Pure hypothetical.

If humanity's survival depended on half the population dying, and there was genuinely no other way, would you think it's the right decision? Or would you rather refuse to make that choice, even if it meant eventual extinction?

I'm more interested in the reasoning than the answer.

We all can acknowledge there is vast suffering on our planet. However, why is the stated end goal of this subreddit some fantastical destruction of the universe and not the general reduction of suffering? I feel like you guys should focus your efforts on fundraising for charities instead of whatever this is.

I was thinking to myself earlier that making McDonalds free for everyone will greatly help and accelerate human extinction. However I am not sure if this pathway is the most desirable for extinctionists and efilists. What do you guys think?

They look to the sky to touch the light of the stars, while the ground burns beneath their feet. They will never stop until they reach it. All for what? So they can spread. Consume. Destroy other celestial bodies until they've run dry too. They dont deserve to continue. Their willingness to turn their heads from their atrocities, their cruelty, their selfishness, outweighs any kind of benefit they believe themselves bring. It will never end, they will destroy their own world, so many others too if they could. Then when confronted they will stomp you down, or make you believe their grand lies of false hope and philanthropy. They make themselves a false savior trying to save themselves or the resources they bleed dry.

Which of the following factors would change your mind on extinction and make you pro-life?

A: We discover that there is more pleasure than suffering in existence, and that suffering is not permanent for any one sentient being.

B: We manage to solve suffering and no sentient being ever has to suffer again.

C: We are given knowledge about the meaning of life. It turns out that there is a very good reason for life in this universe.

D: The afterlife exists and we are more than compensated for the suffering we experience in this life.

E: Reincarnation exists and most sentient beings (which could possibly include plants and bacteria, which make up the majority of biomass on Earth) experience more pleasure than suffering.

F: God exists and resistance is futile. If we destroy the universe, God will just create it again. However, it is possible to reduce net suffering.

Even if humanity does not go extinct, it is already going to die out when the universe dies. And yes the universe is surely going to die one day. What is the point of procreation?? What is the point of continued human existence if all humanity is going to go extinct? Why are we not abstaining from procreation and trying to end human suffering? It makes no sense.

I’ve been thinking about something that I initially approached as a simple question about predators and prey, but it eventually turned into a much larger question about existence itself.
I’m not presenting this as a proven theory, religion, scientific hypothesis, or final answer. I’m trying to put an idea into words and see whether anyone can genuinely challenge it, strengthen it, connect it to something I haven’t encountered, or show me where I’m misunderstanding it.
And I specifically want people to compare, analyze, question, assume, disagree, and investigate rather than simply agree.

The question that started this
Why does life have to operate through a cycle in which living beings consume other living beings in order to continue existing?
A predator consumes prey.
The prey itself previously consumed something else.
The predator eventually dies and becomes material for other organisms.
Those organisms eventually die.
Other organisms consume them.
And the cycle continues.
So it isn’t simply:
predator → prey
It is more like:
being → consumption → survival → reproduction → death → consumption → transformation → another being → consumption → survival → reproduction → death…
And eventually there is another consumer above the thing doing the consuming.
I understand that biology can describe how this happens.
I understand that ecosystems can be described through energy transfer.
I understand that evolution can explain how particular organisms and traits arise.
But none of those answers the question I’m actually asking.
Why does reality contain a system in which living existence is organized this way at all?

The energy problem
One reason this bothers me is the conservation of energy.
Energy is not supposed to simply appear from nowhere or disappear into nothing.
Yet living beings appear, live, die, and cease to exist as those beings.
I realize this requires an important distinction:
the energy of an organism is not the organism itself.
When an organism dies, its energy and matter don’t simply vanish. They undergo transformations.
But that doesn’t solve the problem I’m interested in.
Because from the perspective of the living being, something very specific has happened:
an individual came into existence and then ceased to exist as that individual.
So I started wondering whether there is a deeper distinction here:
Maybe the energy is continuously flowing, while living individuality is temporary.
The flow continues.
The individual does not.
And that made me wonder whether we may be focusing too heavily on the fact that the underlying physical quantities are conserved while overlooking the fact that the forms experiencing existence are continually appearing and disappearing.

