/lit/ - Literature

>I hate my life, this must mean everybody hates their life
Life is amazing and you niggas can keep seething

>>22597128
Thats not what the book says.

>>22597131
dont care faggot cry about it

>>22597133
Cope, incel.

>>22597126
The idea of trying to convince someone that life is a curse is absurd. You don't come to that conclusion intellectually; it's an emotional orientation toward the world based on someone's experience. Seeing life as a gift or a curse is just a perspective, not knowledge.

>>22597126
>>22597128
He probably speaks to a general perspective.

>>22597473
Wrong, intersubjective shit is knowledge

>>22597126
>would be worse off if I weren't born.
>if I weren't born
>I would be worse off
How do you get to be this retarded?

>Having children is not life-affirming by David Benatar
>https://aeon.co/essays/having-children-is-not-life-affirming-its-immoral
Life affirming sisters... i don't feel so good

>>22597512
>intersubjective shit is knowledge
Then antinatalists are wrong and I'm right. Simple as.

I might have skimmed the first pages in my existential days. It's intellectualized despair porn.

>>22597473
The emotional condition is not intellectual at all but it is the intellect that follows an intellectual conception of morality based on intellectual representations of feeling that are balanced out on the intellectual scales of pro and con, reasonably concluding that the cons outweigh the pros. It's internally consistent and correct in that it really is better not to live like that at all. The alternative is to live audaciously. This appears to reason as an empty platitude because it doesn't know what this means unless learned through experience, and the ignorance of that experience fuels the fear that is the reason of avoiding it.

>>22597566
No, you're wrong. Simple ass

>>22597126
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.

https://vitrifyher.wordpress.com/2018/11/23/how-to-not-die/

>First of all, restrict existence to all computable processes. Within that multiverse, there are many instances of being (qualia, experience, consciousness). For all instances of being, there exists a certain subjective quality.

>Due to relativity of simultaneity, time arises in the computations and not in the fundamental physics of the universe.

>This means that the subjective quality of time serves a survival role. When the subjective quality of pink circle arises, it serves a survival role. The universe doesn’t attach identities to particular brains. Particular brains are not ontologically unitary objects. So it would be a mystery why I don’t experience a blue circle if an indeterminate amount of processing in the past light cone of “my brain” was for blue and for circle. Yet it is only the processing distributed in spacetime that codes for pink that binds with circle.

>What is experienced is always what is adaptive. There is no ontologically unitary brain ticking forward through a sequential path. So whatever experiences do become atemporally integrated into being (experience, qualia, consciousness) are not random. There is some mechanism by which this is determined.

>Unless we imagine that quantum mechanics only applies to some separate magisterium of small things, as far as we know, the probability distribution that governs what we observe is the squared moduli of the universal wavefunction. Denying macroscopic decoherence is contrary to Occam’s Razor and experimental evidence continues to accumulate for superposition of ever larger objects.

>The only way to derive the squared modulus of the wavefunction as that which should govern our anticipation is by applying the behavior of a rational Bayesian agent in Hilbert Space. Otherwise, there would be no reason to anticipate one result in infinity as opposed to any other result in infinity.

>>22597604
I don't care enough to read this. But Benatar argues that even if we managed to end the suffering, it would take a very long... long time, in which many lives would be sacrificed for those of the future. Which is indecent for him.

The focus on the reason of procreation is a strong point of the book. If it encourages people not to have kids I wholeheartedly agree in the case of parents and teachers who would only inoculate new generations into the cult of reason that hates life. If the people who only know that way of living and thinking follow it to its logical conclusions then it is a good thing.

>>22597126
David Benatar will end up having more de facto adherents than John Locke.

Pride is the main thing that compels normies to have children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqeN2RRR3xQ

>>22597575
Teencel.

>>22597675
>Pride is the main thing that compels normies to have children.
No, it's the ape impulse

>>22597575
>It's intellectualized despair porn.
Precisely, which is why it isn't worth reading. It's just a depressed/unhappy person trying to convince the reader to be miserable as well. There is no series of logical arguments or sentences that will convince a happy person that life is a curse. Nietzsche was right when he said that philosophers are just post hoc rationalizing their unconscious impulses and desires.

>>22597126
Holy fucking shit. We get it. You're impotent and cant attract a woman. This is your 50th thread now. Fuck offffffff

>>22597831
I actually don't know if Benatar is really depressed but the mental health of the proponent of antinatalism does not affect the truth of their argument.
Besides (i know that sound like a meme but...) depression can help you see the world more clearly which raises the possibility of inadvertently strengthening the argument for antinatalism rather than destroying it.

>>22597126
Why doesn't this cretin just commit suicide and get out of the way? The same question can be posed to all nihilists and antinatalists

>>22598249
He argues that it's justifiable to commit suicide when the evils of life are bad enough to nullify the interest in not dying. He also mention the guys who say KYS, like you. He argues that they simply don't understand the human condition (or as he calls it "human predicament")

>>22598314
"Deep bro"

>>22598334
Yes

>>22598334
One million times more deep than only saying "kys", yes

>>22597473
>doesn't come to it logically

Yes white people need to STOP having kids!

