So, while “do the least harm” applies when consent is not accessible, even if read in a negative-utilitarian way, it does not exhaust all moral directives. So its truth in certain conditions could not even in principle entail negative utilitarianism. But “do the least harm” does not entail negative utilitarianism anyway, e.g. willing a million dollars to someone without their consent does the least harm relative to not willing it to them, since in the one case they have an opportunity that does not exist in the other case and still retain the right to consent to it or not (they can refuse or give it away). So doing the least harm entails depriving people of the least goods possible, i.e. it entails positive utilitarianism.

This is demonstrated by a magic genie who offers me super-exponential growth in my bliss at the price of also offering some other person the same boon: “do the least harm” entails accepting the genie’s offer (assuming the genie’s offer is genuine, and not a Devil’s Bargain, but I assume you were being sincere and not disingenuous in describing the thought experiment). Because there are more consequences to moral actions than removing harm; most goods do not consist merely in the removal of harms, and indeed, the only goods that justify removing harms at all are positive goods (unless nothing has value, which is the proposition already disproved).

It is of no value to merely remove harm and leave in its place no goods. That is, literally, what murder does. And obviously murder is immoral. “Remove all harms” in the Antinatalist sense entails murder is moral (indeed the most moral action possible). The only way to get murder to be immoral again is to admit there are positive goods that can outweigh negatives (harms). And thus to reject negative utilitarianism.

This is why the full maxim would be “do the least necessary harm.” The word “necessary” encompasses all the positive goods that can justify harms, and that are in fact the reason life is worth living at all, to which harms are merely means (and thus to be removed only when they are unnecessary). This is how rational thought works. Everything else is irrational.

The question was the truth of negative utilitarianism. Negative utilitarianism has here been proven false. That has no relevance to what super genies do or how we ought respond to them.

One does not need “negative utilitarianism” to rationally reject that genie’s offer. For example, I can reject it on non-utilitarian deontological grounds. I can reject on Aristotelian virtue theory. I can reject it on Philippa Foot’s hypotheticalism. I can even reject it on utilitarianism (desire utilitarianism and even standard utilitarianism, which balances positive and negative outcomes, would both entail rejecting it).

These are all the same theory for a reason: each one accounts for effects the other neglects, such that the only correct moral theory is the one that accounts for all effects, not any that neglect effects. Negative utilitarianism is going in the wrong direction, by neglecting consequences and focusing only on a tiny subset of them. Any theory that ignores data is going to be false.

So the only options are correct their premises or declare them insane

Imagine if a magic genie offers me super-exponential growth in my bliss at the price of exponential growth in your agony. Accepting the genie’s offer just seems obviously wrong according to my intuitions. Do you not agree with me on this particular case? Are my intuitions a result of some cognitive bias?

I can even completely concede that suffering is not the only thing that matters (maybe other stuff matters a lot too!) and yet accepting genie’s offer still would seem very wrong. Why? I am not insane by your definition of being incapable of adopting true beliefs. If you could, for example, rationally explain why accepting genie’s offer seems so intuitively wrong, despite being morally right, then that would be an immediate defeater of not only antinatalism and negative utilitarianism, but also philosophical pessimism in general. I am very much open to that.

-Bruno Contestabile

“That only suffering matters” is a demonstrably false belief. As I’ve shown repeatedly here, directly or through linked surveys of the evidence, more times than I can count.

a) If I understand your position correctly, you seem to be saying that when it is impossible to obtain someone’s consent, we should act in what we believe to be their best interests.

“Do the least harm.” When that entails what you describe, then that is correct.

Imagine that an irrational person named Alex stumbles upon an unconscious, bleeding body of Ben, who cannot consent to anything. Alex might genuinely believes that hitting Ben’s body with a hammer will stop the bleeding…

True conclusions cannot follow from false premises. Since the hammer thing is a false belief, Alex is doing the wrong thing. That they are insane and don’t know that does not change that conclusion. It can at best result in their being forced into treatment for their insanity rather than jailed for their crime (see law).

Imagine you’re speaking with a negative utilitarian who believes that only suffering matters.

True conclusions cannot follow from false premises.

So the only options are correct their premises or declare them insane (i.e. incapable of adopting true beliefs). In the latter case, as long as they don’t commit any crimes they remain in the populace acting on false beliefs. Combatting widespread societal delusionality is a major problem today. So you can already see how it proceeds. What laws we should adopt in response depends on least-worst outcome reasoning (what laws result in the least harm). Best actors on this metric appear to be Scandinavia, the EU, Finland, and Australia.

b) I also think there are some meta-ethical concerns with your position. Imagine you’re speaking with a negative utilitarian who believes that only suffering matters. How would you argue that they are wrong and you are right, given that they have different intuitions? Imagine that they (honestly) bite the bullet on all thought experiments designed to disprove negative utilitarianism. In that case, how would you argue that they should adopt your ethical views, other than asserting that you are right and they are wrong?

-Bruno Contestabile

Philip, it’s not clear to me what your remark refers to or adds here. Can you clarify?

I don’t want thing things I own to lose their usefulness to me via theft, damage, etc. because, in this context, it’s effectively saying to me “Your emotional or physical well-being is so trivial that I have the right to diminish it for the most petty of my own self-gains / self-reliefs”. Same thing for suicide outside of “Death With Dignity” reasons.

None of your points are relevant to what I said.

That we could reduce evils has nothing to do with whether every human life experiences net evil rather than net good.

And since the only good is personal good, which requires persons to exist, a world with people always has more good than a world without (which has zero goods).

You thus can’t make any logical point here. You need human life to be net evil. And it isn’t. It’s net good. For almost everyone; and everyone else can leave at any time. Since the absence of humans would be less good than present accessible goods, there can never be any reason to globally select the absence of all humans.

Nor are any of your points correct.

I have vast evidence (thousands of years of history and thousands of findings in the human sciences) confirming my assessment that countless future generations will think on this one point the same as I do. Indeed only when they should all entirely change in that view would they be correct in following your policy. But no one is in that place now, so no one should follow your policy now. Maybe in some hell-hole future the only solve will be extermination, but I doubt it (all past cases show fixing things works better than destroying them when they go wrong) and in any case, that hell-hole future does not exist now nor shows any likelihood of arising. So no decision now can be based on expecting it.

Likewise, I was not being abused or exploited when I chose to take care of my father or pay into my social security to fund his retirement or into social infrastructure to keep telephones and hospitals and the internet working for him to enjoy or when I make and sell things or buy things for myself propping up the economy that kept him alive and joyous.

That there can be abuses and exploitations is not relevant to this. I would agree capitalism is problematic if not adequately offset by socialism, but that relates to how things can be better, not to whether they are so awful no one should want to be alive at all.

So there is no way to get to antinatalism here. Most of what cares for the elderly is voluntary and mutually beneficial (I also get my retirement funded, and I also get the benefit of telephones and hospitals and the internet, in addition to all the other goods I secure for myself and loved ones through maintaining and engaging the engines of the economy).

So there is no net evil here for you to harp on. And even if there were, the solution would be fixing it, not destroying it.

So you’re dead in the water here.