Theory: this is hell and nobody remembers arriving

The thesis that life is hell needs no demons

Hell has no horns or chains. It has cities, hospitals, families, wars, jobs, illness, love, pleasure and death, and nobody remembers arriving here. The theory that this is hell —and not a waiting room— is not new to everyone: in the discussion, some say they have thought it "many, many times" and that, apparently, many people do. Shakespeare already wrote it down in The Tempest, one participant recalls: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

Forgetting as part of the sentence

If this is a punishment, amnesia would not be a flaw in the system: it would be the system. Being born with no memories of a previous existence fits a sentence that renews itself. Bodies that age, time that tears away what you love, and a memory that starts blank every time.

The mechanism goes further. Happiness, in this scheme, is not a reward but a multiplier of pain: it serves to measure precisely what will later be lost. And if it is kept, habit does the rest: it stops being savored and pushes you to seek more. The full development of that chain —hope as a leash, death as a possible reset with no memory of previous lives— takes up a good part of the original argument and is not dismissed in two lines.

The objection comes quickly: not remembering arriving proves nothing, because no theory of existence comes with an entry receipt. An ironic correction, complete with a numerical score, sums up the reply.

Who would design a world like this? The indifferent-universe argument

Here the reasoning takes an uncomfortable theological turn. If life is a vale of tears, it behaves exactly as you would expect from an arbitrary, imperfect universe indifferent to human beings. In other words: as if there were no one behind the counter.

In the discussion, the suspicion is thrown without anesthesia at those who preach a perfect, loving, all-powerful designer: the fit between so much suffering and the absence of design is, it is argued, too perfect to be a coincidence. And believers are reproached for demanding proof that God does not exist.

The Buddhist tradition enters the conversation as a thorny precedent. Its goal is not paradise, but cutting off reincarnation: to stop suffering you must stop desiring, and to stop desiring you must stop coming back.

Simulation, prison or experiment: not everything is God or evolution

The classic dichotomy falls short, according to another participant: simulation, prison, experiment or hell seem more likely to him than a sloppy creator or evolution to explain the conditions of the disaster. It is the most useful criticism of the lot: if there are only two boxes, the framework is badly set up.

The problem is the usual one. The more a hypothesis explains, the less it can be tested.

The counterargument from those who are comfortable

Against metaphysical pessimism, the simplest resistance is direct experience: some reply that they are comfortable and cannot stand the heat, so something does not add up. Another way of dividing the map: earthly life is paradise for some and hell for others, and of that, says another participant, he has no doubt.

At the loudest extreme there is a slur against a religious group, unrelated to the reasoning and not reproduced in this article. And humor appears: the parody of the psalm that turns a Babylonian demon into a shepherd.

The analysis gets stuck right here. The earthly-hell hypothesis absorbs the lack of evidence as further evidence and leaves death as a door no one can open to verify. It is useful for thinking about suffering. It is useless for deciding anything.