I think—probably about 90% sure rather than 100% - I agree that happiness is preferable to non-existence. However, I don’t think there’s an urgency/moral imperative to act to create happiness over neutral states in the same way that there is an urgency and moral imperative to reduce suffering. I.e. I think it’s much more important to spend the world’s resources reducing suffering (taking people from a position of suffering to a position of neutral needs met/not in suffering) than to spend resources on boosting people from a neutral needs met state (which needn’t be non-existence) to a heightened ‘happiness’ state. I view that both: the value difference between neutral and suffering is much larger than the value difference between neutral and happiness AND that there is a moral imperative to reduce suffering where there isn’t necessarily a moral imperative to increase happiness.
To give an example, if presented with the option to either give someone a paracetamol for a mild headache or to give someone a bit of cake that they would enjoy (but do not need—they are not in famine/hunger), I would always choose the painkiller. And—perhaps I’m wrong—I think this would be quite a common preference in the general population. I think most people on a case by case basis would make statements that indicate they do believe we should prioritise suffering. Yet, when we talk on aggregate, suffering-prioritisation seems to be less prevalent. It reminds me of some of the examples in the Frames and Reality chapter of Thinking Fast and Slow about how people will respond the essentially the same scenario differently depending on it’s framing.
WIth apologies for getting a bit dark - (with the possible exclusion of sociopaths etc.), I think people in general would agree they would refuse an ice-cream or the joy of being on a rollercoaster if the cost of it was that someone would be tortured or raped. My point is that I can’t think of any amount of positive/happiness that I would be willing to say yes, this extra happiness for me balances out someone else being raped. So there are at least some examples of suffering, that I just don’t think can be offset by any amount of happiness and therefore my viewpoint definitely includes asymmetry between happiness and suffering. Morally, I just don’t think I can accept a view that says some amount of happiness can offset someone else’s rape or torture.
And I am concerned that the views of people who have experience significant suffering are very under-represented and we don’t think about their viewpoints because it’s easier not to and they often don’t have a platform. What proportion of people working in population ethics have experienced destitution or been a severe burns victim? What proportion of people working in population ethics have spoken to and listened to the views of people who have experienced extreme suffering in order to try and mitigate their own experiential gap? How does this impact their conclusions?
Hi, sorry if I’m a bit late here, and I don’t want to be repeating myself too much, but since I feel it was not properly understood, one of the main points I originally made in this thread and I want to really hit home is that happiness as measured while in a state of happiness cannot be compared in any way to non-existence as “measured” in a state of non-existence, since we obviously cannot perceive sensations (or literally anything) when dead/not in existence. So the common intuition that happiness is preferable to non-existence is based upon our shallow understanding of what it is to “be” dead/non-existant, but from a rational point of view this idea simply does not hold. If I was being tortured with no way out, I would certainly want to die as quickly as I could, however when I imagine death in that moment, I am imagining (while in the state of suffering, and not in the “state” of death) a cessation of that suffering. However, to experience such a cessation I must be able to experience something to which I can compare against said experience of suffering. So technically speaking it doesn’t make any sense at all to say that happiness/suffering is better than non-existence as measured in the respective states of happiness/suffering and death/non-existence. It’s
And it’s not like death/non-existence is neutral in this case. If you picture a scale, with positive experiences (e.g. happiness/satisfaction) in the positive direction and negative experiences (e.g. pain/suffering) in the negative direction, death does NOT appear at 0 since what we are measuring is the perceived value of the experiences. Put another way in terms of utility functions, if someone has a utility function at some value, and then they die, rather than immediately going to zero, their utility function immediately ceases to exist, as a utility function must belong to someone.
Also this idea of mine is somewhat new to me (a few months old maybe), so I haven’t thought through many implications and edge-cases too thoroughly (yet). However this idea, however difficult for me to wrestle with, is something which I find myself simply unable to reason out of.
