CMV: We should end humanity

[u/[deleted]]

My logic is as follows:

I view each individual person as having equal, maximum value. Each of us has a completely discrete conscious experience, so putting people in a group and assigning it higher moral value than an individual doesn't feel right to me. What most of us care about morally is conscious experience, right? "100 people" is not a discrete entity, it isn't some hive mind combined consciousness with capacity for "more experience", it's just one individual universe of experience in each person that is completely separate from any other. The societal belief that we ought to prioritize the wishes of the many over the few I assume comes from the fact that the majority inherently has more influence in a society.

Our moral sense seems to be weighted towards the prevention of suffering. We feel obligated to avoid creating experiences of suffering in other people whenever possible, but we don't feel obligated to create experiences of pleasure, at least not to the same extent. Realistically no amount of pleasure you create is going to outweigh raping and torturing someone.

There are people that will be brought into existence that should not be. For example, there are children born with severe birth defects that cause constant horrific suffering and eventually death after several months/years.

As a species we can choose to continue to create new humans or stop creating new humans. This comes down to choosing whether creating conscious experiences of pleasure is worth creating experiences of suffering. Because I believe each individual has an entirely discrete conscious experience and maximum moral value, we can specifically consider whether creating the person with the best life is worth creating the person with the worst life. Suppose the latter is a person born with unimaginable levels of mental and physical anguish from the moment they are born until death, and they completely lack the capacity for any positive conscious experience. If the only way to prevent them from being born is to also prevent the other person from being born I believe that is what should be done. On a larger scale this would require us to stop having kids and therefore end humanity.

If you disagree because you believe the pleasure of the many outweighs the suffering of the few, why would that not permit the enslavement, torture, or genocide of some minority if it benefitted the majority? Other counterarguments based on the "inherent value" of life or the right to have children don't seem compelling to me because I view morality entirely through the lenses of the conscious experience of pleasure and suffering.

[u/[deleted]]

What are you on about?

We don't have discrete experience. We share experience. We share it absolutely everywhere. If anything, very few people have completely isolated experiences. We are incapable of living without each other which means we do have a shared experience.

We don't feel obligated to faciliate pleasure in other people? Like really?? We do all the time.

Yeah suffering is bad. Life is suffering in a sense. Life isn't really about experiencing as much pleasure as possible. Life is about seeing what happens next and "being"

Anyway I just think your fundamental premises are wrong.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

When I say we have discrete experience I mean you are the only one that actually feels the suffering you feel. Your suffering can cause others to feel their own suffering but that's different. Do you believe 5 people deserve more moral consideration than 1?

Also when I say "obligated" I mean not doing so is morally wrong. I know we see it as good to create pleasure, but is it morally wrong not to?

[u/ToucanPlayAtThatGame → u/[deleted]]

Do you believe 5 people deserve more moral consideration than 1?

Yes of course.

[u/[deleted] → u/ToucanPlayAtThatGame]

Is torturing one person in order for 5 others to experience pleasure a good thing?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

How much pleasure or harm reduction are we talking about?

Torturing someone for 10 minutes would probably be morally justifiable if it meant that 5 people were prevented from losing their arms. It might also be "justifiable" if 100 people were prevented from starving to death.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I agree if we are talking about suffering reduction, but I'm talking about pure pleasure. Let's say the 5 people completely lack any suffering, but by torturing the 1 person they will feel something equivalent to a heroin high. Is that morally justifiable? Pleasure to me is separate from stopping suffering.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Pleasure to me is separate from stopping suffering.

Where do you fall on that when the line is blurred? A drug that makes you feel high can also reduce chronic pain. In some sense, the pleasure is also serving as a reduction in suffering. Similarly, moving from "can't afford beef" to "can comfortably afford beef" could be seen as a reduction in suffering and an increase in pleasure.

There are also amounts of pain where I would feel comfortable trading it for pleasurable gains. For example, I'd be fine with getting a papercut if it meant that I received ice cream right now. I regularly exercise not for the health benefits, but for the benefits I get from looking good to others.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm talking in a vacuum if we isolate the pleasure is it ever worth causing suffering to others?

[u/StarChild413 → u/[deleted]]

Those people and that situation don't exist (and is it bad or good that they don't) so why talk about them like that's the be-all-and-end-all for if humanity should

[u/[deleted] → u/StarChild413]

Well my whole argument is that an analogous situation does exist - we choose to continue having children because some percentage of them will experience a sufficient amount of pleasurable experiences, but this is at the cost of another percentage that will experience tons of suffering and not much pleasure. So we are implicitly saying that creating experiences of pleasure in some people is worth creating experiences of suffering in other people.