Elif Özdemir
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Good questions, thank you!
I think most people would consider a catastrophe all life on Earth dying painlessly, even though no one would experience anything in the process.
I believe, the reason people find the idea of a painless extinction so tragic is that they fundamentally confuse non-existence with a vacuum. This is a massive Category Error.
In physics, a vacuum is still a "something", it has a metric, a coordinate system, and energy fields. It is a physical state. But non-existence isn't a "state" you fall into; it is the total deletion of all states. We fail to grasp this because we can't imagine a "total shutdown" without projecting a background stage (like darkness or silence) to hold it.
And that is the reason why people usually argue, "But think of all the music, the sunsets, and the joy we’d lose!" which is Circular Reasoning. We only value those things because we’re already here and wired to "thirst" for them. If the world ends painlessly, that thirst vanishes along with the water. No one is left behind to feel "deprived." You can't have a "loss" without a "loser" to experience it.
The trick our mind plays on us is the Phantom Observer effect. When you imagine the world ending, you’re secretly picturing yourself standing in the void, looking at a blank space and feeling sad. But in a total extinction, the observer is deleted too. You’re not "missing" the party; the party, the guests, and the very concept of "missing out" are all wiped from the map.
TL;DR: People fear "nothingness" because they perceive it as a cold, hollow state. But once you grasp that nothingness isn’t a state of lack, but rather the "loss" losing its host, the tragedy evaporates. It is not a "loss of value"; it is the deletion of the very coordinate system where value exists.
If not, would you want the painless death of people who have a probability of experiencing more than 1 min of excruciating pain in their real future higher than 1 in 1 trillion, 10^-12, to eliminate the risk of them experiencing excruciating pain?
So, regarding this question, while I realize this is a total non-starter in any public discourse and feels counter-intuitive at first glance, my answer would be yes. I believe it only sounds radical because we are biologically programmed to protect the 'coordinate system' at all costs. However, once you see that non-existence isn't 'losing the water' but 'deleting the thirst, you weigh the reality of suffering against the 'neutrality' of non-existence and the conclusion becomes unavoidable. It is hard to internalize this reasoning because our minds are designed to value things within the system but once you step outside that 'coordinate system,' you see that.
Even if there were a 'Super-Observer' in the universe who experienced the sum of every independent event, an infinite sum of mild annoyances might still fail to add up to a single instance of torture.
The denier of replacement must think that there’s a pain at some amount of intensity so that any number of pains at lower intensity is less bad than that single pain at the higher level of intensity.
In fact, such a claim is highly plausible. Sometimes, even if you have a trillion small things, their addition is not enough to create a higher level of intensity. We see this phenomenon everywhere in nature. In physics, for example, you can gather a trillion low-frequency radio waves, but they will never have the power to displace an electron like a single gamma ray can. In thermodynamics, a trillion raindrops at 20°C will never "add up" to the scorching heat of a single 10,000°C plasma bolt. We might similarly suggest that a trillion small bad feelings can never equal the horror of one true moment of agony. Simply increasing the quantity of something does not necessarily change its fundamental quality.
In my opinion, the core flaw of the "Replacement Argument" lies in there, in its assumption that suffering is a perfectly linear and infinitely additive variable. Under this purely quantitative view, if we say ϵ represent an infinitesimal unit of discomfort, the theory dictates that an infinite accumulation of these trivial annoyances must eventually outweigh a singular state of profound agony, expressed mathematically as:
However, this continuous model might be fundamentally misrepresenting the physiological realities of sentience. Our brains are not simple 19th-century sliders; they do not process information on a linear scale. Instead, they are hyperoptimized data processing machines designed by evolution to sort signals into tiered categories of "minor significance" versus "catastrophic priority."
It would be quite grounded in neurobiological facts to view the difference between a trillion small discomforts and a single moment of true agony as a massive "state transition" or a "quantum leap" in importance. Mechanistically speaking, a dust speck triggers low-threshold Aβ fibers that signal the thalamus. As the brain’s gatekeeper, the thalamus identifies these as low-priority "background noise" and filters most of them out. The signals that do survive are processed as minor sensory inputs that lack the biological weight required to engage the brain's survival systems. Torture, conversely, triggers a completely different set of high-threshold nociceptors (Aδ and C fibers). This recruitment ignites the "agony circuits" (the Anterior Cingulate Cortex and the Insular Cortex), triggering a systemic breakdown of the psychological and physiological self.
