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diff --git a/content/entry/antinatalism.md b/content/entry/antinatalism.md index 96ee31b..e569ce7 100644 --- a/content/entry/antinatalism.md +++ b/content/entry/antinatalism.md @@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ Since interpreting Benatar's premises in an absolute value sense leads to contra Even with clarified premises, Benatar's fourth premise places unnecessary importance on the act of procreation. I value well-being, in the end. If I create a happy person, that's equally morally good as making an already existing person happy. What's the difference between creating a happy conscious mind versus making an existing conscious mind happy? To me and I suspect to many others, there is no difference. To Benatar, that difference is everything. -Let's do a thought experiment for intuition sake. Imagine you are god. You decide to give the people of Earth a heavenly existence. The people of Earth are extraordinarily happy all the time. There is no suffering, not even a single mediocre moment for anyone. Everyone's debts are forgiven. Love and kindness and compassion permeate every human being. Every day is better than the last. Imagine the best moment of your life amplified a trillion times occurring in every human being every single microsecond. +Let's do a thought experiment for intuition's sake. Imagine you are god. You decide to give the people of Earth a heavenly existence. The people of Earth are extraordinarily happy all the time. There is no suffering, not even a single mediocre moment for anyone. Everyone's debts are forgiven. Love and kindness and compassion permeate every human being. Every day is better than the last. Imagine the best moment of your life amplified a trillion times occurring in every human being every single microsecond. For your next project, you create Earth 2.0, a duplicate Earth. You populate it with duplicate human beings with the exact same properties as you bestowed upon the original Earth's humans. It's full of happy people and completely free of suffering. @@ -165,7 +165,7 @@ Antinatalists claim that most people do not evaluate reality correctly. They cla Some antinatalists further argue that the lives of all animals are very bad, not only the lives of humans. This philosophy is known as "universal antinatalism". According to universal antinatalism, since humans are the only species capable of understanding the predicament, we ought to sterilize other animal species to save them from their default state in the wild which is a life of struggle. -I don't know whether or not depressive realism is true. I'm also not sure whether animals suffer more than they flourish. I will give the antinatalists credit on these points. The suffering of descendants does seem to be the strongest argument in favor of no one having children and animal sterilization out of all the antinatalist arguments. +I don't know whether depressive realism is true. I'm also not sure whether animals suffer more than they flourish. I will give the antinatalists credit on these points. The suffering of descendants does seem to be the strongest argument in favor of no one having children and animal sterilization out of all the antinatalist arguments. However there is the possibility that future technology might deliver us eternal bliss so good it would retroactively justify all humanity's past suffering and the suffering of all other beings. This is a point Matt Dillahunty made when he addressed antinatalism. However it's not a valid point since it seems equally plausible that future technology could create suffering, perhaps even unfathomable torment beyond anything we've ever experienced. As a side note, [Matt's criticism of antinatalism](https://yewtu.be/embed/n9BFG0Xh4Wg?local=true) seems to miss the point. @@ -176,7 +176,7 @@ Benatar has cited [historical evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatali ## Famine Relief David Benatar also argues that: -> "...in a situation where a huge number of people live in poverty, we should cease procreation and divert these resources, that would have been used to raise our own children, to the poor." - Wikipedia, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 +> "...in a situation where a huge number of people live in poverty, we should cease procreation and divert these resources, that would have been used to raise our own children, to the poor." — Wikipedia, licensed CC-BY-SA 3.0 To create a new being and increase overconsumption and overpopulation without confidence that the new being would enjoy life all at the cost of being able to definitively improve the life of an already existing person seems selfish. So I agree. It's better to spend your resources on something that definitely reduces suffering and increases well-being without creating extra problems. So that wraps up Benatar's arguments. @@ -207,7 +207,7 @@ As for Benatar, his asymmetry argument is absurd. But he does have a point about If depressive realism is true though, we shouldn't continue the species hoping future technology will make all the suffering worthwhile. It seems equally likely that future technology will create more suffering. The arguments in favor of not having children in order to have more time and money to help the poor and adopt or foster children seem compelling. -If the lives of other animal species consist of mostly suffering as well, we ought to sterilize them to rescue them from existence before we voluntarily extinct our own species. If depressive realism is false for animals and we humans were altruistic enough to go extinct for the sake of other animal species, we would also be altruistic enough to treat them better in the first place and live in harmony with nature as other species do. The pessimistic antinatalist positions about human nature wouldn't necessarily apply any more. +If the lives of other animal species consist of mostly suffering as well, we ought to sterilize them to rescue them from existence before we voluntarily extinct our own species. If depressive realism is false for animals and we humans were altruistic enough to go extinct for the sake of other animal species, we would also be altruistic enough to treat them better in the first place and live in harmony with nature as other species do. The pessimistic antinatalist positions about human nature wouldn't necessarily apply anymore. I conclude therefore that there's no point in considering voluntary human extinction in order to protect other animal life. |