Abstract

The Good Place is about moral philosophy. But one reason everyone hates moral philosophers is that they think everything is about ethics. When it comes to the Good Place versus Bad Place hypothesis, the big giveaway is simplicity. The Good Place hypothesis doesn't require a grand deception and all the planning that would be necessary to keep it afloat. The Bad Place hypothesis does. The biggest worry about an eternal life in something like The Good Place was made famous by the philosopher Bernard Williams: boredom. Although it might take a while, The Good Place would eventually, and inevitably, turn into The Bad Place. Immortality would become torture. As Williams points out, even though a desire for immorality is irrational, the state of being dead is itself nothing to dread—it's still perfectly rational to want to live a longer life rather than a shorter life.