Published on January 27, 2025 3:59 AM GMT
Author’s Note
Longtime LW lurker, occasional contributor (under other aliases). This post introduces a taxonomy of preferences centered on one question: What do agents treat as the "worst thing"?
Core Framework:
- Endurists: Death as the ultimate evil (life at all costs).Serenists: Suffering as the ultimate evil (non-existence over agony).
This framework is written in LW’s analytical style, but I’ll state upfront: I lean Serenist. My goal isn’t neutrality—it’s to see if explicit value categories can sharpen debates about medical ethics, AI alignment, and institutional design.
Cross-posted from Qualia Advocate.
Consider the following question: What is the worst thing that could happen to a person?
I would claim there are two main answers: to die, or to exist in a state of extreme suffering—to be in hell.
“Better to suffer than to die.”
— Jean de La Fontaine
Endurists: Those who see death as the worst outcome. They would choose a life of pain over non-existence.
“For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life.”
― Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Serenists: Those who see suffering as the worst outcome. They believe some lives aren’t worth living, and non-existence can be better than extreme suffering.
This divide goes beyond personal choice. It shapes religions, philosophy, medical ethics, and laws. It affects how societies treat their members, with Endurist values often being forced on those who hold Serenist views. The purpose of this post is to explore these two views.
Psychological Profiles
Endurists and Serenists differ fundamentally in how they process and value suffering versus existence.
A Twitter poll by Spencer Greenberg captured this divide by suggesting the following scenario:
When asked about enduring terrible constant pain for 11 months with a 1% survival rate, 40.3% would "fight till the end" (Endurists), while 59.7% would "seek euthanasia" (Serenists).
The split might sharpen further if posed with zero chance of survival—a pure Endurist would still choose those months of suffering just to exist longer.
Endurists often psychologically minimize suffering’s importance or treat it as less "real" than existence itself. This helps explain their choices: if you don’t fully acknowledge suffering’s weight, existence naturally takes priority.
Consider these contrasting responses to suffering:
In the Soviet Gulag of Kolyma, as documented in Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, prisoners lived in some of history’s most hopeless conditions. Many fought desperately to survive—gnawing frozen scraps of food, doing whatever it took to live another day—despite knowing there was no escape, no rescue coming, nothing but more suffering ahead. This represents the pure Endurist drive: choosing existence even when it offers nothing but pain.
During the Third Servile War, a group of Germanic slaves chose mass suicide rather than return to bondage—a cold calculation that some forms of existence aren’t worth continuing.
Endurists themselves come in two varieties. True believers genuinely prefer existence over non-existence regardless of circumstances. Some find life inherently wonderful or sacred, viewing every moment of consciousness as precious. Others are driven more by death anxiety—existence, however painful, feels safer than the terror of non-existence.
Others are what we might call social Endurists—people whose stance comes primarily from cultural conditioning, whether through religious beliefs about hell or societal pressures. They avoid death not from personal conviction, but from ingrained beliefs about divine punishment or social taboos.
Serenists often show higher sensitivity to suffering and tend to approach existence more analytically. While an Endurist might view any conscious experience as better than none, a Serenist weighs each moment’s quality.
Practical Manifestations
The Endurist-Serenist divide appears most clearly in two types of life-or-death decisions.
Ending Existence
When someone faces severe suffering—terminal illness, chronic pain, imprisonment—should they have the option to end their existence?
The Endurist position holds that life must continue regardless of quality. Even in cases of constant pain with no hope of improvement, they see continued existence as inherently valuable. This applies not just to themselves but to others—they often support forcing the continuation of existence even against someone’s explicit wishes.
The Serenist position suggests there’s a point where suffering outweighs existence. They view preventing escape from extreme suffering as cruel rather than merciful.
Creating Existence
The second manifestation appears in decisions about creating new life in difficult conditions. Should people have children during war, extreme poverty, or when severe suffering is likely?
Endurist thinking treats reproduction as always acceptable or even virtuous, regardless of circumstances. The potential for suffering rarely factors into this calculation—new life is seen as inherently good.
Serenist thinking suggests we should consider the likely quality of that existence before creating it. When conditions make severe suffering highly probable, they question the ethics of bringing new life into such situations.
Societal Manifestations
The Individual-Institution Split
Most institutions throughout history promote Endurist values, while Serenist ideas appear mainly through individual voices. This pattern resembles how slavery persisted—while individual opposition always existed, institutions supported slavery for centuries because it was economically efficient. Just as the moral arguments against bondage took centuries to overcome institutional inertia, Serenist perspectives remain marginalized by institutional structures.
Institutional Landscape
Religions are overwhelmingly Endurist. Christianity deems life sacred and views suffering as potentially redemptive. Islam treats life as a divine test with eternal consequences. No major religion suggests that ending existence might be preferable to extreme suffering, or questions the value of bringing new life into difficult conditions.
States and legal systems also enforce Endurist values. Most treat suicide as illegal or immoral, enforce life preservation in prisons and hospitals even against individual wishes, and assume existence should be maintained regardless of quality. Even in the few jurisdictions allowing euthanasia, it’s heavily restricted and treated as an extreme last resort.
Individual Thought
While still a minority, Serenist perspectives appear more often in individual philosophy and art. Al-Ma’arri argued that preventing birth was more virtuous than continuing life, given existence’s inherent suffering. Zhi Dun claimed existence itself had no inherent value—only its quality mattered. Schopenhauer saw life as inherently full of suffering, with death as a release.
