Should we eliminate all aversive experiences

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That's not possible thanks to hedonic adaptation. No matter how much 'bliss' you get, eventually it won't be enough... unless you're envisioning some kind of blissful lobotomy.

Once again, no, thanks.

Is it not likely that the bliss on the low end of the gradient would eventually become just as undesirable as pain/depression/etc is for us now?

For some of us the bad times outweigh the good times by a factor of 10. I find myself unable to appreciate the good in life as im currently in a state of constant emotional agony. Suffering doesnt ennoble the human condition for the most part it renders us incapable of responding nobly.



Pain is aversive - biologically so. Pain and pleasure are also largely discrete in that there can be no mistaking the 2. The point of this sort of hedonic wiretapping is that we simulate dynamic, stimulating and most importantly enervating bliss such that we'd feel motivated to do and seek out new things and not to wallow. What you're describingis the hedonic treadmill and the point of this thought experiment is to abolish it.



Gradients of bliss can be equally instructive. We'd seek out reward in the form of ever increasing levels of happiness. This would become our new adaptive norm.

We need sadness. Without sadness, we can't tell what's wrong with a situation. If they genetically modify people with The Hedonistic Imperative, then we'll be in a world full of people with hyperthymic sociopathy and extreme narcissism(people who screw others over all the time for their sick enjoyment). Having someone be extremely happy even when seeing a group of people smashing cars with bats and even cheering them on in the collective destruction of property and society will be extremely stupid. Also, there's the paradox of hedonism. It would be more effective to reduce suffering another way. Reducing sadness is just dumb. Reducing fear would be a far more effective method to reducing suffering. If fear is substantially reduced, then we can make more logical and rational decisions about the present and future. Suffering will lose most of it's pain and become neosuffering, and only have around 10% of the pain of regular suffering. We will still tell when things go wrong, but it will not scare us into obeying dystopian and illogical systems of power. Fear and corruption will be reduced dramatically and freedoms and choices maximized in new societies. The Hedonistic Imperative is bad. The Fearless Imperative is good.

I'm starting to think that maybe I would enjoy a brain implant that would make me feel blissful at all times. Unfortunately the human brain has a tendency of righting itself and becoming resistant to such things, so they would have to work around that. This is why people come down from psychoactive drugs and develop a tolerance to them.