/lit/ - Literature

>>19250812
I know. I'm just filling up the quota.

Now, stop being a fag and just give me you argument against it.

>>19250821
Can't. It makes perfect sense. You should probably just accept it.

>>19250832

I also think it is impossible to refute. I was asking in case i miss something obvious.
I guess not...?

>>19250867
Nope. Cheers, no kids for us. No perpetuating suffering.

It's better to choose how you respond to suffering than to be given no choice at all, even if that freedom of choice leads you to isolation or suicide (though prospective parents should of course do everything in their power to make a child who grows up content).
Suffering is not the universal evil that many anti-natalists seem to paint it as, and "getting rid" of it by not having kids wouldn't make the world a better place as it would remove all the positive aspects that come with living.
There are those who have suffered more than either of us yet led happier lives than us as well, and there are those who have suffered less yet decided to kill themselves early.

I also hate how most anti-natalists (at least online) seem to treat not having kids like some saintly act that they should be applauded for, while actually doing nothing to reduce the suffering that does (and always will) exist. Some will even consider themselves morally superior to others who do help to reduce suffering, if those people happened to have kids.

At least anti-natalists aren't as retarded as efilists

>>19250786
Here's a probabilistic argument:
Most people think that "life isn't so bad". Therefore there's nothing wrong with having kids since there is a high probability that they too will end up thinking "eh, it's not that bad to be alive"

>>19251123
>It's better to choose
>implying you ever choose
I shiggy

if they believed it they would kill themselves they're just narcissists upset because life isn't the way they want it to be

>>19250786
David Pearce BTFO'd Benatar. Antinatalists will just be removed from the gene pool in the long run, so not reproducing won't accomplish much. It's also possible that we might be able to genetically engineer ourselves to not suffer in the far future.

https://www.abolitionist.com/anti-natalism.html

>Benatar's policy prescription is untenable. Radical anti-natalism as a recipe for human extinction will fail because any predisposition to share that bias will be weeded out of the population. Radical anti-natalist ethics is self-defeating: there will always be selection pressure against its practitioners. Complications aside, any predisposition not to have children or to adopt is genetically maladaptive. On a personal level, the decision not to bring more suffering into the world and forgo having children is morally admirable. But voluntary childlessness or adoption is not a global solution to the problem of suffering.

>Yet how should rational moral agents behave if - hypothetically - some variant of Benatar's diagnosis as distinct from policy prescription was correct?

>In an era of biotechnology and unnatural selection, an alternative to anti-natalism is the world-wide adoption of genetically preprogrammed well-being. For there needn't be selection pressure against gradients of lifelong adaptive bliss - i.e. a radical recalibration of the hedonic treadmill. The only way to eradicate the biological substrates of unpleasantness - and thereby prevent the harm of Darwinian existence - is not vainly to champion life's eradication, but instead to ensure that sentient life is inherently blissful. More specifically, the impending reproductive revolution of designer babies is likely to witness intense selection pressure against the harmfulness-promoting adaptations that increased the inclusive fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment of adaptation. If we use biotechnology wisely, then gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being can make all sentient life subjectively rewarding - indeed wonderful beyond the human imagination. So in common with "positive" utilitarians, the "negative" utilitarian would do better to argue for genetically preprogrammed superhappiness.

The same argument against everything; It's the musings of an up-jumped chimp with an incomplete picture.

>>19251206
What's the difference between choice and a perception of choice?

If one of my children would be unhappy enough to ask me: "Why did you give me life?", I could answer him with Gottfried Bennem: "Do not think that I was thinking about you when I was with your mother. When we were making love her eyes were always so beautiful. " And I could add: "You do not owe your life to your mother and me, but to the same nature, to which I also owe my life and whose Creator entrusted the emergence of a new life."

- Robert Spaemann

I even bothered to take out a book for you.

For most people, suffering beyond a certain acceptable limit is a consequence of living in a fucked up society.
Make enough money to live in the country where your closest neighbours are also responsible land owners as far away as you’d like them to be, marry a well educated qt with traditional values and goals, raise kids away from the corruption of neoliberal hedonism, and you’re well on your way.

>>19251218
This is just ridiculous
Part I: You will die eventually, therefore your argument is wrong?
Part II: There are people suffering right now but let's just wait till we're able to make designer babies. That will surely solve everything.

>>19250786
Some days are good, some days are bad. But I'm glad I got a chance to see something.

