My rough answer to this is: If someone wants to die (after thinking about it for a long time and having time to reflect on it), let them die.
Some people don’t have the choice to die, because they’re prevented from it, like victims of abuse/torture or certain freak accidents.
I don’t see how the atrocities that are experienced by humans outweigh the benefits, given that the vast majority of humans seem to have a pretty decent will to live.
I think this is a problem with the idea of “outweigh”. Utilitarian interpersonal tradeoffs can be extremely cruel and unfair. If you think the happiness can aggregate to outweigh the worst instances of suffering:
1. How many additional happy people would need to be born to justify subjecting a child to a lifetime of abuse and torture?
2. How many extra years of happy life for yourself would you need to justify subjecting a child to a lifetime of abuse and torture?
The framings might invoke very different immediate reactions (2 seems much more accusatory because the person benefitting from another’s abuse and torture is the one making the decision to subject them to it), but for someone just aggregating by summation, like a classical utilitarian, they’re basically the same.
There’s ongoing sickening cruelty: violent child pornography, chickens are boiled alive, and so on. We should help these victims and prevent such suffering, rather than focus on ensuring that many individuals come into existence in the future. When spending resources on increasing the number of beings instead of preventing extreme suffering, one is essentially saying to the victims: “I could have helped you, but I didn’t, because I think it’s more important that individuals are brought into existence. Sorry.”
Some people don’t have the choice to die, because they’re prevented from it, like victims of abuse/torture or certain freak accidents.
I think this is a problem with the idea of “outweigh”. Utilitarian interpersonal tradeoffs can be extremely cruel and unfair. If you think the happiness can aggregate to outweigh the worst instances of suffering:
1. How many additional happy people would need to be born to justify subjecting a child to a lifetime of abuse and torture?
2. How many extra years of happy life for yourself would you need to justify subjecting a child to a lifetime of abuse and torture?
The framings might invoke very different immediate reactions (2 seems much more accusatory because the person benefitting from another’s abuse and torture is the one making the decision to subject them to it), but for someone just aggregating by summation, like a classical utilitarian, they’re basically the same.
I think it’s put pretty well here, too: