Lately I've become quite sympathetic to #antinatalism.
And yet I have two kids, and if I were to start over again I think I would decide to have kids again.
How's that possible?
(thread)
Really? I always thought antinatalism was nonsensical. You can't compare non-living because you can't experience it, being by definition the absence of conscious experience. For me it's the morality equivalent of mathematics "divide by zero", it's simply not valid, or a category error. I understand being in such a situation of absolute torture with no silver lining or possibility of escape that's it's better to stop experiencing that, but that's extremely rare.
> _“You can't compare non-living because you can't experience it, being by definition the absence of conscious experience.”_
I think that's evidently false. ie, you _have_ to be able to compare existence with non-existence. If you throw your hands in the air and refuse to compare, you end up in very strange places, ethically.
Someone who commits suicide is doing that comparison (for themselves).
A couple who ends the pregnancy of a fetus who is known to carry an important incurable disease is doing that comparison (for someone else).
A family authorising euthanasia for a relative in a vegetative state is doing that comparison (for someone else).
The whole field of [population ethics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_ethics) needs that comparison to be feasible, at least in certain cases. Public health policy, too.
@tripu
Not sure how we can say nonexistence "feels" better than existence, when it's the absence of feeling (as far as we know). We need to compare conscious feelings; non-conscious beings don't have those.
A suicidal person simply wants to stop feeling... bad. Why is not-feeling the only other option?
I suspect parents that abort fetuses do it more for selfish reasons - perhaps the child would have claimed life was wonderful.
People in vegetative state are already not consciously feeling...
> _“We need to compare conscious feelings; non-conscious beings don't have those”_
Thought experiment #1:
You are starving in the woods. You stumble upon an animal hibernating on top of some edible plant. You can either kill the animal instantly and painlessly and eat it, or eat the plant. Assume both options will provide the exact same nutritional value and taste equally good to you. Since there's no suffering involved, and because according to you you can't compare sentience (the animal) with non-sentience (the plant), the decision is a coin toss. Even if it's a hundred little slumbering animals you have to kill to guarantee your survival vs. a single very fruitful plant, it'll still be a coin toss.
Thought experiment #2:
You give someone a drug that instantly puts them in a vegetative state for life. Defending yourself in front of the judge and the jury, you tell them that the current state of that person (absence of feeling) is no worse than their previous state (feeling). The judge counters that it's not in your power to decide that on behalf of the victim. You then correct the judge: your defence is not even based on a subjective preference; it is simply impossible to compare those states, therefore nobody can prove that you did anything wrong at all. It doesn't matter how the jury _feels_.
Do you agree? If not, why?
@tripu
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "not comparable". I meant the subjective experience of living can't be compared with the subjective experience of death, because there's no such thing as the latter (as far as we know). To say that people that have never been born are better off, is nonsensical to me. I thought that's what antinatalism is about.
If “people that have never been born” (yet) don't count, why worry about the future at all?
What would stop you from setting a ticking bomb that would destroy the entire planet in a thousand years from now, _out of sheer boredom_, if you knew that all conscious creatures that do exist today will be dead by then?
@tripu
You're the antinatalist, not me! 😄
But I'm not.
I'm just sympathetic towards those arguments, more open to them than most people. And I think more people would make better decisions if they considered antinatalist ideas.
@tripu
Oh ok 😄 maybe I misunderstand the arguments. And what better decisions with what ideas?
Ideas: the ones I'm defending in this discussion 😆
Decisions:
If more people were more thoughtful about the lives their descendants are likely to lead, we'd see fewer broken homes, fewer children dying of famine, fewer childless couples in prosperous nations, and more people adopting instead of having natural children.
If more people were more thoughtful about the asymmetry between suffering and pleasure, #suicide would carry less of a stigma, and would be easier to communicate, plan and execute.
Overpopulation and lack of natural resources would be less of a problem.
Discussions about public health and demographic changes would be easier. eg, people now assume that it's just bad when population shrinks (often for no good reasons), or that incurable diseases and painful chronic conditions deserve huge attention and resources (when a utilitarian calculus would say otherwise).
Our attachment to life would be more rational, in general.
@tripu
Ah okay, I am on board with most of those ideas, I just didn't see them as antinatalist, simply good decision making. I thought antinatalism regards all procreation as morally wrong.
You said that it is nonsensical “to say that people that have never been born are better off”. I assume it'd be equally absurd to you to say that they are worse off.
Since you can't say whether any life is worth creating in the first place or not, what would stop you from setting the world for destruction in the near future, so that all possible future lives never occur? What arguments are left against (or in favour of) instant and painless sterilisation of all creatures?
Or the opposite: since those comparisons are nonsensical to you, how could you argue _against_ bringing _many more_ children into the world? What's wrong with encouraging women to have more kids, and putting all those children in hospices?
You refuse to admit that it is A Good Thing that the happiest person who ever lived, indeed _lived_. Or that it is bad when people living in hell (famine, disease, war), have (often many) children who will very likely face the same hardships and have short and miserable lives.
In that sense I meant that it seems to me that “people that have never been born” (yet) don’t count at all for you.
@tripu
I meant it's nonsensical “to say that people that have never been born *are* better off” because those people *aren't* at all, so they can't *be* anything. That's all.
And I honestly don't know when I have refused to admit those things...
@tripu
I never said they don't count, did I? 🤔😀