Hello everyone! I'd like to introduce
Magnus Vinding. He holds a degree in
mathematics from the University of
Copenhagen and previous to that he
studied at Roskilde University where he
explored different fields such as
physics, psychology, philosophy, history of
science and geology. He is the author of a
range of books and topics in philosophy
from free will to epistemology but his
main focuses is ethics and moral philosophy. He's written on veganism, moral truth,
speciesism, artificial intelligence,
effective altruism, but the focus of
today's discussion is going to be
"Suffering-Focused Ethics" which is the
title of his latest book so thank you
Magnus for joining and yeah I hope this
is a good discussion. Hope so. So,
you open your book by saying the problem
of suffering is the greatest problem of
all and that the most valuable project
we could pursue is the reduction of
extreme suffering. In fact you have a
little anecdote in the book where I
think just your engagement with philosophy
in general
trying to find what would be the most
meaningful project to pursue and you said
I really, I did not want this
necessarily to be what I landed on but
it was what I landed on and you argue
that essentially ignoring our ability to
help address extreme suffering is wrong
and that "we are currently
confronted with the possibility to
reduce extreme suffering more than ever
and yet almost no one is talking about
this let alone examining the
implications". So my question is why do
you think the problem of suffering is a
neglected topic? And what would you say
to someone to convince them that it's
worth thinking about more in-depth? My
feeling here is that people do genuinely
care about suffering, but what aspects do
you feel are being overlooked and what
biases may be influencing our thinking?
Yeah, I think there are actually many reasons
why we don't give it greater priority.
One is that it's just extremely
unpleasant to think about it and so, if you could really
appreciate the suffering of other beings
at a deep level you wouldn't be able to
function in everyday life. So we all do
need to to push it away, but the sad
thing is that we are, you could say,
too good at pushing it away in a sense
that we almost deny its existence. It's something that both at an
individual level and at a collective
level we suppress the
existence of suffering almost and
especially the very worst of suffering.
You don't generally see it
displayed. It's generally just
hidden from view. Both in our
media but also at the level of our own
minds and I think one thing we can do to
increase the priority that we devote to
suffering is to make ourselves more
aware of it. To become more aware of the
fact that there is such a thing as extreme suffering and I
think in many cases it can be
sufficient just to consider individual
cases of extreme suffering and it
becomes clear that this actually really
does matter. And I think we
usually do become quite impacted by it
in the moment that we encounter it
But, it's as though we tend to just hide
it from view that the next day you might
have have forgotten it again.
Perhaps because of quite an
honest effort at the level of our minds
to actually actively suppress it. So, yeah I think becoming more aware of it
and also to consider the many arguments
in favor of reducing suffering, which I
outlined quite a lot of those in my book
and I think they're actually quite
strong but again back to some of
those biases that you mentioned.
It's generally not very
interesting to talk about suffering and
it's also not a very good
signal generally speaking to
as a self narrative that my aim in
life is all about suffering and trying
to reduce suffering. I mean it doesn't sound
very cheerful it doesn't sound very
positive. It's just all-in-all not
that pretty a story. What do you think is
the first step or would be the most
effective way to raise
awareness if awareness is one of the
biggest hurdles? Yeah, I think there many
different levels actually that we can
look at so for example in terms of
there's the political level
which however tends to be quite crowded
but there's also the level of just
philosophical arguments so academic
debate there's actually a lot less
academic work on the moral importance of
suffering than you'd think.
So, I think this is at least
one avenue where one can do very
important work by developing and
exploring arguments within the field of
ethics. I think that's one very
important, as mentioned, avenue but
then you also have things just such as
exposing people to real world
cases of extreme suffering and this
doesn't necessarily have to even be
it doesn't have to be gory images
but just contemplating even just
descriptions of some of them the worst
cases of suffering. I have a
section in my book that is quite
horrifying where I do describe some
cases of extreme suffering and I think
that's probably the most
powerful section in the book by far
because I think it breaks a certain thing
almost in our minds,
describing these things because it is as
though we have a barrier
from these very bad things usually that
we don't really that prevent us from
from really connecting with the fact
that things that are so bad in fact
exist. I think in terms of my own
experience of first engaging
with the idea it had to have been through
Peter Singer with his arguments about
extreme poverty, but I think for me it
wasn't just awareness that was the most
compelling aspect but it was the
awareness combined with a call for
action and even the most marginal use of
resources can actually have a major
impact and I think while there are a lot
of big questions around things like even
wild animal suffering where you can tend
to get overwhelmed by just the numbers I
think knowing that you can still have
these ripple effects is actually quite
empowering and so I'm curious your
thoughts on that. Yeah I think you're
quite right, I mean, I think that's
something very positive because
it can be a helpful framing
because when you first are introduced to
these issues you can first feel very
disempowered right it's so overwhelming
there's so much suffering in the world
but you can then also
turn that around, or at least try to turn
that around, and and try to see an
opportunity to reduce a lot of suffering
and to really you can say
individually and collectively try to
get our act together because it
really matters that we do our best
to have a positive impact and help other
beings and reduce suffering, prevent suffering.
