# A philosophical thought experiment **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 7, 2018, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982 "2018-09-07T23:35:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/61 "2018-09-12T19:41:45Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > It’s half an argument. It’s sort of like saying “driving a car is totally pointless because cars can’t fly” - it’s a position that focuses entirely on the negatives of something while conspicuously failing to account for the positives. > > There are a few different ways to assess whether life is ‘worth it’. Some are interesting, some are dumb. Assuming your conclusion is one of the dumb ones. If you want me to accept the conclusion that suffering outweighs utility over the entire scope of human life and history, you’re going to have to _earn_ that conclusion. Especially since the fact that the vast, vast majority of persons throughout history have not chosen to end their lives, despite it being relatively easy to do so - a fact which on the face of it would appear to disprove the notion that most people would prefer not to exist. Strange, I don’t want you to accept anything. I don’t care what you accept. I was giving MY answer to the question in the OP. If somebody told me “Hey, if you kill just ONE person, I will give these 10,000 people 1 billion dollars each” guess what? I’m still not doing it. The positives have absolutely no affect on my decision, because the one negative is killing someone. Not worth it to me for ANY amount of positives. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/62 "2018-09-12T19:54:02Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Strange, I don’t want you to accept anything. I don’t care what you accept. I was giving MY answer to the question in the OP. As was I. I blasted the entire position of “we’re gonna ignore half the factors in play!” from stem to stern, and the OP was the stem, and to be honest I consider them the stern too. > [@Slash1972](#): > > If somebody told me “Hey, if you kill just ONE person, I will give these 10,000 people 1 billion dollars each” guess what? I’m still not doing it. The positives have absolutely no affect on my decision, because the one negative is killing someone. Not worth it to me for ANY amount of positives. See, now we’re edging on to an interesting discussion. Any child born will die. By having a child you are sentencing them to death. Is it immoral to have a child? ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/63 "2018-09-12T20:29:07Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > By having a child you are sentencing them to death. Is it immoral to have a child? The OP thinks so - [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859961](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859961). And the OP thought so before that - [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=835707](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=835707) ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/64 "2018-09-12T20:36:32Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > The OP thinks so - [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859961](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859961). And the OP thought so before that - [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=835707](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=835707) Yeah, though in those threads he’s counting more than the fact you’re definitely dooming them to someday die - he’s explicitly assuming that all kinds of horrors will be visited upon his child, to an extraordinarily implausible degree. I just found it interesting to compare the creation of this world and the people in it with murder - in the OP’s scenario you’re not murdering anyone; you’re birthing them with death and various other pains and pleasures in their futures. Just like when you have a child in real life. Gotta give the OP at least some credit for this OP, by the way - at least in this one, all the horrors (and joys) inflicted on the Sims being created will be within the realm of possibility by definition in a way that didn’t hold in some of the others. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/65 "2018-09-12T20:46:27Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Any child born will die. By having a child you are sentencing them to death. Is it immoral to have a child? If your life situation is one where the child will suffer, then yes, it is immoral to have a child. I don’t consider “death” to be part of “suffering” ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/66 "2018-09-12T20:56:33Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > If your life situation is one where the child will suffer, then yes, it is immoral to have a child. > > I don’t consider “death” to be part of “suffering” Everybody suffers. How much suffering is suffering? Coming at your position from another angle, it seems also that a single suffering person (however ‘suffering’ is defined) is enough to invalidate the entire planet - at least if you have to be the one pushing the button. It occurs to me that the button is important - specifically because it’s an ‘on’ button. Allow me to propose a slightly different thought experience or three, for shits and giggles: Instead of a button, there’s a switch. If flipped to ‘On’, the planet is created. If flipped to ‘off’, the planet isn’t. Thought experiment 1: You come upon the switch and it’s off. Do you flip it to on and create a planet with many happy people and at least one suffering person? Thought experiment 2: You come upon the switch and it’s on. Do you flip it to off to abort the creation of a planet with many happy people and at least one suffering person? Thought experiment 3: You come upon the switch and it’s hovering in the middle. If left like that it will eventually snap to one side or the other and create the planet or not. Do you flip it to one side or the other to ensure an outcome, or leave it to fall where it may? ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2018, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/67 "2018-09-12T21:15:41Z")
> [@Marcus\_Flavius](#): > > There’s an uninhabited planet, and you have a button that when pushed, will start a very similar process of life on that planet as the one on this planet; so you’ll get the chocolate ice cream, you get the sex, you get the relationships, you get the beautiful sunsets, you get the fun movies, you get the nice Thanksgiving family dinners, you get the cool 80s music- but you also have to claim accountability for the trillions of sentient organisms suffering. Every war, every genocide, every suicide, every atrocity, every famine, every plague, every harm- all that is on you. Do you press the button, or leave it the way out is? To my mind, constraining another world to be a copy of ours is overly and pointlessly controlling. How much control must that button have to line up, say, the five extinction events that got us to where we are today? To choreograph all of those butterfly wings? That’s a hellacious amount of ongoing control, not just a kick-off. > [@Jasmine](#): > > I’d opt to let nature take its course on that planet. I could go with that. If the planet lacked one element for life to evolve and the button launched a million parachutes carrying crates of that element, I’d probably push the button. ---
**Author:** ![hmoulding](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hmoulding/32/3077_2.png) [@hmoulding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hmoulding)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2018, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/68 "2018-09-13T05:43:38Z")
Since life on Earth seems to have started on its own, with all the good and bad that goes with it, who is responsible for that? Maybe it was a lab tech in a different universe, running some high energy physics experiment, and accidentally creating a new universe? He never noticed, since his universe and ours never intersected, and we’ll never know about him, of course, but is he responsible for the suffering on Earth? What about the doctor who delivered baby Hitler? Is he responsible for the suffering that Hitler caused? You know that butterfly’s sneeze that eventually led to hurricane Maria that killed 3,000 of our fellow humans on Puerto Rico? Do butterflies feel no shame? So anyway, I think my point is that when my act of creation is not the proximate cause of any suffering, then it’s not reasonable to talk of my responsibility for the suffering. Possibly I might have designed a Genesis Device[1] that would create a planet without dangerous weather and earth quakes, a Sun that is even steadier than ours and produces no CME storms that can set fire to the entire planet, and an ecosystem that doesn’t have diseases that can evolve to kill half of humanity in a careless moment? Maybe a human animal that is just slightly more rational, more willing to love, forgive, and support their fellow humans? And no diseases, or age related infirmity? If death is even necessary there’d be a painless fading over a few days, one that is arranged by the person who will die? I like that idea, and if I were building the Genesis Device that’s what I’d try for. However, I’m skeptical that, given the entire process of evolution is not actually directed, that natural selection doesn’t give two flying figs at a rolling donut if there’s suffering down the road as long as there are lots of bebbies, a process like that can ever result in a perfect world. So I’ll take what I can get, and figure if it’s not worse than what we got just by being lucky, then we’re ahead. [1] Genesis Device from Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan, turns a dead planet into a world with life and everything, in the space of a few minutes. [Genesis Device | Memory Alpha | Fandom](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Genesis_Device) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2018, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/69 "2018-09-13T13:47:20Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Coming at your position from another angle, it seems also that a single suffering person (however ‘suffering’ is defined) is enough to invalidate the entire planet - at least if you have to be the one pushing the button Yes, this is correct. As for the rest of your hypothetical, I would do nothing. I wouldn’t touch the stupid button. I’d find the people responsible for setting this up and have the power to create whole planets and ask them to use those powers to reduce suffering for already existing planets and people. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/70 "2018-09-13T17:55:20Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Yes, this is correct. As for the rest of your hypothetical, I would do nothing. I wouldn’t touch the stupid button. I’d find the people responsible for setting this up and have the power to create whole planets and ask them to use those powers to reduce suffering for already existing planets and people. I think that assuming that you can force a third option besides “push” and “don’t push” is fighting the hypothetical. I suppose I’m the sort of person who recognizes that it’s hard to make an omelette without breaking eggs, and it’s hard to have a new generation of babies without their mothers going through the suffering of the birthing process. Which is not to say that I go around murdering people, but I’m skeptical of a valuation system that is so quick to throw out babies because of flies in the bathwater. Which is not to say that I’d push the button myself - as I said I haven’t really been given a reason to do so. But I don’t find myself accepting your reason not to, at least not as a reasoning I’d use myself. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982/71 "2018-09-13T18:14:04Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > But I don’t find myself accepting your reason not to, at least not as a reasoning I’d use myself. Sure, that’s fair. But I WOULD use that reasoning, and that’s what matters to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-philosophical-thought-experiment/820982.md?page=3)