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Re:Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years by rhn_mk1 on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @01:41PM (#20822097)
The answer to the existence question depends on what you consider to be more valuable: life or suffering.

As to the second question, that is an active topic of research:

https://foundational-research.org/the-importance-of-wild-ani...

with some info on Wikipedia as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering#Ecology_...

Re:Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years by yters on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @02:15PM (#20822442)
If avoiding suffering is categorically more important than living, then since all living things suffer, the logical conclusion is that all life should be wiped out.

From my perspective, the conclusion seems to be wrong, and thus I deny the first premise.

Re:Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years by rhn_mk1 on Wednesday August 28, 2019 @04:33PM (#20823717)
The question can be formulated in a couple of ways: how much suffering outweighs the benefits of living?

Or, is there an amount of happiness that outweighs some amount of suffering? Among utilitarians, that's one of the major differences.

Your argument is valid and has been made before, and the answers are varied:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism#The_be...

Re:Vegan takeaway orders quadruple over past two years by jobigoud on Thursday August 29, 2019 @05:37AM (#20828071)
I find this conundrum fascinating and during a deep dive into obscure corners of Youtube I discovered there is a number of people that carried this logic throughout. They are called "life extinctionists". They indeed believe that life is suffering and thus it would be a net positive if all life went extinct. You may have thought the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" was fringe but this is so outrageous it becomes interesting to understand the logic. I can't find more links at the moment.

The debate between living vs avoiding suffering has very important implications for artificial life, artificial consciousness, artificial intelligence, and even space colonization and curing aging.