Thanks, Mike!

Great questions. Let me see whether I can do them justice.

If you could change peoples' minds on one thing, what would it be? I.e. what do you find the most frustrating/pernicious/widespread mistake on this topic?

Three important things come to mind:

1. There seems to be this common misconception that if you hold a suffering-focused view, then you will, or at least you should, endorse forms of violence that seem abhorrent to common sense. For example, you should consider it good when people get killed (because it prevents future suffering for them), and you should try to destroy the world. This doesn't follow. For many reasons.

First, one may hold a pluralist view according to which we have a prima facie obligation to reduce suffering, but also, for example, prima facie obligations not to kill and to respect the autonomy of other individuals. Indeed, academics such as Clark Wolf and Jamie Mayerfeld defend suffering-focused views of this kind. See:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190410204154/https://jwcwolf.public.iastate.edu/Papers/JUPE.HTM https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1996.tb00795.x https://www.amazon.com/Suffering-Moral-Responsibility-Oxford-Ethics/dp/0195115996

Beyond that, even on purely welfarist (suffering-focused) views, there are many strong reasons to consider it bad when individuals die, and to oppose world destruction (see sections 8.1 and 8.2). In fact, the objections commonly raised against suffering-focused views are often more objections against purely welfarist views than they are against the moral asymmetry between happiness and suffering, as you for any welfarist view can construct an argument to the effect that one should be willing to kill for trivial reasons. For example, naively interpreted, a classical utilitarian should also be willing to kill a person, and indeed destroy the world, to prevent the smallest amount of suffering if the "sum" of happiness and suffering is exactly zero otherwise (a point often made by David Pearce). Likewise, a classical utilitarian should endorse what is arguably an even more repugnant world-destruction conclusion than the negative utilitarian: if we could push a button that first unleashes ceaseless torture upon every sentient individual for decades, and then destroys our world to in turn give rise to a "greater" amount of pleasure in some new world, then classical utilitarianism would oblige us to press this button.

But these arguments obviously don't come close to showing that classical utilitarians should endorse violence of this sort in practice; they obviously shouldn't. The same holds true when similar arguments are applied to suffering-focused views.

2. Another belief I would want to challenge is that suffering-focused EAs make the world a more dangerous place from the perspective of other value systems. I would suggest the opposite is the case, and I think what's dangerous is that people don't appreciate this.

Among people who hold suffering-focused views, suffering-focused EAs fall toward the high tail in terms of being cooperative, measured, and prudent. It's a group that does, and to an even greater extent has the potential to, move other suffering-focused people in less naive and more cooperative directions, which is very positive on all value systems. Marginalizing people with suffering-focused views within EA is really not helpful to this end.

3. A third misunderstanding is that people who hold suffering-focused views are much more concerned about mild suffering than, say, the average ethically concerned person. This need not be the case. One can hold suffering-focused views that are primarily concerned with extreme suffering, and which give overriding weight to extreme suffering without giving commensurable weight to mild suffering. I defend such views in chapters 4-5.

'if you were given 10 billion dollars and 10 years to move your field forward, how precisely would you allocate it, and what do you think you could achieve at the end?'

I think I would devote it mostly to research — to building a research field. The field of "effective suffering reduction" is very young and unexplored at this point, and much of the discussion that has taken place so far has been tied to the idiosyncratic and speculative views of a few people (unavoidably so, given that so few people have done research on these issues so far). This means that there is likely a lot of low-hanging fruit here. Building such a research project is in large part the goal of the new organization that I have recently co-founded with Tobias Baumann: Center for Reducing Suffering ( https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/ ).

I think this can give us better insights into which risks we should be most concerned about and more clarity about how we can best reduce them. There's much more to be said here, but I'll let this suffice for now.

Thanks for sharing your review. A few comments:

Concerning the definition of suffering, I do actually provide a definition: an overall bad feeling, or state of consciousness (as I note, I here follow Mayerfeld, 1999, pp. 14-15). One may argue that this is not a particularly reductive definition, and I say the same in a footnote:

One cannot, I submit, define suffering in more precise or reductive terms than this. For just as one cannot ultimately define the experience of, say, phenomenal redness in any other way than by pointing to it, one cannot define a bad overall feeling, i.e. suffering, in any other way than by pointing to the aspect of consciousness it refers to.

I think that he made a deliberate choice to focus on capturing a wide range of views and defenses instead of going deep into defending one view.

Partly. I would say I both tried to make a broad case and defend a specific view, namely the view(s) I defend in Chapters 4 and 5 (they aren't quite identical, but I'd say they are roughly equivalent at the level of normative ethics).

In Chapter 5 Magnus explains his position regarding suffering, but throughout the first part he does not rely on that in order to make a case for suffering focused ethics. Instead, he loads philosophical ammunition from all over the suffering-focused ethics coalition and shoots them at every obstacle in sight.

That's not quite how I see it (though it's true that I don't rely strongly on the meta-ethical view defended in Chapter 5). My own view, including Chapter 5 in particular, is not really isolated from the arguments I make in the preceding chapters. I see most of the arguments outlined in previous chapters as lending support to the arguments made in Chapter 5, and I indeed explicitly cite many of them there.

Many of the arguments are of the form "philosopher X thinks that Y is true", but without appropriate arguments for Y. Also, whenever there was a problem with an argument, Magnus can retreat to a less demanding version of Suffering-Focused Ethics, which makes it more difficult for the reader to follow the arguments.

I'd appreciate some examples (or just one) of this. :-)

I don't think I at any point retreat from the view I defend in Chapters 4 and 5. But I do explain how one can hold other suffering-focused views (e.g. pluralist ones, such as those defended by Wolf and Mayerfeld).

