“Tomasikian” refers to the Effective Altruist blogger Brian Tomasik, who is known for pioneering an extremely bullet-biting version of “suffering-focused ethics” (roughly negative utilitarianism, though from my readings, he may also mix some preference satisfactionism and prioritarianism in as well). The suffering empathy exercises I’m referring to aren’t really a specific thing, but more sort of the style he uses when writing about suffering to try to get people to understand his perspective on it. Usually this involves describing real world cases of extreme suffering, and trying to get people to see the desperation one would feel if they were actually experiencing it, and to take that seriously, and inadequacy of academic dismissals in the face of it. A sort of representative quote:
“Most people ignore worries about medical pain because it’s far away. Several of my friends think I’m weird to be so parochial about reducing suffering and not take a more far-sighted view of my idealized moral values. They tend to shrug off pain, saying it’s not so bad. They think it’s extremely peculiar that I don’t want to be open to changing my moral perspective and coming to realize that suffering isn’t so important and that other things matter comparably. Perhaps others don’t understand what it’s like to be me. Morality is not an abstract, intellectual game, where I pick a viewpoint that seems comely and elegant to my sensibilities. Morality for me is about crying out at the horrors of the universe and pleading for them to stop. Sure, I enjoy intellectual debates, interesting ideas, and harmonious resolutions of conflicting intuitions, and I realize that if you’re serious about reducing suffering, you do need to get into a lot of deep, recondite topics. But fundamentally it has to come back to suffering or else it’s just brain masturbation while others are being tortured.”
To add to the other comment, (to my knowledge) Brian Tomasik coined the terms s-risks and suffering-focused ethics, established foundational research into the problem of wild animal suffering, and had a part in co-founding two existing organizations that have a strong focus on reducing s-risks, i.e. the Center on Long-Term Risk (CLR) and the Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS).
Suffering-focused ethics refers to a broad set of moral views focused on preventing suffering (e.g. some Buddhist ethics might fall under this category).
While Brian Tomasik’s writings are written from a “suffering-focused perspective”, most of them are in the form of in-depth analyses relevant to how to reduce suffering, rather than ethical theory—which makes the work possibly relevant even if someone isn’t as suffering-focused as he is but has at least some concern for suffering. For the moral views themselves another researcher, Magnus Vinding, has written a book on suffering-focused ethics.
None of the researchers/research organizations I mention above endorse bringing about human extinction. In general, how to best reduce suffering is (rightfully, in my view) seen as quite complex in this community (as another comment hinted at).
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to imply that Tomasik supports extinction, just that, if I have to think about the strongest case against preventing it, it’s the sort of Tomasik on my shoulder that is speaking loudest.
What’s a Tomasikian suffering empathy exercise? I’m not familiar with that term.
“Tomasikian” refers to the Effective Altruist blogger Brian Tomasik, who is known for pioneering an extremely bullet-biting version of “suffering-focused ethics” (roughly negative utilitarianism, though from my readings, he may also mix some preference satisfactionism and prioritarianism in as well). The suffering empathy exercises I’m referring to aren’t really a specific thing, but more sort of the style he uses when writing about suffering to try to get people to understand his perspective on it. Usually this involves describing real world cases of extreme suffering, and trying to get people to see the desperation one would feel if they were actually experiencing it, and to take that seriously, and inadequacy of academic dismissals in the face of it. A sort of representative quote:
“Most people ignore worries about medical pain because it’s far away. Several of my friends think I’m weird to be so parochial about reducing suffering and not take a more far-sighted view of my idealized moral values. They tend to shrug off pain, saying it’s not so bad. They think it’s extremely peculiar that I don’t want to be open to changing my moral perspective and coming to realize that suffering isn’t so important and that other things matter comparably. Perhaps others don’t understand what it’s like to be me. Morality is not an abstract, intellectual game, where I pick a viewpoint that seems comely and elegant to my sensibilities. Morality for me is about crying out at the horrors of the universe and pleading for them to stop. Sure, I enjoy intellectual debates, interesting ideas, and harmonious resolutions of conflicting intuitions, and I realize that if you’re serious about reducing suffering, you do need to get into a lot of deep, recondite topics. But fundamentally it has to come back to suffering or else it’s just brain masturbation while others are being tortured.”
The relevant post:
https://reducing-suffering.org/the-horror-of-suffering/
Interesting, I’ll have to look into that. Thanks for the clarification.
To add to the other comment, (to my knowledge) Brian Tomasik coined the terms s-risks and suffering-focused ethics, established foundational research into the problem of wild animal suffering, and had a part in co-founding two existing organizations that have a strong focus on reducing s-risks, i.e. the Center on Long-Term Risk (CLR) and the Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS).
Suffering-focused ethics refers to a broad set of moral views focused on preventing suffering (e.g. some Buddhist ethics might fall under this category).
While Brian Tomasik’s writings are written from a “suffering-focused perspective”, most of them are in the form of in-depth analyses relevant to how to reduce suffering, rather than ethical theory—which makes the work possibly relevant even if someone isn’t as suffering-focused as he is but has at least some concern for suffering. For the moral views themselves another researcher, Magnus Vinding, has written a book on suffering-focused ethics.
None of the researchers/research organizations I mention above endorse bringing about human extinction. In general, how to best reduce suffering is (rightfully, in my view) seen as quite complex in this community (as another comment hinted at).
Good clarifications, endorsed.
To be clear, I wasn’t trying to imply that Tomasik supports extinction, just that, if I have to think about the strongest case against preventing it, it’s the sort of Tomasik on my shoulder that is speaking loudest.