Let's move onto Sentientism. So, your work
is in alignment with the philosophy of
Sentientism which is essentially the
moral consideration for the suffering of
all sentience, all sentient beings. You
write "an individual species
membership is not relevant to their
intrinsic moral value only their
sentience is. Sentience alone is sufficient
to warrant full moral consideration. So,
why in your view does Sentientism
often seem so radical or unintuitive
when people first encounter that? And in
a world where there's around 75 billion
terrestrial farmed animals slaughtered
every year, what can we do to advance our
compassion there? Yeah,
good questions. I think again there are
a couple of reasons why it seems so radical and so foreign to us. So, first I think at
the biological level you know we evolved
to empathize with humans and moreso than
with say rats or snakes. So we are in
some ways set up to
empathize more with humans and also
beings who are more like us. I mean, you could say
that it's also easier to empathize with
mammals than with fish, for example.
So concerning what we can do to
advance the cause I think again that an
emphasis on philosophical arguments is
actually quite important and also I
would say relatively neglected
because if you go through the facts most
people actually don't disagree that
non-human animals can suffer and they
don't even disagree either that,
at the level of values people
also do tend to agree that non-human
animals deserve some moral consideration
but the question is then if we... We
can ask the question well what can
justify that we discriminate against
other sentient beings? So this is what's
known as the argument from species
overlap. That whatever traits we can
point to and say that this is the trait
that non-human animals don't have and
which justify that we can discriminate
against them that same trait we can also
identify certain humans who may not have
that specific trait and yet people don't
think that we are justified in
discriminating against humans on that
basis and I think this is actually a
very powerful argument that
really challenges the way in which we...
like our moral perception you could say
and the barriers we draw within our
moral perception and I think that can
really help us connect with the actual
moral implications of the beliefs that
most of us already hold namely that
non-human animals can suffer and that
for example, it shouldn't matter what
outside characteristics a sentient being
has, it's essentially an irrelevant trait and what
matters is that just as we would say in
the human case what matters is that
there is an individual there who has
interests and who can suffer, feel pain
and pleasure and so on.
Yeah, I think that is a compelling
point and it's a beautiful one and I'm
I'm curious what you would say
to someone who perhaps they would
counter with something like oh I'm only
interested in a being that has this
level of sentience and so there's this
gradient and I think that
there's a certain level that would
enable our moral concern. How would you
respond to something like that? Yeah, so I
would say that might be among the more
interesting arguments or counter
arguments that you could bring up, but I
would still say to that that well in the case
of... so first of all what what is
your reason for thinking, for example,
that most non-human animals fall below
that given level of sentience right? I
mean why do you think non-human animals
suffer less than humans why
wouldn't it be the other way around? As
there are some arguments to
that effect, as I present in my book
about speciesism. But that's one
thing you could say and then you can
also say that well so how can you be
sure for example that all humans fall
above this threshold that's you've
identified right? And so it again
gets quite tricky because that is almost
no matter what you want to say
i'd argue it's impossible to find
something that allows you to include all
humans and yet exclude, not necessarily
all non-human animals, but to exclude
for example all vertebrates. Right? I mean
I would say as soon as you think all
humans deserve moral consideration or
say all humans who have been
born, for example, I would say that
then you really will be hard pressed to
not also say that all vertebrates at
least also deserve moral
consideration. You write "that the
vast majority of non-human animals comes
into existence in a circumstance where
they're doomed to live short lives full
of frustrated desires since thousands of
beings are born where only a few can
survive" and that "even if we have
no proposed answers to wild animal
suffering this would not give us reason
to dismiss the issue by analogy to the
case of human poverty the mere fact that
this is a difficult problem does not
mean that we should give up and do
nothing". Wild Animal Initiative
quotes a figure of 10 trillion wild
vertebrates. How would you respond to
skepticism concerning suffering, for
example, something I've encountered quite
a lot is the claim that look we don't
know what the qualia are of these
beings we don't know the actual kind of
neural computation that's in progress
therefore there's no definitive way to
to make any hard statement about their
qualitative experience. How would you
respond to that? Well I guess
I'd first ask the question about how
is it different from the case of other
humans? I mean, we also have a
similar problem there in a lack of
certainty about how they exactly
experience the kinds of things that
happen to them and so it's
often thought of in terms
that well we can be quite certain about
in the case of humans but not really in
the case of non-human animals but I
don't really I don't share that
view that there's such a strong
distinction. I mean especially if you
look at the degree of convergence in
terms of just brain structures that
we humans have and for example other
vertebrates have. I mean we are talking
about very similar basic structures that
in humans happen to be bigger and more
elaborate and so the question is why
should it suddenly become so much more?
