[Open Thread] Stupid Questions (2014-02-17)

solipsist

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This is part of a two-week experiment on having more open threads.

Obvious answers aren't always obvious. If you feel silly for not understanding something, you're not alone. Ask a question here.

Previous stupid questions

Other similar threads include:

If suffering has far greater dis-utility for you than happy living has utility, is it logical to conclude that it'd be a good thing if the universe ceased to exist, thereby preventing all future suffering at the cost of all future life?

No. Not purely from that knowledge about your utility function, anyway.

Unless suffering has infinite disutility, then enough happiness would outweigh all the suffering in the world.

If we reach a Good Future, then it would be worth it even if the average modern human has negative utility - which seems far from obvious itself, even given the premise; most human lives could still experience sufficiently more happiness than suffering.

0Alsadius12y

All that implies is that we ought to tolerate suicide. Those with negative net value attached to living can reset it to zero pretty easily.

3Creutzer12y

You might want to look at the writings of David Benatar. He's a professional philosopher who argues something similar in spirit. His position it that it would be better for there to not be (and never have been) any sentient life. He is not as crazy as this may sound; the problem is just that he has one premise that is totally intuitive to some people while others completely fail to see its appeal, and there's no real reason for or against accepting it other than intuition. The shortest thing to read would be his paper "Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence". He also has a book titled "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence".

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[Open Thread] Stupid Questions (2014-02-17)

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[Open Thread] Stupid Questions (2014-02-17)

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