I notice you don't answer my questions. Not a great way to dialogue.. and sort of unfair to me who is trying to do one. — schopenhauer1

Apologies! Not a refusal to answer, but an inability to answer! Please carry on. Danke for sharing your views. Paranesis!

I don't think it's a good idea but I trust mother nature or, more accurately, evolution. Suicides happen for a reason I suppose - those who can't take it are being culled automatically i.e. only those who don't mind suffering will be able to pass down their apathetic genes. In the long run what'll happen is our pleasure-pain sensing apparatus will be recalibrated to a new, higher pain threshold and all will be well. :snicker:

A question to antinatalism.

Do you detect any problems with the following list which has been ranked in termsa preference?

1. Life + Happiness
2. Nonexistence

My gut instincts tell me that antinatalists should give their nod of approval for the order, it makes sense to them. Therein lies the rub, oui mes amies?

I sympathize with the antinatalist crowd. Suffering tops the list of humanity's and also all life's problems - people seem too distracted to notice their own dukkha, especially in the modern world with cyberspace providing intermittent relief (for folks like myself). Billions are, to use a Matrix analogy, plugged in/jacked into virtual communities; I consider this a symptom of our dissatisfaction with the real world (dukkha manifests in interesting ways). In short antinatalism has a point.

However, this also means that if people are happy, they'll choose life.

Conclusion: :chin:

Shamanism has always been romanticised by hippies! :sweat: — javi2541997

:lol:

What are these impositions of life?
Why should they be endured?
How should we treat each other if we must endure them?
What are we perpetuating when we create more people? — schopenhauer1

Vitals!

My own take is that the problem of suffering at the heart of natalism-antinatalism is this:

1. (How to) Live happily (?).

Note live happily.

You can't, as is obvious to you, recommend nonexistence as a solution then, oui?

Really? I thought it was about right action? You are putting a spin on it such that of course, antinatalism would thus never be "ethical".. If ethics entails procreation, thus antinatalism is not ethical. But of course, the antinatalist would never define ethics so. They would define ethics as principles of right and wrong behavior. — schopenhauer1

I said what I hadta say!

If you're interested, you might wanna read up on the taijitu (yin-yang). When someone cares (too much) about life, he becomes a mass-murderer! :chin:

Thanos cared too much. I'm ignoring the "too much" part!

It's dressed up nihilism. Always has been. — Xtrix

:chin:

Most mathematicians seem to just take zero for granted, with zero understanding of what "zero" means. But of course, as I explained, the meaning of "0", as it is commonly used by mathematicians, is ambiguous — Metaphysician Undercover

How abso-fucking-lutely fascinating! :up:

There are reasons people want to procreate.. whether or not they are ethical.. Understood and can agree if stated in those terms. But once you say, THEREFORE people should procreate, that becomes an ethical statement, or at the least, axiological. — schopenhauer1

Work with me here; for the moment ignore ethics, Momma Nature has been doing that all this while, oui? Maybe that's not entirely accurate but methinks there's a grain or two of truth in my statement. Now, sir/madam, as the case maybe, can you think of one/two good reasons why we should have children?

Too, it just dawned on me, ethics revolves around two essential doodads:

1. Life/Phanes/Existence
2. Suffering/Algos

Antinatalism is unethical for the simple reason that nonexistence (death, killing) is. You can't claim to be moral in any sense of the word if as a solution to a problem you recommend nonexistence. Ethics is all about creating/preserving life while attempting to make the experience a memorable (read happy) one.

Ok, the point is there seem to be nonethical reasons to advocate for natalism and one appears in my previous post.

Well, I'm not sure how to judge your post. It rings true but, absit iniuria, that can be for so many reasons other than it being true if you catch my drift. Verisimilitude is rather complex it seems! I digress though.

What evolution selects for isn't gonna be something we can control if we don't do anything about our natural built-in reward-punishment system; as is obvious, that critical component of ours is not something we're in charge of. We follow our hearts and though our emotions tend to, by and large, make sense to our minds, sometimes we like what we aren't supposed to like and detest stuff we ain't supposed to detest. The conflict or disharmony between heart and mind (Xin), how well/badly these two work (together), will decide, in my humble opinion, humanity's fate!

No I don't see it that way at all. Each of us has his own truths which consider them as undeniable. I don't see any harm at sharing them with others. — dimosthenis9

Fine!

Indeed, I wonder if it is a post-facto excuse for justifying the fact that life entails work, and thus if work isn't meaningful then much of what sustains life isn't meaningful, and thus procreation is putting upon people not a benefit but a burden simply to "deal with". In other words, people MUST find meaning in work, otherwise implications are not good. — schopenhauer1

Well, frankly, it would be amazing if we didn't have to work at all and still have our needs & wants met to our satisfaction. This sentiment (something for nothing) has been associated with "kids these days!", as if to say the notion is puerile, a cardinal sign of an immature mind. However, what about the adult obsession with efficiency, making things easier, etc.? Such concepts, taken to their natural endpoint, imply that even adults want something for nothing. We wanna do magic! I suppose I would advocate for natalism of some kind, a toned-down version of it, just to see what happens...in the end? Do we succeed/fail? Mind you I'm working outside the domain of ethics here! Mighty interesting, oui?

:up:

The negation of there are no truths is an absolute truth! :snicker:

what each person individually consider as "absolute truths". — dimosthenis9

Isn't that kinda shooting yourself in the foot?

