this is an interesting take, that death (or the uncertainty of it) might be worse than life and also both together worse than non-existence for a person. then a further question: if we take complete lack of experience to be neutral (sleep, in Hume’s example), and we had a magic device that could grant each individual the opportunity to cease experience from this moment to their naturally occurring death (i.e. to become a zombie), 1) how many people who claim their life has negative value would follow through by using this device and 2) is this meaningfully different from choosing death directly? from the experiential point of view it’s identical. from the experience of those around you, not as much, though in the zombie case you’re being dishonest with those around you and that brings its own baggage.
also interesting is that even in the friendliest of utilitarian views the repugnant conclusion usually ends with “a plethora of near-0-value lives” or “a single maximally high-value life”. less discussed is a plethora of willful negative existences required to enable a counteracting positive existence (for example, a miserable father who slaves away so his children may lead better lives). yet that arrangement is arguably more relatable to the typical individual, who may frequently embrace negative states in order to obtain later positive ones (e.g. as simple as setting an early alarm clock so that you can admire the sun rise).
the saving grace to all this, for me, is that i find it incredibly unlikely that any of these distasteful utilitarian hypotheticals actually represent the global maximum. or even significant local maxima for that matter. no matter if it’s the sum or the mean, negative experience immediately adjacent to positive experience doesn’t seem to be so stable. most human relationships are co-beneficial, for example. many people gain more than they lose when they give (charity/philanthropy/etc).
this is an interesting take, that death (or the uncertainty of it) might be worse than life and also both together worse than non-existence for a person. then a further question: if we take complete lack of experience to be neutral (sleep, in Hume’s example), and we had a magic device that could grant each individual the opportunity to cease experience from this moment to their naturally occurring death (i.e. to become a zombie), 1) how many people who claim their life has negative value would follow through by using this device and 2) is this meaningfully different from choosing death directly? from the experiential point of view it’s identical. from the experience of those around you, not as much, though in the zombie case you’re being dishonest with those around you and that brings its own baggage.
also interesting is that even in the friendliest of utilitarian views the repugnant conclusion usually ends with “a plethora of near-0-value lives” or “a single maximally high-value life”. less discussed is a plethora of willful negative existences required to enable a counteracting positive existence (for example, a miserable father who slaves away so his children may lead better lives). yet that arrangement is arguably more relatable to the typical individual, who may frequently embrace negative states in order to obtain later positive ones (e.g. as simple as setting an early alarm clock so that you can admire the sun rise).
the saving grace to all this, for me, is that i find it incredibly unlikely that any of these distasteful utilitarian hypotheticals actually represent the global maximum. or even significant local maxima for that matter. no matter if it’s the sum or the mean, negative experience immediately adjacent to positive experience doesn’t seem to be so stable. most human relationships are co-beneficial, for example. many people gain more than they lose when they give (charity/philanthropy/etc).