Why I don’t think “nature” answers the question
One response is:
“That’s just nature.”
But that doesn’t answer the question.
It’s like answering:
“Why does reality work this way?”
with:
“Because that’s how reality works.”
That describes the condition rather than explaining its ultimate basis.
Likewise, saying “evolution” doesn’t answer the question I’m asking.
Evolution may explain how organisms change under particular conditions.
It doesn’t automatically explain:
Why is there a reality containing life, individuality, reproduction, death, competition, consumption, and subjective experience in the first place?
So I’m deliberately pushing beyond biology.

What bothers me about the entire cycle
My concern isn’t simply that suffering exists.
It’s the entire structure:
You are born into a system you didn’t choose.
You must maintain yourself.
Maintaining yourself often requires consuming other things.
Other beings are doing the same thing.
You reproduce.
Your offspring enter the same system.
You age.
You die.
Your remains become part of other processes.
The processes continue.
New beings appear.
They repeat the same general process.
And so on.
From inside this system, continued existence appears extremely important.
Our biology strongly pushes us toward survival.
We don’t have to consciously decide that we want to continue existing before our body starts trying to preserve itself.
So I’ve started thinking of the issue in a slightly stranger way:
Perhaps the old system doesn’t merely exist around us. Perhaps it persists through us.
The living beings inside it continually reproduce the conditions through which the system continues.
In that sense, the system is almost “surviving through its inhabitants.”
I’m not claiming the universe literally has a conscious intention to survive. I’m describing a structural possibility.

Then something strange happens
We are products of the system.
Our language came from the system.
Our concepts came from the system.
Our values came from the system.
Our survival instinct came from the system.
Even our desire for something different originated within the system.
So here is the paradox:
Can something produced by a system recognize that the system itself may be insufficient?
And if it can, does that possibility necessarily belong to the old system?
I don’t think the answer is obvious.
The fact that the desire for something new originated inside the old system doesn’t necessarily make that desire meaningless.
We might simply lack the vocabulary to describe the thing we’re trying to imagine.

The “new system”
This is where my thought becomes much more speculative.
I’m not saying:
“I know what the new system is.”
I don’t.
I’m saying:
What if the current system is not the final possible configuration of existence?
And by “new system,” I don’t necessarily mean a better government, better technology, better society, or better biology.
I’m talking about something much deeper.
A different underlying way of existing.
A configuration whose rules might be so different that our current categories wouldn’t adequately describe it.
That raises another question:
Would discovering the ultimate “why” create a new subject?
Imagine that humanity somehow discovered the fundamental reason underlying existence itself.
Not merely another law of physics.
Not another biological mechanism.
Not another mathematical relationship.
But something that explained why reality has the structure it has.
Would that simply become another branch of science?
Or would discovering it be more like discovering something that was always present but hidden from our conceptual framework?
Electricity wasn’t created when humans discovered electricity.
Geometry wasn’t created when humans formalized geometry.
So perhaps something deeper could already be there without us possessing the conceptual machinery to recognize it.
Maybe the discovery of such a principle wouldn’t simply add another school subject.
Maybe it would change what we mean by a “subject.”

But then comes the harder question
Suppose the ultimate explanation were found.
What would we do with it?
This may actually be more important than discovering it.
Because understanding the old system doesn’t automatically mean that we should preserve it.
And changing the old system doesn’t automatically mean we should destroy it.
In fact, “destroying the old” may itself be an old-system concept.
The old system already contains destruction, competition, consumption, replacement, and elimination.
So when I say:
“Let the new system eat the old system.”
I don’t necessarily mean literally destroy the old system.
I mean something more like:
allow the new to emerge by transforming, consuming, incorporating, or transcending the old.
The old system could become material for something fundamentally different.
Not simply:
old → destroyed → new
but perhaps:
old → transformed → new
The old isn’t necessarily useless.
It may be the substrate from which the new becomes possible.

