The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end.
> The people who believe this stuff don't have kids, so they lose out in the Darwinian race, and the people with pro-natalist beliefs continue the human existence and more often pass down those beliefs. So regardless of who thinks they're right, evolution wins in the end.
Not necessarily. Parents aren't the only source of beliefs: as an extreme example indoctrination in forced boarding schools for young children can nearly totally eliminate parental influence.
So if anti-natalists want to beat evolution, they've got a window right now to crank up the indoctrination to keep humanity on a glide path towards extinction. IMHO, procreation has historically driven by a desire for sex, but technology has decoupled those. It'll take some time for explicitly pro-natal psychology to get equivalently powerful.
I am a parent. The amount of responsibility I feel towards my child is all encompassing and absolute.
The love I feel for them is immeasurable, as is the joy they bring me.
The guilt of this selfishness, however, is not entirely weightless either.
My child being created is, 50% my doing, I created them into a world I cannot control, without their consent. Every pain they will experience, will rest on my shoulders, until I die, and even from beyond my death, it will be due to me.
I will do everything in my power to prepare them to achieve a good life, this does not mean shielding them from pain, because experiencing pain is part of life, and learning how to deal with it appropriately, increases the quality of life they can have. This is the worst from both worlds, it is the parent who feels all their pain, and it is the parent that recognizes that it is part of becoming a full human.
My parents were very loving and caring, they wanted to have me, they wanted a child, and they gave me life. I am not grateful for them giving me life, in fact, that they did that is something I do not appreciate. But I am grateful for the love and care they showed me, and I love them very much, despite them creating me.
If you feel there are contradictions here, think harder.
"Evolution wins in the end", well, in the end I guess entropy wins.. But, you attribute a goal to evolution, but evolution, as a concept, really boils down to "the laws of physics also apply to life", it's not like we know it to be trying to do something in particular.. the life that continues is the life that continues, it's not that life really finds a way, it's just that there's enough variance that some of it will likely survive a change, not that every species does that.. but I don't really think that matters to whether knowingly creating life is moral or not.. it's not like nature or life is inherently moral.. it'd probably be a stretch, but one could say that, at least when perfectly executed, the least moral are most likely to succeed.
You're thinking about this in the backwards immediately obvious way.
Anti natalists are people who wouldn't want to be born if their parents had asked them. This means that anti natalism is the flip side of natalism.
A natalist can only succeed if they give birth to natalists and the only way they can do that is by giving their children a body and life worth living, making them anti natalists in disguise.
If you can cherry-pick your assumptions, you can reason to almost any result.
Which is a tactic for manipulating people to change their beliefs that I see often: don't argue for your position directly, but focus on more distant propositions that your target isn't as guarded about.
Granted.
I didn't mean this as a complete framework, only as an additional perspective or "mod" to amend the weakest part of Benetar's asymmetry. Also, I'm not personally interested in changing peoples views, only to contribute the idea of value-null, or that the discussion really ends with the existing.
A huge number of people feel this way, especially post Gen-X generations--Millennials, etc.
From the paper:
> moral authorisation has to come before the imposition.
What's the expression... tell me you're a Millennial without telling me you're a Millennial...?
The anti-natalist movement and it's reactionary natalist counterpart are perfect case studies in how people's beliefs are shaped by their cultural environment.
Maybe we should consider whether the ideology is logically correct, not who it comes from. Also, what you said are just baseless assumptions where you assign ideas you don't like to people you don't like
> Every moral duty is owed to a real, identifiable someone. You can’t have a duty to “a possible person” who does not yet exist.
This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future, which of course they will be since antinatalism is not universal and fertility rates are above zero. There are valuable things that can be done today that will help those people but not anyone alive today (e.g. preservation of media that is well-known and widely distributed today but may not be in the future when it is more historically valuable).
It is safe to assume that new people will be born at some point in the future (given current conditions) and will then be “identifiable”, so you have to account for their future existences when making moral decisions with future consequences.
I'm not arguing against the moral duty of making the future better for those that are created in the future, I agree with that perspective.
I only try to enhance the argument that there is no moral duty to create them.
Moral value is for those who exist, and given that we know more will come to exist, even though their creation itself is (in my view) morally negative, it does not conflict with acknowledging that they will, and to make the world as good as possible for them.
We could destroy the planet leaving all future generations screwed and that's okay because they are owed nothing? If that thinking passed muster we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's obviously maladaptive.
If the actions I take now will affect someone I know will exist in the future and who will be owed duties, I effectively have a moral duty. You can say the moral duty is not in existence until the person is actually born, but my duty to that future person has to be taken into account now so it already exists in a meaningful sense.
I don't know man... in general, these arguments seem more like pulling out the rug from a discussion by obfuscating arguments through abstract yet vague claims with some intellectual snobbery to make them feel correct, a trump card argument.
You win either by slinging undue complexity and forcing others to tap-out of the discussion in an awkward pause, or if a counter argument is made, you claim they do not understand your original argument.
I feel like the author is really trying hard to justify why they are not having kids. Fine! that is their preference, there is no need to justify it.
What I'm trying to say is, that, if a person is not born, they don't exist.. they're not waiting eagerly in the "before life" to be born, therefore, there can be no duty towards them, because there's nothing there.. You can't owe anything unless you have some subject, a rights-bearer.. If you don't create one, there is not one, and so, you do not have any duty to create one..