>>22597516
In the book he presents an axiological asymmetry such that the absence of pain is good but the absence of pleasure isn't bad. He means this in counterfactual sense - compared to being born and suffering its better not to be born. And so I make the same claim in the opposite direction - compared to being born and feeling pleasure, it's worse to not be born.

Neither is saying there is some unborn child or whatever hurting or benefitting "out there". David benatars case is that there's an asymmetry in value judgments where we think absent pleasures aren't bad unless someone suffers their deprivation. But then at the same time absent harms aren't good unless someone benefits. But he says actually that IS good regardless of who it affects.

It's very muddled and hard to understand.

>>22599384
Why is pain mad

>>22599724
I haven't read the book yet but assuming that harm would be caused to someone by giving him life because he could have enjoyed a pleasant life, the harm of death cannot be avoided. Therefore, to say that harm would be caused by not giving him life is not correct, or at least not entirely.
>And so I make the same claim in the opposite direction - compared to being born and feeling pleasure, it's worse to not be born.
The problem is also that even if it is not harmful to you, it is inevitably harmful to others.

>>22597473
that's the opposite dumdum. women are emotional and they all say life is awesome no matter how shitty it is. it's delusional

>>22599724
I haven't read the book yet but assuming that harm would be caused to someone by not giving him life because he could have enjoyed a pleasant life, the harm of death cannot be avoided. Therefore, to say that harm would be caused by not giving him life is not correct, or at least not entirely.
>And so I make the same claim in the opposite direction - compared to being born and feeling pleasure, it's worse to not be born.
The problem is also that even if it is not harmful to you, you're existence it's inevitably harmful to others.

>>22600044
Why should i care about harm

>>22600055
It doesn't matter if you care or not. It doesn't change any facts. The world doesn't care what you feel/care

>>22597128
If your life was amazing you wouldn't be on /lit/, you idiot.

>>22597126
Read his interviews. He is an unhinged lunatic. I do not care what he says outside of how it entertains me.

>>22597126
This book gets posted here pretty regularly; I'm starting to wonder if it's some weird agitprop shit like the botting you see on /b/.

>>22597575
>intellectual conception of morality
So, a wrong conception of morality?

>>22597875
>but the mental health of the proponent of antinatalism does not affect the truth of their argument.
The argument isn't true by definition since it's about issues of emotional, intuitive sentiment, that possess no logical or rational component whatsoever.

>>22600062
>It doesn't matter if you care or not. It doesn't change any facts
Morality isn't factual.

>>22600062
It is rather important, given that we are discussing ethics. Rejecting the reduction of harm as the prime moral imperative defangs anti-natalism, and renders it completely tame because their underlying priors have been rejected. Priors which btw, are not actually universally accepted and are in fact quite rare in the wild (Universal reduction of suffering, reducing suffering as the most important thing, etc).

>>22597875
My point is that life can't be reduced to a Pros/Cons chart. You either value your life or you don't. And if you're in the latter camp, then maybe you end up writing books espousing your antinatalism like you discovered it the same way Einstein discovered relativity. But you didn't. You just hate your life and are rationalizing why and projecting that feeling onto the world.

Btw I've been depressed, and I didn't see the world more accurately. I was perpetually wallowing in anguish and self-pity, and making mountains out of molehills. Depression clouds your judgment (especially your self-judgment) and amplifies your perception of negative experiences, while it neuters your perception of positive experiences.
>>22600039
You misunderstood me. Antinatalists are projecting their feelings onto the world: feelings of resentment, anguish, frustration, self-loathing, etc. I'm not saying that they're moody, simply that their ideas originate in their emotions.

>>22600593
>I'm not saying that they're moody, simply that their ideas originate in their emotions.
Just like everyone else's

>>22600593
Benatar in addition to using the "pros" and "cons" (they are actually things that are good and bad intersubjectively though) that you talk about. He clarifies that life can have meanings from any perspective except the broadest one (subspecies aeternitatis) à la Spinoza.
He basically gives a negative value according to these intersubjective "facts". And about the last thing I was talking specifically about medical depression,
also "depressive realism" may not only be true for some individuals at times, in other words, medical depression may cloud your worldview but only sometimes. You were probably part of the exception, but in general medical depression helps you see things more accurately as they are

>>22600532
It can be intersubjective. Something that is pretty close to the facts, if they aren't already.
>>22600542
It's negative ethics, you wouldn't understand it

>>22600759
>Something that is pretty close to the facts
No. That's literally just an argumentum ad populum with some ranch dressing on it.

>>22601812
Not true at all. I would explain it to you but nah

>>22600495
Yes he would be

>>22597604
>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.
hilarious how this is on “abolitionist.com”. this would be an attempt to make “happy slaves”

Stop posting this and start posting Zapffe instead, he explain in a better and shorter way why life is shit

>>22597663
I doubt Benatar argues for sterilizing the whole planet. Thus voluntary human extinction leads to ~500 million years of continued animal suffering. A couple hundred years is a piss in the ocean compared to that. Tech advancement isn't a sure way of getting rid of suffering though and it might even lead to unfathomable scales of suffering if sentience is emergent in AI systems. Any option besides succesful anti suffering tech or complete earth annihilation are completely useless and even they are very local cosmologically. You'd need self improving and assembling genocidal probe armies to do the same in larger scale and you better make sure you have the safeguards against misallignement in place.