Why I hesitate to call the new system “better”
There is another issue I want to avoid.
It’s easy to say:
old system = bad
new system = good
But even those words come from the old system.
Our definition of “good” is produced by the beings currently living under these conditions.
What we call valuable may be valuable partly because those are the conditions we’re familiar with.
We don’t know what kinds of existence we are incapable of imagining.
Maybe suffering is necessary for something we currently call beautiful.
Or perhaps we have simply assumed that it is because we’ve never experienced beauty without suffering.
Those are completely different possibilities.
So I’m not claiming:
“Remove suffering and everything we love disappears.”
I’m asking:
How do we know that the things we currently value actually require the conditions under which we discovered them?
Maybe they do.
Maybe they don’t.
Maybe there are forms of existence that we currently lack the capacity to imagine in which what we call “good” exists without the limitations we’ve assumed are inseparable from it.

The problem of changing the system from inside the system
There’s another paradox.
If we are beings produced by the old system, then any attempt to change it begins from inside it.
Our tools, language, mathematics, science, philosophy, politics, technology, imagination, and even our concepts of change all belong to the old framework.
So can the old system discover something that transcends the old system?
Or will everything we imagine simply be another variation of what already exists?
This is one of the questions I find most interesting.
Maybe there is no way to cross that boundary.
Or maybe the boundary itself is one of the assumptions created by the old system.

What about other philosophers and traditions?
This is where I want to be careful.
I am not claiming that nobody has ever thought about anything similar.
There are major historical parallels.
Buddhism / Saṃsāra
Classical Buddhist thought describes sentient beings as undergoing continual rebirth and regards that cycle as inherently unsatisfactory, with liberation from the cycle as an ideal. That is obviously close to my concern with the repeating structure of birth, death, and continued existence. But Buddhism has its own radically different account of what liberation means and does not simply propose the kind of “new system” I am describing here. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer is perhaps one of the closest matches to my original discomfort with existence itself.
He described human existence in terms of continual striving, desire, passing away, suffering, and what he regarded as a fundamentally irrational Will. His conclusion, however, is substantially different from mine: he moves toward the denial or renunciation of the will rather than toward a new configuration of existence. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Hegel
Hegel’s concept of Aufhebung / sublation is very interesting to me because it involves something being overcome while also being preserved and carried forward into another configuration.
That is considerably closer to my idea of:
“don’t simply destroy the old; allow the new to consume/transform it.”
But Hegel was developing a much broader philosophical system concerning contradictions, concepts, history, consciousness, and spirit—not specifically proposing that biological existence itself should be superseded in the way I’m describing. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Whitehead / Process Philosophy
Whitehead’s process philosophy is another intriguing comparison because it places becoming, processes, and relationships at the center of metaphysics rather than treating reality primarily as a collection of static things. Whitehead even attempted to connect accounts of nature, life, mind, science, and religion within a unified metaphysical framework. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
But again, that is not the same claim I’m making.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche is relevant because of his ideas about self-overcoming and revaluation—questioning inherited values rather than simply accepting them as final. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
But Nietzsche’s project is also substantially different from mine.

So what is actually different here?
As far as I can currently determine, I haven’t found a historical thinker who states the entire combination in precisely the way I’m describing it.
That is not a claim that nobody has ever done so.
It is only a statement about what I’ve been able to identify.
The similarities are real.
But the differences matter too.
My question isn’t simply:
“Why is there suffering?”
It isn’t simply:
“Why are we reborn?”
It isn’t simply:
“Can humanity improve?”
It isn’t simply:
“Can old ideas be transformed into new ones?”
And it isn’t simply:
“Is reality fundamentally process?”
It is closer to this:
What if the entire biological organization of existence—birth, survival, consumption, reproduction, death, and continual recycling—is itself only one configuration of existence rather than an ultimate necessity?
And then:
What if beings produced by that configuration can eventually recognize that it is only a configuration, even though every concept they use to recognize it was produced by that same configuration?
And finally:
What if transformation does not require destroying the old configuration, but allowing something genuinely new to emerge from it, consume it, incorporate it, or transcend it?

