Addressing the first paragraph, I don't think I correlated relief with the absence of pain. One is more of a positive feeling, the other is nothing, like you said. If a dying person is in severe pain with no hope of recovery, it's still up to them when or whether they want to be euthanized, as long as they're capable of making that decision. It's not automatically better that they die, due to what I mentioned before about perception.
On the second paragraph, I wasn't just talking about relief and learning, I was talking about stuff like funerals. We congregate with others when we're sad, not just because it shares the burden, but because there's a positive feeling associated with doing so. You mourn when a loved one is gone, and it's a reassurance of your feelings and humanity.
At least, that was the idea. I might be going off the deep end on this one, I'm not a psychologist. Forget I said anything.
Not sure you need any uncertainty or setbacks to be happy, necessarily. It's just that a slight rewording of that statement is true: even with uncertainty and setbacks, you can still be happy. That alone disproves that someone needs to be born into a perfect life for it to be worth it.
To the third paragraph, I addressed that at the end of the original post. No one, given the choice to be born or not, would or should trust what we have to say about it. Not you or me. They wouldn't be able to make any informed decision on the topic until after they got here. There's too many unknowns and we're way too biased. They would be weighing the pros and cons of how they felt at the moment (in nonexistence) compared to what WE SAY their lives are going to be like. We don't know. Even if they were able to get a glimpse of their parents and whatnot, they still wouldn't be able to make an informed decision. They would have to roam around the Earth as a spirit for a while, but at that point, they might as well be alive. If you just asked them whether they wanted to be born with absolutely no context whatsoever (and also removing tone of voice somehow), I think all of them would say "Yes" with no exceptions, because being able to do something beats not being able to do anything. The same is true for heroin, frankly. Assuming high availability, whether someone gets into heroin is entirely dependent on how their perception can be skewed for or against it. In a vacuum, however, they will probably take it, unless they have an inclination against being adventurous.
As for the fear of death, I'm not going to argue about it. It's too circular and doesn't really leave any space for discussion. If someone doesn't want to die, no matter what the reason, it could automatically be attributed to a fear of death. How do you disprove a fear of death? The main way would be a desire to die. I would be tasked with trying to prove a way of not fearing death but also not wanting to die, and I just can't be bothered.
Yeah I know you didn't make that correlation directly, but that was the only example I could think of when you said that "Any positives of nonexistence is cancelled out by the fact that you don't exist". So I thought you were thinking of something like that.
I think I understand what you mean, that crying and mourning has been shown to have a positive effect on people. It's releases emotional tension, so it's cathartic. But the only reason it has a positive effect was because you were feeling so miserable in the first place. And it never negates the pain completely, it just makes you feel a little better. So I don't think that shows that those negative emotions are actually good.
"even with uncertainty and setbacks, you can still be happy". I don't think that does mean that being born would be worth it. Antinatalists don't argue that people born into hard lives never experience happiness, just that they experience a lot of sadness, and that experiencing even a little sadness makes life not worth giving up a painfree non-existence for.
I see what you mean, that in order for them to make an informed decision about it, they'd need to know the future, so that they'd know exactly what their life will be like, before deciding if it'd be worth it. But I don't think they'd need that much detail to make an informed decision. As long as they knew the socio-economic environment they'd be born into, and the typical kind of life that someone in that environment would lead, they would be considerably informed. (It's the same with heroin. You wouldn't need to know exactly what your future will be like in order to make an informed decision about whether to start using it. All you'd need to know is the percentage of people whose lives are ruined from it).
I don't think they would all say "Yes" to being born. The reason you give of why they would, that it would be better than doing nothing, implies that they could feel boredom or unfulfillment from being in non-existence, which they can't. (Of course, that's why it's impossible to ask them in the first place if they want to be born, because they would need to have some form of existence to even understand that question. And they would need to be born in the first place to even understand what pain is and why it's bad).
Wasn't trying to say that those emotions are necessarily on equal grounds with happiness, just that they weren't full negatives to be used as a reason not to be born. I think the disconnect here is... why would even a little sadness make life worse than "painfree non-existence"? If it can be proven that they will live a life of mostly positives, isn't that by default better than not existing (which goes back to my "0 != 1" argument, but I'm giving it a twist here)? If it's not, I have to say, the ideology puts nonexistence on way too high of a pedestal, to the point of equating it with true happiness. An extremely wealthy 0.1%-er who has never experienced an ounce of hardship AND absolutely loves every aspect of their lives is very clearly not on the same plane as someone who was never born. That would mean putting "absence of pain + absence of a lack of joy" at a value of something like +1000, which is bordering full fetishization.