For example, why should we suddenly
have so much more moral concern in the
case of humans just because we have a
larger number of neurons in these
various possible brains?
It's fascinating and it is a difficult
discussion if someone is
making the claim that, for example, a
chicken just doesn't have qualia. It
seems to me things like nociception would
and just observing behavior as well
would be strong evidence toward that
they do. Yeah so there are many lines of
argument that suggest that they do.
You also have evolutionary reasons there
are also shared neurotransmitters
but even also specific centers in
the brain that are very similar across
yes certainly across vertebrates and
of course there is still a lot of debate
about this but there are also, there's now I
think it's becoming more and more
of a consensus you know there was this
so-called "Cambridge Declaration on
Consciousness" that was published back in
2012 by the world's leading
neuroscientists where they said that the
neural correlates of consciousness were
also present in other... like they included
also birds but also I believe other even
invertebrates like for example
octopuses. Excellent yeah we should I'll
link that in the description.
Do you have any view on near term versus
long term effective projects there or
methods there? Yeah so in terms of the
near term Animal Ethics
has actually just published some
videos about this on
concrete ways in which we can
help wild animals and one of them is for
example vaccinations, actually. Which is
something that has already been done so
so that's quite a nice example that this
is yeah there's this proof of concept.
Although the reasons it's been done so
far has mainly been for
other reasons than the well-being of the
wild animals themselves but... Oh!
It just shows the potential. I'm
curious now. So, for example there's the
disease called Rinderpest which is
actually now I believe it's no longer
existent because they actually
successfully managed to
cure it, for good.
Also, there has been I think there have
been a few cases where they have
vaccinated against rabies.
So, vaccination may be one of the most
effective near-term strategies. It's
certainly something that's very concrete
and and has been done already, but I
think the long-term priority and also
like the more necessary thing to focus
on at this point is to just raise
concern for the issue in the first place
and to argue that yeah make the
case that this is actually something
that merits priority because until we
get to that point
there isn't really, we aren't going to be
able to help animals on a large scale.
So the problem of basically the human
willingness to to act right? And that's I
think where moral arguments do come in:
moral philosophy. And it is
actually something that, in a sense,
is quite fundamental to engage at that
level. You argue for us to acknowledge
the reality of suffering in other minds
and that this is the fact
about the world as real as any other
regardless of who we are and whether we
manage to connect with it and that even
things like the Golden Rule asks us to
look at ethics from an impartial
perspective, right, Singer often
mentions the point of view of the
universe. So, do you see solipsism, or whatever degree of solipsism we have
as part of the problem because we don't have this direct access and experience of
other minds. The reality isn't
as viscerally accessible? Yeah, I think
it's a good point when you say I
mean so I interpret what you're saying
is that, in a sense, we are you could say
"suffering solipsists" in that we don't
really experience the suffering of others
right? And yeah I think that's
very true I mean of course in one sense
if we are very empathic we do to some
degree experience the suffering of
others but of course for most of us most
of the time we are effectively "suffering
solipsists" right we don't really
experience what others go through
and in one sense I think that's good but
in another sense well it's not good
that we are not deeply aware of the
existence and prevalence of
suffering and I think and this is this
is actually a key point in my book and one
that I've stolen from the author
Jamie Mayerfeld which is that
there's some good news in that we can
actually have this kind of awareness
that there is a lot of suffering in the
world and that it's important to reduce
it without necessarily suffering
ourselves and psychologists draw a
related distinction between, on the one
hand, effective empathy which is you know
that you actually feel what others feel
and then, on the other hand, compassion
which is the desire to see others
suffering alleviated and prevented and
so the point is that we can
actually have compassion without
necessarily suffering deeply ourselves
without being weighed down by excessive
empathy. One example you illustrate in
the book you echo Ursula Le Guinn's famous the ones who walk away from Omelas which
is basically a story about a utopian
city whose prosperity depends on the
suffering of a single child so I'm
wondering in what way might our situation
currently be similar to Omelas
amidst the wealth and
luxury consumer culture that we have.
