From conversations with you previously, you count frustrated/unmet desires, especially where that causes emotional distress, as suffering, right?

Otherwise a lot of what you're classifying as suffering for offspring wouldn't count as suffering. — Terrapin Station

Frustrated because you aren't doing something that causes a life that contains harm for another person? I am okay, letting that person stay frustrated by not putting another person into that.

I have to go NOW though so I'm just gonna leave this here

So the reason why birth should be immoral is:

(a) always applies. There always will be a subject capable of granting or withholding consent after birth.

As for (b): I would say modifying sperm/egg -> human is a problematic unusual modification. For proof, compare the amount of sperm that actually results in making a child with the net amount of sperm in the world.

I see that giving someone a physical body with 8 limbs is worse than giving them one with 4 (obviously) but giving one 4 is also problematic. This is because it creates an entity

1- capable of granting or withholding consent
2- capable of suffering
3- that will very likely suffer

How is this any different from the situation where you create a kid with 8 limbs that will very likely suffer severely?

Think about it: The kid with 8 limbs MAY find life good (although that is unlikely), but that doesn't justify taking the risk for him does it. Why doesn't it justify it exactly? Is it because he is MORE LIKELY to suffer? Or is it because there IS A CHANCE he does?

For me modifying a child to have 8 limbs is wrong not JUST because it INCREASES the chances of him suffering, but also because it ADDS THE CHANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I don't see how you can draw the line at having a kid with 8 limbs but saying having one with 4 is fine. Why exactly is that? How do you draw the line where "unusually modify" lies. Who decides this "unusually". What if someone is a cripple with 8 limbs and enjoys life and so decides to have a kids the exact same as him? Would you allow that legally or ethically?

Your ethical system has a huge amount of ambiguitiy as to what exactly "unusually modify" means. Therefore I would replace "unusually modify" with "create". I do not understand how you can see it as wrong to CHANGE someone's chances of enjoying life for the worse but see it as ok to give him the chances in the first place when there was no need for them before he was born.

"There is an 80% chance this child will suffer severely so let's not have him/let's abort him/let's kill him. But on the other hand this child has a 20% chance to suffer severely. There is nothing wrong with having him whatsoever. I see no inconsistency here"

Why take the risk for someone else in the first place? Why is 80% not ok but 20% is ok? Who decides these percentages? It is more responsible to be safe and set the chance of suffering at which having children is unacceptable at 0%.

I think you truly have a misconception about what suicidal people go through. Suicide is nothing like "Damn life sucks lemme just go jump off a bridge real quick". I think you are severely underestimating the resolve required to actually commit suicide — khaled

I know very well what suicidal people go through. You're still not addressing what I said, your analogy wasn't suitable.

You say that in order to leave this world, people have to go through extreme suffering, as if to say if they want to leave they can't do it without going through extreme suffering, and that's wrong. If they want to leave, they can do it in painless ways. The thing is that usually it is the people who go through extreme suffering who want to leave, precisely because of that suffering, but they can put an end to it in painless ways, they don't have to cut their wrists for instance. If you don't see why your analogy wasn't appropriate and as such why it doesn't support your argument for antinatalism, then I suppose you aren't willing to have a reasoned discussion on the subject.

"It is not ok to create a being that will be in a constant state of suffering" well no shit sherlock, I never thought someone would consider to set the bar THAT low. And then you say "One baby out of a million is born like that". WHY IS THIS BAR SET SO LOW? So as long as I commit an action that causes less suffering than a genetically engineered baby's suffering it's ok? What would you think if someone forced you to, say, cut a finger off and then said "Oh I'm not doing anything wrong here, at least I'm not forcing him to live with 8 broken limbs, this is totally negligable" — khaled

I have a hard time uncovering your argument through all these appeals to emotion. Do you see appeals to emotion as a valid form of argumentation? Some straw men in there too, bundled with begging the question as you're basically assuming in the first place that having babies is wrong. Why is your bar set so low?