This is not merely "intense touch"; it is a fundamentally different state of being. Firing a dust signal a trillion times is never equivalent to firing an agony signal once; we cannot stack low intensity inputs to force a high intensity neurological state. Because evolution has built a sharp "cliff" between these levels of importance, we can never simply add up low priority signals to create a high priority emergency.
Ultimately, the idea that agony possesses a unique intensity that no amount of lower-level pain can ever reach might not only be plausible but analytically necessary if we adopt the view that 'suffering' is not a uniform currency, but a series of discrete state transitions. And as I explained, this model would be far more congruent with evolutionary biology as our neural architecture is hardwired for survival-critical prioritization, rather than the mere arithmetic summation of inputs.
I think by decoupling moral philosophy from the actual mechanics of the nervous system, we risk creating a "theoretically consistent" but biologically impossible ethics. Think of it like this: I can create a fictional physics where gravity works in reverse. My math for calculating orbital mechanics in that universe will be perfectly "internally consistent," but I’ll still never launch a rocket in THIS one.
Ethics should be treated like a branch of physics (specifically the physics of affective experience), not just a branch of math. In other words, our "moral arithmetic" must be built on the actual hardware of the brain, not on abstract lines that stretch to infinity and we should view affective neuroscience as our "Law Book’’ in the process.
Additional Thought:
While scope neglect is real, I think it is not the reason why we reject the utilitarian calculus. We reject it because we recognize qualitative lexicality. On an experience level we know that certain states are not merely quantitative intensifications of the same feeling but belong to an entirely different ontological order.
Aggregative utilitarians talk about 'Total Badness' as if there’s a giant, cosmic Excel sheet in the sky:) But one might simply reject these frameworks in favor of a person-affecting view, which I find far more intuitive.
Suffering is subject-dependent; it exists only within a conscious vessel. A trillion dust specks in a trillion different eyes are a trillion isolated events. They never 'meet' to form a collective mountain of pain.
1-) In Case A (Torture), one consciousness experiences 100% of the agony.
2-)In Case B (Dust Specks), no single consciousness experiences more than a 0.000001% discomfort.
If no single observer in the universe experiences a 'catastrophe,' can we truly say a catastrophe has occurred? In my opinion, by aggregating across separate minds, we create a 'phantom suffering' that no one actually feels. There is no 'Super-Observer' in the universe who feels the sum of those trillion specks:)
Additional Thought:
We can also apply John Rawls’s 'Veil of Ignorance' to test whether a trillion dust specks are truly worse than a single case of torture. Imagine you are behind a curtain, about to be born into the world, but you have no idea which 'conscious vessel' you will inhabit. You are given two choices:
- World A: One person is subjected to 100% catastrophic torture while the other trillion minus one people live happily.
- World B: A trillion people each experience a 0.000001% dust speck in their eye.
If the 'Total Badness' of a trillion specks were truly greater than torture, a rational person behind the Veil would have to choose World A to avoid the 'larger' catastrophe. I don't know about you but I would never take that gamble.
Here’s how I’m thinking about this:
From the perspective of non-human animals, humanity looks a lot like an unaligned superintelligence. We closely resemble the "paperclip maximizer" thought experiment, where the "paperclips" are narrow human goals. Over millennia, we’ve become incredibly good at optimizing for those goals, but in the process we systematically exclude other sentient beings out of the moral circle and override their most basic interests for benefits that are often trivial.
Given this reality, without a fundamental shift in our ethics, superintelligence is more likely to scale our existing biases than to correct them. A more powerful optimizer does not automatically become more benevolent; it just becomes more effective at pursuing the same goals. And higher intelligence and capability do not by themselves fix moral blind spots.