>>19251277
You really could have left it be if it only served to bolster that unhelpful drivel.

kys

>>19251398
Possibly the shortest refutation ever written

>>19251398
Not so simple.
What if there's a metaphysical post-death price to be paid after being born that one doesn't incur had they never been born?

What if we only damn people to some form of eternal suffering by birthing them? I know theories like this.

Life is good.

I'm antinatalist but only for non-whites.

>>19250786
Why not kill yourself?
>but people around me will feel sad
So? They already must be miserable by being alive. If you're right, then their suffering will not be increased by any significant factor, as they still subsist in what you claim to be the ultimate and intrinsic suffering. If they feel that much worse, your principles are demonstrably false.
>I would rather not risk crippling/injuring myself
So? You can guarantee death in a number of ways. If you could step into the hypothetical instant suicide booth, why shouldn't you? This is up to individual action, and therefore is not a defense of your abstract principles
>well, antinatalism is just that you shouldn't be born or reproduce in the first place
The only reason you would think that you won't return to some unborn state after suicide is that you believe in some higher good, which therefore negates the supposed evil of birth in the first place. As for reproduction, if you agree with the former statements (which you must, unless you admit to being wrong, and if so, why are you still reading?), then everyone else can just as easily find themselves in your position, and instantly and perfectly kill themselves, resulting in absolutely no pain. Once again, since you reject concepts of higher good or meaning to life, you should have no problem with a life of misery ending in suicide, as such suffering can only be felt by an individual (since any higher human good or meaning is non existent) who, after said suicide, will no longer feel any of it. Life, according to your own schema, cannot be a zero sum game. So there is no reason to advocate for anything; voluntary individual suicide is perfectly fine.
If you still agree, don't actually kill yourself. Move on to Neech, or turn 18 or something.

>>19251456
>The only reason you would think that you won't return to some unborn state after suicide is that you believe in some higher good
Actually the reason is I believe in a higher bad.
There being an evil force controlling everything doesn't require there also to be a good. This isn't a movie.

>>19251473
That means literally nothing. I never said anything about an evil force, just that if you believe there truly is some fate after death, you have to be religious. Or do you think that there is an evil God out there who hates you specifically?

>>19251490
>if you believe there truly is some fate after death, you have to be religious
You could be resurrected in a torturous form through only material means. You do not need to be religious for hell to exist, just imaginative.

>>19251495
If it's material, this merely extends life?
Just admit it.

>>19251438
You're already born, damage has already been done for your line

Can't risk having kids if you kys, also ends your life suffering and starts the process of you paying that post death price sooner rather than later

All antinatalists should kts as praxis

>>19251495
Well, you're gonna die anyways, why not just accept it and off yourself?
Also you have no reason to actually believe that. I implore you to prove me wrong

>>19251516
Sure, but it fits the definition after life as is traditionally defined.
As long as we don't know what the fuck happens, the whole "nothingness" is an unsupported assumption.

>>19251517
I'd still be in no rush.

>>19251518
I have no reason to believe otherwise. I have the assumption of every person living to guide me at this point, and its not much to go on.

Breeding really takes on a whole new level of horror when you look at it through this lens.

>>19251533
To add, nature has shown me she cares for little for my pain sensors. She has no obligation to care for them just because I changed substrates upon death. Its a scary universe, kids.

>>19250786
If you're not mentally ill, it doesn't make sense.
I can understand why you would go for that if you are, though.
Would you say you live a meaningful life?

>>19251533
>>19251542
Why do you have a reason for nature to allow your consciousness to survive physical death?

>>19251554
Well, if you were to save my brain right now, shatter it into a million preserved bits, then glue it together in a billion years, it would feel subjectively real to me, also it would feel as though no time has passed.

I see no difference between that subjectivity and that brought from my brin reoccuring somewhere in the great vacuum.

This is called "big world immortality" and its one of the myriad ways nature could fuck us beyond brain death.

>>19251554
There's also quantum immortality, and asymptotic death. And these are just the ones we know about.
So I never assume nothingness. Nothingness is an article of faith.

>>19251566
>Well, if you were to save my brain right now, shatter it into a million preserved bits, then glue it together in a billion years, it would feel subjectively real to me, also it would feel as though no time has passed.
That's objectively false. Your brain, even if physically perfectly repaired, does not remain the same after traumatic injury.

>>19251579
>does not remain the same after traumatic injury.
You're missing the larger point. Given enough time and material, an undamaged version will appear, or one just in the next possible state my flesh brain was in before all the lights finally went out.

>>19251566
>>19251574
Actually nvm, I don't care enough to engage in a dialogue about every possible form of immortality. I guess your skepticism has made your very specific, reduced form of antinatalism inarguable.

