#26 – Thomas Moynihan on the History of Existential Risk
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The Existential Risk of Negative Utilitarianism
Schopenhauer himself recommended this because he was a you know probably the first anti-natalist in the sense of saying that it would cause human extinction. Then one of his followers a guy called Edward von Hartmann said that um we should take that even further and remove the very possibility of life so then later on you get like these arguments against negative utilitarianism which is an argument to say such ethical outlooks are non-starters. David Pearce kind of has this comeback to that where he says that classical utilitarian is also potentially going to be led into such troubling conclusions if they were given a button that would convert universe or matter into homogenized utilitronium.
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