As for asking the unborn the question, I disagree, they would need that much detail. Knowing the socio-economic environment does not prepare them, since they could very well do better themselves, get adopted, move out later in their lives, etc. They would need to know their genetics, their home, their choices and their prospects, and ultimately, they would need to weigh all that with their nonexistence, which tips the scale. Similarly, for heroin, the percentage of people whose lives are ruined would NOT matter. Not by itself. It needs to be accompanied by heroin's many long-term, universal effects. Of course, for the information to be complete, you also need to include the fact that heroin feels good and is very addictive, which, depending on the state of that person's life... tips the scale.
The non-existing person don't have to feel any boredom or nonfulfillment, they aren't feeling anything. I posit that feeling something is better than feeling nothing. I imagine it's kind of like a sensory deprivation tank. Yes, it's different if you weren't experiencing anything before entering the tank, but upon being given the choice of leaving the tank, what reason would you have not to? We end up going back to the previous paragraph. But yeah, obviously it's a silly idea. I'm giving it credence because it's one of the cores of the ideology.
Ok, I get you. "why would even a little sadness make life worse than painfree non-existence? If it can be proven that they will live a life of mostly positives, isn't that by default better than not existing". Yeah it does feel that way to me too, but then I think living people like us are too prone to bias when judging whether existence or non-existence is better. The thought of never living life does sound quite miserable to us, but then you can't experience any sadness before you're born at the thought of never living life, so it'd make no difference to a not-yet-living person. Same with when you say that feeling something is better than feeling nothing, the thought of never feeling anything sounds empty to us, but it'd make no difference to a non-existing person.
I do think it is a bit extreme alright though to say that it wouldn't be worth being born, if you were guaranteed a mostly happy and easy life. I like the idea of antinatalism just to encourage people not to have kids if they can't give them a decent upbringing. But even though I can't find any fault with their argument that no one at all should be born, no matter what life they'd be born into, I still don't take it seriously.
Oh yeah, they would need to know their genetics and general health as well alright, I forgot about that. And I suppose their home may not necessarily be ok just because they're in a generally good community, so maybe they should know that too. I'd say that'd be enough information for them to make an informed decision though. But even with this information, I don't think they'd always choose to be born, especially with the very good chance of encountering some serious pain in life, like developing cancer or watching a spouse/child die or something. Not to mention the guaranteed anguish of eventually dying yourself anyway.
I'm not saying nonexistence is miserable, just that it's nothing. I make some subjective arguments, but saying that a life needs to be perfect to be worth being born into is a pretty huge fault in their argument, since that is itself very subjective. Antinatalism describes nonexistence as a wholly positive state, and not just slightly positive, but positive enough to require a perfect life to make up for losing it. The fault in their argument is exactly that.
For them to know that cancer exists without someone in their family having it, you would need to tell them that. The bigger the list of things you're telling them, the more open to bias the information gets. Present them with "you'll die eventually and it's probably going to hurt" and "people you love will die", and they will probably say no. Present them with "you will feel great pride as you accomplish things" and "you get to have orgasms", and they will probably say yes. It goes back to what I meant before about how they shouldn't trust anything we say. It also relates to the previous paragraph about attributing a wholly positive value to nonexistence. For all we know, you could present a completely negative view of life and they will still always choose to be born.
Basically, the idea that they would likely choose not to be born is entrenched in the idea that nonexistence is great. Not merely nothing. It's actually great.
Well I guess they think that because of what I wrote in my original post, that non-existence is perfectly pain-free, and that you don't miss the absence of positive emotions. So it's perfectly non-distressing. Plus the very fact that they hold that opinion but you don't, shows that people have different opinions about it, which means the non-existent person may not want to be born if he knew all the information and could somehow make that choice, and so they believe that we shouldn't give birth to them since we can't get their opinion or consent.
Well yeah, I guess if we told them about life then it would likely be biased either way. A happy person would tell them how great it is, while an unhappy person would tell them how miserable it is. The only way they would be able to make the decision really would be if they were born and got to experience it first, but then obviously they wouldn't be non-existent anymore.
Consider this: I'm taking more of an absolutist stance on the opinion nonexistent persons might have, since attributing any individuality to them would start getting into religion and spirituality. They can't really otherwise be individuals because they don't exist. They can't have pre-existing opinions, so it's all or nothing. Given the same information, all of them would react the same way, so the only difference is what information they're given.
If you look at it that way, their consent isn't important because it can be easily bought. It's more about making a valid decision yourself (as the parent) based on your own circumstances, since that's the information that you would likely be passing onto them, anyway. The moral argument of whether it's right to bring them out of nonexistence in the first place basically just circles back to my original post about "0 != 1".
What do you think of antinatalism?
