Hacker News Reader

Comment by Retra | Hacker News Reader

Well, that's a trivial proof. Kill everybody and there will be no suffering. Then you invoke what does intrinsically matter to recognize that this is an unacceptable solution, because you've actually destroyed everything that matters.

What does matter is reliable, flexible decision-making capabilities, and killing someone is just about the worst way to achieve that (barring that the person you kill isn't doing more damage than good in this regard.) Suffering is bad because it causes people to make bad decisions.

And that isn't something you can easily argue is true for the situation I was responding to.

View on HN

The argument in your first paragraph shows that suffering is not the only thing that matters; it doesn't prove it isn't a thing that matters (which is what you claimed before).

I don't think it's tenable to say that suffering is bad only "because it causes people to make bad decisions", unless you are comfortable saying that inflicting pain on infants is morally neutral. (I don't think a very small baby can rightly be said to be "making decisions", good or bad.)

I said it doesn't matter intrinsically. It matters when you consider its effects on decision-making.

>unless you are comfortable saying that inflicting pain on infants is morally neutral.

Why not make your argument about chickens or pigs? I don't care if a chicken suffers before I eat it: it's dead. It was bred to die. That's not much of a moral quandary for me, to be honest.

Baby humans have a lot of potential, and we need them to make good decisions as adults. That doesn't happen when you don't care about children's pain. But it definitely also doesn't happen if you kill them.

So you're arguing that if inflicting pain produces better decisions (as it occasionally does), it is not just morally acceptable, but an actual positive force for good?

No, if inflicting pain produces better, more circumstantially adaptable decision-making capabilities, then I would agree.

And when it does, it clearly is good. That's why we evolved pain receptors: because it enables better decision-making capabilities. People who can't feel pain suffer plenty for it, and they live in real danger.

By your logic, I could breed slaves to suffer and die for my benefit, with no moral quandary, as long as I never let them make any decisions. This was in fact USA law for decades.

That is not my logic, you've completely missed my point. The adult human brain is the most powerful decision-making tool known to have ever existed anywhere in the entire universe. That being the trait that makes humans valuable, and slavery undermining that makes it somewhat incompatible with my morality.

Chickens do not have that potential to be valuable decision-makers. That is the only reason it is acceptable to breed them for death.

What a weird and arbitrary (and absurdly anthropocentric) standard for who is regarded as valuable.

You could say the same about any morality, though I don't see why you think it's arbitrary or anthropocentric. For one, I am talking about the properties of information, which isn't arbitrary. And you could certainly build a machine, find another animal, or locate an ecosystem that has more value than humans.

Especially when you've got a world of absurd religious philosophies to compare it to.

> For one, I am talking about the properties of information, which isn't arbitrary.

I dunno, do chickens agree with you on that?

"If all life were to end in Spira, all suffering would end. Don't you see? Do you not agree?"

- an antagonist in Final Fantasy X

Reply on news.ycombinator.com