My Blog

Categoría: Techniques to prevent suffering

  • An overview of wagers for reducing future suffering

    «Pascal’s wager is a famous argument for why one should believe in God. If God exists, then eternal life in heaven or hell is at stake, but if God doesn’t exist, one’s belief does not matter much – so one should wager on the former. (The validity of this argument has been discussed at length.)

    More generally, whenever we consider two hypotheses H1 and H2 about the world, the stakes may be higher in one of the two cases – say, if H1 is true. This is a reason to act as if H1 is true, even if it is not most likely. For instance, the precautionary principle emphasises caution towards potentially harmful innovations (e.g. a new medicine) as long as we have substantial uncertainty.

    In this post, I will consider wagers that are relevant to effective altruism – that is, hypotheses that would allow us to have a particularly large impact. I’m most interested in reducing future suffering, but many of these wagers also apply to other goals.»

  • Researchers discover technique to alter a patient’s DNA that could cut chronic agony for sufferers

    Scientists have discovered how to switch off a key ‘pain gene’, dramatically raising hopes of a long-term treatment to relieve the agony of serious illness for millions.

    The revolutionary technique alters a patient’s DNA, silencing a gene that transmits pain signals up the spine.

    Preliminary studies on mice have already proven successful and US researchers plan to start human trials next year, potentially offering terminally-ill patients and those with chronic conditions the prospect of pain-free care.

    So suppressing this ‘pain gene’ – called SCN9A – could be used as an alternative to morphine, helping cancer patients stay on chemotherapy longer and enabling them to live their final months more fully. Navega’s method involves placing the CRISPR-editing tool inside particles of a harmless virus, which acts like a Trojan horse.

    These virus particles are injected into the spine, much like an epidural, after which they ‘infect’ neuron cells. Once inside a cell, the CRISPR tool is released and gets to work silencing the pain gene.

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  • Opportunities for an astronomical reduction of suffering

    This is a list of situations, projects or initiatives in which there could be an “astronomical” (huge) reduction in the amount of suffering compared to what currently exists or is expected. Many of these situations (but not necessarily all of them) involve a high risk in the sense that they are difficult projects whose probability of success is very low. In some cases, this may happen because they are projects that assume as certain some hypotheses for which there is little evidence, so we can consider them unlikely, although not impossible.

    I insist that the only criterion to appear on this list is that the project or idea supposes an astronomical reduction of the suffering that we believe exists or will exist. The list can include both remote possibilities and speculative approaches as well as conventional and highly probable scenarios.

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  • One woman is entirely insensitive to physical pain

    One woman is entirely insensitive to physical pain and has no palpable negative emotions.

    Joanne Cameron experiences suffering mostly as “an abstract thing.”

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-without-pain