> δS - Delta S; the difference in suffering between ES and NES, that is (ES - BNES) = δS"
I claim that what you’re calling BNES actually feels extremely different from ES
You can start from ES and make the suffering monotonically less bad at step 1, 2, 3, … but not actually get to BNES, *sorta* (!) like if you start from 1 you can subtract 1/3, then 1/9, then 1/27 and so on but never reach 0.2
An alternative very fuzzy imperfect analogue is that you’re trying to like start from infinity and asking me to accept that if you keep subtracting integer amounts you’ll eventually hit some very large integer
Tbc these two math things are not perfect formal models of what I believe the correct models are, just a bit of intuition assistance
Also ofc this is not a complete or extremely robust argument, just part of the general idea.
Thanks for writing this! I’ll try to cook up a proper response but here's the short sloppy version:
> "This means that the LSFU view will result in it being ethically preferable to have a world with substantially more total suffering..."
You’re begging the question here. Like this assertion is largely just the actual debate - I think that the above quote isn't true.
And I think that mistake falls out of the following: my argument is largely that the following is a *bad model* of world:
> "LSFU - Lexical Suffering Focused Utilitarianism
> ES - Extreme Suffering
> BNES - Barely Not Extreme Suffering
> δS - Delta S; the difference in suffering between ES and NES, that is (ES - BNES) = δS"
I claim that what you’re calling BNES actually feels extremely different from ES
You can start from ES and make the suffering monotonically less bad at step 1, 2, 3, … but not actually get to BNES, *sorta* (!) like if you start from 1 you can subtract 1/3, then 1/9, then 1/27 and so on but never reach 0.2
An alternative very fuzzy imperfect analogue is that you’re trying to like start from infinity and asking me to accept that if you keep subtracting integer amounts you’ll eventually hit some very large integer
Tbc these two math things are not perfect formal models of what I believe the correct models are, just a bit of intuition assistance
Also ofc this is not a complete or extremely robust argument, just part of the general idea.
For the interested I've been responding to Aaron about this on twitter, and am too lazy to re-write or copy paste those responses (for now): https://x.com/AaronBergman18/status/1967057832622387452
Extremely relatable lol