What if morality's only real job is reducing suffering, not maximizing happiness?
Standard utilitarianism asks us to maximize total happiness minus suffering. Negative utilitarianism instead gives special priority, sometimes total priority, to minimizing suffering over increasing pleasure. Taken to its extreme, critics point out, the view implies that painlessly ending all sentient life would be morally acceptable or even required, since a world with no one left to suffer contains zero suffering, a conclusion most negative utilitarians scramble to avoid.