One more round of searches to nail down the areas of overlap and disagreement on identity, superintelligence, and ethics:

Here's a ten-point comparison of David Pearce's and Andrés Gómez-Emilsson's world-pictures. The two are intellectual kin — Pearce sits on QRI's advisory board — so the exercise is as much about divergent emphases within a shared project as it is about opposition ( Wikipedia).

1. Shared ethical core: abolitionism. Both hold suffering-focused ethics as central and treat technology, not moral exhortation, as the vehicle for ending it. Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative (1995) argues that genetic engineering, nanotechnology and neurosurgery should abolish aversive experience in all sentient life, replacing it with "information-sensitive gradients of bliss" ( Wikipedia,  HedWeb). Gómez-Emilsson's QRI is explicitly committed to suffering-focused ethics and technologies that enhance the well-being of sentient beings, but locates the bottleneck in science rather than bioengineering: without a rigorous science of consciousness, we can't reliably engineer valence ( QRI). Pearce is a manifesto-writer and futurist; Gómez-Emilsson is building an institutional research programme.

2. Metaphysics: idealist monism vs. dual-aspect monism. Pearce defends "non-materialist physicalism" (physicalistic idealism): the formalism of physics is complete, but the intrinsic nature of the physical — the "fire" in the equations — is experience; reality is exhausted by the unitary evolution of the universal wavefunction ( HedWeb). QRI's official ontology is dual-aspect monism: physics and consciousness are two aspects of one underlying phenomenon, like two shadows cast by a cylinder — deliberately more neutral and theory-agnostic than Pearce's idealism, and compatible with panpsychist readings ( QRI Wiki,  QRI Wiki). Pearce commits to one forbidden answer; Gómez-Emilsson keeps the substrate question open.

3. The binding problem: quantum coherence vs. EM field topology. Pearce's solution is radical: phenomenal binding consists of quantum-coherent superpositions of neurons — neuronal "Schrödinger's cat states" at sub-femtosecond timescales — testable via matter-wave interferometry, and classical digital computers, lacking binding, are micro-experiential "zombies" ( HedWeb,  HedWeb). Gómez-Emilsson attacks the boundary problem with electromagnetic field theory: topological segmentation of the brain's EM field, connectome-specific harmonic waves, coupling kernels and field topology — classical-physics-flavoured mechanisms rather than quantum coherence ( Frontiers/PhilArchive,  QRI). This is arguably their sharpest technical disagreement.

4. Digital minds and AI. Pearce regards "digital mind" as close to an oxymoron: without phenomenal binding, whole-brain emulations and LLMs are alien intelligences, and he wants "abolitionist AI" constrained by a sanctity-of-life proviso so superintelligence doesn't "solve" suffering by extinguishing life ( Daniel Faggella,  HedWeb). Gómez-Emilsson is far more open: he co-authored the Actor Framework for rigorously assessing artificial consciousness across 21 field theories, and treats valence realism as a candidate foundation for AI alignment via indirect normativity ( PhilArchive,  Science, Technology & Future). Pearce's default toward non-carbon scepticism contrasts with QRI's systematic agnosticism.

5. The nature of valence. Pearce treats the pleasure-pain axis as disclosing the world's "inbuilt metric of disvalue" — an ethical given, not something to be derived ( Daniel Faggella). Gómez-Emilsson wants to compute it: qualia formalism (each experience is a mathematical object) plus valence structuralism, with the Symmetry Theory of Valence as the leading hypothesis — valence is the symmetry of the object isomorphic to the experience, so harmony, consonance and coherence literally feel good ( QRI,  QRI Wiki,  Science, Technology & Future). Pearce's valence realism is axiological; Gómez-Emilsson's is mathematical.

6. Wireheading. Pearce polemicizes against wirehead hedonism, insisting precision-engineered hedonic enrichment needn't mean electrode bliss or a "wirehead rut" — paradise-engineering ≠ the Olds rat ( Wireheading.com,  QRI). Gómez-Emilsson steelmans it: "Wireheading Done Right" proposes cycling between phenomenologically distinct kinds of euphoria so one never gets stuck, while avoiding becoming a "pure replicator" at Darwinism's mercy ( QRI,  QRI). Same worry about motivational collapse; opposite rhetorical strategy.

7. Empirical method: prediction vs. phenomenology. Pearce's method is deductive-empiricist: derive bizarre but falsifiable predictions from first principles (Schrödinger's neurons) and let interferometry decide ( HedWeb). Gómez-Emilsson's is state-specific science: psychonauts, jhānas, 5-MeO-DMT retreats, tracer-replication tools, and phenomenology of exotic states as primary data — a "post-Galilean" science of consciousness with meditators as collaborators ( QRI,  QRI). Pearce is the theoretician; Gómez-Emilsson the psychophysicist.

8. The scale of suffering and bliss. Gómez-Emilsson argues the valence scale is logarithmic/heavy-tailed — the worst suffering dwarfs everything else by orders of magnitude — with empirical data, implying ethics should prioritize the extreme ends of experience ( QRI,  Frontiers). Pearce agrees in spirit (NU's priority is the worst) but resists letting extreme suffering dominate the vision: life should be based on gradients of superhuman bliss, not merely the absence of the bad ( Sentience Research,  Metanaissance).

9. Personal identity. Gómez-Emilsson gives identity theory a load-bearing role, comparing closed/empty/open individualism to conservation laws in physics, exploring open individualism sympathetically and its implications for antinatalism in block-time ( QRI,  QRI). Pearce mostly brackets personal identity: the "unitary phenomenal self" is a feature of each brain's egocentric world-simulation, and his project proceeds at the level of sentience everywhere, selves or none ( HedWeb).

10. The endgame vision. Pearce's terminus is the abolitionist project across the forward light-cone: rewriting the vertebrate genome, reprogramming predators, a cross-species welfare state, and superintelligence phasing out the molecular substrates of suffering throughout the living world ( Wikipedia,  Metanaissance). Gómez-Emilsson's is the Harmonic Society: art, sacred experience and a future "affective language" grounded in symmetry science, plus systematic exploration of the state-space of consciousness — explicitly a society "free from suffering and interpersonal misunderstanding," but reached through aesthetics and mutual comprehension rather than germline editing ( QRI,  QRI).

In one line: Pearce is a negative-utilitarian idealist who wants to bioengineer paradise and expects quantum neurobiology to vindicate the primacy of experience; Gómez-Emilsson is a valence structuralist who wants to mathematicize consciousness first and trusts field topology, psychedelics and symmetry to tell us what bliss is — with Pearce supplying the ethical destination and QRI attempting the scientific vehicle.