A Misconception about Reducing Suffering

01.07.2026David Veldran

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged meaning, purpose.

Can reducing suffering be pursued in a healthy and inspiring way?

Some may assume that working to reduce suffering must be a joyless, tedious pursuit. This reaction is understandable. If we focus on the worst forms of suffering, we will confront things that may make us sad or fearful. We may come to appreciate just how much suffering exists and how grim things are for far too many beings. And we may reflect on how difficult it often is to reduce suffering, making the task feel like an uphill battle. Thinking about this can be difficult, frustrating, and emotionally draining. [...]

Meaning and Reducing Suffering

David Veldran

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged meaning, purpose.

Once upon a time, meaning and purpose didn’t need to be found—they found us. The task was survival: keeping warm, finding food, keeping the wolves and the raiders at bay. Purpose was immediate, physical, undeniable. Today, for many of us in rich, secure societies, the wolves are gone, replaced by hums and screens. The fridge is full, the house is warm, the algorithm knows our taste in movies. Comfort has triumphed over scarcity, security over danger, yet somehow many of us remain restless, anxious, and lost.

When purpose fades, the mind improvises. We are built to struggle, so we shrink our battles until they fit our circumstances. In the absence of famine, Wi-Fi outages become crises. Without invading armies, we wage moral wars on social media. Office politics turn into trench warfare. The human animal needs adversity to feel real, so when the old dragons die, we invent new ones—tiny, ridiculous, imaginary. [...]

The Compensation Question

18.12.2025David Veldran

Posted in Uncategorized. Tagged suffering-focused ethics.

Can anything morally outweigh or compensate for extreme suffering? This simple question strikes at the heart of ethics. Yet too often, it is neglected. It may be hard to think about this question in the abstract. To bring it into focus, let us consider a few concrete cases.

The Drowning Child

Perhaps you have encountered Peter Singer’s drowning child thought experiment. You see a child struggling in a pond; you can save them easily, though it means you will ruin your expensive shoes. Plausibly, you ought to save the child. [...]

Facing Up to the Worst

11.12.2025Tobias Baumann

Posted in s-risks, Uncategorized.

Most efforts to reduce suffering focus on helping individuals alive today. This is understandable, given the tragedies that currently exist. Many millions of people endure immense suffering due to poverty, wars, disasters, chronic pain, depression, and so on. On an even greater scale, tens of billions of animals live and die miserably in factory farms built to facilitate their mass exploitation and abuse. Beyond human civilisation, there are billions upon billions of wild animals who suffer serious harms.

But what about the possibility of a future moral catastrophe? What if such tragedies could potentially take place on an even larger scale? And what can we do now to prevent that from happening? [...]

Magnus Vinding Discusses Upcoming Book on the Utilitarian Podcast

07.12.2021Winston Oswald-Drummond

Posted in Uncategorized.

CRS researcher and co-founder Magnus Vinding made a recent appearance on the Utilitarian Podcast hosted by Gus Docker.

Magnus begins by presenting a number of arguments in favor of suffering-focused views and then proceeds to discuss their practical implications. In particular, he explores how we can best reduce suffering for people, animals, and potentially even artificial sentient beings in the future. [...]

Tobias Baumann on the Sentience Institute Podcast

30.07.2021Winston Oswald-Drummond

Posted in Uncategorized.

CRS researcher and co-founder Tobias Baumann recently appeared as a guest on the Sentience Institute Podcast. The podcast, hosted by researcher Jamie Harris, typically focuses on moral circle expansion and animal welfare. Tobias was featured in two episodes.

The first episode covers moral circle expansion, cause prioritization, and s-risks. In particular, Tobias explains what moral circle expansion is and presents arguments for and against prioritizing it. He then gives his take on longtermism, transformative AI, and whether we’re currently living at the hinge of history. Jamie and Tobias also consider the implications of accepting both longtermism and a focus on moral circle expansion, including what beings to advocate for and how to do it most effectively. Finally, Tobias argues that we should focus on reducing risks of astronomical suffering known as s-risks. [...]

We’re Hiring!

29.06.2021Winston Oswald-Drummond

Posted in Uncategorized.

We’re now hiring for remote roles, including but not limited to operations, growth, and research.

2020 End-of-Year Fundraiser

29.11.2020Tobias Baumann

Posted in Uncategorized.

2020 has been an exciting year for us. We officially set up the Center for Reducing Suffering (CRS) as an organisation, launched this website, and published articles on suffering–focused ethics, s-risks, and cause prioritisation. We are now raising money to consolidate our financial situation.

We believe that CRS’s open-ended research programme on how to best reduce suffering fills an important gap. To help donors make informed choices, we are fully transparent about our values and our strategy — for more details on why we do what we do, see our Strategic Plan. [...]