And this: "but then by the same token we should stop doing anything because there is a risk of causing suffering in anything"

sounds bonkers to me. Doing something that risks harming someone else is shunned upon agreed? Yet we do it to survive OURSELVES. The case with antinatalism is extremely different. You can always adopt, so the suffering due to not having a child is just an excuse and instead you spare someone a LIFETIME of suffering. — khaled

If living means that you risk harming others, why don't you kill yourself? Because that would risk harming others too? Then whatever you do you risk harming others. So risking harming others is not a valid argument for antinatalism.

You're assuming that an individual experiences a lifetime of suffering, many people wouldn't describe their life that way, so I disagree that having a child is creating a lifetime of suffering.

If you assume that it's ok to risk harming others as long as we do it to survive, many people would claim that they can't live if they don't have a child, so then it's ok for them to have a child right? There aren't as many children to adopt as there are people who need to have a child.

Also, if existence is a lifetime of suffering according to you, why don't you go around and kill babies? You would spare them a lifetime of suffering, you could even do it in a painless way for them, isn't that the compassionate thing to do according to you? That's how you become a monster.

No because I have to do that to survive. Antinatalism doesn't say "don't do anything that risks harming someone else". It says "Ok guys, I know life sometimes sucks and you have to hurt others to avoid getting hurt yourself but can someone please explain to me what's going on with having kids? You are literally dooming someone to a lifetime they didn't ask for that may or may not be terrible for no good reason whatsoever when you can adopt." Antinatalism is simply the view that the risks of harm associated with coming into existence are astronomically high in comparison to the rewards, which I'm sure everyone would agree with — khaled

You don't have to drive a car or talk to others to survive, you could live in complete isolation to risk harming others as little as possible, only eating plants. If life is as horrible as you say it is, why is it ok in your view to harm others to keep on living a horrible life? Wouldn't you want to make the life of others less horrible? Or you don't really care about other people who are alive now, you only care about people who aren't born yet?

Adoption is not always an option, if more people start doing it it will most often not be an option.

Your view that "the risks of harm associated with coming into existence are astronomically high in comparison to the rewards" is your view, many people do not agree with it, that's why many people are not antinatalists.

Never existing and suicide are not the same. In fact, that is another pro-antinatalist argument. Either live out life, or kill yourself is pretty damn callous. — schopenhauer1

I didn't say live your life or kill yourself. I just note, again, that people want to continue living, including anti-natalists.

.If you don't like life, figure out how to cope — schopenhauer1

That's not how I react to people, professionally or regular every day interpersonally. I don't tell pregant women coming to term that they are being immoral. I presume you don't either.

Also, it makes no logical sense to CREATE people from NOTHING just so they can HAVE goals that they DIDN'T NEED in the first place — schopenhauer1

I don't think that sentence make much sense, but I think that is a line of not reasoning well that Terrapin is handling well. In any case I am not an advocate that the not born need anything or that parents should have goals for them.

Putting an agenda like "long term goals and achievement" above considerations of preventing ALL harm (with no cost to the future child), makes no sense is using the child for an agenda. They have to have XYZ experiences because someone else projected this to be what has to happen for them. — schopenhauer1

I didn't put it on them. I see that others who are alive will suffer their lives and now seemingly pointless if you win, so to speak. You think they shouldn't look the future and bring anyone new into it. So you think their feelings are part so wrong view. However they will suffer and it will be experiened by them as harm. And this would be, if antinatalists were successful, an effect of your polemic, and one which might be, since you are fallible humans, based on values that are not prioritized correctly or the wrong ones, or based on some incorrect reasonsing, or based on false metaphysics.

But you take that risk because you are pretty dman sure you are right.

Which is what everyone does regarding their values.

You however seem to think you are taking no risks of causing harm on those who did not ask for it.

I think that is very confused. It would have to mean you assume you cannot possibly be mistaken and so risks are being taken. I don't know where this idea of your infallibility comes from. But we've covered this ground.

Frustrated because you aren't doing something that causes a life that contains harm for another person? I am okay, letting that person stay frustrated by not putting another person into that. — schopenhauer1

I'd count it as progress that you apparently no longer think that suffering is a trump card. You're prepared to effectively dismiss some suffering.