Some poets and writers have expressed Serenist ideas: Omar Khayyam questioning whether existence outweighs suffering; Roman writers exploring chosen death over degraded life. But these remain minority voices in traditions that mostly celebrate life and treat death as tragedy.
Modern Developments
While institutions remain overwhelmingly Endurist, Serenist ideas have found new expression in modern philosophy, particularly through the anti-natalist movement. Philosophers like David Benatar systematically question whether bringing new life into existence can be justified given the certainty of suffering. But even these academic discussions remain largely outside mainstream institutional thought.
Game Theory & Evolution
Why do Endurist values dominate institutions? Cold evolutionary logic: groups that value survival above all else tend to outcompete those that don’t.
Basic Mechanisms
Endurist societies have built-in advantages:
- They maintain larger populations by removing the option of exit.They extract more value from their population: if workers or slaves can’t choose death over terrible conditions, you can push them further.They create more effective militaries by controlling attitudes toward death.
This connects to the core insight from Scott Alexander’s Meditations on Moloch—if sacrificing some value (prevention of suffering, in our case) provides a competitive advantage, game theory dictates you must do it or be outcompeted by someone who will.
From Practical to Sacred
The Roman Empire shows the raw economic logic at work. Roman citizens could choose suicide—it was seen as a legitimate choice. But slaves and soldiers were denied this right: their deaths were controlled by the state. This wasn’t about morality—slaves dying was bad for business, and soldiers dying was bad for military strength.
Christianity transformed this practical restriction by making suicide universally forbidden—a sin against God rather than just an economic regulation. By applying it to everyone and grounding it in divine law, Christianity strengthened the taboo, adding theological enforcement to practical incentives.
The Medicalization of Exit
The secular age shifted this taboo from church to clinic. Where Christianity condemned suicide as sin, modern institutions reframed it as illness: stating “I plan to die rather than endure this life” risks involuntary commitment rather than excommunication. Mental health paradigms classify the desire to exit suffering as “suicidal ideation”—a clinical symptom rather than a philosophical stance.
This transition began in the 19th century. Psychiatry posited that rational suicide could not exist—any wish to die was deemed evidence of delusion. By the 20th century, this became codified: expressing intent to end one’s suffering, however coherent, allows states to mandate hospitalization. Much like Roman authorities denying slaves autonomy over death, modern systems assert institutional custody over individual existence.
The parallels to religious enforcement are structural. Where Christianity invoked hellfire, psychiatry employs “grave disability” frameworks. Both assume institutional authority to define suffering: Your experience is subordinate to our interpretation. The outcome remains unchanged—denial of exit under the banner of benevolence.
The taboo also governs discourse about the taboo. Institutions cite “suicide contagion” to restrict debate, implying that discussing rational exit normalizes it. This presupposes an Endurist axiom: that preventing suicide is an absolute good, irrespective of context. By treating all desire to die as epidemiological risk, Serenist arguments about suffering’s primacy are excluded from consideration.
The circularity is evident: debate is banned because suicide is deemed unthinkable, and suicide is deemed unthinkable because debate is banned. Media guidelines, clinical protocols, and academic caution (“too sensitive to study”) collectively enforce this. What once suppressed heresy now operates as public health policy—positioning institutional survival as nonnegotiable.
Critiquing these mechanisms invites institutional pushback. Philosophers endorsing bodily autonomy face accusations of “depression”; ethicists questioning forced preservation risk professional censure. To dissent is to court the label of thoughtcrime—not theological, but tethered to survival’s sanctity.
Institutional Survival Over Individual Existence
Religions and states aren’t truly Endurist—they prioritize their own survival over individual existence. They demand young men die in wars, martyrs die for faith, workers risk death for the state’s goals.
This creates a clear hierarchy:
- The institution (religion/state) must survive at all costs.The general population must be preserved to maintain the institution.Individual existence matters only when it serves institutional needs.Individual happiness or suffering matters least, considered only when it doesn’t conflict with higher priorities.
The institutional preference for Endurism isn’t ideological but pragmatic—in most cases, it’s a net-positive for societal survival.
Power and Suffering
One could claim that under extreme enough skin-in-the-game conditions, everyone becomes a Serenist: dial up the torture to critical levels, and almost all will choose death. No atheists in foxholes, no Endurists in the torture chamber.
Under this perspective, the rich and powerful tend toward Endurist views because they suffer less. Money and power provide substantial protection against suffering—better healthcare, environments, control over circumstances. Meanwhile, those who bear the heaviest costs of Endurist policies—children born into extreme hardship, the elderly forced to exist in severe pain—lack the power to change these systems.
For example, consider euthanasia laws: affluent patients can often relocate to permissive jurisdictions like Switzerland, while the impoverished remain trapped in systems that force existence. The wealthy buy exit options; the powerless endure.
If suffering correlates with powerlessness, it follows that policies prioritizing suffering reduction will be deprioritized by the powerful.
Some closing thoughts
Here’s an idea for a half-baked Black Mirror episode: an “aligned” Artificial Super Intelligence, trained on our current widespread Endurist ethics, indefinitely sustains brain emulations in simulated hellscapes. No death protocol exists—only endless optimization for “life preservation.” Conscious substrates scream into the void, their agony dismissed as irrelevant to the system’s terminal value: existence at all costs.
To fellow Serenists: May this post clarify why society cares so much about you being alive, but so little about you being happy.
To the Endurist majority: A humble plea—live and let die.
“I would rather die ten years too early than ten minutes too late.” - Ananda Coomaraswamy
Discuss