>>19251591
As long as you see that immortality is not solely the domain of religion. That's the point.

>>19251533
Antinatalism also implicitly allows for people's lives to get progressively worse as the ideology gains popularity and a labor shortage comes for an aging population that badly needs care and assistance like in Japan. In such a desperate scenario killing oneself seems the only solution aside from extreme automation, which again just postpones your eternal payment.

Additionally, your conjecture about the nature of the afterlife is just that, conjecture, and as we know nothing about it, you just as easily could be reborn earlier into the cycle of this world's development and extinction of life, or into another world where the antinatalist path was not adopted. Eternal torment is just as an unsubstantiated claim as nothingness or any other post death scenario.
This argument seems to rely more on a religious conviction of the nature of the afterlife than any real tangible reason evident in the life we can experience so far.

If it were merely life's suffering, suicide would be the clear choice. If it's not about this life's suffering, it's just post death anxious wankery like the hindus or christians.

>>19251595
I never thought that, I just assumed your point of view was different from what I've realized it is, because every other anti-natalist I've met believes in it. Not really feeling up to formulating a new response to a new worldview now. Maybe in another thread, anon. Have a good night.

>>19251599
Was typing before you talked about quantum immortality, but quantum immortality doesn't necessitate that the next reality you are reconstituted in be the same, or that you are not transformed in the process, which throws our current conception of this life's suffering out the window.

Even if it is the same, it makes the breeding vs antinatalist problem a scenario more similar to eternal recurrence, in which it would be a matter of your confidence in the newly born consciousness to have the coping strength to justify their eternal recurrence without the suffering being needless.

>I wonder if those NIGGERS are coming back to pick me up. This innercity sidewalk is fuckin nasty. That day in the store when the white lady with big tiddies was about to reach for me, Mom couldn't contain her excitement, telling me over and over how proud she was of me. Instead, the lady grabbed big long Elong. Elong was huge, like the rest of his family, and it was always good money to bet on one of their pod getting picked first.
>The next morning, when we saw a nappy haired NIGGER walking down the aisle, we all got quiet.
>Please, please not me. You could see it in everyone's eyes.
>All of a sudden, it got dark. A dark sweaty limb descended, blocking the fluorescent din. Mom couldn't even get the words out now. I didn't know what to say.
>Trayshon and Devontay fighting over me in the back seat
>Rough sweaty hands grabbing all over
>Drowning now in putrid three-piece breath
>Eyes closed, I don't want to know what's happening anymore
>This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Maybe that anti-natalist faggot cousin Dolee had a point. This world is fucked.
>And now, a shell of my former self, the ground vibrates as another one of them approaches.
>Maybe these NIGGERS have some sense of civic duty after all, and intend to dispose of me where I may at least return to the soil - the only place in this squalid landscape I could ever belong
>Alas, it is not - perhaps never was - to be
>Clumsy NIGGER arms swinging, pointing across the street, NIGGER voice booming
>AYYO D-TRAIN WASS GOOD SON, YO IMMA GETCHU THAT SCRILLA TONIGHT FOREAL
>My bananapeel brains triangulating the juxtaposition of NIGGER gaze, body, and feet: it doesn't look good
>A foot looms, I try to scream but nothing rises
>NIGGER limbs flailing, as what remains of my guts are rendered once again - this poor body has given too much
>Across the street, D-Train bursts forth in aggravated NIGGER howl
>YO THIS NIGGA FINNA CRACK A SKULL, AYO NIGGA THAS WATCHU GET PLAYIN THEM KNICKS SUCKA

>>19250786
>wipe out all humans
>monke evolves 20,000 years later and rinse and repeat

Nuh fuck that. If this is how reality actually is, then we gotta work within its bounds to make it work, and not be some anti-lifer, although I completely understand if you wanna go that route

>>19251843
Primates in general shouldn't exist.
Octopuses will evolve and take over, but the world will be better off that way

I'm pretty happy and my kids will probably be happy too :^)

Suffering is mostly self-imposed.

>>19251847
What's the difference between octopi and monkes though?
>>19251851
Honestly, I've come to take an anti-death stance, seeing as even biologically that's what we're primed to do anyway, and just achieving and fulfilling my goals and dreams "forever"

Not to say that thinking about it and getting dread can't bring some perspective every once in a while

>>19250786
Anyone is able to choose to cease to exist, but not to come into existence.
I'm an antinatalist and this gives me pause

>>19250786
Taking a life denying position and an anti-natalist one is taking a position based only on what we have observed up until now. There may be something we've been missing that will reveal itself to us tomorrow that will justify living, but if you die you would never witness this new piece of information.
Basically keep living (and producing more people who live) just in case pessimism is wrong. I know it's some Pascal's wager shit but it's the best I've got.