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Addressing the first paragraph, I don't think I correlated relief with the absence of pain. One is more of a positive feeling, the other is nothing, like you said. If a dying person is in severe pain with no hope of recovery, it's still up to them when or whether they want to be euthanized, as long as they're capable of making that decision. It's not automatically better that they die, due to what I mentioned before about perception.
On the second paragraph, I wasn't just talking about relief and learning, I was talking about stuff like funerals. We congregate with others when we're sad, not just because it shares the burden, but because there's a positive feeling associated with doing so. You mourn when a loved one is gone, and it's a reassurance of your feelings and humanity.
At least, that was the idea. I might be going off the deep end on this one, I'm not a psychologist. Forget I said anything.
Not sure you need any uncertainty or setbacks to be happy, necessarily. It's just that a slight rewording of that statement is true: even with uncertainty and setbacks, you can still be happy. That alone disproves that someone needs to be born into a perfect life for it to be worth it.
To the third paragraph, I addressed that at the end of the original post. No one, given the choice to be born or not, would or should trust what we have to say about it. Not you or me. They wouldn't be able to make any informed decision on the topic until after they got here. There's too many unknowns and we're way too biased. They would be weighing the pros and cons of how they felt at the moment (in nonexistence) compared to what WE SAY their lives are going to be like. We don't know. Even if they were able to get a glimpse of their parents and whatnot, they still wouldn't be able to make an informed decision. They would have to roam around the Earth as a spirit for a while, but at that point, they might as well be alive. If you just asked them whether they wanted to be born with absolutely no context whatsoever (and also removing tone of voice somehow), I think all of them would say "Yes" with no exceptions, because being able to do something beats not being able to do anything. The same is true for heroin, frankly. Assuming high availability, whether someone gets into heroin is entirely dependent on how their perception can be skewed for or against it. In a vacuum, however, they will probably take it, unless they have an inclination against being adventurous.
As for the fear of death, I'm not going to argue about it. It's too circular and doesn't really leave any space for discussion. If someone doesn't want to die, no matter what the reason, it could automatically be attributed to a fear of death. How do you disprove a fear of death? The main way would be a desire to die. I would be tasked with trying to prove a way of not fearing death but also not wanting to die, and I just can't be bothered.
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JellyBeanBandit
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Yeah I know you didn't make that correlation directly, but that was the only example I could think of when you said that "Any positives of nonexistence is cancelled out by the fact that you don't exist". So I thought you were thinking of something like that.
I think I understand what you mean, that crying and mourning has been shown to have a positive effect on people. It's releases emotional tension, so it's cathartic. But the only reason it has a positive effect was because you were feeling so miserable in the first place. And it never negates the pain completely, it just makes you feel a little better. So I don't think that shows that those negative emotions are actually good.
"even with uncertainty and setbacks, you can still be happy". I don't think that does mean that being born would be worth it. Antinatalists don't argue that people born into hard lives never experience happiness, just that they experience a lot of sadness, and that experiencing even a little sadness makes life not worth giving up a painfree non-existence for.
I see what you mean, that in order for them to make an informed decision about it, they'd need to know the future, so that they'd know exactly what their life will be like, before deciding if it'd be worth it. But I don't think they'd need that much detail to make an informed decision. As long as they knew the socio-economic environment they'd be born into, and the typical kind of life that someone in that environment would lead, they would be considerably informed. (It's the same with heroin. You wouldn't need to know exactly what your future will be like in order to make an informed decision about whether to start using it. All you'd need to know is the percentage of people whose lives are ruined from it).
I don't think they would all say "Yes" to being born. The reason you give of why they would, that it would be better than doing nothing, implies that they could feel boredom or unfulfillment from being in non-existence, which they can't. (Of course, that's why it's impossible to ask them in the first place if they want to be born, because they would need to have some form of existence to even understand that question. And they would need to be born in the first place to even understand what pain is and why it's bad).
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Anonnet
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Wasn't trying to say that those emotions are necessarily on equal grounds with happiness, just that they weren't full negatives to be used as a reason not to be born. I think the disconnect here is... why would even a little sadness make life worse than "painfree non-existence"? If it can be proven that they will live a life of mostly positives, isn't that by default better than not existing (which goes back to my "0 != 1" argument, but I'm giving it a twist here)? If it's not, I have to say, the ideology puts nonexistence on way too high of a pedestal, to the point of equating it with true happiness. An extremely wealthy 0.1%-er who has never experienced an ounce of hardship AND absolutely loves every aspect of their lives is very clearly not on the same plane as someone who was never born. That would mean putting "absence of pain + absence of a lack of joy" at a value of something like +1000, which is bordering full fetishization.
