we hate the suffering of other people because it causes us pain to think about other people suffering.
It seems to me that I negatively value other people's suffering... I want there to be less of it.
Given the choice between reducing their suffering and reducing the pain I feel upon contemplating their suffering, it seems to me I ought to reduce their suffering.
Given the option of reducing their suffering at the cost of experiencing just as much pain when I contemplate their lack of suffering as I do now when I contemplate their suffering, it seems to me I ought to reduce their suffering.
None of that seems compatible with the idea that what I actually negatively value is the pain of thinking about other people suffering.
What I can't figure out is whether you're suggesting that I'm ethically confused... that it simply isn't true that I ought to do those things, and if I understood the world better it would stop seeming to me that I ought to do them... or if I'm simply not being correctly described by your "we" statements and you're unjustifiedly generalizing from your own experience... or whether perhaps I've altogether misunderstood you.
What I can't figure out is whether you're suggesting that I'm ethically confused... that it simply isn't true that I ought to do those things, and if I understood the world better it would stop seeming to me that I ought to do them... or if I'm simply not being correctly described by your "we" statements and you're unjustifiedly generalizing from your own experience
None of the above. I'm just trying to figure out why my intuition says that I do not want not block all negative affect and whether my intuition is wrong, and your objections are he...
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)