I find your attitude somewhat surprising. I’m much less sympathetic to trolley problems or utility monsters than the repugnant conclusion. I can see why some people aren’t moved by it, but I have a hard time seeing how someone couldn’t get what it is moving about it. Since it is a rather basic intuition, it’s not super easy to pump. But I wonder, what do you think about this alternative, which seems to draw on similar intuitions for me:
Suppose that you could right now, at this moment, choose between continuing to live your life, with all its ups and downs and complexity, or going into a state of near-total suspended animation. In the state of suspended animation, you will have no thoughts and no feelings, except you will have a sensation of sucking on a rather disappointing but not altogether bad cough drop. You won’t be able to meditate on your existence, or focus on the different aspects of the flavor. You won’t feel pain or boredom. Just the cough drop. If you continue your life, you’ll die in 40 years. If you go into the state of animation, it will last for 40,000 years (or 500,000, or 20 million, whatever number it takes.) Is it totally obvious that the right thing to do is to opt for the suspended animation (at least, from a selfish perspective) ?
Thanks for trying to come up with a thought experiment that targets your intuitions here! That’s exactly what I was hoping people would do.
For me, this thought experiment feels like it raises more “value of complexity” questions than the canonical RC. Though from the comments it seems like complexity vs homogeneity intuitions are contributing to quite a few people’s anti-RC feelings, so it’s not bad to have a thought experiment that targets that.
In any case, I think there probably is a sufficiently large number of years at which I would take the cough drop, all else equal. Certainly I don’t feel extremely strong resistance to the idea of doing so. However, I’m a slightly non-optimal person to pose this thought experiment to, in that I’m not at all sure that my life so far has been good for me on net.
By the way I apologise for implying you should “remove” something from your comment which I didn’t literally mean. What I should have said is I think the words led to an unhelpful characterisation of the life being lived in the thought experiment. The OP doesn’t appreciate my contributions so I am going to leave this post.
In the state of suspended animation, you will have no thoughts and no feelings, except you will have a sensation of sucking on a rather disappointing but not altogether bad cough drop.
Firstly remove the words “rather disappointing”. Remember there is nothing bad in this world and terms like that don’t help people put themselves in the situation.
You won’t feel pain or boredom.
I for one find this very difficult to imagine, and perhaps counterproductive to the RC. A buddhist might say not feeling pain or boredom is akin to living an enlightened life which is of the highest possible quality. It’s for this reason that I personally don’t find this thought experiment very helpful—it’s just way too difficult to imagine what such a cough drop life would be like.
EDIT: I regret implying you should “remove” something from your comment which I don’t literally mean. What I should have said is I think the words led to an unhelpful characterisation
There is a challenge here in making the thought experiment specific, conceivable, and still compelling for the majority of people. I think a marginally positive experience like sucking on a cough drop is easy to imagine (even if it is hard to really picture doing it for 40,000 years) and intuitively just slightly better than non-existence minute by minute.
Someone might disagree. There are some who think that existence is intrinsically valuable, so simply having no negative experiences might be enough to have a life well worth living. But it is hard to paint a clear picture of a life that is definitely barely worth living and involves some mix of ups and downs, because you then have to make sure that the ups and downs balance each other out, and this is more difficult to imagine and harder to gauge.
I find your attitude somewhat surprising. I’m much less sympathetic to trolley problems or utility monsters than the repugnant conclusion. I can see why some people aren’t moved by it, but I have a hard time seeing how someone couldn’t get what it is moving about it. Since it is a rather basic intuition, it’s not super easy to pump. But I wonder, what do you think about this alternative, which seems to draw on similar intuitions for me:
Suppose that you could right now, at this moment, choose between continuing to live your life, with all its ups and downs and complexity, or going into a state of near-total suspended animation. In the state of suspended animation, you will have no thoughts and no feelings, except you will have a sensation of sucking on a rather disappointing but not altogether bad cough drop. You won’t be able to meditate on your existence, or focus on the different aspects of the flavor. You won’t feel pain or boredom. Just the cough drop. If you continue your life, you’ll die in 40 years. If you go into the state of animation, it will last for 40,000 years (or 500,000, or 20 million, whatever number it takes.) Is it totally obvious that the right thing to do is to opt for the suspended animation (at least, from a selfish perspective) ?
Thanks for trying to come up with a thought experiment that targets your intuitions here! That’s exactly what I was hoping people would do.
For me, this thought experiment feels like it raises more “value of complexity” questions than the canonical RC. Though from the comments it seems like complexity vs homogeneity intuitions are contributing to quite a few people’s anti-RC feelings, so it’s not bad to have a thought experiment that targets that.
In any case, I think there probably is a sufficiently large number of years at which I would take the cough drop, all else equal. Certainly I don’t feel extremely strong resistance to the idea of doing so. However, I’m a slightly non-optimal person to pose this thought experiment to, in that I’m not at all sure that my life so far has been good for me on net.
By the way I apologise for implying you should “remove” something from your comment which I didn’t literally mean. What I should have said is I think the words led to an unhelpful characterisation of the life being lived in the thought experiment. The OP doesn’t appreciate my contributions so I am going to leave this post.
Firstly remove the words “rather disappointing”. Remember there is nothing bad in this world and terms like that don’t help people put themselves in the situation.
I for one find this very difficult to imagine, and perhaps counterproductive to the RC. A buddhist might say not feeling pain or boredom is akin to living an enlightened life which is of the highest possible quality. It’s for this reason that I personally don’t find this thought experiment very helpful—it’s just way too difficult to imagine what such a cough drop life would be like.
EDIT: I regret implying you should “remove” something from your comment which I don’t literally mean. What I should have said is I think the words led to an unhelpful characterisation
There is a challenge here in making the thought experiment specific, conceivable, and still compelling for the majority of people. I think a marginally positive experience like sucking on a cough drop is easy to imagine (even if it is hard to really picture doing it for 40,000 years) and intuitively just slightly better than non-existence minute by minute.
Someone might disagree. There are some who think that existence is intrinsically valuable, so simply having no negative experiences might be enough to have a life well worth living. But it is hard to paint a clear picture of a life that is definitely barely worth living and involves some mix of ups and downs, because you then have to make sure that the ups and downs balance each other out, and this is more difficult to imagine and harder to gauge.