David Benatar argues against the optimists that life is not good, and we should not create more of it.
To say that some lives are better or worse than others – or that a life is better or worse than it might otherwise have been – is obviously to make a comparative claim. It says nothing about whether any lives are good enough to count as good lives or bad enough to count as bad ones. Most people, however, do make the further claim that there are both good and bad lives. In contrast to the widespread idea that some people have good lives and others bad, I think that while some lives are better than others, no lives are good enough to count as (non-comparatively) good.
One common and instant response to such a claim is indignation. How dare one claim that no lives are good when there are billions of people who say otherwise about their own lives? I dare to make such a claim partly because there is excellent empirical evidence for the conclusion that people’s judgements cannot be trusted as a reliable indicator of how good their lives really are. For example, research psychologists have shown that people are prone to optimism and to optimistic (that is, inaccurately positive) assessments of their own lives. There are many manifestations of this phenomenon. People are more prone to remember good experiences than bad ones; they have exaggerated views of how well things will go for them in the future; and most people think that the quality of their lives is above average. When it comes to assessing their own moral goodness, people also tend to be overly optimistic. Very few people think of themselves as bad. If we were to trust self-assessments, we would have to conclude that there are very few bad people and evil actions, which is patently false.
Communiqué 