Most People Won't Answer This Philosophical Question...

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]I think what a lot of people would consider is life worth living, one crude way of working it out is adding up the pleasure, minusing the pain, and sort of seeing what you're left over with, you know, is it is it worth living overall?

[00:00:10]Benatar thinks that crucially, before you exist, the potential pleasure that you might experience if you come into existence doesn't matter one like one jot. It's literally irrelevant. But the potential pain that you would avoid does matter.

[00:00:26]And he tries to prove this through some sort of intuitive thought experiments.

[00:00:30]For example, there are no conscious beings on Mars, right?

[00:00:35]We don't really think that it's a bad thing that all this pleasure that could be on Mars is is being missed out on. We don't think what a tragedy that all of the potential pleasure that could exist on Mars isn't actually happening. But we might think that it is a good thing that there's no suffering up there.

[00:00:52]And some people hear that kind of example and go, "Yeah, that makes sense." Some people go, "Well, no, I am I am I am sad that there's no pleasure on It it's sort of an intuitive thing."

[00:01:01]Um he also One other way of thinking about this, at least for the imbalance, might be a question, which is, would you take 5 minutes of the worst imaginable, conceivable suffering that you could experience if afterwards you got to have 5 minutes of the best possible bliss? I mean, I don't know what you guys would do. You wouldn't take it?

[00:01:21]>> No, thank you.

[00:01:22]>> I I think that's I don't think I'd take 5 minutes of the best possible bliss anyway. The rest of your life? The rest of your life where you just expectation Yeah, you just you'd just be complete You just feel empty, you know?

[00:01:31]>> Well, I mean, that's another asymmetry.

[00:01:33]Yeah. That's an additional asymmetry.

[00:01:35]>> And that that actually might be just a a sort of good response to this kind of thought experiment. Because what Benatar's trying to say is that most people would say no, and so crudely, it seems like the suffering kind of counts for more. Um but as so much of philosophy does, it kind of relies on intuitive that you you're sort of feeling of good >> a sense of negativity bias and loss of Another way he he talks about And and crucially, this is only before you exist, right? Once you exist, your your pleasure is good for you and your suffering is bad for you. But before you exist, The fact that other people have a choice about whether you do or don't.

[00:02:07]>> Yeah. Before you exist for someone who doesn't exist, them not experiencing pleasure is not bad, but them not experiencing suffering is good. And so before you're born, the only moral calculus is the goodness that you're not suffering.

[00:02:20]And so that's all that should be taken into account. It's good that you're not suffering, let's not bring that into existence. Another sort of line of reasoning he goes down is a kind of like a rights based approach where he says, "Suppose for example that if I were to like break your arm, you would get an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy or something. You might if I gave you that option, you might think to yourself like, you know what? I think that's that's worth it. Probably it definitely worth it for me. I'd take that. However, even if I would actually prefer that, if you didn't ask me first, if you just did it, like you don't have the right to do that to me, right? If if if I found you in need of an ambulance and the only way to save your life somehow was to break your arm, then I think most people say you should do it. But if by causing you suffering I can not save you from worse suffering, but bring you something good, most people think that I don't have the right to inflict that suffering on you even if it would be ultimately worth it. So for Benatar, same thing before you're born, right?

[00:03:16]You're allowed to inflict suffering to prevent worse suffering, but you're not allowed to inflict suffering on the promise that there'll be some good that comes out of it unconsensually. Because what you're essentially doing is is causing a bunch of people to unconsensually experience masses of suffering that they had no say in. Some people have actually tried to sue their parents for wrongful birth because they >> [laughter] >> It's actually that has actually happened.

[00:03:38]>> If you're Benatar-pilled. Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:40]So the the asymmetry thing is is quite important to Benatar's flavor of anti-natalism. You can have anti-natalism without it. You can just say that life consists in more suffering. And if you think it's it's consist in more pleasure, you you've fallen for the uh the the Pollyanna principle as I think they call it, which is the idea that we tend to remember the good stuff more than the bad stuff. The sort of rose-tinted view of of the past.

[00:04:01]Most people, says Benatar, like vastly underestimate the extent to which their lives are going terribly.

[00:04:08]They they like sort of in retrospect and go, you know, it's all good, but if you actually were to live through it again, you'd realize that at every moment it was going very badly. He then after [laughter] after convincing after convincing you that you're He sort of he sort of says like, you know, it doesn't matter how much you suffer or experience pleasure in life, it's immoral to bring people into existence. And then after convincing you of that, he then says, but just so you know, life is actually does actually contain a lot more suffering. And this uh detour into disability ethics or metaphysics, I suppose, is sort of part of this case. You know, these these menial sufferings that that you don't even notice.

[00:04:44]It's not you shouldn't have been here.

[00:04:46]You should be upset that you are here.

[00:04:48]And by the way, the fact that you are here also is a reason for regret.

[00:04:51]>> Yeah, it gets a little bit tricky because like once you're here, I mean the the inevitable question for David Benatar is is then why don't you just think we should kill ourselves? And David Benatar in a footnote compares this to going to a movie and when you're about halfway through thinking like, this is kind of a crap film. Um it's not bad enough that I'm going to leave now that I'm here, but I kind of wish I'd never come in the first place.

[00:05:16]That's sort of his position on on on life. He's he's he's >> How robust do you think that is as an answer to why shouldn't I just kill myself?

[00:05:21]>> I think it it doesn't really work very well cuz I'm quite suspicious of the the asymmetry argument like anyway. Um so I think that a case that that sort of makes life not worth living and therefore not worth beginning will inevitably create a powerful argument for not continuing life.

[00:05:39]Um Benatar like is as far as I can remember quite quite sort of staunchly not that.

[00:05:46]Um but I I'm not so sure that they can be so definitively separated.

[00:05:51]>> taken that? Is there a suicide philosophy? There have been examples. I think uh Camus talks about a few examples at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus, doesn't he? He sort of He sort of mentions, I think, like one or two examples of some philosophers who like wrote a tract. He mentions I can't remember who it was. He mentions who wrote a tract and then killed himself in order to like bring attention to his work. But it didn't work cuz no one liked the work anyway. Philip Mainlander killed himself. But I don't know if that I I can't remember if that's what he was talking about. I can't remember who who Camus was talking about. Um, but No, you tend to find that people who are genuinely committed I mean, Camus says in The Myth of Sisyphus, "For the man who does not cheat, what he determines to be true must determine his action."

[00:06:29]So, if you become convinced that life is not worth living and you're like certain enough of that in order to kill yourself, then you're probably not going to sit around writing a book first.

[00:06:37]Yeah, so it's it's you it's sort of like self-selecting. And there's an interesting sort of evolutionary deselection for views like this and for views like anti-natalism. And and again, Benatar addresses this. Doesn't affect the truth of the claim, but it means it will never take off because memetically it's cancerous. Exactly, yeah. Which, in reverse, is the explanation, I think, for the general optimism that sort of sort of just just just Only the optimistic people last.

[00:07:03]>> survived. Exactly, to some degree. I mean, there are people who are not optimists, but they're not quite pessimistic enough to to fully commit to the bit, as it were. Um, and if they are, then they select themselves out of the meme pool.