Because if you had been born into that world, your sensibilities would be shaped by that world. I think it's reasonable to speculate that people who are born into 2 different worlds with 2 different sets of potentialities would develop 2 completely different sets of standards.
Put it this way: if you were born into a world where the worst thing that could happen to anyone would be to stub their toe, do you really think you would be walking around going "Isn't it great there are no mass extinction events in our world? Isn't it wonderful that there's no such things as diseases? or mental disorders? or genetic defects? or insanity?"
Of course you wouldn't. If those things were unknown in your world they wouldn't play any role at all in whatever standards you set to determine what is and isn't a satisfactory existence. No more than you're likely to walk around in this world thinking "Gee, isn't it great that there are no such thing as 5000 lb radio active spiders in our world?"
No matter what world we can envision, it's reasonable to predict that your set of standards would reflect the conditions of that world.
This is mixing up knowledge with realization. Knowledge of other worlds is a tool to explain why some possible worlds are better than others, but knowledge doesn't have to directly play a role in
why that world is better. It's only a tool for external philosophical beings to make the comparison. Beings in a hellish realm, and beings in a heavenly realm, would not have to know of each others existence for their levels of fulfillment and suffering to be different from each other (although adding the knowledge of the heavenly realm to the hellish realm would probably add insult to injury).
If, in a world where the worst thing that can happen is a stubbed toe, someone puts forth the PoE and suggests that a powerful and loving god wouldn't allow this to happen, they might have an initial point, but a proper response would be, "look, I can recover in 5 minutes from a stubbed toe. The highest pleasure is so much larger in magnitude than this suffering." and it would render the argument weak.
But in this world, where unbearable agony or lifelong illness are among the worst possible things, the same defense can't be said.
Adjusting to the environment is only a partial thing. People can adjust to an extent, and that's because our bodies are rather flexible due to our growing in this world. For instance, if someone joins a kickboxing club for the first time and I have to fight her, chances are, she'll be a pansy. But after a few months of rigorous training, she'll develop cardiovascular conditioning, muscular strength and endurance, and learn how to actually take a hit and hit back harder. This does not mean, however, that the scales between suffering and fulfillment are wholly relative (see example below).
"Reason" has nothing to do with it. We're talking about human psychology more than anything here.
Most people don't live in the world you describe above. For most people, those things aren't realities, just ideas. Most people living under the conditions you describe above would no doubt consider the world we live in here in a developed country a "less imperfect" world. Yet the people living here don't usually equate that with perfection.
If we decide to consider the average living conditions of the average, middle class to upper-middle class US citizen the starting point and work from there, my theory still holds: most of us don't consider the world we live in a perfect world even when compared with 3rd world or war torn regions.
By the same token, using your formula of substituting some hypothetically perfect world with a less imperfect world and trying to use that to address the POE, all we have to do is look at people living what many or most people in our culture would consider the ideal life: extreme wealth, fame, beauty---people whose lives many would call "perfect"--- and realize that these people obviously don't consider their personal worlds perfect either: people like Heath Ledger, Brittany Spears, and Curt Cobain who have all of the above and still find life unbearable to the point of willingly ending it or losing their minds.
"Minor" as compared to what? If the worst thing that could happen in a particular reality would be something that we, looking at it from the perspective of this reality, considered minor, it wouldn't be minor to the occupants of that reality.
Major/minor are relative terms.
I showed you how. I showed you 2 formulas: one was meant to demonstrate that perfection is a logical impossibility. The other was intended to show that the idea of our living in a "better" world is also a logical impossibility.
When I asked you how you would go about fixing the world, I wasn't looking for specific details I was looking for a formula that, relatively speaking, didn't land us right back where we started.
The formula that you seem to be suggesting is Reality minus Imperfections equal Perfection (or close enough).
This doesn't resolve the POE. If the POE is meant to demonstrate that the idea of an Omni-beneficent God is incompatible with a world that includes suffering, then your formula, according to the examples you've given, doesn't give us a perfect world, just a less "imperfect" one, and it doesn't accommodate the possibility of an Omni-beneficent God, just a slightly nicer one.
So yes, even if we create a world by your formula, we're still stuck with the POE.
Yes, it really is.
I've met people in this world who consider the fact that they're only going to be able to take one vacation to Europe or Caba San Lucas in a given year, instead of 2 or 3, "grievous suffering". Water finds it's level. So does whining.
Firstly, I didn't put forth the idea the argument that an omni-beneficent god is incompatible with a world that includes suffering. I specifically disclaim those sorts of positions.
For the rest, consider two possible environments.
In one environment, there is a child that is raised by intelligent and loving parents in a fairly stable and safe area. The child is given affection, taught values, and educated. The child encounters some obstacles, like sport injuries or some mean other children, but they learn from these minor sufferings and are happy and fulfilled in general.
In another environment, there is a child that is initially raised by parents until they are both tortured and killed, possibly even in front of the child. The child lives in poverty, without education, faces starvation, and eventually dies due to an attack from millions of multiplying microscopic biological torture devices (a virus) which are present in nature.
Going by your logic, if these children never knew of each others existence, they should have roughly the same level of suffering and fulfillment and happiness since their sensibilities should match their environment. Would you say that they do? Is one of the children more fortunate than the other, or is it totally equal?
