Abstract

"Over the past half billion years, life on Earth has been governed by the pleasure pain axis. Nature is typically "red in tooth and claw". Consequently, life has typically been "nasty, brutish and short". However, a major evolutionary transition lies ahead. Natural selection has evolved organic robots with the capacity to rewrite their own source code. Humans will shortly be able to redesign our own reward circuitry, decommission natural selection, design compassionate ecosystems, and abolish suffering throughout the living world