Are there some parallels to
be drawn there? Yeah, I think it's
actually interesting to note how
Omelas is very dissimilar from our world,
because in Omelas you
have this large paradise and then you
have this single being suffering in
order for this paradise to be able to
exist right and and then these
the happy people in Omelas they're
really really happy right but if you
then try to compare that with this
world I would say that we have...
I described this before it's like
reality is almost like an inverse
Omelas scenario in some ways because
we humans we exploit and abuse other
sentient beings like for example if we just
look at vertebrates we exploit and
kill, I believe, like 20 times as many
vertebrates as there are humans
every year actually and so in that way
you have a large number of beings who
are suffering in order to satisfy the
needs, I mean, if you just look at humans
and the beings we exploit in order
to satisfy the needs of relatively few
and again we can also compare the
experiences of individual humans right
who unlike the people who live in
Omelas you could argue that people in
the real world are, even people who are
not miserable are most of the time closer
to a state of mediocrity than to
being in a very blissful and happy state
as the beings in Omelas, so I think there
are actually many disanalogies there
and it's interesting then that people
react so negatively Omelas but don't
seem to see that they're actually... well
maybe it's the identifiable victem
effect I don't know but yeah that our world is
almost, no matter how you measure it, so
much worse than Omelas.
I wonder if that yeah that ties into
some of your work on the biases.
Might there be any insight there? Yeah I
think so quite a few of
the biases so for example we have the
bias called "scope neglect" "scope
insensitivity" that when there are a lot
of beings who are suffering it's
surprising that not only do we fail to
care more when there are more beings but
there's actually psychological evidence
to suggest that we tend to care less
about a large number of beings who are
suffering than even about a single being.
And yeah another bias that's quite
relevant there is what I've called the
"novelty bias". We live in this
world and we've gotten used to living in
this world
so the fact that beings are
getting killed by the millions every
single day doesn't really hit us deeply.
I mean, it's not something that really
even those of us who are aware of
it we still have to live our
lives. And so there's this wonderful
quote from, I forget his name
right now, but the quote is that "custom
will reconcile people to any atrocity".
And in that way... when
something happens every single day it's
almost impossible to really feel
that it's an atrocity and it's something
that's urgent that we do something about.
Sounds similar to the "banality of evil"
concept. Yeah it is very similar also in that
it's also just deeply cultural
right so we just simply get
used to whatever surrounds us and we get
quite numb to it,
even if we think it's it's a problem.
Are there ways of overcoming that bias
other than awareness? Yeah so
again back to this thing about effective
empathy and compassion it might be good
to some extent that we are...
that we get somewhat hardened and it
might be best that it's
mostly a cerebral insight that things
are bad and that...
that there is an ongoing atrocity and that
it's important that we act, but and
perhaps we shouldn't, because there can be a danger in getting to
weighed down and burning out. Sure. So on
that point you write that "some
pockets of the universe are in a state
of insufferable darkness such suffering
is like a black hole that sucks all
light out of the world and yet there's a
form of light whose value does compare
to this darkness and that it's the kind
of light we should aspire to become. The
light that brightens and prevents the
unendurable darkness of the world. So
first of all I find that very positive
and beautiful view. Some suffering focused
ethical views results in, seems to me,
anti-civilization and anti-life stances
but you've written, "It should be
better to allow sentient life to keep
existing without extreme suffering. We
should seek to engage with others in
kind and cooperative ways so as to
increase future concern for suffering
and in particular to reduce the risk of
worst-case outcomes that contain
astronomical amounts of suffering. So my
question to you is:
How can we pursue the product of
civilization and all the
flourishing, art, science, insight,
communities, relationships in tandem to
this project of addressing suffering? It
seems to me some make it out to be a
zero-sum game. My intuition is that they
should happen in tandem, but there needs
to be a greater weight on
addressing extreme suffering. So what are
your thoughts there? Yeah, I think this is
actually it's a very important question
that you raised there and I
think it's actually one of
our main challenges to integrate a
strong motivation to reduce suffering
with a balanced, healthy, wholesome
lifestyle because the reality is that
none of us are hyper optimizers who can
just always work single-mindedly on
one thing. We also need to
work in sustainable ways and we need
balance in our lives and we need to
remain motivated and reasonably...
