@Beyond Singularity Another issue is how you calculate positive vs negative valence. David Pearce thinks ethics is only about reducing negative experiences, and although it is good to make beings have more positive ones, it is not within ethics. So his view is, I think, the more extreme side of negative utilitarianism.
I think positive experiences are within the ethical realm, and although reducing suffering is more important than increasing happiness, I would still try calculate how much beings are happy as well and how to optimize that.
Thanks, I agree — positive experiences matter morally too. I didn’t emphasize it explicitly, but the text defines valence as “how good or bad an experience feels”, so both sides are included. Since there’s no consensus on how to weigh suffering vs happiness, I think the relative weight between them should itself come from feedback — like through pairwise comparisons and aggregation of moral intuitions across perspectives.
@Beyond Singularity Another issue is how you calculate positive vs negative valence. David Pearce thinks ethics is only about reducing negative experiences, and although it is good to make beings have more positive ones, it is not within ethics. So his view is, I think, the more extreme side of negative utilitarianism.
I think positive experiences are within the ethical realm, and although reducing suffering is more important than increasing happiness, I would still try calculate how much beings are happy as well and how to optimize that.
Thanks, I agree — positive experiences matter morally too. I didn’t emphasize it explicitly, but the text defines valence as “how good or bad an experience feels”, so both sides are included.
Since there’s no consensus on how to weigh suffering vs happiness, I think the relative weight between them should itself come from feedback — like through pairwise comparisons and aggregation of moral intuitions across perspectives.