The Planet of You: A Thought Experiment on Wellbeing Tradeoffs
You can be teleported to an isolated planet and then cloned 9 times to make up a fixed population of 10 of “you”. Of those, S (ranging between 0 and 10 inclusive) will be experiencing suffering for fifty years, while the remaining 10 - S will be experiencing happiness during the same period, after which all of you will painlessly cease to exist. The suffering and happiness will be of the worst and the best kind that you have experienced in your lifetime on Earth, respectively.[1]
What is the largest value of S, if any, at which you would still prefer to be teleported to the planet if the alternative is that you immediately, painlessly cease to exist? Is there a value of S at which you are indifferent between the two options? And how would your answer change if instead of 10 of you there were, say, a thousand or a million of you?
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Feel free to substitute “wellbeing” for “suffering and happiness”. Also, the quality or quantity of the wellbeing need not be assumed constant, but you shall never (nontrivially) cross the notional neutral state.
The thing is I value my sentience above everything else, so I would experience all the pain you can offer for being alive for 50 years even if those 50 were pure misery. So 10. As long as I have my sentience and memories I can make through, and enjoy the sentience.
I have experienced severe nerve pain, and I would still choose the 10. I love being sentient.