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Because they suffer more. Suffering is good. Without it, we tend to fall apart. With it, we tend to get better.


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why pile more suffering on top of their current amount?

Because suffering is suffering. If we distinguish suffering of good people from bad people then we have to expand this to a spectrum, the best people suffering is the worse, and worse people suffering is the best. But then it's all just relative, who is good, who is bad is your opinion. Most rational people would consider their own suffering to be the worse.

Well, it is an issue that we are more likely to care when someone suffers, these days. That increases human suffering all by itself.

On the contrary: fewer people suffer, but they suffer much much more. And there's still a ton of them regardless.

To people like the commenter it's much better if everyone is suffering than if some people aren't and some are.

Why do you think suffering is worse than not existing? If they find their suffering to be unbearable they can end their lives, But unlike us they will have more information to make such a decision. With suffering they have a chance to at least achieve something, so we should not be ones deciding to discard their lives.

Because this world is suffering.


Maybe it’s based on the assumption that more complex organisms are more sensitive and thus the suffering that is experienced is bigger.

Because mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Suffering-based punishments disproportionately punish the chronically unhappy, who have less non-suffering.

Because you don't think too much about your own suffering when you hear about the suffering of others... probably.

Why do you think that experiencing suffering lets you experience pleasure more readily?

I think it just sounds good. Most people who experience significant suffering can be damaged beyond repair.

The shell shocked war vet doesn't necessarily see life as more beautiful afterwards.


Also, greater intelligence and self-awareness brings more suffering. A bird only knows pain. A human with a terminal illness knows it is dying and suffers the psychological consequences.

I’m not sure about that. I think our baseline for suffering just shifts. So you can shield a person in a bubble of happiness, still some minor inconvenience might cause that person to break down if they’re not used to experiencing it.

The same way, people who have suffered a lot in the past might be now more happy than you are, maybe you’re objectively better but you might not perceive it that way, which is what matters in the end.


That's incorrect. A reduction in suffering is preferable even if it doesn't result in the absence of it.

Yes, but of the two, which one would you say is happier? Some people like doing it the hard way because they think a bit of suffering is good for you.

We tend to interpret suffering as virtue. Even PG advises faced with a choice, doing what sucks more is probably the right answer.

Because a strained conscience isn't the only sort of suffering one gets to experience.
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