As for asking the unborn the question, I disagree, they would need that much detail. Knowing the socio-economic environment does not prepare them, since they could very well do better themselves, get adopted, move out later in their lives, etc. They would need to know their genetics, their home, their choices and their prospects, and ultimately, they would need to weigh all that with their nonexistence, which tips the scale. Similarly, for heroin, the percentage of people whose lives are ruined would NOT matter. Not by itself. It needs to be accompanied by heroin's many long-term, universal effects. Of course, for the information to be complete, you also need to include the fact that heroin feels good and is very addictive, which, depending on the state of that person's life... tips the scale.
The non-existing person don't have to feel any boredom or nonfulfillment, they aren't feeling anything. I posit that feeling something is better than feeling nothing. I imagine it's kind of like a sensory deprivation tank. Yes, it's different if you weren't experiencing anything before entering the tank, but upon being given the choice of leaving the tank, what reason would you have not to? We end up going back to the previous paragraph. But yeah, obviously it's a silly idea. I'm giving it credence because it's one of the cores of the ideology.
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JellyBeanBandit
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Ok, I get you. "why would even a little sadness make life worse than painfree non-existence? If it can be proven that they will live a life of mostly positives, isn't that by default better than not existing". Yeah it does feel that way to me too, but then I think living people like us are too prone to bias when judging whether existence or non-existence is better. The thought of never living life does sound quite miserable to us, but then you can't experience any sadness before you're born at the thought of never living life, so it'd make no difference to a not-yet-living person. Same with when you say that feeling something is better than feeling nothing, the thought of never feeling anything sounds empty to us, but it'd make no difference to a non-existing person.
I do think it is a bit extreme alright though to say that it wouldn't be worth being born, if you were guaranteed a mostly happy and easy life. I like the idea of antinatalism just to encourage people not to have kids if they can't give them a decent upbringing. But even though I can't find any fault with their argument that no one at all should be born, no matter what life they'd be born into, I still don't take it seriously.
Oh yeah, they would need to know their genetics and general health as well alright, I forgot about that. And I suppose their home may not necessarily be ok just because they're in a generally good community, so maybe they should know that too. I'd say that'd be enough information for them to make an informed decision though. But even with this information, I don't think they'd always choose to be born, especially with the very good chance of encountering some serious pain in life, like developing cancer or watching a spouse/child die or something. Not to mention the guaranteed anguish of eventually dying yourself anyway.
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Anonnet
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I'm not saying nonexistence is miserable, just that it's nothing. I make some subjective arguments, but saying that a life needs to be perfect to be worth being born into is a pretty huge fault in their argument, since that is itself very subjective. Antinatalism describes nonexistence as a wholly positive state, and not just slightly positive, but positive enough to require a perfect life to make up for losing it. The fault in their argument is exactly that.
For them to know that cancer exists without someone in their family having it, you would need to tell them that. The bigger the list of things you're telling them, the more open to bias the information gets. Present them with "you'll die eventually and it's probably going to hurt" and "people you love will die", and they will probably say no. Present them with "you will feel great pride as you accomplish things" and "you get to have orgasms", and they will probably say yes. It goes back to what I meant before about how they shouldn't trust anything we say. It also relates to the previous paragraph about attributing a wholly positive value to nonexistence. For all we know, you could present a completely negative view of life and they will still always choose to be born.
Basically, the idea that they would likely choose not to be born is entrenched in the idea that nonexistence is great. Not merely nothing. It's actually great.
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Well I guess they think that because of what I wrote in my original post, that non-existence is perfectly pain-free, and that you don't miss the absence of positive emotions. So it's perfectly non-distressing. Plus the very fact that they hold that opinion but you don't, shows that people have different opinions about it, which means the non-existent person may not want to be born if he knew all the information and could somehow make that choice, and so they believe that we shouldn't give birth to them since we can't get their opinion or consent.
Well yeah, I guess if we told them about life then it would likely be biased either way. A happy person would tell them how great it is, while an unhappy person would tell them how miserable it is. The only way they would be able to make the decision really would be if they were born and got to experience it first, but then obviously they wouldn't be non-existent anymore.
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Anonnet
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Exactly.
Consider this: I'm taking more of an absolutist stance on the opinion nonexistent persons might have, since attributing any individuality to them would start getting into religion and spirituality. They can't really otherwise be individuals because they don't exist. They can't have pre-existing opinions, so it's all or nothing. Given the same information, all of them would react the same way, so the only difference is what information they're given.
If you look at it that way, their consent isn't important because it can be easily bought. It's more about making a valid decision yourself (as the parent) based on your own circumstances, since that's the information that you would likely be passing onto them, anyway. The moral argument of whether it's right to bring them out of nonexistence in the first place basically just circles back to my original post about "0 != 1".