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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

> My question has rather been that, if suffering is required and a child getting bone cancer and dying at five is the best of all possible worlds, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase.

Is that better? it would also require not having all the good things from creation.

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Nah, just create the world at a state where modern medicine can cure cancer, like we're on the slow road to doing.

In the 1800s someone might have asked "if suffering is required and a child is going to die of a systemic infection, maybe the whole project should have been scrapped at the planning phase".

To me it's clear that human flourishing without much suffering is possible in this universe and it's more about knowledge and power to prevent suffering being hard to come by. The kind of knowledge that e.g. could have been written down in ancient religious books or whatever if we had a best possible world.

> Nah, just create the world at a state where modern medicine can cure cancer, like we're on the slow road to doing.

We would have cures for every illness if not for human selfishness and evil. Look at all the money and effort spent on war during the last 10,000 years, on legal fees and disputes for the last 5,000 years. Rather than love our neighbors as ourselves, too many of us in our hearts say, "This land is MINE! This money is MINE! This patent is MINE! The credit is MINE!" If all this effort went to instead cultivating gifted individuals to research and cure diseases we'd have all our cures.

I can’t see the good being contingent on a five year old getting bone cancer.

In that case you have rejected Leibniz's argument anyway so the argument in the comment I was replying to does not arise.

You don't know that the child wouldn't have grown up Hitler.

The argument seems similar - not exactly, but similar - to the question "if global warming is real, why is it snowing here". A function describing the maximum global integration over happiness could very well contain many local minima.

Yes, but an omnipotent God could presumably just make Hitlers not exist. The argument rests on the assumption that there are hidden dependencies in the laws of the universe, such that it was logically necessary that Hitler (or insert whatever other evil here) had to exist to make the best possible world. That's hard to swallow.

Consider that many people today, who live better than the kings of centuries past, are depressed. One could conclude that happiness is a state of improvement over past experiences, not necessarily an absolute scale. If this is true (and I personally believe that it is), then evil is in fact a necessary baseline against which happiness can be improved upon.

This seems to be assuming omnipotence is not just a fantasy?

More likely they were operating under significant constraints…

> an omnipotent ... could

The Architect in Leibniz is not omnipotent, and can only make the best out of what is possible.

I think you are just restating what I said. Yes, Leibniz and any of his defenders must assume that there are hidden constraints to what is possible that lie beyond human understanding that made Hitler (just to use a very salient example, but insert whatever evil you like), necessary to achieve a greater good. It is ultimately an argument from faith (just trust in God, he had the best for the world at heart) that can only be accepted by those who already believe.

I meant that it is explicit, not just an assumption but the very metaphysics. A Logos is thought as predominant over the Agent that uses it. (Otherwise, it would be logical to have perfection and only perfection immediately.)

> an argument from faith

I think it remains (it was intended to be) a logical argument from the very definitions (not from devotional faith).

Edit: sorry, but I realize I misremembered a few important details, that could make the above quite misleading...

Leibniz speaks of full omnipotence. So, that Logos is not "above" Divinity in an ontological sense, but in a purely logical sense. I.e. it was impossible to do differently as this is "the best possible plan", not "the best achievable".

> we are not well enough acquainted with the general harmony of the universe and of the hidden reasons for his conduct; and that makes people recklessly judge that many things could have been improved [... // ...] to know in detail his reasons for ordering the universe as he has, allowing sin, and granting his saving grace in one way rather than another, is beyond the power of a finite mind

~~ Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics(1686)

Apologies, re-reading this - which is literally false -, in view of a quick re-read of some salient paragraphs:

the Architect in Leibniz is omnipotent, and his project is regarded as the best possible; only, the project involves a limited humanity that cannot understand it.

(In the original writing above I meant 'omnipotent' in an oblique way (including "clarity" and "satisfying all" as "perfections"), which is too stretched and rhetoric not to mislead.)

I might be misinterpreting Leibniz’s central argument, but doesn’t the idea of the best of all possible worlds not depend on how humans (or any kind of life really) perceive it? This is similar to the idea that an unaligned AI agent could get its own idea of “best world”.

Also, I get the impression that in modern times, people fall away from religion because they can’t explain why God allows evil in a satisfactory way. But in the distant historical past, they were more motivated to reason or figure out why God intentionally causes evil things to happen.

> "if global warming is real, why is it snowing here". A function describing the maximum global integration over happiness could very well contain many local minima.

Love that answer. its a really good analogy.

Of course plenty of people I (probably most people) do not understand it with regard to global warming....

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