As for (b): I would say modifying sperm/egg -> human is a problematic unusual modification. — khaled

Then you don't understand what "unusual" is referring to.

Also, you have to be careful to not interpret my ethical views as principle-following. As I mentioned, I'm against that approach.

Yes, suffering by not using ANOTHER person's life that will cause all other instances of harm for that person, is irrelevant as it is suffering had from not playing with someone else's life.

Yes, suffering by not using ANOTHER person's life that will cause all other instances of harm for that person, is irrelevant as it is suffering had from not playing with someone else's life. — schopenhauer1

So if suffering is not your trump card, what is?

So suffering is not qualified by "suffering that comes from.creating all harmful experiences for someone else?"

So suffering is not qualified by "suffering that comes from.creating all harmful experiences for someone else?" — schopenhauer1

Not sure what you're asking there.

Causes are the forces that necessarily result in property F (of some entity x) obtaining versus some other property. If c is the cause of F, then c can't occur without F occurring.

You can travel to South Africa without breaking your leg. So traveling to South Africa doesn't cause you to break your leg. — Terrapin Station

You can do absolutely anything without breaking your leg...except breaking your leg; so according to your argument breaking your leg is the cause of breaking your leg. That's real intelligent!

You can do absolutely anything without breaking your leg...except breaking your leg; so according to your argument breaking your leg is the cause of breaking your leg. That's real intelligent! — Janus

If you impact your leg with particular forces, under conditions where your leg isn't in armor, etc., you'd actually not be able to do that without breaking your leg. The cause is the forces that necessarily result in the effect in question.

Yes, if you impact you leg with sufficient force to break your leg you will break your leg. Again, that's real intelligent, genius!

Yes, if you impact you leg with sufficient force to break your leg you will break your leg. Again, that's real intelligent, genius! — Janus

And the cause is the forces that break your leg, which are not identical to your leg breaking.

The cause is not everything that's a precondition for breaking your leg in the circumstance that you broke it. For example, if you break your leg in South Africa, being in South Africa is not a cause of breaking your leg. This should be almost kindergarten-level simple, yet we've seen folks having trouble with it above.

So give me an example of these "forces". Are they something we can observe or are they just theoretical?

Say you hit your leg with a sledgehammer sufficiently hard to break it; would you not say it is hitting your leg with the sledgehammer that breaks your leg? But hitting your leg with a sledgehammer such as to break it just is breaking your leg. The sledgehammer is the proximal means to be sure, but to say it is the cause is too reductive. What about your swinging it, or your desire to swing it, The sledgehammer alone cannot be the cause.

But then what caused you to hit your leg with a sledgehammer? The causes are not isolated in the way you claim. They exist in a series, or better, a network that constitutes the whole context of events that culminate in your leg breaking. If it includes going to South Africa then going to South Africa was part of that series, just as every other event in your life, including the fact of your being born was, more or less proximally.

See, you were criticizing this kindergarten-level stuff and you're having a problem with it, too.

So first, again, If c is the cause of F, then c can't occur without F occurring.

You can travel to South Africa without breaking your leg, so traveling to South Africa is not the cause of breaking your leg.

One thing you seem to be not recognizing is the fact that people make free-will decisions to do things.

One thing you seem to be not recognizing is the fact that people make free will decisions to do things. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps, but not if determinism is the case (which we don't and cannot know either way).

I'm not an antinatalist, but I'm criticising your argument against it, which seems to rely on the reductive idea that there is one isolated cause, or perhaps at most a few causes, of any instance of suffering or misfortune, and that we cannot count being born as a cause of suffering. Being born is undoubtedly going to result in much suffering. How that is determined to balance against (at least some inevitable) pleasure is not really determinable. But the antinatalists have a point that no one is disadvantaged by not being born; whereas it seems inevitable that everyone will be disadvantaged by being born. You could turn that around and say that no one is advantaged by not being born whereas it seems inevitable that everyone will, in some regard or in some way, be advantaged by being born.

