I've neither claimed nor implied that. — 180 Proof

Apologies then. Must be the bad cold I have. Au revoir.

The universe ain't mathematical. Sorry Max Tegmark. Hopefully he isn't a Trinitarian. Newton really hated the idea! Adds up, he was the foremost mathematician of his time!

You get points for imagination and evasive tactics!

1 = 3

:snicker:

In other words, either "reasonable or unreasonable" makes no practical – existential – difference. — 180 Proof

You mean to say reason doesn't guide us/doesn't inform our deeds? That's antiphilosophy, not philosophy! I quite like it! :smile:

Precisely! — Merkwurdichliebe

This however raises the question of where exactly in samsara (hell/earth/heaven) souls started out. It's a rather interesting puzzle, oui? Did we begin with a net karma that was positive (heaven/earth) /negative (hell)/zero (limbo)? Basically, how does karma in samsara work?

We could take things at face value, yeah! Nothing wrong with that except doing so means you'll think, for instance, the sun revolves around the earth when in fact, so they say, it's the exact opposite! Do you realize what this means? I could be eating a lobster, but in fact the lobster could be the one actually eating me! But that's not the end of it: It could be that though the lobster could be the one actually eating me, it could also be that I could be really, truly, eating the lobster! Never-ending story of loops in reality where the truth is always one step ahead of us. Eureka! I got it! No, you didn't!!

Astronomical radio telescopes have to be pointed at a source which means radio waves have direction (vector, not scalar) and light belonging to the same family as radio waves should be vector too? We can't see around corners. :chin:

Whether or not it's reasonable to procreate is moot. — 180 Proof

Really? Why?

Yep. Remember my arguments around the differences in things like drinking water, taking a shit, and procreating? Procreating is not instinct in the way the first two are (necessary or death). — schopenhauer1

Biological urges usually have a perfectly good explanation says the theory of evolution. The problem is that sometimes they can be counterproductive e.g. emotions tend to be problematic by deprioritizing reason - it initiated a vicious cycle that leads to death spirals.

And, recycling souls makes for an efficient universe and leaves enough space in hell for everybody, if necessary :naughty: — Merkwurdichliebe

Recycling souls in samsara! Makes sense to me!

Why the question? — 180 Proof

Why not the question?

Why would we want to reproduce given that path leads to disaster: overpopulation and its accompaniments like diseases (e.g. Covid), famine, ecological collapse, so on and so forth.

You did mention in an earlier post that reproduction is as natural as breathing - it's the default state of all life. However, is it sensible/reasonable to have kids? There are many things that are natural, e.g. we're violent by nature, but does that mean we should be violent?

I can only applaud in admiration at your idea - it seems to be well-thought-out. Not many can say that of their own worldviews. I'm still trying to grasp the essence of it. Give me time.

Happens to be that EM waves are light, but it doesn't necessarily follow from the evidence. Gravitational waves also travel locally at c, and yet they're not light.

How did Maxwell measure this speed? It's not like he could sync clocks on different continents. Sagnac effect says that in the frame of Earth's surface, westbound light is faster than eastbound light, such that light sent one way through a fiber optic cable around the world will arrive back at the source at a different time than light sent the other way. This doesn't violate relativity since a non-inertial frame was used to take the measurements. — noAxioms

Danke!

Please tell me why it's speed of light and not velocity of light? A laser can be pointed in a particular direction, oui?

It doesn't. It depends on the medium through which it travels. It can be made to creep very slowly indeed in the laboratory. — jgill

:rofl:

We must tread carefully here - nonexistence (nothing) must be avoided at all cost for it complicates the matter as is obvious from what you say about how Benatar resorts to intuition rather than logical rigor.

If you're game let's go over this again.

1. Nonexistent people don't feel the deprivation of joy.

To be consistent,

2. Nonexistent people also don't feel the elimination of suffering.

Nonexistent people have no moral status then, oui? If so to say being childless is moral is devoid of any meaning for no one's happy/suffers less or not at all except the people who decided not to have children. You know what I'm driving at, oui? We must shift our focus from possible people (babies) to actual people (people who can have babies). Give it a shot, will ya?

One response would be we're looking at the potential for suffering (if a baby is birthed, s/he may suffer). However, there's the potential for happiness too and it's back to square 1 for us.

:ok: Please carry on.

For many months you have continued to post disinformation, even repeating items on which you were already corrected or refuted. That is a pattern not merely of a beginner, but of a crank.

And you recently lied about me personally. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I'm sorry you feel this way! Good day.

This has to be exciting news for theoretical physics! — jgill

Indeed there's potential there to revolutionize science! Glad that you see it.

"Natalism" needs to be justified? Since when? — 180 Proof

Natalism: It's ok/good to birth children.

Question: Why?

1. When someone doesn't exist to experience good, damage has occurred to no one.
2. When someone does exist to experience bad, damage has occurred to someone. — schopenhauer1

Benatar, to be consistent, has to say:

1*. When someone doesn't exist to experience good bad, damage benefit has occured to no one.

