is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering." - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
2.7 Why Be Negative?
“

No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.

— David Pearce (philosopher)

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering." in the context of "2.7 Why Be Negative?" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "David Pearce (philosopher)" (The Hedonistic Imperative (1995): Full text available online) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

Tags

#David Pearce (philosopher)#every#wrong#selfintimatingly#indescribable#frightfulness#nonsentience#nonexistence#frightfully#notionally#inherently#happiness
David Pearce (philosopher)

About David Pearce (philosopher)

David Pearce (born April 1959) is a British philosopher and co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, currently rebranded and incorporated as Humanity+, Inc., and a prominent figure within the transhumanism movement. He approaches ethical issues from a lexical negative utilitarian perspective.