Both arguments are mirror equivalents in a way, but since the percentage of suffering to pleasure is impossible to determine it would seem to be most harmless to refrain from having children. Perhaps I am an antinatalist if you consider that I personally never wanted to have children; or at least if there was any transient motivation at all to have them it would only have been egoistic as far as I can tell. But I don't count myself an antinatalist insofar as I have no particular desire to influence others either way. Having said that I do think it would be best all round, given the current convergence of crises humanity faces, if as many people as possible refrained from giving birth, and instead adopted from third world countries if they really want to have children in their lives.

Right on :up: . You get the absurdity of Terrapin Station's argument, and understand the AN argument, just as well. I don't understand why he can't.

So first, again, If c is the cause of F, then c can't occur without F occurring.

You can travel to South Africa without breaking your leg, so traveling to South Africa is not the cause of breaking your leg.

One thing you seem to be not recognizing is the fact that people make free-will decisions to do things. — Terrapin Station

OK, so you came off a motorbike and broke your leg. You can come off a motorbike without breaking your leg just as you can go to South Africa without breaking your leg. So you will probably retort that coming off a motorbike and hitting the road with sufficient force to break your leg is the cause of breaking your leg.

As I have said it may be the most proximal cause, but maybe you lost focus for a moment causing you to come off the bike. Or maybe you were going too fast, which meant that you hit the road with great enough force to break your leg when you came off. Or maybe you are not a sufficiently alert and agile person and were not able to land in a way such as to avoid breaking your leg. Or maybe you didn't wear sufficient protective clothing. Maybe you could have hit the road with the same force but at a slightly different angle and avoided breaking your leg. Perhaps your bones are "chalky". The list of possibilities, just those right around the moment of the accident are manifold. So, it's an artificial, reductive mindset that isolates just one factor as cause.

And regardless of what I said above about determinism, I have no idea what you think free will has to do with anything in this context.

I'm not an antinatalist, but I'm criticising your argument against it, which seems to rely on the reductive idea that there is one isolated cause, or perhaps at most a few causes, of any instance of suffering or misfortune, and that we cannot count being born as a cause of suffering. — Janus

First off, it's not an argument against antinatalism. It's simply a disagreement with considering a precondition for x a cause of x. I use "cause" in the way I described. With an important aspect of that being that if c is the cause of F, then c can't occur without F occurring. That criterion isn't met by preconditions, but it is met by some things. It's only the things that meet that criterion that I call "causes."

You can come off a motorbike without breaking your leg — Janus

Yes, but not at the particular velocities etc. in question.

The thing is that usually it is the people who go through extreme suffering who want to leave, — leo

Yes. This is the suffering I was referring to when I said "They go through severe suffering". I wasn't talking about the act of commiting suicide itself

I have a hard time uncovering your argument through all these appeals to emotion. Do you see appeals to emotion as a valid form of argumentation? Some straw men in there too, bundled with begging the question as you're basically assuming in the first place that having babies is wrong. Why is your bar set so low? — leo

Stating random "fallacies" that don't apply to what I'm saying at all (where is this appeal to emotion?) and then proceeding not to address what I'm saying in that paragraph isn't a valid form of argumentation either. My question was basically this: Why do you think it is permissable to cause someone so much suffering that they literally kill themselves? The fact that they can kill themselves to remove that suffering doesn't justify causing it does it?

If living means that you risk harming others, why don't you kill yourself? Because that would risk harming others too? Then whatever you do you risk harming others. So risking harming others is not a valid argument for antinatalism. — leo

Logical fallacy. This is pure sophistry. First off, I never said I don't kill myself because that harms others (although that is obviously part of the reason), I count my OWN suffering as well as the suffering I would cause by any action. If I suffer severely for not commiting an action that causes minimal suffering (Ex: I would suffer severely if I don't drive but I DO risk running people over, however in terms of risks x harm done, my suffering from not driving > the potential suffering I cause by driving x the chance I cause it) then the action is moral. This however, does not lead in any way shape or form to saying "risking harming others is not a valid argument for antinatalism". The harm done in having a child will always be greater than the harm alleviated from the parent. Thus it is not that I would never do anything that harms anyone else, because I will. ONLY AS LONG AS the amount of harm I relieve off myself is significantly greater than the amount I cause (Ex: driving as i said). Having children causes much more suffering than it alleviates and is therefore immoral.