This is precisely the insight that drives concern about AI alignment. We do not assume that more capable and intelligent AI systems will automatically act in ways that are good for us. (Even though they do not have anywhere near as bad a track record as humanity does toward animals.) If “automatic benefit” were a real thing, AI alignment would be a niche concern rather than a central one. We would just accelerate progress and trust that everything else would sort itself out. But we do not believe that, and for good reason.
If we take this insight seriously, we should also apply it symmetrically. The core alignment problem may not just be between humans and AI, but between humans and the rest of sentient life. And it would be dangerously Panglossian to assume that AGI will automatically solve animal suffering. Based on humanity’s track record of causing massive harm despite our increasing capabilities, it is irresponsible to default to optimism about AGI “naturally” improving things without a justification that matches what is at stake.
Extra thought 1:
And the thing that worries me most about human alignment? Permanent lock-in. If we reach advanced AI systems without deliberately including concern for all sentient beings, we risk locking in a future where today’s exclusions last for a very long time. Once such systems are embedded in infrastructure, institutions, and potentially self-improving AI, their underlying value structures may become extremely difficult to change.
A historical analogy makes this clear. Think about the Industrial Revolution, a massive event that empowered humanity. If it had happened in a society that cared about animal welfare (maybe a vegetarian country?), trillions of farmed animals could have been spared extreme suffering (cramped spaces, painful procedures and deaths for basically trivial human gain.) Early ethical choices really do shape the fate of huge numbers of sentient beings.
Moreover, the stakes are far greater this time. Humanity will remain a tiny outlier, yet one that would hold disproportionate power over a vastly larger number of sentient beings in the future. So, misalignments now could ripple across astronomical numbers of individuals, turning a large-scale moral failure into a potentially permanent, cosmic-scale one.
Extra thought 2:
It’s sadly all too common for us to push animals to the very bottom of the priority list, thinking, “Once we fix all our problems, we’ll start worrying about extreme animal suffering.” So I’m really glad to see this discussion happening!
Thank you for the post! This reinforces my view that industrial profitability is likely the most important leverage point for large-scale systemic change.
Technologies like in ovo sexing, immunocastration, or controlled atmospheric stunning are good examples of solutions that are both positive for animal welfare and profitable for the industry. In recent years, we have also begun to see genetic interventions at the intersection of welfare and profitability. For instance, the CRISPR-edited "Slick" gene, which addresses heat stress (a condition that costs the US beef industry over $1 billion annually) received FDA approval in 2022. Similarly, driven by the high costs and labor-intensive nature of dehorning, there is ongoing genetic work to develop and proliferate 'polled' (hornless) cattle. It has already been proven that these bulls can transmit the hornless trait to 100% of their offspring, potentially eliminating the need for those painful and costly procedures.
What I am currently reflecting on is whether these technological indicators justify moving toward more radical interventions that reduce suffering in the industry, such as genetically raising the pain threshold of animals. I have seen the topic of "genetic welfare" evaluated in theoretical EA discussions (it was exciting to see a week dedicated to it in the Sentient Futures fellowship!). However, I haven't encountered even a BOTEC-style analysis regarding the technical feasibility of the subject. Are you aware of any sources I might have missed, or how does this prospect strike you at first glance?
My individual research has led me to speculate that creating "stress-ressilient" herds through genetic intervention could (once initial R&D costs are covered) be profitable for the industry. Ultimately, the fear, panic, and chronic stress mechanisms that help animals to survive in the wild have no functional equivalent in the isolated and controlled environment of the industry. In fact, there are several reasons to suggest that stress is a significant operational cost:
Metabolic Waste: When an animal experiences fear or panic, the resulting cortisol spikes divert metabolic energy toward "fight or flight" mode rather than growth or tissue repair. This leads directly to a decline in Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) and results in increased costs.
Product Quality: Acute stress during transport or pre-slaughter alters meat chemistry, leading to irreversible quality defects like PSE (Pale, Soft, Exudative) or DFD (Dark, Firm, Dry), which lower market value.
Operational Losses: Increased antibiotic expenditures due to stress-induced immunosuppression, along with physical injuries and "shrinkage" caused by social conflict, further strain profitability.
