Chapter 33
The Dark Side: Abhorrent Realities
Intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that superimmortality is not entirely a comforting theory. Alongside the promise of enhanced existence and infinite possibility, it also predicts the possibility of abhorrent realities — existences that are deeply negative.
If any consciousness that shares your ixperiencitness is "you" in the relevant sense, then the scope of your superimmortality includes pleasant and enhanced existences alongside suffering, degraded, and horrifying ones.
Abhorrent Awarepaths
An abhorrent awarepath is a conscious lifetime filled with suffering, fear, confusion, or misery. If the relevant organization of a brain can produce ecstatic joy, it can also produce excruciating pain. If enhanced versions of your consciousness are possible, so are degraded versions. The space of possible awarepaths includes beautiful ones and terrible ones.
In the natural course of events — without deliberate intervention — the distribution of awarepaths is shaped by the unthinking processes of nature: evolution, random chemical interactions, environmental conditions. Nature has no preference for pleasant experiences over painful ones. It produces whatever structures and functionings arise from its processes, and some of those produce consciousness that we would consider abhorrent.
Abhorrent Sensepaths
An abhorrent sensepath is a sequence of sensory inputs that produces terrible conscious experiences — unrelenting pain, terrifying hallucinations, deep despair. In principle, a brain (or brain-like system) could be stimulated with inputs designed to produce the worst possible experiences. This is a dark possibility that future technology could make real.
How to Think About This
The existence of abhorrent realities is not a reason to reject superimmortality. It is a reason to take it seriously.
If superimmortality is true, then the nature of future conscious existences is not a matter of indifference. It matters enormously what kinds of consciousnesses are produced, because we (or versions of us) will experience them. This gives us a powerful motivation to:
1. Develop the science of consciousness, so that we understand what structures and functionings produce what kinds of experience.
2. Develop technology for conscious design, so that we can ensure that future consciousnesses are positive rather than negative.
3. Create ethical frameworks for conscious production, so that the deliberate creation of consciousness is guided by concern for the well-being of the beings created.
4. Protect the conditions that support positive conscious existence — a healthy planet, just societies, scientific knowledge, because these conditions make positive future existences more likely and abhorrent ones less likely.
The Asymmetry of Superimmortality
There is, however, an asymmetry here that matters. The following is speculative but grounded in observable patterns of how intelligent systems behave; it is a prediction, not a proof, and I present it as such. Abhorrent awarepaths are possible, but they are not equally likely to persist as positive ones. Here is why.
Consciousness that suffers tends to act to end its suffering. A being in agony seeks relief. A being trapped in misery seeks escape. Negative conscious experiences generate strong motivation to change the conditions that produce them. Positive experiences, by contrast, generate motivation to sustain and enhance themselves.
This means that, over time, the intelligent development of consciousness will tend toward positive experiences. Advanced civilizations that understand consciousness will design it for flourishing, not for torment, not out of pure altruism, but because flourishing consciousness is more stable, more productive, and more conducive to its own continuation than suffering consciousness.
Key Terms in This Chapter
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