Books
Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications
Magnus Vinding
In Suffering-Focused Ethics, Magnus Vinding argues that the reduction of suffering deserves special priority, and explores how we can best reduce suffering in practice.
Avoiding the Worst: How to Prevent a Moral Catastrophe
Tobias Baumann
In this book, Tobias Baumann lays out the concept of risks of future suffering (s-risks), and argues that we have strong reasons to consider their reduction a top priority.
Reasoned Politics
Magnus Vinding
In Reasoned Politics, Magnus Vinding outlines a path toward better politics, and investigates which policies seem most helpful for alleviating severe suffering.
Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics
Magnus Vinding
A collection of 34 essays that explore various questions related to the reduction of suffering. Taken together, these essays make the case for a principled yet nuanced approach to the prevention of extreme suffering.
Suffering-Focused Ethics
Positive roles of life and experience in suffering-focused ethics
Teo Ajantaival
A common objection to suffering-focused ethics is that it contradicts our practically prioritizing other pursuits, such as seeking positive experiences. To respond, this essay aims to show that even if we assume a purely suffering-focused view, it would still be wise to recognize the highly positive and often necessary roles that other things may have for reducing suffering.
Minimalist axiologies and positive lives
Teo Ajantaival
Minimalist axiologies, or theories of value, are views whose central conception of independent value says “The less this, the better.” This essay looks at minimalist axiologies that are impartial and welfarist (i.e. concerned with the welfare of all sentient beings), with a focus on their theoretical and practical implications.
Peacefulness, nonviolence, and experientialist minimalism
Teo Ajantaival
This essay is a response to potential worries about cessation, which are often raised as objections to minimalist axiologies. It shows that cessation implications are not unique to (experience-focused) minimalist views, argues that other consequentialist views have worse theoretical implications, and argues that minimalists have strong practical reasons to pursue a nonviolent approach and to cooperate with proponents of other value systems.
Minimalist extended very repugnant conclusions are the least repugnant
Teo Ajantaival
Population axiology matters greatly for our priorities. Recently, it has been claimed that all plausible axiological views imply certain “very repugnant conclusions”. In this response, I argue that minimalist views avoid these “very repugnant conclusions”, and that they face less repugnant conclusions than do contrasting offsetting views.
Minimalist views of wellbeing
Teo Ajantaival
This essay explores the variety of minimalist alternatives to “good minus bad” views of wellbeing.
My moral view: Reducing suffering, ‘how to be’ as fundamental to morality, no positive value, cons of grand theory, and more
Simon Knutsson
Simon Knutsson outlines his moral view as a whole. He argues that one should focus on reducing severe suffering and on behaving well, and that these basics get us pretty far in terms of how to act in real life.
On purported positive goods “outweighing” suffering
Magnus Vinding
Many moral views hold that purported positive goods, such as pleasure, can morally “outweigh” or “cancel out” suffering. Yet this notion of outweighing is more problematic than is commonly recognized, since it is not obvious in what sense such outweighing is supposed to obtain, nor what justifies it. Clarifying and justifying this notion of “outweighing” is thus a problem facing the moral views that rely on it. In contrast, strongly suffering-focused views, and harm-focused views more generally, do not face this problem.
Suffering and happiness: Morally symmetric or orthogonal?
Magnus Vinding
The purported value symmetry between suffering and happiness ought to be questioned and contrasted with alternative views. I here present two asymmetric pictures that collectively cover a broad range of axiological and ethical views. These pictures merit serious consideration.
A phenomenological argument against a positive counterpart to suffering
Magnus Vinding
This essay argues that purportedly positive experiences do not possess any property that renders them genuine opposites of painful and uncomfortable experiences, neither in phenomenological nor axiological terms.
Other Publications
On value lexicality
Replies to critiques of suffering-focused views
- Note on Pummer’s “Worseness of nonexistence”
- Comparing repugnant conclusions: Response to the “near-perfect paradise vs. small hell” objection
- Point-by-point critique of Ord’s “Why I’m Not a Negative Utilitarian”
- Reply to Gustafsson’s “Against Negative Utilitarianism”
- Reply to Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”
- Comments on Mogensen’s “The weight of suffering”
- Critique of MacAskill’s “Is It Good to Make Happy People?”
- A thought experiment that questions the moral importance of creating happy lives
- Reply to the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” against suffering-focused ethics
S-Risks
S-risks: An introduction
Tobias Baumann
Future technology will likely endow humanity with unprecedented power, potentially allowing us to shape the entire universe. But if this newfound power is used irresponsibly, it may lead to suffering on an astronomical scale. Such risks of astronomical suffering are also called suffering risks or s-risks for short. While such scenarios may seem far-fetched at first, we have good reasons to believe that their probability is not negligible. People who want to help others as effectively as possible should, therefore, consider reducing s-risks a top priority – especially if they perceive them to be important on moral grounds or neglected in practice.