Although the profitability of stress-resilient herds is speculative, I believe the argument bear a deep resemblance to a common argument for cultured meat. Cultured meat advocates describe the massive metabolic energy spent maintaining a central nervous system, skeletal structure, and digestive system (parts that do not become the "final product") as systemic waste. Rather than trying to rebuild the current level of biological optimization from scratch in a lab, might it be a faster route to intervene in the system's existing "software"? By genetically "dimming" stress responses (for example, partially silencing specific genes responsible for stress triggers), we could directly target this energy leak within the current "infrastructure" .
What are your thoughts on this reasoning? The industrial livestock sector may not have a reason to shoulder the high-risk, initial R&D costs of radical innovations. However, if independent ventures or altruistic funding can handle the early-stage R&D and show that this technology is actually profitable, could the change become self-sustaining without the need for external pressure from activists?
Thank you for the thought experiment! Here’s my current thinking about it:
The premise of "99.99999999% of X" assumes that pain exists on a perfectly smooth, linear scale that can be infinitely divided. However, from a functional perspective, it would be evolutionarily absurd for every infinitesimal change in stimulus to have a unique affective counterpart. If the brain had to run a different neurological "program" for 90∘C versus 90.00001∘C for example, the computational overhead would be catastrophic.
Instead, it feels more neurobiologically grounded to model pain as operating through discrete phase transitions. This perspective would highlight the fact that the nervous system cares about categorical urgency rather than focusing on the infinite precision of a scalar value.
I think a five-phase discrete model like this could be used (where each jump represents a fundamental shift in the organism's functional priorities):
In this model, the ethics of phase transitions are governed by lexical priority, meaning that even an infinite amount of Level 2 discomfort can never add up to a Level 5 phase. However, lexical priority only prevents us from trading a lower level for a higher one; it doesn't forbid arithmetic within the same phase. Therefore, when sensations occupy the same level, quantitative calculations become perfectly permissible.
Coming to your question, I believe that 99.99999999% of X and X are functionally identical, as the infinitesimal difference between them becomes irrelevant to the organism's affective state. Let’s say X refers to the highest phase of Systemic Collapse. Because the system has already crossed the final 'boiling point' into the catastrophe phase, it is already operating in a state of maximum functional disruption, making X and 99.99999999% of X biologically indistinguishable. Since these pains occupy the same biological orbital, we can apply a quantitative comparison.
To find the total disutility (U), let’s use the formula U=I×T, where I is the intensity and T is the duration. In my model, we define the highest level of systemic collapse as Level 5 so let’s assign X a value of 5, and 99.999999% of X becomes 4.999999.
Option A (X for 1 second):
UA=5×1 second=5 units
Option B (99.999999% of X for 10^100 years):
UB=4.999999×(3.15×10^107 seconds)≈1.57×10^108 units
Even without the probability factor, the math is undeniable: UB≫UA. Therefore, averting B is the rational conclusion. By preventing 10^100 years of systemic collapse, we are eliminating an extreme amount of suffering. (Rather than accounting for an intensity difference that remains below the threshold of neural resolution.)
But let’s consider these 2 pains:
As long as we treat this as a purely abstract thought experiment where variables are independent, (viewing 10^100 years not as a single continuous experience, but as a series of completely independent events of Level 4 pain) increasing the duration becomes equivalent to increasing the population size. In this framework, my answer would be similar to the 'trillion dust specks' problem: I would choose to avert Option A as I believe that even an infinitesimal chance of a staggering amount of Level 5 pain outweighs the certainty of a small amount of Level 4 pain due to lexical priority.
However I want to note that in a biological context, duration and intensity are inextricably linked. Pain has a cumulative nature. As duration extends, the collapse of cognitive and emotional resilience removes the brain's natural filters and causes long-term stimuli to neurologically evolve into a higher-intensity experience (neurons become increasingly reactive or neuroplasticity lowers the pain threshold to turn even minor stimuli into intense suffering etc.).
If my conclusion feels counterintuitive, the discrepancy between our biological intuitions and abstract logical conclusions is likely the reason. In the real world, the variables in the ‘Total Pain = Intensity × Time’ equation are interdependent (and we tend to imagine these scenarios by projecting our lived biological experiences onto them) however, in this thought experiment, they are treated as independent factors.