A mutation in the FAAH-OUT gene suppresses pain and anxiety in Scottish woman Jo Cameron. Philosopher David Pearce, co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, proposes editing future children's genes following her example and explains why, in his view, digital immortality is impossible
A mutation in the FAAH-OUT gene suppresses pain and anxiety in Scottish woman Jo Cameron. Philosopher David Pearce, co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, proposes editing future children's genes following her example and explains why, in his view, digital immortality is impossible
On August 30, an interview was published with Pearce, who in 1998 co-founded the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+) together with Nick Bostrom. He is turning his 1995 manifesto "The Hedonistic Imperative" into a practical program: genome editing of children modeled on Cameron and gene drives for wild species. He also explains why the AI revolution has not shifted his forecast of several centuries.
In an interview on the YouTube channel New Horizons, Pearce presents Cameron's case as a template for replication rather than a form of congenital insensitivity to pain that leaves a person living "in a bubble." The former schoolteacher from Inverness went through hip and hand surgeries with almost no pain, and experienced childbirth as a tickling sensation: her pain signaling works, but her pain threshold sits far above normal. Geneticists at University College London found that she carries a double mutation: a common variant that weakens FAAH, the enzyme that normally breaks down anandamide (a compound named after the Sanskrit word for "bliss"), and a rare deletion in the FAAH-OUT gene, which acts as a volume control for FAAH. Less enzyme means more anandamide: Cameron has roughly twice the usual level, her pain and anxiety are dampened, and her wounds heal faster.
Before eliminating pain altogether, Pearce says, the entire range needs to be raised to Cameron's level: the obligation of future parents is preimplantation embryo selection and genome editing aimed at a high pain threshold and a high hedonic set point, the baseline level of contentment. "I don't want to lean too heavily on one example," Pearce acknowledges: Cameron's full genome is not yet publicly available.
Pearce proposes applying the same tool to tens of thousands of wild species: CRISPR gene drives spread an edit faster than normal inheritance, while hunger and predation would be replaced by population management, up to and including "nonviolent extinction" of predators, which, in his view, have no reproductive rights. The scale would require oversight of the entire biosphere. Pearce compares that risk to an Orwellian dystopia and suggests starting with pilot projects in enclosed ecosystems.
The transformer revolution in AI has not shifted his forecast: a world without suffering remains a matter of several centuries, although "I've lost my bearings and no longer trust my own judgments about timelines." The barrier is not biotechnology but parental consent: every parent would need to be convinced to use genome editing.
Pearce recently returned from the first conference on machine consciousness in Berkeley, where the majority of participants believe AI already possesses consciousness. The same question is already being investigated at major AI labs: Google DeepMind has hired a staff philosopher focused on machine consciousness, and Anthropic's test of Claude's capacity for introspection yielded only "limited and unreliable" signs. Pearce takes the opposite position: classical digital computers run up against the unsolved "binding problem," the question of how a single experiencing subject arises from many separate processes. A digital copy of the brain, in which "ones and zeros" were replaced by discrete states, would produce only a "micro-experiential zombie."
"Digital mind is an oxymoron," he says.
Intelligent machines, Pearce adds, "now discuss consciousness, the hard problem, and the binding problem more intelligently than most sentient humans, and yet they are zombies."
The binding problem is an open question in the philosophy of mind, first formulated by William James. Pearce's own solution rests on the idea that humans are "quantum minds simulating classical worlds," a position that is marginal even among transhumanists. Pearce acknowledges this himself: "most people talk complete nonsense about consciousness, so statistically there is a high probability that I do too."