💾 Archived View for osanwe.benson.earth › s › Philosophy › 38 captured on 2024-12-17 at 09:54:46. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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A great thought experiment from the ACX open thread:
Suppose that God could create a universe at time t=0 containing a countably infinite number of sentient beings (hereinafter "persons" or "people"). He sets up a one-to-one correspondence between the people and the positive integers: every person gets a unique integer, and all the positive integers are used.
At t=0, everyone is suffering the torments of Hell, and believes that they will continue for all eternity. Everyone would choose nonexistence over their current state, if that were an option. At t=1sec, person #1 is released from Hell and taken to Heaven, where they will enjoy eternal happiness; none of the other occupants of Hell knows that this has happened and that their suffering might end. At t=2, person #2 is translated to eternal bliss; and so forth.
Should a good God create such a universe? Arguing against, there will never be a time at which infinitely many people aren't suffering hideous torments, while only finitely many people will be enjoying unending bliss. For all eternity, the total suffering in the universe will infinitely exceed the total happiness, which seems to fit any utilitarian's definition of an evil universe.
On the other hand, no individual will suffer forever, and every individual's suffering will come to an end and be followed by an eternity of happiness. A rational happiness-maximizing individual would presumably be willing to be decanted into such a universe, since their finite stint in Hell would be followed by eternity in Heaven; and the fact that such an individual would choose it over nonexistence suggests that it's actually a good universe.
The way I think about it, we can visualize a graph of the line y=t where y is the number of people in heaven. Just considering positive t and y values of course, it's easy to see that the area above the line is actually equal to the area below it.
So we should be able to reduce this question to a much simpler finite one: is one person-minute in hell plus one person-minute in heaven better or worse or equal to zero person-minutes?
Nov 04 · 6 weeks ago
🦉 satya [OP/mod] · Nov 04 at 14:50:
(I think nonexistence is certainly worse)
Also, this might just be a mostly trivial math problem in a philosophical disguise. I'm curious whether there is a philosophical argument against my calculation - I'm sure someone can think of one.
🚀 vstrecha · Nov 06 at 04:16:
I don't think a good god would torment people without a good reason for it.
🦉 satya [OP/mod] · Nov 08 at 19:25:
@vstrecha the good reason is that the alternative is complete nonexistence.
Maybe it’s easier to think of this good agent as not a god; just an agent with the ability to make this choice.