Adam James Davis

Writer, Editor, Proofreader, Polymath, Philosopher.

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

Literature is life
And poetry is proof
That words are my world
Wherein what’s written
Is what’s right…

That words are my world
Wherein what’s written is what’s right
Is proven by the poems
For literature is life!

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

@harmonicjunkie Many congratulations, Beata!

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

@algekalipso Many, many thanks Andrés! Your support is greatly appreciated, and you have provided so much inspiration for me in my own journey through philosophy, ethics, literature and creativity. You're a hero and it's a joy to know you. Infinite bliss.

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

Here's the paper:

https://t.co/04YfAPgu2N

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

Massive congratulations to the Herbivorize Predators team on the acceptance of their paper, "Nature without Suffering: Herbivorisation of Predator Species for the Compassionate Stewardship of Earth's Ecosystems", by Stijn Bruers, Adam J. Davis, Sara Hojjat, Aatu Koskensilta, Thomas Lepeltier, and David Pearce. After four years of effort, rewrites, and navigating a fair share of ideological pushback—including some... spirited feedback from reviewers—their work has found a home in the Journal of Applied Animal Ethics Research.

You can imagine how this at first might seem unpublishable. But it's a sane and level-headed analysis worth taking into account by anyone who takes the problem of suffering seriously. So the efforts to get it out in a credible formal are super valuable. Congratulations again!

I think it's a big step forward for "compassionate conservation" thinking, and I can't wait to see the impact this paper will have! :-)

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

@max_sixty @nearcyan @slatestarcodex Or to put it another way: there are certainly viable ways of approximating it, accounting for the poor kid, so all of us are free.

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

@max_sixty @nearcyan @slatestarcodex But without the child kept in torment, of course 😉.

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

@CubingLord82791 @algekalipso Hi Cubing Lord, and thank you. To answer your first question: much value-alignment! Value-aligned talent, value-aligned attention, and value-aligned advocacy for "adaptive suffering abolitionism" in general.

[HerbivoRyzing @herbivoryze]

Herbivorization to me might make sense as an ideal to shoot for. For one, it seems it may be feasible. Plants are in most terrestrial environments and they defend themselves, the diet of a given species is evolvable, and biotech is advancing rapidly. Baby wombat for attention. 💕

[Marcin Kowrygo @MKowrygo]

There seems to be a deep synergy between the "midtermist" x-risk reduction and the exploratory research on adaptive suffering abolitionist interventions similar to ours. Numerous great non-x-risk EA(-adjacent) projects could benefit from it as well. Thank you, @daniel_271828!

[Daniel Eth (yes, Eth is my actual last name) @daniel_271828]

Hot take, but ~this should probably be like the second biggest EA cause area, after X-risk. The fact that things like this are approximately totally neglected by EA makes me think worse of the non-X-risk parts of EA.

[Marcin Kowrygo @MKowrygo]

Far Out goes far out near @nearcyan. Thank you for the exposure! We started an FAQ section to answer common questions: https://t.co/jTzn7Cjw00

[near @nearcyan]

possibly the best use of $50,000 I've seen in my life

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

I think it's important to emphasize just how lucky we are to have been born into a timeline with someone with Jo Cameron's condition and how insane we would be not to take this opportunity and run with it.

Reflexive and unreflective incredulity is the biggest problem that Suffering Abolitionism faces. How can something that has been plaguing life for billions of years be ended now with a simple genetic intervention? Well, we got lucky. Incredibly lucky. We could've spent centuries exploring the genome for a solution to suffering. Instead, we happened to discover someone with a naturally occurring genetic condition that eliminates physical and psychological suffering, which can be transferred to others using existing gene editing techniques. We would be mad not to seize this opportunity and run with it.

The Far Out Initiative is taking the lead on doing the foundational research required to create anti-suffering therapies for humans and human-exploited animals.

Find out more at: https://t.co/Y2DwbkANT3

- Michael Spark, founder of the initiative

Guys, please check them out! And donate if you can. They're one of the absolutely most promising ideas/and groups to radically reduce suffering worldwide.

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

Many animals and non-human life live a kind of quasi-“I have no mouth, but I must scream” type of existence.

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

People who say "you shouldn't pursue pleasure and avoid pain, instead, you should pursue meaning" are, as a rule, grifter who are trying to sell you their particular brand of meaning-making as a solution for you to, er, suffer less. Ironic, isn't it?

[Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson @algekalipso]

Anti-hedonists, are, of course, motivated by hedonic tone.

Yes, you say you want meaning, not happiness. But why?

1) because it's _unpleasant_ to think that we are always pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain

2) because it signals that you have loyalty to your friends and family: you wouldn't let them down for the sake of pleasure. But introspect: doesn't social rejection... _feel bad_?

3) because saying you want to pursue pleasure and avoid pain makes you seem shallow. But... Why are you avoiding looking shallow? Isn't it perhaps because it feels _uncomfortable_ to see yourself that way?

4) because pursuing pleasure directly is often ineffective - but doesn't that mean you're still pursuing it, just in a more sophisticated, indirect way?

Etc.

[Adam James Davis @AdamJamesDavis7]

Trans-paradoxical: a library of deleted timelines. A place to store and save timelines erased by time travellers going back into the past and altering events so that future events in a timeline are deleted/changed (hence a place to store them, somehow).