Executive summary: The emergence of intense suffering, especially in non-human animals, raises important moral questions about the value of pleasure versus the badness of suffering.
Key points:
Suffering may be stronger and more important than pleasure, based on thought experiments and real-world examples.
The scale of intense suffering, especially in factory farms and the wild, seems to dwarf human pleasure.
Moral theories like utilitarianism struggle with intense suffering, which seems non-offsetable and non-comparable.
Individual compassion and systemic changes are needed to effectively alleviate intense suffering.
A dialectical mindset helps reconcile massive suffering with motivation for action.
Practices like mindfulness can build equanimity to accept suffering while still working to reduce it.
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Executive summary: The emergence of intense suffering, especially in non-human animals, raises important moral questions about the value of pleasure versus the badness of suffering.
Key points:
Suffering may be stronger and more important than pleasure, based on thought experiments and real-world examples.
The scale of intense suffering, especially in factory farms and the wild, seems to dwarf human pleasure.
Moral theories like utilitarianism struggle with intense suffering, which seems non-offsetable and non-comparable.
Individual compassion and systemic changes are needed to effectively alleviate intense suffering.
A dialectical mindset helps reconcile massive suffering with motivation for action.
Practices like mindfulness can build equanimity to accept suffering while still working to reduce it.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Great TL;DR