Is it just something like “preventing suffering is the most important thing to work on (and the disjunction of assumptions that can lead to this conclusion)”?
I also don’t want to speak for FRI as a whole, but yeah, I think it’s safe to say that a main thing that makes FRI unique is its suffering focus.
My high confidence in suffering-focused values results from moral anti-realism generally (or, if moral realism is true, then my unconcern for the moral truth). I don’t think consciousness anti-realism plays a big role because I would still be suffering-focused even if qualia were “real”. My suffering focus is ultimately driven by the visceral feeling that extreme suffering is so severe that nothing else compares in importance. Theoretical arguments take a back seat to this conviction.
Interesting. I’m a moral anti-realist who also focuses on suffering, but not to the extent that you do (e.g. not worrying that much about suffering at the level of fundamental physics.) I would have predicted that theoretical arguments were what convinced you to care about fundamental physics suffering, not any sort of visceral feeling.
Sorry, I meant that emotion is what makes me care about (extreme) suffering in the first place. With that foundation, one should use arguments to clarify what reducing suffering looks like in practice and what “suffering” even means. Also, there’s some blending of rational arguments and emotion. I now care a bit about suffering in fundamental physics on an emotional level because my conception of suffering has been changed by learning more about the world and philosophy of mind. (That said, I still care a lot about animals.)
I also don’t want to speak for FRI as a whole, but yeah, I think it’s safe to say that a main thing that makes FRI unique is its suffering focus.
My high confidence in suffering-focused values results from moral anti-realism generally (or, if moral realism is true, then my unconcern for the moral truth). I don’t think consciousness anti-realism plays a big role because I would still be suffering-focused even if qualia were “real”. My suffering focus is ultimately driven by the visceral feeling that extreme suffering is so severe that nothing else compares in importance. Theoretical arguments take a back seat to this conviction.
Interesting. I’m a moral anti-realist who also focuses on suffering, but not to the extent that you do (e.g. not worrying that much about suffering at the level of fundamental physics.) I would have predicted that theoretical arguments were what convinced you to care about fundamental physics suffering, not any sort of visceral feeling.
Sorry, I meant that emotion is what makes me care about (extreme) suffering in the first place. With that foundation, one should use arguments to clarify what reducing suffering looks like in practice and what “suffering” even means. Also, there’s some blending of rational arguments and emotion. I now care a bit about suffering in fundamental physics on an emotional level because my conception of suffering has been changed by learning more about the world and philosophy of mind. (That said, I still care a lot about animals.)