While I agree that treating extreme pain is definitely in line with NU, a person struggling with major depression, I believe, usually is quite dubious about their efficacy and potential to achieve such goals. You can't work on ending factory farming if you can't even get out of bed, plainly speaking.
Hi Geoffrey - I've found your work very interesting and hence I respect your authority, but at the same time I can't fully agree. For me, reading Perry felt honestly great, that someone perhaps could hold similar views that I hold, that someone would actually agree with me on certain things, that I was not all alone in the world. And in the end - both Perry and me lead a fairly happy life, I think. No one would arrive at her or Benatar's writings accidentally - and if they did, they wouldn't find them appealing.
But that was a sidenote. My major arguement is: I don't deny that most people are net happy. I just think that the price of those suffering is a really high one to pay - one unworthy paying.
I've been attracted to this idea my whole adult life. However:
I know outing people who are gay can get them as far as murdered in places where homophobia is most rampant. On the other hand, polyamory seems to be a fairly popular model in the rich Bay Area community, often not kept secretive and without such repercussions. So I'm reserved whether this comparison is fair.
I see it's indeed page 83 in the document on arxiv; it was 82 in the pdf on OpenAI website