What's an absolute truth? :chin:

HAHAHHAHA — schopenhauer1

:rofl: I don't need to embarrass myself further!

Life really does suck!

In my humble opinoion, I addressed your concern to the degree required. Work is, let's just say, mutating - what it's now is orders of magnitude better than it was 30kya, and what it'll become, if all goes well, may have people falling over each other to be given the opportunity to, well, work.

I believe I've mentioned this before - some ideas tend to be photographs, others videos!

:up:

Most of what you wrote went over me head, mate!

Even then, what seems to be an important pattern caught my eye. Numbers were initially 1 dimensional (the number line) i.e. the reals. Then they became 2 dimensional (the complex plane). Do you discern a pattern? It appears that our number system is as of yet still incomplete!

This is the very problem I referred to. The numberline shows us an order, and this order gives zero a place. But zero has no place within an order, because it would mean that there is a position of no order within that order, which is contradictory. Set theory suffers this problem which I discussed extensively with fishfry, who insisted that a set with no order is a coherent concept.

In common usage though, negative numbers are used to represent quantitative values, and here zero has a justified meaning. So it is the equivocation in usage, between "negative numbers" representing quantitative values, and "negative numbers" representing positions in an order, which causes a problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

As is obvious to you, zero is hard, but not impossible, to grasp. Remember the calendar starts from 1 AD and so, technically, this year is 2021 Anno Domini! Go figure!

There's nothing I disagree on in your post. My only fear/worry is that what looks doable from only a general outline may turn out to be impossibe when we get down to the details à la the famed felicific calculus, kind courtesy of Jeremy Bentham.

rotation — Pie

So -4 = $i \times i \times 4$. A u-turn of whatever +4 is; repeat the offense and it's back to square one! :lol:

Nice!

Say what ?

You must mean isn't defined, (roughly) because of the last part of your statement. In other words, is not one-to-one and hence not invertible. — Pie

:chin:

So you think that we are condemned to uncertainty about the general picture? I don't want to admit it but it might probably be the case. — dimosthenis9

Truth is I haven't really done my homework on the subject to make any definitive claims; so cum grano salis with regard to my statements. Agrippa's/Münchhausen's trilemma are knockout punches to any and all forms of dogmatism. I'll leave it at that for now. Still working on it; all in good time I suppose!

The best response in my humble opinion in re the question of absolute truths is...wait for it...sabrá Mandrake which is just another way of sayin' God knows. Our brains clearly can't match up to the task at hand.

What you say seems to be historical account of shamanism; not denying the experts on that point.

What I've shared on this forum are merely my own analysis of what could be seen as a proto-religion. Shamanism never really took off like religions in real life though there's a mystique surrounding it, this being the result of romanticized fictional tales woven by writers, playwrights and film-makers around sorcerers and especially powerful sorceresses. :smile:

It just struck me that a shaman is/was basically a comms channel between us/people and the great unknown - they (shamans) bridged this terrifying gap as best as they could and brought some semblance of what in psychology is known as closure in our/people's lives.

Indeed, decoupling is the wrong concept to use here; what I actually meant was how work transformed into something more than, not just, gathering/hunting/farming; there was a time when work meant just that - sensu amplo, foraging.

Post-agricultural revolution, things changed, in my humble opinion for the better, and we could engage in activities that had no direct nutritional payoffs, things like painting/music/philosophy/etc.

In a sense food lost its numero uno position in re labor to second place, below other more, let's just say, sublime aforementioned activities. To me this is a significant upgrade to the status of work which should matter, oui? Especially if the downsides of having to look for/hold a job is a key premise in an/any argument. :smile:

You have a point but work has, in a sense, been decoupled, much to my satisfaction I might add, from food (a need). Gone are the days when work meant walking/running/leaping/hurling spears/weaving nets/setting traps which I consider activites directly related to nutrition. In the modern world, of course this going back at least 5-6 kiloyears ago, we can now earn our bread by doing things like writing/painting/solving problems/even plain thinking/etc., these kinda professions being only indirectly related to feeding. I consider this a significant improvement and we should be thankful for it.

The nightmare scenario that you're claiming life is is I think a severe case of cherry picking aka confirmation bias.

Anyway, true it is that the system we currently operate under leaves much to be desired - it be cold-hearted, it fails to address our emotional needs of which there are many. However, as I see it, this ain't a done deal with zero options for improvement. Conditions could be bettered and we may begin to, at some point, appreciate life as gift, worth it, enjoyable, and so on.

I understand your dukkha - something's wrong, I second that motion.

Sounds like a fair deal. What exactly are you complaining about?

The self-destruct countdown began...quando?

0 = the mind; or the mind and 0 belong to the same category of things? — Daniel

That feels right!

0 isn't divisble. $\frac{0}{x} = 0$ where x is real.

What follows? Any ideas?

Life is somewhat of an ouroboros (prey-predator, food web). Death (destruction/0) works against with Birth (creation/1)!

Are there any physical constants that are negative numbers?

It seems odd that if I say there's a square with an area of 4 cm², one value for its side viz. -2 is treated as if it were nonsense. A square with a side length -2?! Pffft!

And yet, when introducing children to the concept of negatives, we use a line to wit the number line.

In one sense, geometry's anti-negative numbers and in another sense it is pro-negative numbers!

What up with that? Anyone have any ideas?

I do, but I'm breaking open and out of my shell to more deeply engage with the world around and within me. Little by little. — Bret Bernhoft

Bonam fortunam, mon ami! Let your journey not end in you concluding that you were better off in your shell!