Arguments for and against a focus on s-risks
Tobias Baumann
Among the myriad ways to do good, should averting risks of astronomical suffering (s-risks) be our main priority? The case for a focus on s-risks rests on a combination of longtermism, a suffering focus, and a worst-case focus. In this article, I will outline key arguments for and against each of these premises.
How can we reduce s-risks?
Tobias Baumann
Given the highly abstract and often speculative nature of such future scenarios, what can we actually do now to reduce s-risks? This post gives an overview of the priority areas that have been identified in suffering-focused cause prioritisation research to date.
Other Publications
- Risk factors for s-risks
- A typology of s-risks
- FAQ on s-risks
- On fat-tailed distributions and s-risks
- S-risk impact distribution is double-tailed
- Popular views of population ethics imply a priority on preventing worst-case outcomes
Cause Prioritization
Reducing long-term risks from malevolent actors
David Althaus and Tobias Baumann
Dictators who exhibited highly narcissistic, psychopathic, or sadistic traits were involved in some of the greatest catastrophes in human history. Malevolent humans with access to advanced technology—such as whole brain emulation or other forms of transformative AI—could cause serious existential risks and suffering risks. We therefore consider interventions to reduce the expected influence of malevolent humans on the long-term future. The development of manipulation-proof measures of malevolence seems valuable, since they could be used to screen for malevolent humans in high-impact settings, such as heads of government or CEOs. We also explore possible future technologies that may offer unprecedented leverage to mitigate against malevolent traits.
Is most expected suffering due to worst-case outcomes?
Tobias Baumann
For those interested in reducing future suffering, a natural question to ask is: should we focus our efforts on preventing the worst outcomes? Or is (expected) future suffering distributed more broadly over a wide range of plausible futures? This is relevant because it determines the extent to which we accept “Pascalian” wagers about how the future could go very badly. If worst-case outcomes dominate, then it pays to think about specific scenarios and how to prevent them; if not, we should pursue robust strategies that are good over many or all scenarios. In this post, I will try to define the question more precisely, and give arguments for and against the hypothesis that extreme outcomes should dominate consequentialist calculations.
Why altruists should be cooperative
Magnus Vinding
There are many reasons to adopt a cooperative approach to altruism. A cooperative approach can enable positive-sum compromises, make people more willing to join our efforts, and promote collaboration with others toward shared ends. Last but not least, greater cooperation can help reduce some of the main risk factors for s-risks.
Other Publications
- Common ground for longtermists
- Longtermism and animal advocacy
- Reasons to include insects in animal advocacy
- Representing future generations in the political process
- Improving our political system: An overview
- Arguments for and against moral advocacy
- Beware frictions from altruistic value differences
- Distrusting salience: Keeping unseen urgencies in mind
- Two contrasting models of “intelligence” and future growth
- Research vs. non-research work to improve the world: In defense of more research and reflection
Practical Recommendations
Career advice for reducing suffering
Tobias Baumann
In this post, we outline our thoughts on promising paths for those who wish to use their career to reduce suffering. What we do in our professional life is arguably our best opportunity to do good, far more so than other decisions such as consumption choices or voting (which is not to say that those are not also important). Choosing a high-impact career is therefore of critical importance for aspiring effective altruists.
Facing the Endeavor to Reduce Extreme Suffering in Healthy Ways
Magnus Vinding
In this chapter for his forthcoming book, Magnus Vinding explores healthy ways to reduce extreme suffering. The chapter covers issues such as dealing with uncertainty, handling Weltschmerz, and cultivating hope for compassionate impact.
How the animal movement could do even more good
Tobias Baumann
The animal advocacy movement is doing a lot to help animals, and has enjoyed some level of success. Yet there is still substantial room for improvement to allow the movement to reach its full potential. To that end, we believe it is critical to be aware of biases that may distort our thinking, such as the tendency to keep doing what we have done so far simply because that’s what we are familiar with. In this post, we outline our suggestions for the animal movement and our vision of how it can develop to reduce animal suffering (even) more effectively.
Five recommendations for better political discourse
Tobias Baumann
Political decisions arguably represent the linchpin of human decision-making, constraining and influencing every choice we make. And our political system is currently operating far from ideally, to put it mildly. This renders it uniquely important that we do better. In this post, we will focus on our broader political culture, drawing on the best science of today to outline recommendations for better political discourse.
Other Resources
- Animal Ethics’ overview of suffering-focused ethics
- Wikipedia article on suffering-focused ethics
- The case for suffering-focused ethics (Center on Long-Term Risk)
- Reasons to Promote Suffering-Focused Ethics (Brian Tomasik)
- Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (Magnus Vinding)
- Reducing risks of astronomical suffering (David Althaus & Lukas Gloor)
- Artificial intelligence and its implications for future suffering (Brian Tomasik)
- Online course introducing wild animal suffering (Animal Ethics)
- Reducing Suffering Amongst Invertebrates Such As Insects (Simon Knutsson)
- Sentience Politics philosophy sequence
- Brian Tomasik: Essays on Reducing Suffering
- Magnus Vinding’s blog
- Tobias Baumann: Reducing Risks of Future Suffering
- Simon Knutsson’s writings on ethics