists will not themselves have had intensely painful experiences. Thus, why it is so crucial to raise awareness about this topic in the community (it does not show up on its own). Simply put: because the logarithmic nature of pleasure and pain is *news* to most people in EA.

Video, Article, Presentation given at EA New York

David Pearce on what is the difference between perception and consciousness

“Thus the existence of a real object outside me is never given directly in perception, but can only be added in thought to what is a modification of inner sense as its external cause, and hence can only be inferred.”
(Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 1781)

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
(Edgar Allan Poe)

“Perception” is a useful word. It’s also systematically misleading. This is because the term suggests that each of us enjoys direct access to our local surroundings, including one’s extra-cranial body. “Cross-modally matched real-time egocentric world-simulation” might be more apt; alas, it’s a mouthful. Either way, the external environment may be inferred; it’s not accessed. The mind-independent world powerfully selects the subjective content of one’s waking world-simulation; the mind-independent world doesn’t create it.

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