Negative utilitarians are known to be notoriously bad at making sense of how humans (and other animals) behave in real life (e.g., most people are willing to endure the pain of walking over hot sand for the pleasure of swimming in the sea). And I suspect this extends to the behavior of negative utilitarians themselves.
And classical utilitarians are notoriously prone to making quick judgments when tradeoffs are concerned:)
Perhaps people walk over hot sand because they really want to go swimming in the sea and would suffer otherwise. If there was absolutely nothing that subjectively bothers you about the current state you're in, you would not act at all, so it's highly non-obvious that people are generally trading pleasure and suffering in their daily lives. Whenever we consciously make a trade involving pleasure, the counterfactual alternative always seems to include so...
I've always been more of a theoretician, but it's important to try one's hand at practical problems from time to time. In that vein, I've decided to try three simultaneous experiments on major Less Wrong themes. I will aim to acquire something to protect, I will practice training a seed intelligence, and I will become more familiar with many consequences of evolutionary psychology.
In the spirit of efficiency I'll combine all these experiments into one:
She's never seen Star Wars or Doctor Who.
She's never seen David Attenborough or read J. L. Borges.
She's never had a philosophical debate.
She's never been skiing.
Never had sex, never been hugged or even been licked by a dog!
She has so much to look forwards to...
(Though she'll be very boring for several months yet!)