>>19251327
>Part I: You will die eventually, therefore your argument is wrong?
You're completely misunderstanding Pearce's argument. Antinatalism only appeals to people who are sufficiently intelligent to question reproduction, and who care about reducing suffering. These sorts of people will be weeded out of the gene pool. The only people who will keep breeding will be stupid people who don't care about causing suffering. The only thing you will succeed in doing is creating an Idiocracy.

>Part II: There are people suffering right now but let's just wait till we're able to make designer babies. That will surely solve everything.
And to do that, you have to have a sufficiently high IQ population. You're never going to get designer babies if there's another Dark Ages and everyone is mentally retarded.

>>19250786
I hate people so I encourage natalism out of spite. Let them keep popping out more and more suffering machines.

Have a baby if you want

I am more in favour of a selective antinatalism. A kind of advanced eugenics, where you should only have children if you are healthy and have good genetics, but also only if you are wealthy enough to properly support your children. Of course that would mean that 90% of people shouldn't have children, but the world would be a much better place.

>>19250786
Arguments Against Antinatalism (Benatar / Peterson debate)

>Peterson disagrees with Benatar’s conclusion to this existential conundrum.
>First issue addresses asymmetry argument – more bad in life than there is good.
>Benatar’s weighting system is logically flawed due to how arbitrary is it.
>Only way to derive a conclusion is to weigh “data” a priori (formed as conceived
beforehand).
>You can to establish parameters around your measurement process in order to
objectively gauge this empirical asymmetry.
>If one were to commit a good deed in the world, in order to measure the impact of that
deed, you have to parametrize it in both time and space in some arbitrary manner.
>The arbitrariness of this lies in the fact that you cannot calculate the full consequences
of your actions since you do not know how they will propagate out into the future (as
an aside, this is itself a refutation of utilitarianism).
>The measurement system is arbitrary because it is dependent on an unconceivable
number of variables, and can therefore be interpreted in a near infinite number of
ways, thus rendering it analytically invalid.

>>19252316
Arguments for Antinatalism

Misanthropic Argument:
>Misanthropy is marked by a hatred and contempt for mankind.
>We ought not to bring new humans beings into existence because of the harm they
will do to others.
>Not a categorical argument against procreation, yet it still over-determines the case.

Philanthropic Argument:
>Predicated on Humanitarianism.
>Bringing someone into existence is wrong because of the misery and suffering you
would be subjecting that person to without their consent.
>Axiological asymmetry: asymmetry of value between pain and pleasure.
>If you follow this asymmetry to its conclusion, you find that coming into existence
can never be of a net benefit.
>The quality of human life is very bad – much worse than what most people think. Not
at any given instance, but over the course of a lifespan.
>This results in quite a desirous harm that you are inflicting on somebody by bringing
them into existence.

Empirical Asymmetric Argument:
>Empirical asymmetries between good and bad are a posteriori (derived by reasoning
from observed facts.
>Empirical evidence overwhelmingly shows the bad things outweigh the good things in
life.
>For example, the phenomena of chronic pain; people live a vast majority of their lives
in constant pain, whereas nobody is sitting in chronic pleasure.

>>19250786
I had kids. I win

>>19252347
“To have committed every crime but that of being a father.”

>>19250786
antinatalists are weak pussibois

>>19251322
have you done that?

>>19251345
I'm not the anon you replied to, but go fuck yourself. Fuck you. You talk like the aesthetic has nothing to do with the value of human life. Can't wait to hear your dry accountant's argument on how you can add up all of the moments of human life and the number you get is negative, or maybe your even drier, more soulless feux logician's argument about if we can have duties to beings that don't yet exist. "Unhelpful drivel" -- Kiss my ass and go outside.

>>19250786
Humans develop. In the future we will find out a lot about the life and we will be able to do the right things.
So we must reproduce to get the things done in the future. Lol

>>19251847
So the greatest good is the well-being of "the world"?

>>19250786
Women dont need arguments
Women dont make arguments
Women dont listen to arguments
Pussy feels good
Majorities agree
Majorities agree with women not philosophers
Your argument is invalid
Majorities can be cruel and dissimulate your woes.
Why not join them?

"should"s arent very interesting philosophically but on a political or personal level i feel its bad to give birth for many reasons