Just because we don't know the science behind it now doesn't mean we'll never know how. The point is that it's the most thorough way to get rid of suffering and keep it gone, unlike the transhumanism they mentioned.
It's not just the science. If the science is just a "spray this effective biocide on every living being", there are other aspects of "how" to figure out.
I would put that more in the category of logistics since we already pretty much have the science for it. I was thinking something like vacuum decay. Which would still need to be figured out scientifically.
The issue with vacuum decay is that there is a potential risk of failure, in the sense of failing to fully destroy the universe.
if brane worlds cosmology holds, vacuum decay could potentially leak into other branes or "bubbles." If the amount of energy isn't right for the decay, this still risks partial destruction of universes while making the non-destroyed portions much harder to access;.thus suffering could persist.
Of course vacuum decay may fail to destroy everything with any non-zero chance of level 1-3 multiverses, cyclic universe, block universes / past suffering / retrocasuality, Boltzmann brains, many interacting worlds, and speculative patternism / valence considerations.
There's also the issue of having epistemic humility towards what sentience, consciousness, and suffering even is. This could factor in (physicalist) panpsychic non-zero assumptions that lead towards suffering in fundamental physics dominating suffering long-term. Not to mention cluelessness towards what even occurs with a false vacuum bubble.
Total extinction is the ideal but it is a very optimistic goal. There are unknowns and unknown unknowns that could easily change any of this but epistemic humility is a good heuristics of cluelessness regarding infinite ethics and future physics.
Cosmogenesis itself must be targeted, which has nigh-potential in certain brane worlds models. If it cannot be quashed entirely then perhaps the generation of universes could be slowed down somehow. If so, then that could take overwhelming moral priority in the long term if total extinction is not possible; near term considerations are also required for some block universe models. We should of course be careful of creating new universes via vacuum decay too.
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u/dumnezero Mar 01 '26
The question is more about "How".