(nods) Ah, I see. Gotcha.
I certainly agree that we can be squeamish about things that we don't actually judge to be wrong, whatever our ethical standards are (unless we explicitly consider squeamishness our ethical standard, of course).
That said, I don't seem to value diversity of experience enough that I'm willing to preserve suffering for the novelty/diversity value.
Tangentially, IME the stuff we class as "positive affect" is way less boring to experience than the stuff we class as "negative affect," as well as involving less suffering.
I just remembered about eliezer's post about serious stories. He thinks that all stories involve conflict, fear, or sadness, and aren't interesting otherwise.
I think he's got a point, about humans needing some sort of self-narrative, about having a need to live the sort of life you would like to read about.
After reading Eliezer's post, I put it on my to-do list as a challenge to write a good story that involves no pain or conflict. I'm hoping to substitute conflict related suspense with strangeness and wonder suspense. That said, it's true that I'm having ...
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.)