>>22602238
Only 600 years more bros...
My head actually hurts thinking about the pains in the world, and I'm absolutely terrified at the thought of the apocalypse taking too long to come. Oh Benatar says it's naive to think that antinatalism can work on more than a small scale

>>22602238
>>22602347
Fuck, i forgot the pic

>>22597126
>be born, have to experience death
>don't be born, don't have to experience death
Seems pretty simple to me.

>>22597126
I really like that cover

>>22597232
>>22597133
You have to be at least 18 to post here

>>22597128
That is not a universal statement though, is it? There are many creatures who have shit lives. I haven't read the book fully but I feel like when we think of "the gift of consciousness", we must also consider the fate of other conscious creatures whose lives are miserable. For example, chickens raised for slaughter. What do (You) think?

i cant imagine what kind of whiny loser buys into this crap. either self pity incarnate, or some kind of utilitarian mega-autist

oh
>South African
no wonder he sees life the way he does

>>22597473
All beings experience physical pain. Its not a perspective it is indeed knowledge

>>22603077
>either self pity incarnate
>some kind of utilitarian mega-autist
>Benatar
Choose one

>>22602221
What’s wrong with making happy slaves?

>>22597126
>>22597128
it's not about you per say.
it's about the sum of it.
even if one person suffers immensely then it wouldn't be worth the pleasures of all of humanity
but you niggers are too selfish to care about that calculus.

>>22597473
Anyone who isn't either an idiot or a psychopath would see this world and their personal lives as an extension as bad. even if they're in the mid of a high.

This shit is so stupid Buddha have said the same thing 2500 years ago like why does this type of shit get any attention as if these stupid academic assholes thought of something new. Everyone knows life sucks.

>>22598249
it's not like you're bringing anything useful to the table. at least antinatalists are trying to fix what's broken.

>>22599388
Yes and blacks and arabs, chinks and spics too

>>22597128
FPBP.
>>22597133
Based.

>>22597126
Reminder that anti-natalists are likely to be mentally ill and have a personality disorder.

>>22605396
This doesn't mean that anti-natalist arguments can be dismissed solely due to this fact; it does however add context to why autists make these threads and are completely unable to understand why they are wrong. It also has direct implications regarding Benatar's quality of life argument (i.e. anti-natalists are stuck in a rigid ideological system as a cope for to sustain their defective worldview).

>>22605396
Anti-natalists are at a complete poverty when it comes to weighing quality of life. Their defective nature simply precludes them from accepting any rationalization outside of their own self-indoctrination. They don't necessarily mean to be disingenuous because such is simply written into their nature.

>>22605396
David Benatar, the thought leader for the anti-natalist sad sack cult of ideology, is a mentally unstable spaz. It's no wonder the retard avoids making appearances when walking in the park on a sunny day gives him a panic attack/public breakdown:
>they go for a walk in the park
>interviewer forwards the idea that life can be improved
>Benatar raises his voice and starts sperging that life never improves (objectively false by the way)
>Benatar literally starts crying and basically says "life is unacceptable"
>interviewer is taken aback by his outburst and at a loss for words (Benatar is inconsolable)
Benatar is pretty unstable. On top of that he admits that his ideas are damaging while using the excuse that his work is academic and only meant for those that seek it out (note that these people are likely to have personality disorders and mental illness). Benatar objectively creates suffering and given that he's under the delusion that his work is toward the opposite: he's delusional and irrational.

>>22605396
humanity suffers from the worst personality disorder. natalism.
symptoms are:
impregnation fetish.
a psychotic ability to deny the hellish world they live in and always looking for the silver lining

>>22605422
>sheds a tear for the hellish state of the world
>therefore unstable
????

>>22605476
>in public
>surrounded by happy families in a park on a nice sunny day
>starts sperging about life being miserable and cries because the interviewer suggested he should direct effort to improving the lives of others
>to polish it off he admits his work causes suffering/attracts pathological mindsets and just handwaves with "le academic"
Lol, this is your thought leader.

>>22605464
>the fact women won't fuck me is central to my identity and worldview
Lol

>>22599384

>>22597675
I like how this guy is smart because he's half white

>>22605285
You gonna cry about it faggot :,(

>>22597131
Kill yourself homo
>>22597133
based, checked.

OP pat benetar is a shit author and a faggot. Fuck you and fuck him.

>the amount of seethe from just the presence of antinatalism
kek

>>22606265
Still disagreeing with antinatalism. Benatar's writing alone is, although simple, very funny to read

>>22603075
Don't care about some gay chickens.

>>22608081
Neither do most people. They also don't care what happens to other people. They only care about their well-being, basically the majority are overrated monkeys