I’ve been attracted to this idea my whole adult life. However:
an actual attempt to pursue it would probably have quite awful consequences instead of the good ones imagined (simplest case possible to realise: me ending my own suffering would create suffering for my close ones)
Killing other people—there’s no magic annihilation button, so that’s probably not going to end well either. Perhaps something like legalising euthanasia could actually successfully reduce suffering rather than accidentally increase it.
as the previous point may hint already, I don’t think this philosophy is a very healthy one to hold—or rather, I believe it’s a result of a mind troubled with suffering. So it’s not that it changed my mind, but rather it was something I naturally looked for and arrived at thanks to being depressed—and I didn’t enjoy the journey very much.
I sympathise, but… For 1), if your negative utilitarianism (NU) is a sincerely held, ‘psychologically normal’ belief, I think that you can be a very strong NU and still want to pursue totally ‘normal’ EA goals. For any brand of utilitarianism, greatly reducing or eradicating suffering is a valid and obviously normal goal. Assuming you don’t have the capability for ‘magic annihilation’, there are so many alternatives. Is there a worldview where ‘ending your own suffering’ is higher expected-value than ending factory farming or treating extreme cancer pain in Sub-Saharan Africa? Preventing S-risks is also a productive way for an NU to work on/ think about an EA topic.
While I agree that treating extreme pain is definitely in line with NU, a person struggling with major depression, I believe, usually is quite dubious about their efficacy and potential to achieve such goals. You can’t work on ending factory farming if you can’t even get out of bed, plainly speaking.
I’ve been attracted to this idea my whole adult life. However:
an actual attempt to pursue it would probably have quite awful consequences instead of the good ones imagined (simplest case possible to realise: me ending my own suffering would create suffering for my close ones) Killing other people—there’s no magic annihilation button, so that’s probably not going to end well either. Perhaps something like legalising euthanasia could actually successfully reduce suffering rather than accidentally increase it.
as the previous point may hint already, I don’t think this philosophy is a very healthy one to hold—or rather, I believe it’s a result of a mind troubled with suffering. So it’s not that it changed my mind, but rather it was something I naturally looked for and arrived at thanks to being depressed—and I didn’t enjoy the journey very much.
I sympathise, but… For 1), if your negative utilitarianism (NU) is a sincerely held, ‘psychologically normal’ belief, I think that you can be a very strong NU and still want to pursue totally ‘normal’ EA goals. For any brand of utilitarianism, greatly reducing or eradicating suffering is a valid and obviously normal goal. Assuming you don’t have the capability for ‘magic annihilation’, there are so many alternatives. Is there a worldview where ‘ending your own suffering’ is higher expected-value than ending factory farming or treating extreme cancer pain in Sub-Saharan Africa? Preventing S-risks is also a productive way for an NU to work on/ think about an EA topic.
While I agree that treating extreme pain is definitely in line with NU, a person struggling with major depression, I believe, usually is quite dubious about their efficacy and potential to achieve such goals. You can’t work on ending factory farming if you can’t even get out of bed, plainly speaking.