be reasonably happy about what we do
right and so I think in that way it is
very instrumental that we actually
pursue other things and that other
things are in fact very instrumentally
important. Even things that
don't necessarily seem very important
like, for example, having
a healthy balanced lifestyle and
having good relationships.
It's just absolutely key right it's
one of the more solid findings in modern
psychology is that balanced social
relationships are extremely important
for our well-being and, in turn, also for
our productivity. You claim that we
greatly underestimate our ability to
reduce suffering and that not only can we
measure suffering but how we can
best reduce suffering is ultimately a
scientific and (potentially) engineering
question, for example, through
technologies that could make us wiser, more compassionate, and in general better
motivated and able to reduce suffering.
So my question is how can we raise
awareness of our potential impact? I
think I should just clarify on the
points about measuring suffering and
also the points about having a
science of reducing suffering. My
view isn't that we can measure suffering
very precisely.
That's point I also make in the
book, but despite the fact that
we can't measure it precisely my point
is that we can still make
reasonable efforts to
actually reduce suffering. The extent to
which its a scientific question I would
again say that yeah that is my view
but it's not as though it can
ever be an exact science. So I think
those are important points to make.
We are always dealing in
probabilities and there's always going
to be a lot of uncertainty about what, in
fact, is going to have the best
consequences. I think one important thing
and also something that I have an entire
chapter on, a fairly short chapter, in the
book about is about research.
We really do need to
build a research project because there
really are many open questions and as I
think my book makes clear it's
actually quite complicated in many ways.
There are many different
considerations to weigh and balance
and so I think it's really crucial that
we get as many of the relevant
considerations on the table as we
possibly can because I think there
are some serious risks that we might be
missing something very important.
I actually have a quote by you on that
which is that such research should be
"hierarchical and that it should
prioritize exploring the ideas and
questions that seem most relevant and
recursive in that new discoveries
should continually update our future
research directions." Yeah and so it comes
back to... it's basically just to adopt a
scientific mindset. Which is of course
something that is quite foreign to us by
nature right? We tend to embrace
set views and then to endorse them
strongly and identify with them rather
than to embrace the inevitable
uncertainty that is just yeah I mean
insurmountable. But I think this is a
very common thing actually for people
who are focused on reducing suffering
that they identify a certain cause a
certain issue and they then go all
out on that, so to speak, rather than to
take a step back and reflect on and actively question is this really the
best thing I can do in relation to my
ultimate goal? And it's very
common for people to find a certain
cause and then stick with that and of
course there is
a lot to be said in favor of that
given that there's so much... for
example, if you already have identified a
very promising cause and especially
also if you build up knowledge and
experience within that
cause area, it does make sense
to continue, or at least it is a reason
to continue to pursue that cause, but I
think.. it is extremely neglected: this taking a step back and trying to reflect
broadly about how should ideally act and
I think this is really something... it's
also something that's not particularly
pleasant to do I mean it it can really
be rather taxing which is another reason
we probably do it a lot less
than we actually should. An example could
be that a person who identifies
veganism as the main cause to be
working on and then because they go down
that path and go all-in they don't
necessarily see that there are other
issues like, for example, wild animal
suffering which suggests... well I've
argued that perhaps focus more on anti-speciesism rather than for example
veganism in particular because anti
speciesism actually implies veganism but
it also implies taking wild-animal suffering
seriously, but beyond that
you can then also say, well there's this
issue of "s-risks" and which is risks
astronomical future suffering how things
could turn out really badly and that's
also something that merits some
consideration and even just starting to
think about that can change your
priorities and approach in some
significant ways like, for example,
thinking about that makes it clear that
it's a good idea to pursue a
very cooperative approach because not
doing so likely has very bad
consequences. So, you founded just
recently congratulations by the way
"Center for Reducing Suffering" would you
say that philosophy about taking a
step back and really thinking critically
is its core driving force or mission?
