"...at some momentous and exactly datable time, I would surmise well before the end of the fourth millennium and possibly even the third, the last unpleasant experience ever to occur on this planet will take place. It will be, perhaps, a (purely comparatively) minor pain in some (to us) obscure marine invertebrate. For just as the smallpox virus was systematically hunted down to extinction, so the precise molecular signature(s) of aversive experience and its predisposing genes can predictably be hunted down and wiped out as well. The application of nanotechnology, self-reproducing micro-miniaturised robots armed with supercomputer processing power, and ultra-sophisticated genetic engineering, perhaps using retro-viral vectors, will assure the eradication of the root of all evil in its naturalistic guise. The advent of the post-Darwinian era will mark a major transition in the evolution of life..."
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