1 & 1* (a consistent pair), together, means that nonexistence can't gain/lose anything [Who? Nemo (no one)]

However, Benatar's argument for antinatalism is based on the premise that

1**. When someone doesn't exist to experience bad, benefit has occurred. He truncates his premise by leaving out "no one". Below is how 1** should look if Benatar is to be consistent

1***. When someone doesn't exist to experience bad, benefit has occured [to no one].

1* = 1***

So, Benatar has to be inconsistent in how he treats nonexistence to make the case for antinatalism. That's the flaw in his argument in my humble opinion.

That's why I wished to take nonexistence out of the calculus by proposing we assume people exist before they're born on Earth. That way we can avoid the metaphysics of nonexistence, a complex topic in its own right and reduce the problem to a mathematical game of chance.

Right, but this doesn't refute the point, if the things are different for everyone, why go with the riskiest move? And then this also goes back to the asymmetry. WHO loses out on "no goods had"? Look back to my last post about the asymmetry. — schopenhauer1

There is no "riskiest move" mon ami! De gustibus non est disputandum. Lemme clarify: Since how I feel (sad/happy) about the world is subjective (we're on the same page), I can't make objective claims about it and since I can't do that, I can't argue.

As for who gains/loses if born/unborn, let's examine Benatar's asymmetry.

1. Born + Will be happy (Good)
2. Born + Will be unhappy (Bad)
3. Unborn + Would've been happy (Not bad)
4. Unborn + Would've been unhappy (Good)

To my reckoning, Benatar is guilty of an inconsistency - look at 3 & 4. In the case of 3, nonexistence diminishes the value of possible happiness (Not bad only), but in 4, the value of unhappiness remains unaffected by nonexistence (Good). Benatar is trying to eat his cake and have it too.

why go with the riskiest, most harm-creating one? — schopenhauer1

As I've tried to explain to you, this statement you just made $\uparrow$ is nonsensical for the simple reason that objectivity is impossible in re happiness/sadness. To drive home the point, a person could be in hell & :smile: and another person could be in heaven & :sad:

When subjectivity is involved, all bets are off!!! You can't predict and once that's impossible, our argument falls apart.

This is what blows my mind, if only I'm correct that is. James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish scientist, reportedly derived the speed of electromagnetic radiation and when his cross-Atlantic colleagues measured the speed of light (c), they found out that, this is where it gets interesting, c = the speed of electromagnetic waves. This led to the obvious conclusion that light was an electromagnetic wave!

Faster than light travel?

Have a look at this :point: Time Lag Argument For Idealism @Bartricks

According to Bartricks' the perceived present moment hasta be the true present moment (light should possess infinite speed or light is an illusion, thereabouts) and ergo, he argues, materialism (limited by the finite speed of light) is false.

I don't know what that emoticon you keep posting means.

/

I found out more about the -(1/12) thing. It requires taking the infinite sum in a different sense from the usual sense. It doesn't imply that there is a contradiction in mathematics — TonesInDeepFreeze

Okey dokey! Muchas gracias kind person! Please cut me some (more) slack. I'm a only a beginner as you already know.

I'm with you in that it would be presumptuous of anyone to think for someone else given that people differ so much in all the relevant respects (the subjectivity of hedonism comes into play). To illustrate, I might be happy living on minimum wages, with no health insurance, in a one-room apartment while you maybe miserable in a 40-room mansion with a full complement of staff to run the place.

However, for this very same reason, I can't defend antinatalism and nor can anyone justify natalism. To do either, we need objectivity (we are arguing, oui?) but that as we just discovered isn't there (vide previous paragraph).

What this means is that we can't predict how children will respond to the world - they could be all smiles or all tears, nobody can say.

It is at this juncture that I left the readers/posters/forum members.

What should we do now?

That, my friend, is the right question. — Dr. Lanning

vast majority at your party — universeness

This statement is obviously false! Are you saying antinatalists are a fringe, minority group? I'm not so sure - remember one Doomsday factor is overpopulation and it gets worse by the minute (google population clocks).

Also what's the exchange rate between tears & smiles? How many :sad: are worth 1 :smile: or conversly how many :smile: are worth 1 :sad: ? Surely, the conversiom factor is not 1. What you're tryin' to say is that if, in your family, only your bro/sis is :sad: , it's absolutely ok. Wouldn't her sobbing drag your entire family's happiness score down into the bloody abyss?

I'm all out.

The whole of human society has responsibility for the well-being of all children and all people for that matter, not just parents. We need to remove the rich/poor imbalance from the human experience, which will help alleviate human suffering without turning to extremist, fringe, low-brow thinking such as antinatalism. — universeness

Desperate times call for desperate measures, mon ami! Consider antinatalism a symptom; that should clear up the matter for you. If I throw a party and I see someone :sad: , my party is bollocks! :snicker:

Most well-balanced report of the situation at hand! :up:

As I suggested previously in another thread, we need hard data to settle the matter, but to compound our woes, the subjective nature of joy/sorrow means data (happiness indices) will be worthless.