In short: Harming others isn't an automatic no in my ethical system, but having children is at a degree of harm that makes it almost always the correct call not to have a child

You're assuming that an individual experiences a lifetime of suffering — leo

No I am not. I am assuming this is a real risk that you're completely unjustified in taking for someone else without very good reason which you haven't presented me. I am getting tired of saying this over and over again. I never made the claim life is terrible, only that it can be

If you assume that it's ok to risk harming others as long as we do it to survive, many people would claim that they can't live if they don't have a child, so then it's ok for them to have a child right? — leo

No, because that child will also make the same claim. So this scenario would be like stealing food from someone to satiate yourself and starve them instead. We can agree that's immoral right?

Also, if existence is a lifetime of suffering according to you, why don't you go around and kill babies? — leo

Existence is not a lifetime of suffering according to me. But it can be. Now as for your second point: Because a forced imposition cannot be fixed by another forced imposition. If someone asks me for assisted suicide I would oblige (as long as it doesn't harm me myself). However I can't just go around killing people because I THINK they might be suffering. And by the same token I can't just go around making people because I THINK they will like it. Antinatalism is only about not taking risks with others that you don't have to. Killing babies is out of the question for the same reason having them is: Because it risks harming someone without their consent

If life is as horrible as you say it is — leo

Again. Stop this please. I am not saying life is horrible. Only that it can be.... And that there is no way to know that it won't be horrible for your child. And that you don't have to take that risk at all.

You don't have to drive a car or talk to others to survive, you could live in complete isolation to risk harming others as little as possible, only eating plants. — leo

But that wouldn't alleviate much pain from others would it? Even if I lived like a hermit that won't spare a single animal's life, or at least the chances of it doing so are extremely low. It would only add to food loss and reduce the amount of services I could have provided other people. On the other hand, me not having a child CAN (didn't say it would) spare someone an entire lifetime of suffering. And I am not one for taking risks for others without their consent, so I won't have children.

Your view that "the risks of harm associated with coming into existence are astronomically high in comparison to the rewards" is your view, many people do not agree with it, that's why many people are not antinatalists. — leo

It doesn't matter if they agree with it or not. It doesn't matter how much I like a job, I can't force you to work it. Especially if forcing you to work it entails giving you a "job keeping instinct" which forces you to continue working the job until you go through extreme suffering enough to finally make you quit. Again, I just don't see that an action that risks harming people to the point of them committing suicide without consent from them and only to satiate one's own desires is moral.

Then you don't understand what "unusual" is referring to. — Terrapin Station

Please tell me what unusual was referring to. Also please actually respond to my points not literally a single line.

The literal entire post was detailing why having birth should count as "unusual" change. You can't just handwave that away

I'm going to address some arguments for antinatalism that were mentioned in the beginning of this thread.

I. Keep in mind that no actual person is deprived if not born. However, some actual person will always experience harm if born (the Benatar asymmetry argument). — schopenhauer1

This argument assumes that avoiding harm is more important than having positive experiences, which many don't agree with. Also it doesn't take into account the fact that would-be parents are often deprived and harmed from not having a child.

II. Being born means moving into a constantly deprived state. In other words, prior to birth, there is no actual need for anything, after birth, needs and wants are a constant (Schopenhauer's deprivational theory of suffering). — schopenhauer1

Many people don't see their life as being in "a constantly deprived state", they would rather describe it as full of experiences and feelings, so I don't agree that life is being in a constantly deprived state.

III. Life presents challenges to overcome and burdens to deal with. When putting a new person into the world, you are creating a situation where they now HAVE TO deal with the challenges and burdens. It does not matter the extent or kind of adversity, the fact that a parent forced a new person to deal with challenges and burdens of life in the first place, is not good. Forcing something to play a game that cannot be escaped, or to burden someone with tasks that cannot be escaped, including enduring one's daily life challenges, is not right, no matter how much people later "accept" or "identify with" the game they were forced into (i.e. the "common man's view" used so much to counter the antinatalists "extremism"). — schopenhauer1

Whether a particular experience is seen as a "challenge to overcome" or a "burden to deal with" is subjective. When you enjoy what you do, you don't see it as a challenge or a burden, it's when you don't enjoy what you do that you see it that way.

