The Paradox of Infinite Happines and Zero Suffering

It can be said that a morally correct action is one that increases net happiness or decreases net suffering. For example, if there is a rich man and a poor man, the rich man is to give enough food for the poor man to survive because the amount of happiness the rich man can get out of having more food is much less than the suffering that the poor man will get from starving to death. I'm not taking credit for this. The idea that morral correctness is based on these two things is often attributed to John Stuart Mill¹ and his ideas on utilitarianism.

According to utilitarianism, if one biologist works his entire life to find a cure for AIDS, they are being morally correct, because, although the biologist suffered from working his entire life, many people will be happier because they don't have AIDS. Since this is true, it can also be said that an entire generation of people can work their butts off to make a better world for all the future generations. Keep in mind that the suffering of the one generation is out weighed by the joy all of the generations to come will have if the one generation worked so hard to make the world a better place. And if this is true, we can also say that two generations can work to make the world an even better place. And three generations can do so too. After all, the more generations that work super hard, the better our science, art, culture etc. will be.

If you haven't caught on to where I'm going with this, let me explain: let's take as a thought experiment that 100 generations start working their butts off to make the world a better place. Surely, this is would be correct according to utilitarianism- the suffering of 100 generations is less than the gain of the infinite generations to come. However, if the 101^st generation stops, they're being morally incorrect because they should be working for all of the future ones. The paradox is this one: if, at any given moment, the living people stop working to enjoy what their predecessors have created, then they are being immoral because they could work to help the people of the future. But, if no one ever stops working in austerity, then every generation is being immoral since they aren't cultivating the potential happiness that the pas generations have worked so hard for. When do we stop?

You might say that we could stop one second past when the world is going to end, but with all of this work on science, we will find out a way to get to a new planet for sure. If we're really working to make the world (or other living place) a better place to live in, we must find a way to prevent life from ending as a whole. A solution to the paradox could be to have half of the population plus one enjoying the work of others. However, that would retard the creation of science, art, culture, etc. because more than half the population isn't working. These are just some counter arguments that came to mind. Please leave your own in the comments.

To make everything clear, I came up with the paradox of infinite happiness and zero suffering on my own. It is possible, though, that someone else has already came up with a similar, or even identical thought experiment already. In that case, I'm not copying you, I've never seen your work. If you wanted to add to my idea, or contradict it, comment below. Also, you can I'm White Xocolate on YouTube and WhiteXocolate1 on Instagram. Have a wonderful day². Bye.

¹Not to be confused with The Daily Show's former host John Stewart.

²Unless you're working in austerity to make the world a better place in the future.