“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.”
“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.