It’s true that there would be no further suffering once the destruction was complete.
This is a bit of an abstract point to argue over, but I’ll give it a go...
I started out earlier arguing that the basis of all ethics was {minimizing suffering} and {maximizing freedom}; I later dropped the second term because it seemed like it might be more of a personal preference than a universal principle—but perhaps it, or something like it, needs to be included in order to avoid the “destroy everything instantly and painlessly” solution.
That said, I think it’s more of a glitch in the algorithm than a serious exception to the principle. Can you think of any real-world examples, or class of problems, where anyone would seriously argue for such a solution?
Your example exposes the flaw in the “destroy everything instantly and painlessly” pseudo-solution: the latter assumes that life is more suffering than pleasure. (Euthanasia is only performed—or argued for, anyway—when the gain from continuing to live is believed to be outweighed by the suffering.)
I think this shows that there needs to be a term for pleasure/enjoyment in the formula...
...or perhaps a concept or word which equates to either suffering and pleasure depending on signage (+/-), and then we can simply say that we’re trying to maximize that term—where the exact aggregation function has yet to be determined, but we know it has a positive slope.
It’s true that there would be no further suffering once the destruction was complete.
This is a bit of an abstract point to argue over, but I’ll give it a go...
I started out earlier arguing that the basis of all ethics was {minimizing suffering} and {maximizing freedom}; I later dropped the second term because it seemed like it might be more of a personal preference than a universal principle—but perhaps it, or something like it, needs to be included in order to avoid the “destroy everything instantly and painlessly” solution.
That said, I think it’s more of a glitch in the algorithm than a serious exception to the principle. Can you think of any real-world examples, or class of problems, where anyone would seriously argue for such a solution?
The classic one is euthanasia.
Your example exposes the flaw in the “destroy everything instantly and painlessly” pseudo-solution: the latter assumes that life is more suffering than pleasure. (Euthanasia is only performed—or argued for, anyway—when the gain from continuing to live is believed to be outweighed by the suffering.)
I think this shows that there needs to be a term for pleasure/enjoyment in the formula...
...or perhaps a concept or word which equates to either suffering and pleasure depending on signage (+/-), and then we can simply say that we’re trying to maximize that term—where the exact aggregation function has yet to be determined, but we know it has a positive slope.