This brings us back to the question I asked: Given the uncertainty that's a feature of the issue, what should we do?

The antinatalist's dilemma: Sorrow ( :sad: ) or Nonexistence ( :death: ) [Suicidal ideation].

The natalist's response: Life isn't suffering (anti-Buddhism) & Life isn't mostly suffering i.e. the joys of life are being ignored. Took the bull by the horns!

The subjective nature of hedonism nullifies both antinatalism & natalism as pointed to above.

What do we do?

What I object to is the idea that 'that teacup isn't real'. It is real because thst teacup is the sort of thing we use the word 'real' to describe and that's the only measure there is of what a word means. — Isaac

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

We can and do make mistakes, oui monsieur/mademoiselle?

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci despite the fact that she was discovered by Christopher Columbus. A catrographical boo-boo that remains uncorrected to this day.

That is why I used the word "risks"! Therein lies the balance. — DA671

A calculated risk is when the odds of winnin' are higher than the odds of losin'. The risk is in name only, or nominal/negligble whatever you wanna call it but, the catch is, ain't zero! Having children it seems is a gamble after all!

Calculated risks keeping in mind the opportunities! — DA671

Not forgetting the threats! :lol:

$10^{123}$

:fire:

Well, in my humble opinion, there hasta be some kinda interaction between things to, in a way, establish their existence (to each other). A tree exists insofar as it crashes to the ground and produces a sound in the process and likewise for the ground.

For conscious, thinking beings like ourselves, there's a further fact viz. knowledge of existence/the interaction - this is an additional layer to being/existence: There is existence simpliciter (interaction) and then there is knowledge (of existence/interactions).

Reality is incomplete then if it is, as Wittgenstein states, the totality of facts if there are no beings like us capable of knowing these facts.

As for "expanding the definition of reality", I'm afraid, it won't do us any good. We could decide to call black a color (we erroneously do), but that doesn't affect the fact that black can't be like red, green, mauve, etc. because black is when all colors are absorbed, unlike other true colors. In other words, we may expand the definition of reality but souls and stones will still be different enough to preclude any radical inferences we might wish to make.

My two cents...

The possible outcome of one throw are (50/50 odds, a fair coin in a manner of speaking):

1. Dart lands anywhere but on the kid ( :smile: )

OR

2. Dart lands on the kid ( :sad: )

We're not certain which of the two (1/2) will happen! How would you or anyone else for that matter tackle this game?

The game mirrors the natalism vs antinatalism dilemma. Neither side can guarantee the joy/sorrow of children and hence can't clinch their respective arguments.

P.S. Those who can provide for the well-being of their kids are only a handful of well-off folks and so, for simplicity's sake, they can be ignored, like $\delta x$, from the calculus.

Merci, merci apokrisis.

Dart Analogy for antinatalism.

Imagine you're asked to throw a dart blindfolded. The person whose game this is informs you that there's a dartboard, complete with a bullseyse in front of you but, just to add that extra spice to the game, there's also a child in the vicinity of the dartboard. You're told that whether you throw the dart or not is your choice and yours alone. Would you throw the dart or would you go "you sick bastard!"

Or something else—hopefully better. — DA671

Yes, some of us, I guess the more liberal-minded ride on optimism, it's their superpower. Others tend to be conservative, extra cautious as it were, not willing to take (unnecessary) risks, these types like to play it safe.

The way out, like one person once told me, is to take a calculated risk.

to extend, not contradict, human understanding — 180 Proof

:fire: You da man!

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

Correct me if I'm wrong, the whole idea of your EnFormAction theory boils down to, from the little that I know, yin & yang (the interaction of opposites) & Hegelian dialectics, both of which remind me of Heraclitean dualism (thesis-antithesis dynamics).

I don't know if it's actually true but, for obvious reasons, your thesis feels biocentric (pro-life) - the name EnFormAction suggests a bias towards life (EnFormy being anti-entropy, entropy being anti-order and thus an anti-life force we havta deal on a daily basis). Do you consider this to be a feature/bug in EnFormAction?

:clap: :fire:

Gratuitious suffering! Endemic stupidity! Fresh meat! Moral circus! :up: :up:

As for your recommendation, let's go all out on (pro)natalism; (Hegelian) Dialecticism guarantees that, as you seem to be implying, that the thesis (natalism) contains the seed of its own antithesis (antinatalism) via overpopulation/population explosion and intriguingly this might be automated rather than willed. The same goes for antinatalism, but there's a real chance that the yin-yang pattern won't hold: ◇extinction!

Much obliged monsieur!

Read Spinoza (re: substance / natura naturans which is both eternal and infinite – the only real, everything else that exists are merely ephemera necessarily dependent on substance). Or read Epicurus / Lucretius (re: the void which is both eternal and infinite ...) There are many other "infinite foundations" – the absolute, god, ground of being, the one, dao, xaos, etc – throughout the history of metaphysics. — 180 Proof

Muchas gracias señor!

@Bob Ross $\uparrow$

Same question: Why does metaphysics tend to have foundations that use $\infty$?