So again, you're focusing on the negative part (the unenjoyed experiences), and not the positive part (the enjoyed experiences). Whether you confer more weight to the negative part is a subjective view, not an objective one.

I could equally make the opposite argument and say that life presents wonders and joy. When putting a new person into the world, you are creating a situation where they will experience wonders and joy, ...

IV. Contingent harm is harm that is situational. You simply do not know how much harms there are in life for a certain person. This creates huge collateral damage that was not meant for the child to endure, but he/she must do it nonetheless. Some people will find the "love of their life" others will be loveless for life. Some will struggle to keep food on the table for themselves, others will become highly successful in a career. Having the capacity for achieving one's happiness, does not mean this will occur for any particular person. In fact, if we are to be really real here, the ones that will be successful with much of what most consider "happiness" are using the ones that will fail at this. Why? One cannot know who will be successful or not prior to birth, so you must take chances with peoples' lives to see the actual outcomes. — schopenhauer1

Again, you don't know how much wonder and joy there will be in life for a certain person. I think we can agree that a given person can see their life as a net positive or as a net negative. You're not saying why it is more important to avoid a potential net negative than it is to create a potential net positive. Especially if the parents believe that they can give a happy life to their child.

This is not to say that people should have as many babies as possible, if the would-be parents feel like they couldn't take care of one or couldn't make him/her happy then better not to have one.

V. We are used as "technology/progress" advancers by a circular-production system. We rely on the productive forces to make stuff, and are forced into a system where we are constantly producing and forcing others to produce with our consumption. Once this system subsumes everything, there is no escaping being a part of its productive forces. We try to "self-help" people into accepting a "job that you like!!" so that this seems less painful, but we are just extensions of the machines we create. Plastics, chemicals, metals, materials of all kinds, mining, transportation, engine-building, building-building, any damn product in the world, manufacturing, utilities, engineering, etc. etc. — schopenhauer1

Yes this is a problem, but it's separate from antinatalism. We are educated to become efficient cogs in a great industrial machine that progressively destroys nature and other species and cultures, and that's a huge problem, and a source of great suffering. Does that mean that to solve this problem the whole of humanity has to be thrown away and go extinct? No, some individuals are much more responsible for this state of affairs than others. That's what I see as the important fight, changing course, elevate consciousnesses, make people see this state of affairs and rise against it, against those who are responsible for it, for a great part of the suffering that antinatalists and people around the world experience, that's the important fight, not convincing people that life is fundamentally horrible and that it's better to put an end to it all, because then those who are destroying humanity and the world will have won and we will have lost.

hi

Please tell me what unusual was referring to. — khaled

Outside of human behavioral norms (where those are culturally relative).

Outside of human behavioral norms (where those are culturally relative). — Terrapin Station

Ohhhhhh. So your argument against antinatalism is "It's ok because it's a social norm, even though it causes harm in the same way genetically modifying babies causes harm"

Also please actually respond to my points not literally a single line. — khaled

Keep posts short if you don't want anything overlooked. You can type as much as you want, of course, but I'm not going to respond to multiple points per post.

Ok let's take this slowly then. Why exactly is genetically modifying a baby to have 8 broken limbs on birth bad? And don't say "because it's unusual" I am asking why unusual is bad

Ohhhhhh. So your argument against antinatalism i — khaled

How many times do I need to point out that I'm not arguing against antinatalism as an ethical stance? Ethical stances can't be objectively right or wrong, true or false, etc. They're always ultimately ways that people feel, dispositions they have re behavior.

That's not to say that I wasn't arguing anything, but I was arguing things like, "There's no one to do anything to prior to conception." Because that's an ontological fact. That ontological fact implies nothing about ethics, because no fact implies any value.