"Certainly there would be no future suffering on earth if all life on earth ceased. But most people seem glad that they were born: we do not usually think of present people (and animals) that the pain in their lives outweighs their pleasures...There have been great advances in the human condition due to science: recollect the horrors of childbirth, surgical operations, even of having a tooth out, a hundred years ago. If the human race is not extinguished there may be cures of cancer, senility, and other evils, so that happiness may outweigh unhappiness in the case of more and more individuals. Perhaps our far superior descendants of a million years hence (if they exist) will be possessed of a felicity unimaginable to us."
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Ethics, Persuasion and Truth, 1984, p. 141
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._J._C._Smart
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J. J. C. Smart
J. J. C. Smart (full name, John Jamieson Carswell "Jack" Smart; 16 September 1920 – 6 October 2012) was a British-Australian philosopher and Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. He specialized in metaphysics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy.
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