My major issue with this book is that it feels heavily biased. I felt that I was being persuaded, not explained to.

I did seek to explain the arguments and considerations that have led me to hold a suffering-focused view, and I do happen to find these arguments persuasive.

I wonder what you think I should have done differently, and whether you can refer me to a book defending a moral view in a way that was more "explaining".

It feels that Magnus offers no major concessions, related to the point above that there is always a line of retreat.

What major concessions do you feel I should make? My view is that it cannot be justified to create purported positive goods at the price of extreme suffering, and it would be dishonest for me to claim that I've found a persuasive argument against this view. But I'm keen to hear any counterargument you find persuasive.

In chapter 7, there are a long list of possible biases that prevent us from accepting Suffering-Focused Ethics.

This is not quite accurate, and I should have made this clearer. :-)

As I say at the beginning of this chapter, I here "present various biases against giving suffering its due moral weight and consideration." This is not the same as (only) presenting biases against suffering-focused moral views in particular. One can be a classical utilitarian and still think that most, perhaps even all, of the biases mentioned in this chapter plausibly bias us against giving sufficient priority to suffering.

For example, a classical utilitarian can agree that we tend to shy away from contemplating suffering (7.2); that we underestimate how bad suffering often is (7.4); that we underestimate and ignore our ability to reduce suffering, in part because of omission bias (7.5); that we have a novelty bias and scope insensitivity (7.6); that we have a perpetrator bias that leads us to dismiss suffering not caused by moral agents (7.7); that the Just World Fallacy leads us to dismiss others' suffering (7.8); that we have a positivity and an optimism bias (7.9); that a craving for certain sources of pleasure, e.g. sex and status, can distort our judgments (7.10); that we have an existence bias — widespread resistance against euthanasia is an example (7.11); that suffering is a very general phenomenon, which makes it difficult for us to make systematic and effective efforts to prevent it (7.13); etc.

I'd actually say that most of the biases reviewed are not biases against accepting suffering-focused moral views, but rather biases against giving the priority to reducing suffering that the values most people already hold would require. I should probably have made this more clear (I say a bit more on this in the second half of section 12.3).

and really the biggest flaw for me was that there was no analogous comparison with possible biases [favoring] Suffering-Based Ethics.

But there was in fact a section on this: 7.15. If you feel I've missed some important considerations, I'm keen to hear about them.

Also, in Chapter 8 Magnus presents many arguments against his views, each a couple of sentences, and spends the majority of the time making counterarguments and half-hearted concessions.

I wonder what you mean by "half-hearted concessions", and why you think they are half-hearted. Also, it's not true that "each [counterargument is] a couple of sentences", even as most are stated very concisely.

Instead of acknowledging reasonable ethical views that may oppose Suffering-Focused Ethics, there is an attempt at convincing the readers that there is still some way of reducing suffering that they should prefer.

As mentioned above, my view is that it cannot be justified to create purported positive goods at the price of extreme suffering. I cannot honestly say that I find views that would have us increase extreme suffering in order to increase, say, pleasure to be reasonable. So again, all I can say is that I'd invite you to present and defend the views that you think I should acknowledge as reasonable.

After reading this book, it is clearer to me that I find extreme suffering very bad

I'm glad to hear that. Helping people clarify their views of the significance of extreme suffering is among the main objectives of the book.

but that in general I tend to think suffering can be outweighted.

This is then where I, apropos the complaint about a lack of "appropriate arguments" for a stated premise, would ask for some arguments: how and why can extreme suffering be outweighed? What counterarguments would you give to the arguments presented in, say, Chapters 3 and 4?

Also, I was worried before reading the book that there is an inherent difficulty in cooperation between suffering-focused ethical systems and aspirations for more (happy) people to exist. I still think that's somewhat the case but it is clearer that these differences can be overcome and that one can value both.

Pleased to hear this. The second part of the book should lend even more support to that view. I very much hope we can all cooperate closely rather than fall victim to tribal psychology, as difficult as that can be. As I note in Chapter 10, disagreeing on values is arguably a strong catalyst for outgroup perception. Let's resist falling prey to that.

Thanks again for taking the time to read and review the first part of the book. :-)

Thanks for your question, Niklas. It's an important one.

The following link contains some resources for sustainable activism that I've found useful:

https://magnusvinding.com/2017/12/30/resources-for-sustainable-activism/

But specifically, it may be useful to cultivate compassion — the desire for other beings to be free from suffering — more than (affective) empathy, i.e. actually feeling the feelings of those who suffer.

Here is an informative conversation about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ1SuKOchps

As I write in section 9.5 (see the book for references):

Research suggests that these meditation practices [i.e. compassion and loving-kindness meditation] not only increase compassionate responses to suffering, but that they also help to increase life satisfaction and reduce depressive symptoms for the practitioner, as well as to foster better coping mechanisms and increased positive affect in the face of suffering.

Thanks for your comment, George.

Sections 1.4 and 8.5 in my book deal directly with the first issue you raise. Also see Chapter 3, "Creating Happiness at the Price of Suffering Is Wrong", for various arguments against a moral symmetry between pleasure and suffering. But many chapters in the first part of the book deal with this.

Empirically, I think it's pretty clear that most people are willing to trade off pleasure and pain for themselves.

I say a good deal about this in Chapter 2. I also discuss the moral relevance of such intrapersonal claims in section 3.2, "Intra- and Interpersonal Claims".

I find it extremely hard to reason clearly on these matters! 😊