On asymmetry—and indeed most of the points I’m trying to make—Magnus Vinding gives better explanations than I could. On asymmetry specifically I’d recommend: https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/research/suffering-and-happiness-morally-symmetric-or-orthogonal/
and on whether positive can outweigh suffering: https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/research/on-purported-positive-goods-outweighing-suffering/
To get a better understanding of these points, I highly recommend his book ‘Suffering-focused ethics’ - it is the most compelling thing I’ve read on these topics.
I think—probably about 90% sure rather than 100% - I agree that happiness is preferable to non-existence. However, I don’t think there’s an urgency/moral imperative to act to create happiness over neutral states in the same way that there is an urgency and moral imperative to reduce suffering. I.e. I think it’s much more important to spend the world’s resources reducing suffering (taking people from a position of suffering to a position of neutral needs met/not in suffering) than to spend resources on boosting people from a neutral needs met state (which needn’t be non-existence) to a heightened ‘happiness’ state.
I view that both: the value difference between neutral and suffering is much larger than the value difference between neutral and happiness AND that there is a moral imperative to reduce suffering where there isn’t necessarily a moral imperative to increase happiness.
To give an example, if presented with the option to either give someone a paracetamol for a mild headache or to give someone a bit of cake that they would enjoy (but do not need—they are not in famine/hunger), I would always choose the painkiller. And—perhaps I’m wrong—I think this would be quite a common preference in the general population. I think most people on a case by case basis would make statements that indicate they do believe we should prioritise suffering. Yet, when we talk on aggregate, suffering-prioritisation seems to be less prevalent. It reminds me of some of the examples in the Frames and Reality chapter of Thinking Fast and Slow about how people will respond the essentially the same scenario differently depending on it’s framing.
WIth apologies for getting a bit dark - (with the possible exclusion of sociopaths etc.), I think people in general would agree they would refuse an ice-cream or the joy of being on a rollercoaster if the cost of it was that someone would be tortured or raped. My point is that I can’t think of any amount of positive/happiness that I would be willing to say yes, this extra happiness for me balances out someone else being raped. So there are at least some examples of suffering, that I just don’t think can be offset by any amount of happiness and therefore my viewpoint definitely includes asymmetry between happiness and suffering. Morally, I just don’t think I can accept a view that says some amount of happiness can offset someone else’s rape or torture.
And I am concerned that the views of people who have experience significant suffering are very under-represented and we don’t think about their viewpoints because it’s easier not to and they often don’t have a platform. What proportion of people working in population ethics have experienced destitution or been a severe burns victim? What proportion of people working in population ethics have spoken to and listened to the views of people who have experienced extreme suffering in order to try and mitigate their own experiential gap? How does this impact their conclusions?
Hi, sorry if I’m a bit late here, and I don’t want to be repeating myself too much, but since I feel it was not properly understood, one of the main points I originally made in this thread and I want to really hit home is that happiness as measured while in a state of happiness cannot be compared in any way to non-existence as “measured” in a state of non-existence, since we obviously cannot perceive sensations (or literally anything) when dead/not in existence. So the common intuition that happiness is preferable to non-existence is based upon our shallow understanding of what it is to “be” dead/non-existant, but from a rational point of view this idea simply does not hold. If I was being tortured with no way out, I would certainly want to die as quickly as I could, however when I imagine death in that moment, I am imagining (while in the state of suffering, and not in the “state” of death) a cessation of that suffering. However, to experience such a cessation I must be able to experience something to which I can compare against said experience of suffering. So technically speaking it doesn’t make any sense at all to say that happiness/suffering is better than non-existence as measured in the respective states of happiness/suffering and death/non-existence. It’s
And it’s not like death/non-existence is neutral in this case. If you picture a scale, with positive experiences (e.g. happiness/satisfaction) in the positive direction and negative experiences (e.g. pain/suffering) in the negative direction, death does NOT appear at 0 since what we are measuring is the perceived value of the experiences. Put another way in terms of utility functions, if someone has a utility function at some value, and then they die, rather than immediately going to zero, their utility function immediately ceases to exist, as a utility function must belong to someone.
Also this idea of mine is somewhat new to me (a few months old maybe), so I haven’t thought through many implications and edge-cases too thoroughly (yet). However this idea, however difficult for me to wrestle with, is something which I find myself simply unable to reason out of.