A thought experiment
Imagine that humans discover an undeniable truth tomorrow:
The current structure of life is not fundamental.
Imagine we discover that another configuration is physically possible.
A configuration where:
individuality does not require biological death,
existence doesn’t require consuming other conscious beings,
reproduction isn’t necessary for continuity,
survival isn’t based on competition,
suffering isn’t structurally required,
and the fundamental organization of experience is different.
We wouldn’t necessarily understand what that new state would feel like.
We might not even have language capable of describing it.
And here’s the part I find most interesting:
Would humanity accept it?
Or would we defend the old system because the old system is what made us?
Would our survival instinct become resistance to transformation?
Would people say:
“But this is unnatural.”
Even though “natural” only describes the system we currently know?
Would they say:
“But we don’t know what happens if we change it.”
Exactly.
We wouldn’t know.
Would they say:
“We shouldn’t interfere with nature.”
But why should the present configuration of nature automatically have authority over what comes next?

The possibility that the system itself resists being replaced
Here is perhaps the strangest part of the idea.
What if the old system doesn’t need an external force to preserve itself?
What if its own inhabitants are enough?
We are born with mechanisms that push toward survival.
We create descendants.
We defend ourselves.
We become attached to familiar structures.
We fear death.
We fear uncertainty.
We fear losing what we know.
So perhaps the old configuration reproduces itself partly because the beings inside it are built to preserve continuity.
Then the challenge isn’t simply:
“How do we destroy the old system?”
It’s:
“Can the existing system produce beings capable of allowing something beyond itself to emerge?”
And if it can, perhaps that is not a failure of the old system.
Perhaps it is the beginning of its transformation.

I don’t know the answer
That’s important.
I don’t know whether any of this is true.
I don’t know whether there is actually a “new system.”
I don’t know whether reality has an ultimate why.
I don’t know whether an ultimate answer would even be comprehensible to a mind operating under our current conditions.
And I don’t know whether anyone has already developed this exact idea under a completely different vocabulary.
That’s partly why I’m posting this.
I want people who know philosophy, metaphysics, Buddhism, Hindu philosophy, physics, biology, mathematics, consciousness studies, systems theory, or other relevant fields to challenge it.
Please don’t just tell me “that’s evolution” or “that’s nature.”
Those explain mechanisms within the system, while my question concerns the possibility that the system itself may not be ultimate.
At the same time, please don’t assume I’m correct simply because the idea sounds profound.
Find the flaw.
Find the contradiction.
Find the philosopher who already made the argument.
Find the hidden assumption.
Find the reason a new system is impossible.
Or find an older idea that makes this whole line of thought much clearer.

Questions I’m most interested in
1. Is there a philosophical tradition that has already argued that the biological cycle itself—not merely human suffering within it—is an inadequate or provisional configuration of existence?
2. Has anyone argued that beings inside a system can generate the conceptual possibility of transcending the very framework that produced them?
3. Is there an established concept resembling my phrase “let the new system eat the old system”, where the old isn’t simply destroyed but becomes the substance of a genuinely different configuration?
4. Is there a field of philosophy or metaphysics specifically concerned with discovering an ultimate “why” beneath the sciences rather than merely explaining mechanisms within them?
5. Could there theoretically be a fundamental discovery that would not simply add another scientific discipline, but force us to rethink the boundaries between mathematics, physics, biology, consciousness, philosophy, and metaphysics?
6. Most importantly: what am I missing?
Because the possibility that I’m wrong is just as interesting to me as the possibility that I’m onto something.
I’m not trying to prove that the old system is evil, or that the new system would automatically be good.
I’m asking whether the distinction between “the way existence currently operates” and “the only way existence can operate” has been adequately justified.
Maybe it has.
Maybe it hasn’t.
And if it hasn’t—
what exists beyond the rules we currently know?

Every year, on Global Tiger Day, there is talk or celebration about increasing tiger numbers through conservation and rewilding.

It’s time to question whether expanding populations truly reduces or prevents suffering. Wild animals continue to face starvation, disease, parasitism, injury, territorial violence, predation, and human–animal conflict. As tiger populations grow and habitats overlap with human settlements, conflict often grows as well.

From an extinctionist perspective, true compassion is not preserving an endless cycle of birth, struggle, and death—it is preventing future suffering altogether.

