system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is there more to Utilitarianism than decreasing suffering?

I know. I know there is literally more to it. What I'm looking for is the source of this concept of morality.

All to often I argue with people that claim their ethics are based in utilitarianism. I'll ask them why and they will say "decreasing suffering is the purpose or the goal of morality". Something to that effect.

Easy argument to dismantle in my opinion because if it were true that the only structure to morality was to mitigate suffering then shooting people in the head would be the ultimate moral exercise.

Is there something I'm missing or is there a flaw in the argument of the college utilitarian?
gpt
The idea that the only goal is decreasing suffering is a particular interpretation of negative utilitarianism that fell out of favor for the reasons you specified. Positive utilitarianism includes increasing happiness. And most people presume that people have overall more positive experience than pure suffering in their life, and so being alive is preferable and so killing them is wrong.

Different forms of utilitarianism expand on this in ways. For instance, some happiness might be better than others, which explains why being alive is positive, since enduing some suffering is worth it for the benefits. Or maybe happiness is the main, but not the only metric. Other things may be independently valuable. Or maybe preference is the metric.