Yeah it's quite fair to say, so actually
we have two missions in a
sense so one is at the level of normative
ethics that we develop and explore
suffering-focused views and arguments and
another part of our mission is that we
try to figure out what our priorities
should be and again this is
not anything like an exact science
but it's still something that we in fact
most likely can make real progress on
and which does give us some action
guiding insights. What would you
say is the most under-appreciated or
neglected area perhaps in the EA
community or just in general? It's a good
question. I think generally
it's a fairly small minority in
the Effective Altruism community that
sees the problem of suffering as being
the main priority. There is a
strand within the movement
that you can identify as being a
suffering-focused strand and they do
have this focus but I would say
the EA movement at large
doesn't actually really have that focus.
I think actually a majority of
people who are at least in the broader
Effective Altruism movement they are
focused on alleviating poverty
human poverty and so...
As people get more and more involved with
Effective Altruism they tend to move
to other causes than poverty. A lot of
move on to working on, for example,
animal welfare, but I think even
among people who are focused on animal
welfare I don't think it's a majority
that at least explicitly frame it in terms
of "the problem of suffering" that's
the main problem. Although I
suspect many would agree with that on
reflection.
But this is actually another point
that I've tried to make in the
context of Effective Altruism is that I
think there isn't as much reflection on
fundamental values that I think there
should be because ultimately our core
values are going to determine our
priorities in the end
and so that renders them rather important.
Hopefully this discussion will raise
some thought there and awareness.
Hope so and I should also
make clear that when I say this it's not
I don't mean to say this just to reply
that well people haven't considered the
kinds of arguments that I find
compelling and if only people considered
those then they would agree with me, but
the point is that there is...
no matter what view you have, whatever
values you'll end up with I think this
process of critical reflection is
crucial, either way. So to be fair there
is kind of a counter argument there which
says that well but don't for example
most people already agree to a
significant extent on what is good and
what is bad and shouldn't we just rather
than sit around and think and
reflect all day shouldn't we actually go out
and do something? And I can certainly
I have a lot of sympathy for that
view, especially given how much
there is to do in the world,
how much there is to improve, but
nonetheless, I think if if we are to be
systematic in our efforts to improve the
world and if we are to
prioritize in really well considered and
reasonable ways, I don't
think there is some way around going
deep down into the philosophical
trenches so to speak and really explore
these issues of core values.
So Magnus, wrapping up, is there anything that we haven't covered yet that you'd like to
reflect on? We already touched on it, but
this issue of being open like both at
the level of core values, but also at the
level of ... at the practical level
where it's more a scientific
openness, but in both cases I think it's
really important to explore these issues
with a lot of openness and I think it's
it's very important to emphasize
that because it just doesn't come
natural to us at all, to be very open
minded I mean we do tend to get set in
our ways and I think there are I think
there are also various biological
reasons for this that... I mean to really
think about all the
different ways in which for example
we might be able to prevent suffering
and also the many different ways in
which, for example, new kinds of suffering
might emerge in the future. There are a lot of possibilities there, and to to
consider all these possibilities... it is quite
overwhelming and hence it's very
tempting to just choose something
that you focus on, but I think it is important that at least some
people resist that temptation and do
some more reflection on these issues.
To really just admit that,
for example, in the context of how
we can best reduce suffering there are a
lot of open questions about this and we
should approach these
questions like impartial scientists to
the extent that we can.
Excellent. Well Magnus, thank you for doing this.
We should totally do this again
sometime. Yeah totally. Have a great day,
good luck with everything!
Thanks Graham, likewise.
So, I think an important takeaway from
this discussion is whatever projects we
contribute to be it career or
volunteerism that aim to make the world
a better place to take that moment to
step back and consider the big picture
from the widest timescales and notice
perhaps there's something I can do that
I hadn't considered or perhaps there
are ways in which our culture has some
misalignment on fundamental values for
which if we better understood our biases
and work to clarify our values we could
achieve incredible things. "Suffering
Focused Ethics" is a challenging read given
its subject matter, but it's an
incredibly important one. The reduction
of suffering is arguably the most urgent,
most meaningful long-term project we
could prioritize and pursue. Having such
a thoughtful reflection available to
guide our thinking and action toward this
goal as a gift.