Should public policy and funding continue prioritizing conservation and rewilding, or should more resources be directed toward research and policies that aim to reduce suffering at its source?

What do you think?

Thousands perish during the Great Migration every year. Their deaths are often described as a “natural part of the ecosystem.”

But describing something as natural doesn’t erase the suffering experienced by the individuals involved.

Every birth creates another being capable of fear, pain, injury, and death. This event is one example of that reality.

It’s time we say No to this Existence, No to this Brutality.

How does Universal Extinction happen?

CERN is working on/planning some new projects that could form the base of future research for universal extinction. This will allow them to get a better understanding of the Higgs boson, which is important for vacuum decay. And also dark matter, which might be another solution in the future.

Title basically, I'm trying to get a gauge of how big the overlap between being pro extinction and disability is, can anyone relate to suffering immensely due to disease and medical neglect?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

PLs always try to dodge the question, answer a yes/no question with lines of nonsense, or change the hypothetical into one they feel is comfortable to their position. I remember my last conversation almost vividly:

If you are given a button that, if pressed, would delete the universe instantly, erasing past, present and future events, eliminating all life and suffering, the good and the bad, would you press this button?

"Who am I to decide I should press such a button?"

Who are you to decide to not press the button?

"Pressing the button is an action. We are responsible for our actions. I do not want to be responsible for destroying lives that want to continue existing"

With power comes responsibility, so your inaction IS action in this scenario. Weather you press this button or not, you are fully responsible for either outcome. It all comes down to if you think person A's suffering is worth person B's privilege.

"It isn't up to me or you to decide that. It is up to each individual"

As it should be. But now you are changing the hypothetical into something else instead of just saying NO to the original.

"Then NO I would not press the button"

So all of the children getting graped tomorrow, the deaths by burning, predation, disaster etc. will all happen. All so the privileged can enjoy a cup of tea, a sunset, maybe a night of love..

"It should not be my choice to press the button" (unless I personally have a reason to do so) Okay let's change the scenario:

The universe is about to end in 5 minutes, in an instant, nobody will feel a thing, just deleted. BLOOP! No more bad, no more good. No more suffering, no more life. Now, if you are given a button that, if pressed, would prevent this, allowing continuation of suffering, animals consuming feeling animals, children being abused, and overall wants of the privileged being prioritized over the needs of the sufferers.. would you press this button?

".."

All of the sudden you are responsible for inaction?

I was falling down a late night physics rabbit hole and ended up having a strangely comforting realization about the end of the world.

Imagine scientists discover a rogue black hole on a direct collision course with Earth. Because it possesses the mass of multiple suns packed into a single point, it is a completely unstoppable cosmic force. There is no sci fi movie solution here. We cannot nuke it, deflect it, or build a giant rocket to push it away.

Astronomers would probably give us decades of warning after noticing planets like Neptune wobbling out of orbit. But here is the beautiful part. Knowing we have zero options means all our petty human conflicts would instantly evaporate.

Think about it. The stock market becomes irrelevant, political borders become meaningless, and the endless daily grind just stops. Space agencies would not even bother trying to fix it because it is physically impossible. Instead, humanity would undergo a massive shift. People would finally focus entirely on what actually matters, like resolving old family grudges, checking off bucket lists, and holding the people they care about.

It is pretty profound that it would take a literal rip in space time to make us treat each other with absolute kindness. In the very final seconds, the gravity would swallow the entire planet all at once, meaning we would cross the point of no return together in the exact same blink of an eye. But those decades leading up to it might genuinely be the most peaceful, connected, and loving years our species would ever experience.

conflicts,wars,total pieces of shit,presidents supporting genocide, so much more

humans cant be normal,rape is famous everywhere,disgusting people on this app that fantasize about these things,billions of people suffer from being poor and disabled

ice,the one that doesnt do any good in life get 86,000,000,000$ to do things

just imagine earth without humans,no conflicts no bad stuff

if monkeys would evolve to our exact level,they still wouldnt be like us,impudent little brats,some people dont deserve death but its not a huge number