You know, like, if you don't take a loan, you don't owe any money on that loan, it's not like there is already loans made in your name, with debts waiting to be paid off, that you must go to the bank and take, so that you can pay them off.. I don't know how many different ways there is to say the same thing, but if the _THING_ does not exist, then it really has no rights, and you really have no duty towards it.. Those start only if you make the thing exist..
If you have a fortune, and nobody to inherit it, then you don't have any obligation to create a heir, you can chose to do that (even if I argue that it's morally bad to do, I will amend that it's probably less morally bad to do than if you created them so they could inherit the debt you don't have enough time to pay off during your own life)
Interesting to find one of my closely-held philosophical beliefs on HN. I'd recommend looking at Aponism <https://aponism.org/manifesto> for a set of beliefs that include this + others relating to reduction of suffering, or Negative Utilitarianism for similar ideas built upon the same building blocks.
Readit News
Not necessarily. Parents aren't the only source of beliefs: as an extreme example indoctrination in forced boarding schools for young children can nearly totally eliminate parental influence.
So if anti-natalists want to beat evolution, they've got a window right now to crank up the indoctrination to keep humanity on a glide path towards extinction. IMHO, procreation has historically driven by a desire for sex, but technology has decoupled those. It'll take some time for explicitly pro-natal psychology to get equivalently powerful.
The guilt of this selfishness, however, is not entirely weightless either.
My child being created is, 50% my doing, I created them into a world I cannot control, without their consent. Every pain they will experience, will rest on my shoulders, until I die, and even from beyond my death, it will be due to me.
I will do everything in my power to prepare them to achieve a good life, this does not mean shielding them from pain, because experiencing pain is part of life, and learning how to deal with it appropriately, increases the quality of life they can have. This is the worst from both worlds, it is the parent who feels all their pain, and it is the parent that recognizes that it is part of becoming a full human.
My parents were very loving and caring, they wanted to have me, they wanted a child, and they gave me life. I am not grateful for them giving me life, in fact, that they did that is something I do not appreciate. But I am grateful for the love and care they showed me, and I love them very much, despite them creating me.
If you feel there are contradictions here, think harder.
"Evolution wins in the end", well, in the end I guess entropy wins.. But, you attribute a goal to evolution, but evolution, as a concept, really boils down to "the laws of physics also apply to life", it's not like we know it to be trying to do something in particular.. the life that continues is the life that continues, it's not that life really finds a way, it's just that there's enough variance that some of it will likely survive a change, not that every species does that.. but I don't really think that matters to whether knowingly creating life is moral or not.. it's not like nature or life is inherently moral.. it'd probably be a stretch, but one could say that, at least when perfectly executed, the least moral are most likely to succeed.
Anti natalists are people who wouldn't want to be born if their parents had asked them. This means that anti natalism is the flip side of natalism.
A natalist can only succeed if they give birth to natalists and the only way they can do that is by giving their children a body and life worth living, making them anti natalists in disguise.
Which is a tactic for manipulating people to change their beliefs that I see often: don't argue for your position directly, but focus on more distant propositions that your target isn't as guarded about.
Deleted Comment
From the paper:
> moral authorisation has to come before the imposition.
What's the expression... tell me you're a Millennial without telling me you're a Millennial...?
The anti-natalist movement and it's reactionary natalist counterpart are perfect case studies in how people's beliefs are shaped by their cultural environment.
This doesn’t hold up. It is effectively denying that people will be born in the future, which of course they will be since antinatalism is not universal and fertility rates are above zero. There are valuable things that can be done today that will help those people but not anyone alive today (e.g. preservation of media that is well-known and widely distributed today but may not be in the future when it is more historically valuable).
It is safe to assume that new people will be born at some point in the future (given current conditions) and will then be “identifiable”, so you have to account for their future existences when making moral decisions with future consequences.
I only try to enhance the argument that there is no moral duty to create them.
Moral value is for those who exist, and given that we know more will come to exist, even though their creation itself is (in my view) morally negative, it does not conflict with acknowledging that they will, and to make the world as good as possible for them.
No, it merely denies that people that do not exist can have moral duties owed to them.
You win either by slinging undue complexity and forcing others to tap-out of the discussion in an awkward pause, or if a counter argument is made, you claim they do not understand your original argument.
I feel like the author is really trying hard to justify why they are not having kids. Fine! that is their preference, there is no need to justify it.
That pontification just feels pulled out of thin air.
Suppose I just need S to take over the family fortune? Also pulled out of thin air.
You know, like, if you don't take a loan, you don't owe any money on that loan, it's not like there is already loans made in your name, with debts waiting to be paid off, that you must go to the bank and take, so that you can pay them off.. I don't know how many different ways there is to say the same thing, but if the _THING_ does not exist, then it really has no rights, and you really have no duty towards it.. Those start only if you make the thing exist..
If you have a fortune, and nobody to inherit it, then you don't have any obligation to create a heir, you can chose to do that (even if I argue that it's morally bad to do, I will amend that it's probably less morally bad to do than if you created them so they could inherit the debt you don't have enough time to pay off during your own life)
That part is obvious and incontrovertible.
The idea that such a duty must exist, or is even relevant, is just something someone made up.
Deleted Comment