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...
> _“Not sure how we can say nonexistence "feels" better than existence, when it's the absence of feeling”_
Don't get hung up on words. We can judge states of the world even when we don't feel anything directly ourselves. eg, an accident that maims someone in the other side of the world is objectively worse than no accident happening. Even if that person doesn't manifest their suffering, or if I never get to know them or hear from them.
@tripu
We can judge them because all of those situations involve conscious beings. Is it better to be a rock or a human? I think this a category-error question, because there's no such thing as "being a rock".
Again, I think you get to absurd situations if you refuse to compare existence with non-existence, or consciousness with no consciousness.
Several ways to see that:
For rhetorical purposes there _is_ such a thing as “being a rock”. It means having zero consciousness. It is almost equivalent to “being a corpse”. Someone with a sledgehammer could easily turn you into the functional equivalent of a rock right now. Are you indifferent towards that proposition, since you can't compare consciousness with “being a rock”?
Is there such a thing as “being an amoeba”? Or “being a nematode”? Consciousness is pretty much a continuum. If you don't accept “being a rock” as a hypothetical, I guess you won't accept “being a protozoo”, either. Unless you are drawing a line somewhere, you can't consider “being an elephant” or “being that brown-haired person across the street”, either. How could you possible _be that other person_? You can only be you. And yet intuitively you know that you have to compare what _is_ against what _could be_, all the time. You know that a sterile, rocky planet “is worse” than a planet teeming with creatures living in permanent bliss.
Beings that could plausibly exist in the future are not “conscious beings” either. Like rocks. Isn't that a problem, if you refuse to consider them at all because they don't exist? Why care about your great-nephew at all, then?
OK, not the _experience_ of nonexistence, which is impossible by definition. We don't need to use those verbs you keep on fussing about: “feel”, “experience”.
I want us to agree that we can evaluate those states of the world, and compare them. Even when in some scenarios some creatures don't exist and in others they do.
@tripu
Yes, I agree we can try to badly guess counterfactuals in which different people exist or don't exist.
I'd say many of those guesses aren't bad at all. Many counterfactuals involving creatures existing one hour from now, or not existing at all, are straightforward, and sometimes hugely consequential.
@tripu
Yes, I think we're not talking about the same thing. I'm not indifferent to losing consciousness, I just meant we can't talk about the experience of nonexistence.